Spotlight, Brooklyn and Cannibal Holocaust: Your week in film (Feb 29-Mar 6)

Spotlight: Tom McCarthy's drama was a shock winner at the Oscars 

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

But first a word or two about the Oscars

I enjoyed The Revenant but was glad it didn't win the Best Picture Oscar. Yes, it's a beautiful-looking film with a couple of superb dramatic set-pieces but, ultimately, is really just another half-decent Western revenge tale. Or, to be less kind, what it all boils to is two men with silly accents (Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy) wrestling in the snow. Alejandro Iñárritu's film deserved its award for cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki's third Oscar win in a row) but that's about it. 

Eventual Best Picture champion Spotlight is The Revenant's polar opposite – a low-key film with no directorial flashiness, action set-pieces or melodrama. The film's plot – journalists investigating the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston – is front and centre at all times. Even the excellent ensemble cast in Tom McCarthy's movie (including Supporting Actor nominees Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams) are granted little external life outside of their quest to chase down witnesses and pour over information sources. It's a fascinating film and one happy to take its time in showing the Boston Globe writers methodically and forensically building their jigsaw of evidence. However, despite its many qualities, Spotlight still seems like an odd favourite. Simply put, the film's problem is that it isn't very 'cinematic', reminding me more of a quality TV drama than an Oscar-winning movie. In fact, it might just be the most understated Best Picture winner ever.

Now, if you're thinking all these sour grapes are just my way of saying "Mad Max: Fury Road was robbed", then you'd be right. I'm delighted director George Miller and his team won six technical Oscars though. But that was the least the film deserved...

On with this week's picks...

Monday February 29th: Saoirse Ronan is fantastic in Brooklyn (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD), director John Crowley's beautifully written (by Nick Hornby) and acted adaptation of Colm Tóibín's 1950s-set novel. As Ellis, Ronan is a young immigrant relocating from her quiet Irish village to the hustle and bustle of the titular New York borough. There, she meets and falls for an easygoing Italian plumber but is soon recalled on urgent family business. Back on home soil, Ellis's new life, priorities and future are all suddenly thrown up into the air, especially when a potential new suitor makes himself known. She faces a huge choice – which way will she leap? The plot is simplicity itself but the themes and emotions are big. Elsewhere, Takashi Miike's notorious J-horror Audition (BR and Dual Format Steelbook) gets the swanky reissue treatment.

Brooklyn is beautifully written and acted (trailer)

Tuesday March 1st: Despite being nearly 40 years old, Cannibal Holocaust (Mubi) still bites great big bloody lumps out of recent cannibal-flavoured offerings such as Bone Tomahawk and The Green Inferno. It might be sleazy, nasty, gratuitous, and thoroughly reprehensible (the killing of several animals in the film is real), but Ruggero Deodato's infamous 1980 film is cleverer and, in many ways, far less reactionary than its clumsy imitators. Of course, it also pretty much invented the 'found footage' storytelling technique now widely seen in dodgy horror flicks the world over. But please don't hold that against it. Film 2016 (23:45, BBC1) ends its latest seven-episode run tonight with Claudia Winkleman, Danny Leigh and guest Tim Robey casting their critical gaze over the week's new releases. The show – which must cost peanuts to produce – is treated pretty shabbily by the Beeb; moved around the schedules willy-nilly and only broadcast for a few weeks at a time either side of the new year. More positively, Peter Sellars is Inspector Clouseau in the very funny The Return of the Pink Panther (Netflix). Swine bird!

Cannibal Holocaust: Sleazy, nasty, gratuitous (trailer)

Wednesday March 2nd: Dallas Buyers Club (Amazon Prime) is one of those rare 'Oscar bait' movies that is actually pretty good. Set in the 1980s and based on a true story, Matthew McConaughey plays AIDS patient Ron Woodroof who, frustrated at the lack of effective medication available to him and fellow sufferers in the US, takes matters into his own hands. A powerful drama. David Cronenberg's bravura body horror remake The Fly (22:00, Syfy), released in 1986, has frequently been described as an AIDS allegory and it's easy to see why. Scientist Jeff Goldblum conducts an experiment into matter transportation that goes horribly wrong, commencing a process that slowly but surely ravages both his mind and body. Inside Llewyn Davis (21:00, Film4) stars Oscar Isaac as the struggling musician of the title in one of my favourite Coen Brothers films. Abject failure is rarely this entertaining. 

