Joy, Captain America: Civil War and Son Of Saul: Your Week In Film (Monday April 25-Sunday May 1)

Holocaust drama Son Of Saul opens in UK cinemas on Friday

Next Monday is not only a Bank Holiday but also my 50th birthday so, after today, this column is taking a two-week break but will return on May 9 (my hangover should have gone by then). The reviews will be back that week, too. In the meantime...

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 25th: Joy (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) is my favourite David O Russell film since Three Kings but it seems to have gone under most people's radar, especially in the UK where its subject - Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano - is not really known. And that's a shame because Joy is not only a cracking biopic, but it boasts a great cast (Jennifer Lawrence as the titular character, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper) and has some interesting things to say about the entrepreneurial spirit and American capitalism too. Far from being an unalloyed endorsement of the latter as some critics suggested, Russell's film explores the murky side of business and how dipping your toes into that world can make a person not just tenacious and determined but utterly ruthless too. Joy succeeds beyond her wildest dreams but the extraordinary luck she needs to get there and the sacrifices she has to make along the way are clearly and effectively signposted. Her familial relationships ultimately become compromised and her loss of innocence is genuinely quite heartbreaking. Russell doesn't invite you to feel sorry for Mangano (she's a multi-millionaire, so why the hell should you?) but very smartly presents her success as something of a double-edged sword. Is being wealthy better than being poor? Yup, every time... but expect to lose a tiny bit of your humanity to make it happen. Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Volume I (23:25, Film 4) is, essentially, a pornographic film about addiction and whilst the Danish master couldn't make a boring or uninteresting movie if his life depended on it, this one simply isn't in the same league as the likes of Antichrist (a horror film about grief) or the sublime Melancholia (a disaster movie about depression). Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin and Stellan Skarsgård star. Mubi are rolling out French New Wave director Jacques Rivette's infamous Out 1 in eight feature-length parts this week, two a day from today. The entire film - a portrait of post-May '68 Paris and its dashed dreams - is 13 hours long but, in mitigation, was originally conceived as a TV series. People seem to recoil from long films but think nothing of binge-watching the latest season of Game Of Thrones or Girls but that's a subject for another day...

Jennifer Lawrence is a joy in, er, Joy

Tuesday 26th: Stay up late for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Volume II (23:25, Film4). Although the film is a bit exhausting (and not just because of the wall-to-wall boning), it's worth sticking with for two cameos. Uma Thurman is brilliant as a scorned wife turning up with her two young children at protagonist Joe's apartment to show them "the whoring bed", while Shia LaBeouf's 'English' accent is truly a thing of mind-boggling wonder (and I still think he's taking the piss). If that doesn't float your boat, there's Spike Lee's bravura heist drama Inside Man (23:40, ITV4). Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster star. 

A bank job goes wrong in Spike Lee's Inside Man

Wednesday 27th: Blue Is The Warmest Colour (23:10, Film4) has become defined by its controversies as much by its artistic and commercial success. Abdellatif Kechiche's film is a touching, explicit and quietly devastating story of a passionate love affair between two young women (Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos are Emma and Adèle), and it was no surprise to anyone when it carried off the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2013. Unfortunately, relations between the director and his stars broke down soon after with Seydoux and Exarchopoulos speaking out about the "horrible" on-set conditions they had to endure, particularly during the movie's main sex scene, which Seydoux claimed took 10 miserable days to shoot. It led to a war of words between the two opposing sides with the actresses vowing never to work with Kechiche again. Additionally, Julie Maroh, the creator of the graphic novel the film is based upon, also spoke out about the sex scene, describing it as a "brutal and surgical display". She also took issue with the director's decision to cast two straight women in the lead roles. For me, whilst it would be difficult to explore the women's relationship without showing its physical side, I have to say the explicit scene in question struck me as entirely gratuitous. We're never left in any doubt about the attraction Emma and Adèle have for each other so chucking in a scene straight out of a porn film tells us nothing we couldn't guess for ourselves about the passionate nature of their relationship. It's a pity because Kechiche's film is otherwise terrific. If all this sauciness (and there's been quite a bit in this week's column) is too much for you, Snake Plissken's back in Escape from L.A. (Netflix UK).

