Pick of the week
Eternity<\/p>\n
David Freyne\u2019s lovely new film<\/a> is a throwback to classic Hollywood romantic comedies such as the Cary Grant classic My Favourite Wife. Miles Teller (in the Grant role) plays Larry, who dies accidentally after 65 years of marriage to Elizabeth Olsen\u2019s terminally ill Joan. He finds himself in an afterlife transit hotel where he must select one of many themed worlds in which to live for ever. Joan turns up soon after, but is met by Luke (Callum Turner), her first husband, who was killed in the Korean war and has been waiting for her ever since. Which one will Joan choose to spend eternity with? Teller, Olsen and Turner find a perfect balance of wit and warmth in a charming drama. CrossingDeeply moving \u2026 Crossing. Photograph: Ozan Acidere<\/p>\n \u201cIstanbul is a place where people come to disappear,\u201d says one of its residents in Levan Akin\u2019s deeply moving drama<\/a>. It\u2019s also a city of refuge, reinvention and freedom, as retired Georgian teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli) discovers when she travels there to look for her long-lost transgender niece. Her search, aided by Lucas Kankava\u2019s callow young neighbour Achi and Turkish trainee lawyer Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a former trans sex worker, reveals a precarious underworld of poverty, illegality and exploitation, but also one of life-affirming friendship. Alice, DarlingChilling and enraging \u2026 Wunmi Mosaku, Anna Kendrick and Kaniehtiio Horn in Alice, Darling. Photograph: Lionsgate<\/p>\n Anna Kendrick is well known for bringing the perk to an array of popular comedies, but Mary Nighy\u2019s drama<\/a> shows she can plumb the emotional depths too. She stars as Alice, who goes off on a week\u2019s lakeside break with her best friends Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn). But her anxious behaviour, and the continual texts from her self-centred artist boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick), hint at a disturbing relationship of coercive control and gaslighting. A chilling, enraging tale about how abuse can come in many forms. QueerSteamy and lush \u2026 Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in Queer. Photograph: Yannis Drakoulidis<\/p>\n Luca Guadagnino\u2019s take on<\/a> William Burroughs\u2019s novella plays with the author\u2019s transgressive myth in a steamy, lush drama that features a bravura performance from Daniel Craig. His gay American expat Lee frequents the seedy bars of 1950s Mexico City picking up young men, until the arrival of Drew Starkey\u2019s enigmatic Eugene sees him fall hopelessly in love. It\u2019s a romance of sorts, but one of unrequited lust and surreal goings-on, not least on a trip into the Ecuadorian rainforest in search of ayahuasca and an encounter with Lesley Manville\u2019s wildly off-grid scientist. The AstronautFleshy twists \u2026 Kate Mara as Sam Walker in The Astronaut. Photograph: Signature Entertainment<\/p>\n When the lead character says of her remote forest retreat \u201cit sounds like a horror movie\u201d, you know what to plan for. Kate Mara is the titular astronaut in Jess Varley\u2019s sci-fi drama<\/a> who returns to Earth after a re-entry that went wrong. Sent to recuperate in a high-tech rural house by her Pentagon general dad (Laurence Fishburne), she starts getting visual and auditory hallucinations, not to mention mystery bruises. And is there a creature hiding in the woods? A tidy chiller with a fleshy twist. How to Train Your DragonDelightful \u2026 Mason Thames as Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon. Photograph: Universal Pictures\/AP<\/p>\n Universal has got in on the Disney act by creating a live-action version<\/a> of its hit 2010 animated comedy<\/a> \u2013 and very nicely done it is too. The original\u2019s writer-director Dean DeBlois is back to shepherd the (mostly) human cast, led by Mason Thomas as smith\u2019s apprentice Hiccup. He\u2019s a disappointment to his Viking chief father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his role), due to his ineptitude in fighting the dragons that raid their village. But then Hiccup befriends one of the creatures, Toothless, and sees a way out of his clan\u2019s never-ending conflict. Delightful. Moulin Rouge!Come what may \u2026 Nicole Kidman and Ewan Mcgregor in Moulin Rouge! Photograph: 20th Century Fox\/Allstar<\/p>\n Take a great opera like La Boh\u00e8me, chuck in a Bollywood dance routine or two, some songs by Elton John and Nirvana, plus the odd Greek myth, then stir them into the heady melting pot of fin-de-si\u00e8cle Paris \u2013 and you have Baz Luhrmann\u2019s fever dream of a movie<\/a>. It\u2019s an almost overwhelming cultural mashup, with Ewan McGregor\u2019s songwriter and Nicole Kidman\u2019s courtesan\/stage star doing well to convince us as star-crossed lovers amid the colourful extravagance, frenetic editing and anachronistic tunes of this magpie musical. A definite case of more being more.
Friday 13 February, Apple TV<\/p>\n
Saturday 7 February, 9.20pm, BBC Four<\/p>\n
Tuesday 10 February, 9pm, Film4<\/p>\n
Tuesday 10 February, 11pm, BBC Two<\/p>\n
Friday 13 February, Paramount+<\/p>\n
Friday 13 February, 8.25am, 4pm, Sky Cinema Premiere<\/p>\n
Friday 13 February, 11pm, BBC Two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pick of the weekEternity David Freyne\u2019s lovely new film is a throwback to classic Hollywood romantic comedies such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-452514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}