Elvis & Nixon, Trumbo and, um, Up Pompeii: Your Week In Film (June 20-26)

The King and I: Shannon and Spacey in Elvis & Nixon

Monday 20th: Trumbo (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) is a thoroughly enjoyable biopic of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Roman Holiday, Spartacus), who was blacklisted and jailed for being a communist during the McCarthy 'witch hunts' of the 1950s. Jay Roach's film was damned with faint praise on its cinema release but deserves better as it boasts a sharp script (as you'd expect) and uniformly top-notch performances (Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is gloriously OTT in the title role, but it's Dean O'Gorman's uncanny turn as Kirk Douglas that really caught my eye). Although the film's main theme - freedom of speech - is one well trodden, it never once tries to duck Trumbo's political affiliations; he was an unapologetic red who, even when subjected to the most heinous pressure, refused to renounce his beliefs. I'm not sure Hollywood has ever properly faced up to this particularly shameful episode in its history but Trumbo is a pretty good start. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has all got a bit too slick and soulless of late so Guardians Of The Galaxy's debut on Netflix UK is a timely reminder of how to do a big, blockbusting superhero movie right. Director/co-writer James Gunn's film is an action-packed treat that is also joyous, wildly inventive and laugh-out-loud funny. Like most Marvel movies it's slightly hobbled by an underwhelming villain (Ronan The Accuser) but you'll be too busy mainlining the manic pop thrill of the rest of it to care too much. Over at MUBI, Molly Ringwald stars in John Hughes' teen classic Pretty In Pink, in which she has to choose between two potential suitors - one called 'Duckie', the other named 'Blane'. I can't remember how it ends but I hope to god she opted to stay single.

Red menace: Bryan Cranston is communist Trumbo 

Tuesday 21st: In Cop Land (01:45, Film4) Sylvester Stallone gives probably his best performance as the bumbling sheriff of a New Jersey town populated by New York City police officers. When Robert De Niro's internal affairs officer shows up to investigate a murder, Stallone - overweight and partially deaf - slowly discovers his patch is a little more than a front for the mob and riddled with corruption. James Mangold's film remains an under-appreciated crime thriller.

Police and thieves: Stallone lights up Cop Land

Wednesday 22nd: I know everyone has Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and a dozen other ways of accessing movies these days but that's still no reason for terrestrial TV channels to schedule their best films at such inconvenient times. Blue Valentine (01:30, Channel 4) is the latest to be dumped in a post-midnight slot which is a shame, as Derek Cianfrance's drama not only boasts fine performances from Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, but also a refreshingly unvarnished approach to the subject of marriage and what happens when one starts to unravel. Cutting between time periods, we see the evolution of working class couple Dean and Cindy's relationship from their initial courtship to ultimate parting in a melancholic movie well worth the space on your PVR.

Bad romance: Blue Valentine's star-crossed lovers

Thursday 23rd: Independence Day: Resurgence hits cinemas. No Will Smith this time, so you'll just have to make do with Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth and Bill Pullman teaming up to save the planet from aliens with a penchant for blowing stuff up. They're doing it in 3D this time, you'll no doubt be delighted to hear. Due to the EU referendum result and its aftermath, Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio 5 Live) is a day earlier this week. Actor Eric Stonestreet chats to Mayo about The Secret Life Of Pets, a new animated movie from the makers of Despicable Me. In The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4), Nell Dunn talks about her screenplay for Ken Loach's ground-breaking drama Poor Cow, which is back in cinemas from tomorrow. Fantasy and reality merge in Blind (01:05, Channel 4), an extraordinary Swedish film from first-time writer/director Eskil Vogt. Chronicling a young, visually-impaired woman's struggle to come to terms with isolation and paranoia, it boasts a great central performance from Ellen Dorrit Petersen.

Out of sight: Ellen Dorrit Petersen stars in Blind

Friday 24th: Elvis & Nixon is probably your best bet in cinemas this week and purports to tell the true story of the pair's famous Oval Office meeting in 1970. Michael Shannon is the king of rock'n'roll, Kevin Spacey is Tricky Dicky and, judging by the trailer (below), it looks an absolute hoot. Two films released simultaneously in cinemas and on VOD from today are Italian mob thriller Suburra and intriguing memory-loss drama Remainder - I shall be checking out both. Irrational Man (09:15 and 18:15, Sky Movies Premiere, also available on NOW TV) is another of Woody Allen's late-period lesser works but at least Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone can be relied upon to turn in fine performances, even if the script is merely passable. Phoenix plays a depressed philosophy professor given a new lease of life after he kills a corrupt judge. Stone is the optimistic, love-struck student trying to save the professor from himself.