Blue Is The Warmest Colour: Mired in controversy

Thursday 28th: On The Film Programme (BBC Radio 4, 16:00), director Laszlo Nemes discusses Son Of Saul, his Oscar-winning movie about life and death in a Nazi concentration camp. The film finally opens in UK cinemas tomorrow (it's also available via Curzon Home Cinema) and is something I've been desperate to see ever since the glowing critical notices it received at last year's Cannes. Films you can see on your TV or other screen today include Martin Scorsese's disappointing Gangs Of New York (22:05, ITV4), the brilliantly strange Duke Of Burgundy (23:15, Film4) and '90s-teenagers-invade-'50s-sitcom oddity Pleasantville (Amazon Prime Video), which I remember really liking way back when.

Son Of Saul won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film

Friday 29th: Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (BBC 5 Live) boasts special guests Chris Evans and Paul Rudd talking about Captain America: Civil War, which opens in cinemas today. Are you on Team Cap or Team Tony? I'm on Team Isn't It About Time Thanos Actually Did Something? If you're staying in, there's rude gags aplenty in Ted 2 (15:30 and 20:00, Sky Movies Premiere), a director's cut of last year's underwhelming Adam Scott comedy The Overnight (23:55, Sky Movies Premiere), or John Turturro's amusing Fading Gigolo (Netflix) which guest stars Woody Allen in a rare acting role. 

Cap and Iron Man fall out in Captain America: Civil War 

Saturday 30th: Directors the Russo Brothers have had an interesting career. These days they're making mega-budget superhero flicks for Marvel (including the aforementioned Civil War), but in the past they also directed multiple episodes of cult US TV comedies Arrested Development and Community. I first came across their work back in the early '00s on Welcome To Collinwood (23:55, BBC2), an offbeat crime comedy, starring George Clooney, Sam Rockwell, William H Macy and Luis Guzmán. Based on the Italian film Big Deal On Madonna Street, it was a box office flop but remains a winning tale of a bunch of idiots and ne'er do wells getting in way over their heads when they attempt to pull off a 'bellini' - a perfect heist.  

Sunday May 1st: Bridesmaids (21:00, Film4) never fails to make me laugh - the scene on the plane, featuring a heavily-medicated Kristen Wiig, especially. Am I the only person who reckons director Paul Feig will do a good job on the Ghostbusters remake and prove everybody wrong? Yeah, thought so...

Welcome To Collinwood: Honour amongst thieves

The last 5 Films I saw

1. Entertainment: Bleak, baffling and often quite brilliant road movie about a depressive, misanthropic comedian on a stand-up tour of seedy bars and strange visitor attractions in California. Gregg Turkington - aka real-life stand-up Neil Hamburger - stars. It's recently been added to Netflix.

2. Black Mountain Poets: Alice Lowe (Sightseers) and Dolly Wells (Dolly & Em) are two con-artist sisters on the run from the law and posing as beat poets at a weekend retreat in this likable British comedy.

3. A Little Chaos: Charming costume drama set in the court of Louis XIV with Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts falling for each other during the construction of a grand water feature in the gardens at Versailles. The late Alan Rickman directs and stars as the Sun King himself. 

4. Midnight Special: Jeff Nichols' Spielbergian sci-fi about a young boy with superhuman powers starts strongly but rather falls apart in its final act. Michael Shannon's as watchable as ever though.

5. Gloria: John Cassavetes mob drama starring Gina Rowlands as a former gangster's moll on the run with an endangered orphan. It has its moments but is ultimately torpedoed by a terrible child actor and his total lack of chemistry with the lead.