Dallas Buyers Club is superior Oscar bait (trailer)

Thursday March 3rd: Presenter Antonia Quirke talks 1950s communism with Joel and Ethan Coen on The Film Programme (BBC Radio 4, 16:00). The brothers' latest comedy – Hail, Caesar! – is the highlight of this week's cinema releases and is out tomorrow. Olympus Has Fallen (21:00, Channel 5) sees secret service agent Gerard Butler battling North Korean terrorists who have taken over the White House. A sequel – London Has Fallen – is also in cinemas from tomorrow. Your best bet movie-wise today, though, is Michael Mann's classy adaptation of The Last Of The Mohicans (21:00, Spike), starring Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye (not that one). 

The Coens are back with Hail, Caesar! (trailer)

Friday March 4th: Apart from the aforementioned Hail, Caesar! and London Has Fallen, this week's cinema releases include a couple of horrors, one intriguing (Goodnight Mommy), one rather less so (The Other Side Of The Door), an interesting-looking documentary (Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Cate Blanchett/Robert Redford drama Truth that, like Spotlight, puts journalists at the centre of proceedings. James Vanderbilt's film tells the true story of 'Rathergate' during the lead up to the 2004 US presidential election. Veteran CBS newsreader Dan Rather (Redford) and the channel's head of news Mary Mapes (Blanchett) ran a story exposing how then-president George W Bush had used his father's connections to avoid being drafted in the Vietnam war. The tsunami of controversy that followed the broadcast saw them both lose their jobs. I shall look out for it when it appears on DVD in a few months time because its chances of reaching my local Odeon are zero.

The Truth is out there for Cate Blanchett (trailer)

Saturday March 5th: Lots of movies on terrestrial TV tonight but nothing you'd take home to meet your mum. Seven Psychopaths (23:40, Channel 4) is another black comedy from Martin McDonagh, the writer/director who gave us the splendidly profane In Bruges. Despite a fine cast, including Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, it isn't a patch on the earlier film. Even less fun is The Bourne Legacy (21:00, Channel 4), which sees Jeremy Renner supplant Matt Damon as the secret agent series' focus with little success. His character isn't even named Bourne, for god's sake. Never Say Never Again (23:20, ITV) is the remake of Thunderball which marked Sean Connery's return as James Bond after 12 years away. Suffice to say, the 1965 version – which also starred Connery – is substantially better. Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in CIA thriller The Recruit (23:50, BBC1), a film so unmemorable I'd completely forgotten it even existed until now.

Sean Connery returns as James Bond (trailer)

Sunday March 6th: American Hustle (21:00, Channel 4) isn't David O'Russell's best film (I still reckon 1999's Three Kings holds that title) but it is enormous fun. The '70s crime caper sees con-man Christian Bale and partner Amy Adams forced to work for the FBI by loose-cannon agent Bradley Cooper. O'Russell merges drama and comedy to good effect and revels in the period setting. But Jennifer Lawrence steals the show. Obviously. Set in 1960, The German Doctor (21:00, BBC4) tells the true story of an Argentine family's encounter with fugitive Nazi Dr Joseph Mengele, the Auschwitz 'Angel of Death'. Without realising his true identity they entrust the care of their sick daughter, Lilith, to the man. It's every bit as chilling and discomfiting as you'd expect. 

Jennifer Lawrence lights up American Hustle (trailer)

The last five films I've seen, from best to worst...
1. Taxi Tehran: Jafar Panahi is banned from making movies by the Iranian authorities but finds increasingly clever ways around that limitation. This time he drives a cab around Tehran and films the passengers he encounters. Some of it is clearly staged, but that doesn't detract from what is a fascinating, funny and eye-opening experience.
2. Chronic: Tim Roth's best performance in years lights up this odd and disturbing tale of a palliative care nurse who gets too close to his patients.
3. Trumbo: Solid biopic of 1950s Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Roman Holiday, Spartacus), who was blacklisted and jailed for being a communist. Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is on fine form.
4. Nina Forever: Bizarre British horror about a man whose girlfriend returns from the dead every time he has sex with his new lover. Underneath the blood and craziness, there's a rather clever meditation on grief.
5.Triple 9: Overcooked heist thriller which boasts a great cast (Kate Winslet, Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor) but suffers from an overabundance of plot twists. 

UK box office top 10
1. Deadpool R
2. Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Road Chip
3. How To Be Single
4. Goosebumps R
5. Dad's Army
6. Triple 9
7. Zoolander 2
8. The Revenant R
9. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
10. Spotlight R

R = Recommended

My 30 favourite films of 2015 (part three #10-1)

Of all the new films I saw in 2015 - 187 at the last count - these were the 10 I loved most...

