Pick of the week
Hamnet<\/p>\n
From a Roman muscle man to William Shakespeare, Paul Mescal is showing his range right\u00a0now. But in Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s version of Maggie O\u2019Farrell superb novel, he has to play second fiddle to Jessie Buckley. It\u2019s her Oscar-winning turn as Agnes \u2013 the Bard\u2019s unsung wife \u2013 that gives the drama its gut-wrenching power. Agnes is the heart to Will\u2019s brain, more attuned to the mysteries of the\u00a0natural world, and aware that his genius will take\u00a0him away from her. But their differing reactions to a\u00a0family tragedy push them further apart \u2026 Hamnet is a difficult book to adapt, its potency coming from its unarticulated emotions, but Zhao\u00a0has pulled it off brilliantly.
Friday 14 August, 8.10am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere<\/p>\n
Parallel MothersIdentity crisis \u2026 Janis (Pen\u00e9lope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit) star as mothers whose babies are swapped at birth. Photograph: Sony\/Allstar<\/p>\n
Just before his latest twisty film, Bitter Christmas, hits cinemas, here\u2019s another chance to see Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s equally knotty 2021 drama, which explores family secrets in the domestic and national spheres. It features a standout performance from Pen\u00e9lope Cruz as photographer Janis, who gets pregnant by a forensic anthropologist investigating the forgotten civil war victims of Franco \u2013 including her ancestors. When her newborn gets swapped with that of the young Ana (Milena Smit), fate intertwines their lives. A forceful experience.
Saturday 8 August, 11.10pm, BBC Four<\/p>\n
SpeedWheel deal \u2026 Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock star in Speed. Photograph: United Archives GmbH\/Alamy<\/p>\n
If Jan de Bont\u2019s 1994 action thriller didn\u2019t propel Keanu Reeves to stardom (Point Break arguably did that in 1991), it was his biggest box-office hit to date \u2013 and it was most definitely a breakthrough moment for Sandra Bullock. She is her co-star\u2019s equal as a passenger who has to take the steering wheel of an LA bus primed to explode if it goes under 50mph. Reeves has the more superficially heroic role as a police bomb disposal officer, but both have their moments in a terrifically tense series of freeway set-pieces, while Dennis Hopper is reliably unhinged as their foe.
Sunday 9 August, 9pm, Film4<\/p>\n
MissingSearching \u2026 June (Storm Reid) tries to track down her mother in Missing. Photograph: Screen Gems<\/p>\n
A thematic sequel to the 2018 film Searching, Nick Johnson and Will Merrick\u2019s 2023 thriller continues its conceit of restricting what we see to computer screens and smartphones. So after Storm Reid\u2019s June discovers her mother, Grace (Nia Long), has vanished while on holiday in Colombia with new boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung), she uses the panoply of digital resources \u2013 voicemails, FaceTime, doorcams, even tourist webcams \u2013 to investigate remotely. It\u2019s all inherently claustrophobic, which helps generate a sustained level of unease and, soon enough, peril.
Tuesday 11 August, 9pm, Film4<\/p>\n
Gladiator IIFighting for freedom \u2026 Paul Mescal is Lucius in Gladiator II. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n
It has taken 24 years for Ridley Scott to get back to the Colosseum. But there\u2019s still a lot of familiarity in his ancient Roman sequel \u2013 from returning characters to elaborate fight scenes and animal antics. Paul Mescal stars as Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe\u2019s Maximus, who is living a quiet life in north Africa until an invading Roman army take him into slavery. From there, it\u2019s a short hop to becoming a rebellious gladiator, under the gimlet gaze of his owner Macrinus (a lip-smacking Denzel Washington).
Wednesday 12 August, Netflix<\/p>\n
A Child of My OwnFake news \u2026 Ana Celeste Montalvo as Alejandra in A Child of My Own. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix\/2026<\/p>\n
Maite Alberdi\u2019s documentary starts as a straightforward ripped-from-the-headlines dramatisation of a secret adoption, shot in the vibrant palette of a telenovela. Mexican hospital worker Alejandra has just had her third miscarriage when she meets Mayra, who doesn\u2019t want the baby she will give birth to. Mayra agrees to hand her newborn over to Alejandra, who meanwhile will pretend to be going through her own pregnancy. It\u2019s when their plan goes wrong that the film pulls the rug out from under the viewer. As other voices enter the frame, is the narrative we have been consuming true at all?
Thursday 13 August, Netflix<\/p>\n
On FallingLack of fulfilment \u2026 Joana Santos stars as Aurora in On Falling. Photograph: Sixteen Films<\/p>\n
Portuguese immigrant Aurora (Joana Santos) works as a \u201cpicker\u201d in an Amazon-style warehouse in Scotland. It\u2019s a monotonous but time-sensitive job that has reduced her to a zombie-like state; she\u2019s too tired and\/or poor to enjoy her free time and struggles to connect with her mostly foreign colleagues and flatmates. And when her phone needs a costly repair, that\u2019s all it takes to tip her over the edge. Laura Carreira\u2019s debut feature is heart-breaking social realism with a Ken Loach feel, but where he rails at capitalism\u2019s evils, Carreira sees bureaucratic indifference.
Friday 14 August, 11.05pm, BBC Two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pick of the weekHamnet From a Roman muscle man to William Shakespeare, Paul Mescal is showing his range…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-805600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805600","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=805600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}