Entertainment: Bleakly funny and misanthropic

UK box office Top 10

1. The Jungle Book
2. Zootropolis
3. Eye In The Sky
4. Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice R
5. Eddie The Eagle
6. The Huntsman Winter's War
7. Fan
8. Theri 

9. Criminal
10. Kung Fu Panda 3

R = Recommended

All information correct at press time

The Criterion Collection hits the UK: Your Week In Film (April 18-24)

Tootsie is part of the Criterion Collection - finally available in the UK

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 18th: Any spare cash I have in the coming weeks will be heading in the direction of the Criterion Collection. Established in the US for 30-odd years and boasting some 800 titles, Criterion has finally made it over the pond to the UK and its first six Blu-ray releases include Roman Polanski's Macbeth, Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn in Tootsie, Harold Lloyd silent movie Speedy, Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings, Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and Grey Gardens, a groundbreaking documentary about the 'rich and useless'. For years, UK cinephiles have had to import the region-locked discs and splash out on expensive region-free machines on which to watch them. But no more. Hallelujah, it's a new day! In the States, Criterion is a byword for quality and that is reflected in everything from the packaging of the discs to the content - original sleeve artwork, perfect transfers, lots of extras. It will be interesting to see how the new venture does against the likes of Arrow and Eureka, who provide a similar high-end product and are long-established in the UK. It's a battle that can only be good news for British movie lovers.

Cary Grant stars in Only Angels Have Wings

Tuesday 19th: A Welshman sits alone in a car for 90 minutes jabbering increasingly frantically into a mobile phone as his world implodes around him. It's hardly an elevator pitch up there with Alien’s ‘Jaws in space’, is it? Still, what Locke (21:00, Film4) lacks in spectacle and action, it more than makes up for in Tom Hardy’s assured, sympathetic performance. Utterly gripping. Elsewhere at the same time, there's Edgar Wright's amusing Hot Fuzz (21:00, ITV4) and Michael Haneke's unsettling Hidden (21:00, Sky Arts). Mubi are showing Laurence Olivier's bravura turn as Hamlet from today (Henry V, which not only starred but was also directed by Olivier, was added yesterday).

Tom Hardy is utterly gripping in Locke 

Wednesday 20th: Buddy cop movies were all the rage in 1987, unfortunately Stakeout (02:05, Channel 4) had the misfortune to drop a few months after Lethal Weapon which soon became the genre's sine qua non. Although it did similar box office business to the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover classic, John Badham's film was always going to seem a little bit undercooked by comparison. That doesn't mean it isn't a lot of fun, though. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are two heavily-moustached Seattle cops sent to keep an eye on Madeleine Stowe, the girlfriend of an escaped prisoner. Dreyfuss falls for her making a complicated, dangerous situation even more so...

Dreyfuss and Estevez are buddy cops in Stakeout

Thursday 21st: In this week's The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4), Francine Stock tries out 'Blind Cinema'. As you enter the movie theatre you are blindfolded by a group of schoolchildren, who then provide a whispered description of the action on-screen via ear-trumpets. I'm guessing a showing of Pasolini's Salo isn't on the agenda ("Now he's making them eat bowls of shit! Bleurgh!"). Your best bet film-wise today is Lawless (23:05, Film4), a Prohibition-era western which sees three bootlegging brothers (Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke and Shia LaBeouf) under threat from an unscrupulous lawman (Guy Pearce). Nick Cave (yes, that one) adapted an original novel for the screenplay.

Bootleggers fight for survival in Lawless 

Friday 22nd: Lots of interesting stuff in cinemas from today, including Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle's biopic of jazz legend Miles Davis; Idris Elba in Paris-set thriller Bastille Day, and Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless One, the first part of Miguel Gomes' three-part epic which adapts the original Middle Eastern stories to modern-day Portugal. Additionally, there's Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures, a documentary about late US photographer/provocateur Robert Mapplethorpe, which will also be available on Curzon Home Cinema. Meryl Streep is the special guest on Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio 5 Live), where she discusses her new film, Florence Foster Jenkins. Takashi Miike's Kurosawa-inspired 13 Assassins (01:05, Channel 4) is well worth catching for the astonishing battle set-piece that takes up much of the film's second half. 