10. Brooklyn 
(director: John Crowley UK release date: November 6)

Beautifully written and acted adaptation of Colm Tóibín's 1950s-set novel. Ellis (Saoirse Ronan) is a young immigrant relocating from her quiet Irish village to the hustle and bustle of the titular New York borough. There, she meets and falls for an easygoing Italian plumber but is soon recalled on urgent family business. Back on home soil, Ellis's new life, priorities and future are all suddenly thrown up into the air, especially when a potential new suitor makes himself known. She faces a huge choice - which way will she leap? The plot is simplicity itself but the themes and emotions are big. Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent are both superb in small supporting roles but this is Ronan's film and if she doesn't grab an Oscar nomination I will eat an entire hat shop. 

9. Girlhood

(Director: Celine Sciamma UK release date: May 8)

Excellent French-language drama set in and around a tough Parisian estate and focusing on the members of a black girl gang. Sciamma – a white woman – has been criticised in some quarters for portraying black characters and their lives negatively but this is as much about the limited choices and pressures faced by young women as it is a film attempting to chronicle the black or immigrant experience in France. Besides, at no point does Girlhood seek to denigrate its main characters or their choices. In fact, Karidja Touré's Marieme is an empowering, inspiring creation; a strong, determined and resourceful young woman who simply refuses to buckle under the weight of a difficult life. 

8. Carol 

(director: Todd Haynes UK release date: November 27) 

A film so classy and graceful it makes Breakfast At Tiffany's look like The Toxic Avenger, Todd Haynes' adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price Of Salt is set in 1950s New York and tells the story of a forbidden love affair between unhappy socialite Cate Blanchett (the titular Carol) and Rooney Mara's Therese, a department-store clerk with dreams of being a photographer. Like Brooklyn, the plot is minimal and Haynes takes his time exploring his main characters' lives, the evolution of their feelings for each other and how that impacts upon their other relationships (Carol is married to Kyle Chandler's boorish drunk Harge). The cast is as impressive as any I saw all year, with Blanchett even more magnetic than usual and Sarah Paulson excellent in a supporting role. Haynes once again proves himself a consummate storyteller and an absolute demon when it comes to period detail. 

7. Phoenix

(director: Christian Petzold UK release date: May 8)
Quietly devastating German noir dealing with the return of Auschwitz survivor Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) to Berlin after WWII. Sporting a new face following reconstructive surgery, she tracks down husband Johnny who, failing to recognise her, instead recruits Nelly into an elaborate plot to claim his 'dead' wife's inheritance. It would be easy to dismiss Phoenix as little more than a clever spin on Hitchcock's Vertigo and denounce the implausibility of its plotting. But the film is so much more than that, effortlessly juggling big themes of rebirth, identity, guilt and betrayal while exploring the experience of Holocaust survivors. Hoss, in her sixth collaboration with director Petzold, is quite superb, and the ending will leave you in bits.

6. Mistress America 

(director: Noah Baumbach UK release date: August 14) 

The Frances Ha team of Noah Baumbach (co-writer/director) and Greta Gerwig (co-writer/star) reunite for a witty comedy that perfectly balances screwball elements with a more melancholic edge speaking to failure and betrayal. Lola Kirke (who you may remember from Gone Girl) is Tracy, a lonely college fresher taken in by her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke (Gerwig). The older woman is impetuous, adventurous and appears to have the world at her feet. But it doesn't take Tracy long before she realises Brooke's schemes for success and world domination are little more than pipe dreams and that she is going nowhere fast. Woody Allen at something approaching his best is evoked in its rat-a-tat dialogue, spiky, not always likeable, characters and moments of pure, laugh-out-loud farce.

5. The Look Of Silence 
(Director: Joshua Oppenheimer UK release date: June 12)
Joshua Oppenheimer's bravura follow-up to The Act of Killing, his 2013 film about the 1965 Indonesian genocide of alleged communists. The Look Of Silence is a smaller, more personal story of one of the families who lost a loved one during the purge. The murdered man's brother - a gentle but determined optometrist named Adi - confronts his sibling's killers (many of whom are celebrated as heroes and hold positions of power) in a number of truly jaw-dropping scenes. My favourite documentary in a year packed with some very good ones.

4. The Dance Of Reality 

(director: Alejandro Jodorowsky UK release date: August 21) 

Veteran filmmaker Jodorowsky’s sort-of-autobiographical film, set in the small Chilean coastal town where the 86-year-old endured a difficult childhood, is peculiar, challenging and utterly bonkers. Counter-intuitively, it might just be his most accessible work to date. The movie - his first in 23 years - is full of surreal imagery, absurdist digressions, playful humour and several genuinely shocking moments (a golden shower, the killing of a donkey and genital torture, if you’re wondering), but at its core is really the story of Jodorowsky’s fraught relationship with his Stalinist dad (here played by Brontis, the director’s real-life son). It owes more than a little something to Federico Fellini (especially the Italian director's 8½ and Amarcord) but proves, that even pushing 90, the Chilean maestro is still capable of producing work every bit as intriguing, eccentric and transgressive as El Topo and Santa Sangre. 

3. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night 

(Director: Ana Lily Amirpour UK release date: May 22)

Utterly beguiling ‘Iranian vampire western’ that quickly transcends its influences to deliver something quite unique. Set in Bad City, a windblown, oddly-deserted industrial town somewhere in Iran (Taft, California in reality), this most peculiar of love stories centres on The Girl (Sheila Vand), a lonely, chador-clad blood-sucker who prowls the streets looking for wrongs to right and evil men to punish. One such night-time patrol brings her into contact with troubled Arash (Arash Marandi) – one part James Dean, one part major doofus – and they enjoy an immediate mutual attraction. Shot in gorgeous, high-contrast black and white with cinematographer Lyle Vincent, Amirpour's full-length debut never loses sight of its sinister horror edge despite also being playful, romantic and effortlessly cool. Superb soundtrack too.

2. Mad Max: Fury Road 

(Director: George Miller UK release date: May 15)

Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy in for Mel Gibson) returns to the post-apocalyptic Aussie badlands in a movie for which the term high-octane was surely invented. On the run from the tyrannical Immortan Joe and his motorcade of mutant crazies, Max teams up with Charlize Theron’s badass Imperator Furiosa (pictured, top of page) for one of the most exciting - and prolonged - chase sequences in movie history. At times, it's like the Marquis de Sade directing Wacky Races, at others surprisingly political, taking aim at patriarchy, climate change, and the one per cent. Hardy's debut as Max is solid enough but this film belongs to one-armed warrior woman Furiosa and the sheer avalanche of crazy ideas, images and stunts that Miller and his co-conspirators bring to the party. The finest action film ever made? It might just be.

1. The New Girlfriend 

(director: François Ozon UK release date: May 22) 

Loosely adapted from Ruth Rendell's bleak short story of the same name, The New Girlfriend is a strange but heady brew of farcical comedy and odd-couple romance that nevertheless contains a tiny sliver of thriller-ish ice at its heart. Ozon's film tells the story of David (Romain Duris) who, after the death of his wife, Laura, starts dressing as a woman, initially so his baby daughter can have a 'mother' but soon simply because he enjoys it. The only person who shares his secret is Claire (Anaïs Demoustier), poor dead Laura's married best friend who was secretly in love with her. 

Initially repelled by David's revelation, Claire tries to discourage his burgeoning transvestism but it isn't long before she starts to come to terms with her own sexuality and falls for his feminine alter-ego, Virginia. On a slightly sinister note, it becomes clear Claire is attracted to the part of David/Virginia that reminds her of Laura and is keen to, in effect, 'recreate' the dead woman using her new beau as a template. In fact, a hint of what can only be called 'necrophilia' informs the entire affair. Not only is Claire in love with Laura but we see David in the morgue dressing his naked wife in her wedding gown prior to her funeral. It's a scene that manages to be titillating and chilling at the same time, and The New Girlfriend is full of such contrasting moments, none more so than in its final shot.

There are times when the film's tone is uneven and the humour just a little too broad, while Ozon leaves some fairly important questions hanging (when David speaks of "living as a woman" does he mean as a transvestite or is he keen to fully transition?). So why is this rather than, say, Fury Road, my favourite film of the year? Well, because I love its ambition and its cheek and its desire to tackle a tricky subject head on and sod the consequences. I admire the fact that French auteur Ozon (Potiche, Swimming Pool) has given us a mature, challenging and utterly charming exploration of sexual and gender fluidity in the form of a film that is occasionally as daft as a brush and camp as Christmas. I also love that its leads are both brilliant. 

Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Populaire) is a hugely versatile actor and his turn here as a man finally able to throw off the shackles and be who he wants to be is sympathetic and believable. He's grieving and depressed, yes, but all of that soon gives way to relief and acceptance and he sells that shift perfectly. Demoustier is French cinema's best kept secret. She is one of those actors who elevates everything she is in by at least 10 per cent and that is certainly true here. As Claire, she's a beautiful ball of confusion and guilt - you can see every conflicted emotion etched across her face. 

Rendell died in May last year and, although Ozon excises her original story's nasty little twist, I'd like to think she'd approve of the complex and fascinatingly flawed film he has crafted from her source material.