Monday
Thunder Road, Film 4, 10.50pm
Jim Cummings directs, writes and stars in a quirky comedy drama expanded from his award-winning 2016 short film. Police officer Jim Arnaud (Cummings) has a breakdown when his mother dies. A deeply emotional and unconventional eulogy goes viral, forcing Jim's captain (Bill Wise) to strongly recommend that he take time off work to grieve properly. Instead, Jim throws himself into his work, which results in an unseemly brawl with one suspect. Soon after, Jim's wife Rosalind (Jocelyn DeBoer) files for divorce, demanding sole custody of their young daughter Crystal (Kendal Farr). Jim vows to fight Rosalind and he prepares for court alone. Overwhelmed by his loss and feelings of injustice, Jim begins to lose sight of the people and things that matter.
Tuesday
The Shallows, E4, 9pm
Nancy Adams (Blake Lively) has recently dropped out of medical school following the death of her mother (Janelle Bailey). The young woman heads to the same secret beach in Mexico where her pregnant mum surfed before she was born and sets out to catch a wave herself. Unfortunately, Nancy inadvertently strays close to the floating carcass of a humpback whale, which has been attacked by a shark. Alert to the danger, she hurriedly paddles back to shore but the shark attacks and sinks its jaws into her leg. She clambers onto the lifeless whale as the predator circles. Just when you thought it was safe to head back into the water, The Shallows thrashes about in the wake of Jaws and its B-movie imitators with surprising success.
Wednesday
Personal Shopper, BBC Two, 11.15pm
Maureen Cartwright (Kristen Stewart) is a personal assistant to a celebrity called Kyra (Nora von Waldstatten), who needs an underling to manage her diary and collect an endless array of loaned gowns from design houses around the world. As she caters to various whims, Maureen finds time to indulge her fascination with the supernatural. Before her twin brother Lewis died, he vowed to make contact from the other side. She waits expectantly for a tangible sign of his protective spirit. Spookily, she begins to receive text messages from someone who refuses to reveal their identity. Personal Shopper is a tantalising character study in which the super-rich and the supernatural collide head-on. Stewart emits a haunting glow, performing for extended periods with just her smartphone.
Thursday
Memory: The Origins of Alien, Film 4, 11.20pm
In 1979, director Ridley Scott blasted into deep space in the company of the crew of the commercial cargo star ship Nostromo, following Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and co as they face an ever-growing alien terror. Made to mark the film's 40th anniversary, documentary filmmaker Alexandre O Philippe illuminates the untold story of a horror classic by delving into the archives of screenwriter Dan O'Bannon and visionary artist HR Giger. This treasure trove of resources includes O’Bannon's original 29-page script from 1971 entitled Memory, rejected storyboards and alien designs, and previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage.
Friday
Film of the Week
Neil Marshall Double Bill, Friday, Film 4, 11.10pm
What’s not to like about a late night horror double bill? Very little when they’re as good as this one. It comes from the mind of Newcastle-born director Neil Marshall and consists of the two features which first put him on the map – 2002’s Dog Soldiers, and The Descent, from 2005.
First up is Dog Soldiers, starring Sean Pertwee as cynical, hard-bitten army sergeant Harry Wells. He's given the task of commanding a group of unwilling grunts on a series of exercises in the Scottish Highlands which will pit them against an SAS unit. What could go wrong? Everything, as it turns out. First they find the bloodied remains of the SAS unit – there’s one survivor, a Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) – and then they’re attacked by whatever it is that did for Ryan’s men. A chance encounter with zoologist Megan (Emma Cleasby) leads to the relative safety of a deserted farmhouse where, with night coming on, they realise they’re actually battling a pack of werewolves. So they hunker down for the fight of their lives. Literally.
It’s a fairly formulaic set up, but the flashes of black humour, the Scottish setting and one or two neat twists keep it feeling fresh even at a distance of nearly 20 years. It’s a pretty decent cast too: as well as Cunningham (who would go on to star in Games Of Thrones) and Pertwee (always a joy to watch), it features Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd as Private Cooper.
Dog Soldiers was set in Scotland but filmed in Luxembourg. The Descent, which follows at 1.20am, was filmed partly in Scotland but is set in America’s Appalachian Mountains, where a group of six female friends take off for a weekend of potholing against a background of personal tragedies. Again, Marshall sets up the sense of jeopardy expertly before he even introduces the supernatural element. In this case the women become lost and disorientated in the dark cave system, though as it turns out that’s only the start of their troubles. It won’t be a surprise to anyone to learn that they aren’t alone down there in the dark. Now a cult favourite with both the horror and the arthouse crowd, The Descent stars Scottish actress Shauna Macdonald and MyAnna Buring, who would go on to appear in Ripper Street and Netflix smash The Witcher (she plays Tissaia de Vries). Marshall, meanwhile, has since helmed 2019’s Hellboy reboot (starring David Harbour of Stranger Things) and been reunited with Pertwee for last year’s 17th century folk-horror romp The Reckoning.
And one to stream …
Beckett, Netflix
Inspired in part by manhunt novels such as John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, this thriller from young Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino stars Tenet’s John David Washington as the titular Beckett, an ordinary Joe visiting Greece off season with his girlfriend, April (Alicia Vikander).
Against a backdrop of political unrest in the capital, the couple take to the mountains for some sightseeing. But when Beckett falls asleep at the wheel during a night drive, the car leaves the road, plunges into a gully and then smashes through the wall of a remote cottage. Semi-conscious and hanging upside down in the wrecked vehicle, Beckett thinks he sees a woman and a young boy through the broken windscreen. Do they live there? Are they injured? It’s when he relates the story to the local police that the trouble starts. Soon he’s being chased through the countryside by pistol-toting assassins. His only hope (he thinks) is to make it back to Athens and the safety (he thinks) of the US embassy. But who is after him and why? And is embassy official Stephen Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) quite the saviour he seems to be?
Though he handles the action sequences well enough, Filomarino’s collaborators are drawn mainly from the upper strata of the arthouse cinema and it shows in the mood and the pacing. The film is produced by Italian director Luca Guadagnino, best known for his Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name and for a trilogy of films he made with Tilda Swinton. The cinematographer is Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, lensman of choice for both Guadagnino and Palme d’Or-winning Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And the soundtrack is by the great Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who starred alongside David Bowie in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. Safe to say then that Beckett doesn’t deliver the kinetic punch of Tenet (though it’s an awful lot easier to follow). Washington, however, is every bit as watchable.
Alicia Vikander and John David Washington in Beckett
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