Idris Elba kicks French arse in Bastille Day

Saturday 23rd: Mesrine: Killer Instinct (12:05, BBC2) and Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1 (01:50, BBC2) are parts one and two of Jean-François Richet's sprawling crime thriller chronicling the life and death of legendary French gangster Jacques Mesrine. The excellent Vincent Cassel (La Haine) plays the titular character, 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' notorious for his daring prison escapes and numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders committed over several continents during the 1960s and '70s. If you like your crime capers violent and epic - think Scarface meets Legend - this double bill is most certainly for you.

Jacques Mesrine was France's Public Enemy No.1

Sunday 24th: John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness (21:00, Horror Channel) sees Donald Pleasence (yay!) discover a mysterious cylinder in an abandoned Los Angeles church. If opened, it could mean the end of the world (clue: it contains the essence of Satan - probably the worst idea for an aftershave ever). Almost as silly is Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man (11:00, Gold) in which Labour MP Diane Abbott and grumpy pop star Elvis Costello team up to battle the supernatural. 

Prince Of Darkness: Old Nick's back and causing trouble

Last 5 Films I saw
1. Husbands (1970): John Cassavetes' no-holds-barred dissection of middle-aged masculinity stars Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and the director himself, as three pals embarking on a booze-fuelled bender following the funeral of a close friend.
2. Gone Girl (2014): Rosamund Pike is a genuinely chilling presence in David Fincher's cold-hearted and blackly comical 'missing person' thriller. It's enough to put you off marriage for life...
3. Sunset Song (2015): Beautiful but bleak book adaptation from Terence Davies. Agyness Deyn – in only her second lead role – dazzles as a bright young woman battling to survive a harsh upbringing in rural Scotland.
4. Eisenstein In Guanajuato (2015): Sumptuous, difficult and maddening - yep, this story of Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein's sexual awakening in 1930s Mexico is a Peter Greenaway film all right.
5. Absolutely Anything (2015): Alien supreme beings imbue Simon Pegg's struggling everyman with the ultimate super power in a daft but likeable comedy. The Pythons and the late Robin Williams provide voices.

Men under the microscope in Husbands

UK box-office top 10

1. The Huntsman Winter's War
2. Zootropolis R
3. Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice R
4. Eddie The Eagle
5. Kung Fu Panda 3
6. Midnight Special
7. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
8. 10 Cloverfield Lane
9. London Has Fallen
10. Hardcore Henry

R = Recommended

All information correct at time of publication

Chronic, Barry Lyndon and Couple In A Hole: Your Week In Film (April 11-17)

The Jungle Book opens in cinemas from Friday

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 11th: Chronic (DVD and VOD) sees Tim Roth consign the likes of United Passions and Grace Of Monaco to the dustbin of history as he turns in his finest performance for many years. In Michel Franco's powerful but off-kilter character study, the Reservoir Dogs actor plays a palliative care nurse working with patients in Los Angeles. He's an odd, and clearly disturbed man, who gets altogether too close to those he looks after, whilst struggling to forge meaningful relationships in his personal life. It's this dislocation that Roth and writer/director Franco are keen to poke about in and they do so very effectively. If you are so inclined, I noticed the likes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Sisters, Black Mountain Poets and Krampus are all available to buy digitally from today. Being old and out of touch, I much prefer proper hard copies myself and will therefore be certain to check out the Blu-ray delights of horror/comedy sequel Bride of Re-Animator, CIA conspiracy thriller Three Days Of The Condor and cracking Steve Martin comedy Three Amigos. Still not sated? Curzon Home Cinema are showing the excellent Couple In A Hole (see Last 5 Films I Saw, below), the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. 