Double Trouble: Elvis & Nixon hits cinemas today

Saturday 25th: In the mood for a bit of music but not keen on sitting through the Argos Alison Moyet (aka Adele) at Glastonbury? Allow me to again point you in the direction of MUBI who are still showing excellent Talking Heads concert flick, Stop Making Sense. Filmed in 1983, Jonathan Demme's film captures the band - rumoured to be reforming for a new tour and album - at the height of its powers. Miss You Already (Amazon Prime Video) is an over-the-top but engaging dramedy about two best friends whose relationship is threatened when one (Drew Barrymore) gets pregnant at the exact same time the other (Toni Collette) is diagnosed with breast cancer. Its melodrama is set to 11 throughout and Morwena Banks' script is hardly cliché free, but Collette is always worth watching, even when she plays a selfish pain in the arse as she does here. L.A. Confidential (23:20, BBC1) is Curtis Hanson's noirish tale of police corruption in 1950s Los Angeles, starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce as cops with very contrasting styles but only one goal: root out the bad guys. Based on the James Ellroy novel of the same name, it's intricately plotted, nicely acted and just as hard-bitten as you'd expect.

Good cop, bad cop: Stakes are high in L.A. Confidential 

Sunday 26th: Lots of good stuff on today, including Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 (22:10, Sky Atlantic), enjoyable Nick Hornby adaptation High Fidelity (23:15, BBC One), superior supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense (23:20, Channel 4), and Bruce Robinson's wonderfully-quotable Withnail & I (23:00, Gold). If your tastes are a little more down market, there's profoundly un-PC Frankie Howerd comedy Up Pompeii (21:15, Gold). Despite its innumerable shortcomings, any film that includes Howerd, Patrick Cargill, Michael Hordern, Bernard Bresslaw, Madeline Smith and Lance Percival amongst its cast can't be all bad.

Let's be Frank: Up Pompeii is an un-PC treat

UK box office top 10
1. Me Before You
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows 
3. Alice Through The Looking Glass
4. Warcraft: The Beginning R
5. X-Men: Apocalypse R
6. The Nice Guys R
7. The Boss
8. Angry Birds 
9. Mother's Day 
10. The Jungle Book R

R = Recommended

All information correct at time of publication

My top 20 movies of the year... so far (part #1)

Blimey, those six months just sped by, didn't they? And with them lots of very, very good films. I don't know whether we've had a stone-cold classic yet but with the likes of Todd Haynes' Carol, Michael Fassbender starring in Macbeth, and Crimson Peak from Guillermo del Toro scheduled for later in the year, there's still plenty to look forward to in 2015. Of all the films I've seen there is only one I can honestly say I hated – American Sniper – but that was more about its lousy politics than Clint Eastwood's skill as a director or the merits of Bradley Cooper as an actor. 

Anyway, the rules here are simple: all films under consideration had to have had a UK cinema release between January 1 and June 30 2015 (to prevent moans of 'But surely that was out last year', I've even included each film's official UK release date, courtesy of launchingfilms.com). No straight to Netflix/Amazon Prime or straight to DVD/Blu-ray movies were considered (sorry, Starry Eyes). 

Not being a professional critic, there are dozens of films I've yet to catch up on that have been released in the last six months (The Falling, White God, and Slow West to name but three) but of those I've seen – 59 as of this morning – these will be my 20 21 favourites. Let's start with numbers 20-11, shall we?

=20. Selma
(Director: Ava DuVernay UK release date: February 6)
The fact David Oyelowo wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his astonishing portrayal of Martin Luther King still sticks in the craw. The rest of this civil rights drama doesn't quite hit the heights of the British actor's performance but is powerful, heartfelt stuff nevertheless.

=20. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
(Director: Roy Andersson UK release date: April 24)
Bizarre comedy following the antics of two dour salesmen as they attempt to flog a range of hopeless novelty items. There isn't a coherent plot as such, just a string of loosely connected sketches each commenting on some aspect of human existence. Gloriously odd.