Tim Roth is back to his best in Chronic

Tuesday 12th: Ryan O'Neal is the titular Barry Lyndon (21:00, TCM) in Stanley Kubrick's slow but rewarding 18th Century-set drama. The extravagant period piece (which won four Oscars) sees O'Neal's young Irish rogue shoot a love rival in a duel before embarking on a series of 'misfortunes and disasters', as he battles his way from nothing to become part of the English aristocracy. Long seen as one of Kubrick's lesser works, it seems to have enjoyed something of a critical renaissance in recent years, possibly helped by the likes of Martin Scorsese heaping praise upon it. And quite right too.

Barry Lyndon is Scorsese's favourite Kubrick film

Wednesday 13th: There's a double bill of Alfred Hitchock thrillers from today on Netflix UK, with James Stewart starring in both films. In Vertigo (voted the best movie of all time by Sight & Sound), he's an acrophobic San Francisco private detective led a merry dance by Kim Novak and all is most certainly not as it seems. In Rear Window, he's a wheelchair-bound photographer who witnesses a murder and, deciding to investigate, puts himself and sweetheart Grace Kelly in mortal danger. Elsewhere, in a very good day for classic films, there's Billy Wilder's WWII prison camp black comedy Stalag 17 (13:35, Film 4) and Michael Powell's controversial and disturbing Peeping Tom (22:50, Horror Channel). 

Vertigo: The greatest movie of all time?

Thursday 14th: Overlong, self-indulgent and shambolic, Magnolia (Amazon Prime Video) is the only one of Paul Thomas Anderson's films I find it hard to get along with. The cast, including Julianne Moore, Tom Cruise and Jason Robards, are all terrific though and, for that reason alone, it's worth several hours of your time. Rather more straightforward is charming undead comedy Zombieland (21:00, Film 4) which contains surely one of the finest cameos in recent movie history. Jon Favreau talks to Francine Stock on The Film Programme (BBC Radio 4, 16:00) about his new film, The Jungle Book (in cinemas Friday).

Magnolia: Shambolic but worth your time (just about)

Friday 15th: After a few weeks away, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo return to the helm of Kermode and Mayo's Film Review (BBC Radio 5 Live, 14:00). Jon Favreau turns up to plug The Jungle Book again. Cinema bids a fond farewell to Alan Rickman as the late actor's final film - Eye In The Sky - hits your local multiplex today. A sophisticated thriller that takes a long, hard look at the morality of modern warfare, it stars Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. If you're after something a little more 'arthouse', there's The Brand New Testament, the tagline to which is surely the best of this or any week: 'Did you know that God is alive and lives in Brussels with his daughter?' I didn't but I certainly do now...

The Brand New Testament: May contain traces of gorilla

Saturday 16th: Kirk Douglas is Vincent van Gogh in  Lust For Life (13:00, BBC2), Vincente Minnelli's beautiful and moving biopic of the painter. In couldn't-be-starker contrast, Film 4 boasts a vampire double bill of the original Fright Night (22:55) and Werner Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre (01:05). Both are a blast.

Sunday 17th: Swashbuckling thrills and spills aplenty await you in the endlessly entertaining The Princess Bride (13:15, Channel 5), while Bend It Like Beckham (15:15) is a pure 'Rachel Of The Rovers' tale about a girls' football team. Oh, and a channel I've never heard of - True Entertainment - is showing Woody Allen's sublime Bullets Over Broadway (21:00). John Cusack stars as a Broadway playwright forced to cast a gangster's moll in the lead role of his play, but Chaz Palminteri steals the show as the hood with the soul of a poet.

Kirk Douglas is Vincent Van Gogh in Lust For Life

The Last 5 films I Saw

1. Couple In A Hole (2015): Tom Geens' bravura drama about the terrible impact of grief on a husband and wife. Paul Higgins (The Thick Of It) and Kate Dickie (The Witch) are both superb. It's in cinemas and available on demand (Curzon Home Cinema, Amazon Prime Video and BFI Player). If you only see one film this week etc...
2. Jane B. for Agnes V. (1988): French new wave director Agnes Varda's illuminating and thoroughly entertaining portrait of actor/singer/muse Jane Birkin.
3. Grandma (2015): Irascible septuagenarian Lily Tomlin scraps and bullies to raise enough cash to fund her grand-daughter's abortion. A brave, likable film, even though the 'tough old boot with a heart of gold' trope has been done to death at this point.

4. Future Shock! The Story Of 2000AD (2014): Enjoyable warts 'n' all documentary about the long-running British weekly sci-fi comic. Gets a bit gushy towards the end though.

5. Nasty Baby (2015): 'Mumblecore' drama about a gay Brooklyn couple trying to conceive a child with their friend/surrogate (Kristen Wiig). An odd mix of intriguing and irritating.

Couple In A Hole: Just see it (you'll thank me, honestly)

UK box office top 10

1. Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice R
2. Eddie The Eagle
3. Zootropolis R
4. Kung Fu Panda 3
5. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
6. 10 Cloverfield Lane
7. London Has Fallen
8. The Boy
9. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
10. High-Rise R

R = Recommended

All information correct at time of publication

The Forbidden Room and Midnight Special: Your Week In Film (April 4-10)

Midnight Special is this week's big new cinema release

Apologies for the lack of new reviews on the blog of late. Unfortunately, time is tighter than ever for me at the moment; not only are the kids off school for their spring break but I'm currently working on three graphic novel projects (two as writer, one as editor). Something approaching normal service should resume in a couple of weeks. Oh, and to update a previous column, there's still no sign of Krampus on Netflix UK. It's out on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD on April 25, if that's any help. Anyway, onwards and upwards...

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 4th: The Forbidden Room (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) is such a strange piece of work that it's easy to slip into hyperbole just trying to describe it. You know the kind of thing: 'So weird it makes Eraserhead look like Ride Along 2' or 'Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain is Get Hard by comparison'. Thing is, Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) and Evan Johnson's film is every bit as challenging and surreal as such descriptions suggest. It is also a great deal of fun. There's no point me trying to outline the plot because it's all over the place, unlikely to prove much of a selling point, and probably irrelevant. No, The Forbidden Room's allure is all in its style and execution. In the film's more than two-hour running time, a series of roughly linked vignettes play out, all of which are one-part art installation, one-part B-movie pastiche. It goes off at ridiculous tangents, there are cameos from the likes of Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier and Ariane Labed, and will frequently leave you scratching your head and/or smiling benignly at the sheer lunatic chutzpah of the thing. It's entirely possible you'll hate every minute but I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it. 

The Forbidden Room: A real head scratcher (trailer)

Sunset Song (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) is a film I missed at the cinema in the chaos of a busy pre-Christmas and have been looking forward to catching up with ever since. Directed by Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives), it's an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel about the impact of World War I on a rural Scottish family. It stars Agyness Deyn, a revelation in last year's criminally under-appreciated Electricity. Elsewhere, Arrow Video continues its series dedicated to the work of German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder with The Marriage of Maria Braun and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (both Blu-ray). Both discs feature brand new 4K restorations of the films. Also from Arrow, Pam Grier and Margaret Markov star in women-in-prison exploitation flick Black Mama, White Mama (Blu-Ray). Like the company's other Grier reissues, it comes with a ton of extras and a 1080p HD presentation of the film.

Tuesday 5th: Some good stuff on today - take your pick from Terry Gilliam's still-marvellous Brazil (23:45, Film4), whip-smart Neil Simon comedy California Suite (18:55, Movie Mix), and Sidney Lumet heist classic Dog Day Afternoon (12:40, Sky Select). Al Pacino has rarely been better.

Pacino is electrifying in Dog Day Afternoon (trailer)

Wednesday 6th: Future Shock! The Story Of 2000AD (23:25, Film 4) is a must-see for any self-respecting fan of the 'Galaxy's Greatest Comic', which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Not only did the British weekly give the world Judge Dredd but a whole host of other influential stories and characters into the bargain. Paul Goodwin's documentary provides a refreshingly warts and all account of the publication's highs and lows, and talks to its original editor Pat Mills, as well as Neil Gaiman, Karl Urban (Dredd himself), and Lauren Beukes. From today, Netflix UK has Woody Allen comedy Match Point, vampire remake Let Me In, and Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams.