19. Blind
(Director: Eskil Vogt UK release date: March 27)
Fantasy and reality merge in this extraordinary Swedish film from a first-time writer/director about a young blind woman struggling to come to terms with isolation and paranoia. Boasts a great central performance from Ellen Dorrit Petersen (below)

18. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
(Director: David Zellner UK release date: February 20)
Terrific but elliptical drama charting a young Japanese woman’s quest to find the briefcase full of cash buried by Steve Buscemi’s character in the movie Fargo. Is the titular Kumiko mentally ill or merely so alienated from modern life that taking refuge in fantasy is her only option? 

17. Inherent Vice
(Director: Paul Thomas Anderson UK release date: January 30)
Vague and sprawling, this adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s similarly opaque novel features Joaquin Phoenix at the top of his game. Perhaps a difficult film to truly love but it is nevertheless enormous fun.

16. Jauja
(Director: Lisandro Alonso UK release date: April 10)
A weird and woozy ‘western’ set in the wilds of 19th Century Patagonia and starring Viggo Mortensen (below) as a Danish engineer on a quest to find his missing daughter. I’d be surprised if I saw a more visually stunning movie all year.

15. Wild
(Director: Jean-Marc Vallée UK release date: January 16)
Reese Witherspoon is terrific as an emotionally shattered young woman hiking a thousand miles up America's west coast in a bid to come to terms with her mother's death and the downward spiral it has plunged her into.

14. Foxcatcher
(Director: Bennett Miller UK release date: January 9)
Haunting adaptation of a true story featuring superb performances from a strong cast. Steve Carell is creepiness personified as John E du Pont, the unstable multi-millionaire who founds a wrestling academy to train US Olympic hopefuls. Suffice to say, it doesn’t end well...

13. Wild Tales
(Director: Damián Szifrón UK release date: March 27)
Argentine portmanteau featuring six stories about rage and vengeance. The final sequence centring on the meltdown of a couple’s relationship at their wedding (below) is a tour de force of bleak humour and brutal emotion.

12. The Duke of Burgundy
(Director: Peter Strickland UK release date: February 20)
BDSM and lepidoptery (the study of butterflies and moths) make strange but beguiling bedfellows in this eccentric and gorgeous lesbian relationship drama. Not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

11. Mad Max: Fury Road 
(Director: George Miller UK release date: May 15)
Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, pictured at the top of the page) returns to the post-apocalyptic Aussie badlands in a movie for which the term high-octane was surely invented. Charlize Theron’s badass Imperator Furiosa steals the film out from under him though.

Numbers 10-1 coming later in the week...

TV Movie Picks (UK): Monday, June 22 - Sunday, June 28

CABLE & SATELLITE: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like Holy Motors (23:50, Tuesday, Film4). More than that, I’m not sure I even have the words to properly describe it. French writer/director Leos Carax’s 2012 film is enigmatic to the point of being utterly unknowable; even with a gun to my head I doubt I could tell you what it was actually about. The facts are these: a man named Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is driven around Paris by Celine (Edith Scob), his chauffeur, in a white limousine to a series of appointments. He adopts a different persona – often requiring extensive make-up, props and costumes – for each engagement he keeps, including that of an old beggar woman, an actor simulating sex while dressed in a motion capture suit, and a violent red-haired man who kidnaps a beautiful young model from a photo shoot. It continues in this vein for some time, occasionally perhaps giving us the odd glimpse of Oscar’s real life as he flits from assignation to assignation, each one stranger than the last. To call Holy Motors surreal or perverse simply doesn’t do it justice, it’s a gloriously entertaining puzzle that isn’t meant to be solved. So don’t try – just enjoy the madcap journey.

Five more...
Avatar (21:00, tonight, Film4) James Cameron’s earnest but enjoyable lanky blue alien spectacular starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver. 

Revolution (13:45, Tuesday, Movie Mix) Al Pacino fights for the freedom of the American colonies in a British film that was a critical and box office flop upon its release in 1985. 
Masque of Red Death (21:00, Wednesday, Horror Channel) Edgar Allan Poe! Roger Corman! Vincent Price! Worshipping Satan! What’s not to like?
The Wicker Man (23:30, Saturday, ITV4) Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee are both terrific in a film for which the term “cult classic” could have been invented.
Super (23:15, Saturday, Film4) Writer/director James Gunn’s first run at making a superhero film is every bit as entertaining as his Guardians of the Galaxy. Rainn Wilson is the Crimson Bolt ("Shut up crime!"), Ellen Page his unstable sidekick Boltie.