Future Shock! It's 40 years not-out for 2000AD (trailer)

Thursday 7th: MUBI are showing Peter Bogdanovich’s coming-of-age classic The Last Picture Show from today, while Amazon Prime Video debuts Steven Soderbergh's industrial espionage comedy The Informant! Francine Stock talks to director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone) on The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4) about his Palme D'Or-winning movie Dheepan, which finally opens in British cinemas tomorrow.

Friday 8th: Hitting your local multiplex today is Midnight Special, a Spielbergian slice of sci-fi from Mud director Jeff Nichols. The always excellent Michael Shannon (99 Homes) goes on the run with his eight-year-old son (Jaeden Lieberher) when the boy manifests extraordinary powers. Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgerton, Sam Shepard and Adam Driver complete an impressive cast. I'm also keen to check out Tom Geens' intriguing Couple In A Hole (in cinemas and on VOD), about a Scottish husband and wife who abandon their middle class existence to live in a cave in the French Pyrenees. Paul Higgins - who you may remember as the appalling Jamie from The Thick Of It - stars. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Robbie Collin sit in for the regular hosts on Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio 5 Live). Emily Blunt - talking about The Huntsman: Winter's War - is their special guest.

Midnight Special: A Spielbergian slice of sci-fi (trailer)

A husband and wife go wild in Couple In A Hole (trailer)

Saturday 9th: John McClane, Hans Gruber, Nakatomi Plaza, "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.", "Yippee Ki Yay, Motherfucker". Yes, it's face-punching, bone-crunching action masterpiece Die Hard (22:00, Channel 4), starring Bruce Willis and the late, great Alan Rickman. Has there ever been a better hero/villain pairing in cinema history? Elsewhere, there's more action, this time of the four-wheeled variety, in The Fast And The Furious (21:25, ITV), while Rowan Atkinson does the bumbling spy thing in Johnny English Reborn (20:00, ITV), and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee star in 1959 horror flick The Mummy (Midnight, BBC2).

Bruce Willis kicks terrorist bottom in Die Hard (trailer)

Sunday 10th: I definitely won't be watching family fantasy Bridge To Terabithia (14:30, Channel 4) because I don't want my children to see me sobbing like an idiot. Based on Katherine Paterson's children's novel, it is very good though. In a lighter vein, Mike Myers is Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (20:00, Comedy Central), and there's a choice of Kill Bills. Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1 is showing on Sky Atlantic at 22:00, with the director's Kill Bill Volume 2 scheduled on Syfy at the same time. 

Bridge To Terabithia will tear out your heart
and stomp on it (trailer)

The Last 5 Films I saw
1. Victoria (2015): Sebastian Schipper's crime thriller sees a naive young Madrid girl led into criminality on the mean streets of Berlin. Filmed in one long take, it really is something special and one of my favourites of the year so far.
2. Welcome To Leith (2015): Chilling documentary about neo-Nazis trying to take over a small American town and the locals who team up to send them packing.
3. The End Of The Tour (2015): Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are both terrific in this sharp drama about David Foster Wallace, the acclaimed but troubled author of Infinite Jest.
4. The Club (2015): Bleak Chilean drama about a safe house for disgraced Catholic priests. Director Pablo Larrain doesn't pull his punches. 
5. Iona (2015): Ruth Negga (World War Z) is the best thing about this beautifully shot but ever-so-slightly dull melodrama set on the titular island. 

Laia Costa turns criminal in the excellent Victoria (trailer)

UK box office top 10
1. Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice R
2. Zootropolis R
3. Kung Fu Panda 3
4. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
5. 10 Cloverfield Lane
6. London Has Fallen
7. The Boy
8. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
9. High-Rise R
10. Deadpool R

R = Recommended