STREAMING/VIEW ON DEMAND: Blind (Various Streaming Services) is an astonishingly assured debut from Norwegian writer/director Eskil Vogt. Set in Oslo, it tells the story of Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), who has recently lost her sight. She retreats into herself – never leaving the apartment she shares with husband Morten, and slowly but surely surrendering to paranoia and fantasy as her loneliness and isolation start to take their inevitable toll. She convinces herself that Morten remains home when he’s supposed to be at work, so he can silently watch her. Not only that, but she believes he’s having an affair with pretty single mum Elin (Vera Vitali) who lives close by. Ingrid’s descent into this imaginary world becomes more and more elaborate as the story proceeds; she conjures more characters and situations to create a sort of film within a film. At first, you aren’t quite sure what is real and what is being shaken loose from Ingrid’s fevered mind. (There’s a great scene early on when Morten sees old friend Einar (Marius Kolbenstvedt), a porn addict with a crush on Elin. Their meeting takes place in a busy café but, because it’s part of Ingrid’s fantasy, the location morphs between that, a moving bus and sometimes a weird combination of both). Vogt reveals his hand earlier than he might have, though, because it isn’t really the artful blurring of fantasy and reality that is the issue here; he’s more interested in exploring the effect of a sudden and hugely debilitating disability on a vulnerable young woman. How it impacts her marriage, her identity and self-worth. He does so cleverly and, at times, shockingly, avoiding many of the clichés that have come to define portrayals of the disabled in movies. Frankly, it’s a triumph, and one of the finest foreign language films I’ve seen all year.

I couldn't find a decent trailer on YouTube with English subtitles so try this one from Vimeo.

Five more...
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Amazon Prime) Beautiful animated Japanese fairy tale from Studio Ghibli.
Appropriate Behaviour (VSS) Desiree Akhavan writes, directs and stars in a likeable comedy-drama about a bisexual Iranian woman struggling with family and relationships in New York.
Blackhat (VSS) Michael Mann's much-maligned techie thriller starring Thor's Chris Hemsworth as an expert hacker trying to bring down a cybercrime network.
Fifty Shades of Grey (VSS) No idea what this is. Something to do with working on the paint counter at B&Q, perhaps?
Everly (VSS, from Friday) Gun-toting Salma Hayek takes on the Yakuza without ever leaving her apartment in a stylish but absurdly violent action thriller.

TERRESTRIAL: There was a period, roughly between 1985 and 1994, when it seemed director Tim Burton could do no wrong. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Batman and its extraordinary sequel Batman Returns – by anyone’s standards, it was a hell of a run. My favourite film from Burton’s purple patch, though, is probably 1988’s Beetlejuice (17:10, Sunday, Channel 5). Weird, funny, scary, charming, surreal, eccentric, inventive, profane, visually stunning and gloriously gothic, it tells the story of Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), a recently-deceased ghostly couple who hire a crazed “bio-exorcist” (the titular Beetlejuice) to rid them of the Deetz – an objectionable family that has recently purchased their house. However, the Maitlands get cold feet when they become friends with the Deetz’s daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) and attempt to call off the “hit” – much to Beetlejuice’s fury. The entire film is an unalloyed joy – from Michael Keaton’s hilarious, gross and generally jaw-dropping turn as the bio-exorcist himself, to the horror and dark humour of the afterlife waiting room scene, to a dinner party dance sequence featuring Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song that Catherine O’Hara (as Delia Deetz) completely owns. It’s just a pity we never got a glimpse of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, an abandoned sequel that would have seen Keaton’s ghost with the most win a surfing contest. 

Five more...
Zaytoun (00:25, Wednesday, Channel 4) A young Palestinian refugee forms a close bond with a downed Israeli fighter pilot (Stephen Dorff).
Bloody Sunday (23:10, Friday, ITV) Paul Greengrass’ powerful drama based on the killing of 14 civilian protestors by British soldiers in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972. James Nesbitt – as SDLP MP Ivan Cooper – has never been better.

Babylon AD (22:55, Saturday, Channel 4) Post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure starring Vin Diesel as a mercenary escorting a girl with strange powers from Russia to New York.

The Infidel (01:00, Saturday, BBC2) Identity crisis comedy starring Omid Djalili as a successful Muslim businessman who discovers he’s adopted and Jewish.
Blue Valentine (00:50, Sunday, Channel 4) Fine relationship drama featuring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a couple struggling to keep their disintegrating marriage intact.

Please note: Films starting after midnight are always considered part of the previous day's schedule, e.g. The Infidel begins at 01:00 - technically Sunday morning - but is still part of Saturday's listings. All times in 24-hour clock.