Pick of the week
Mass
Four parents meet in a church to talk about an incident several years earlier when the teenage son of one couple murdered the other pair’s son in a school shooting. Fran Kranz’s intense film is an ostensibly simple drama, theatrical in its single-setting, real-time setup, but shot in intimate closeup and red raw emotionally. Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs, as the victim’s mum and dad, and Ann Dowd and Reed Birney, playing the killer’s parents, give devastating performances. Running the gamut of grief, they ask hard questions – how much do you really know your children? Are you to blame for their actions? Is forgiveness possible after such trauma? – and find no easy answers.
Wednesday 19 January, 3.20am Sky Cinema Premiere
The Witch
In 1630s New England, a none-more-pious father, William (Ralph Ineson), is banished from his Puritan settler community and takes his family to farm on the fringes of a forest. There, his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) gives birth to a son – but while her eldest child Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy, in her first starring role) is babysitting, the boy is abducted by a witch. Based on true accounts from the time, the debut film from Robert Eggers is a gloriously nightmarish horror, imaginative and brutal, as dark forces – and mutual suspicion – overwhelm the family.
Sunday 16 January, 12.55am, Channel 4
Pig
In Michael Sarnoski’s deft drama, Nicolas Cage plays Rob, an Oregon forest-dwelling loner whose beloved pig – source of the truffles he sells – is abducted. Distraught, he heads into Portland with his young business contact, Amir (Alex Wolff), to find the lost porker. It’s the perfect recipe for a revenge thriller a la Point Blank – but this is the usually 11-on-the-dial Cage turned down to a two. Rob’s past in a quasi-criminal world of high-end dining, fight clubs and foodie philosophy is revealed slowly, with Cage simmering away nicely.
Sunday 16 January, 10.35am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The most celebrated in a wave of turn-of-the-millennium wuxia movies (a martial arts genre originating in China) that wowed western audiences, Ang Lee’s 2000 film still stands up. From vivid green bamboo forests to the dust-yellow Gobi desert, it’s an adventure of relentless visual splendour, as skilled swordspeople (and unconsummated soulmates) Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh seek a mysterious thief. Could it be the imperial governor’s soon-to-be married daughter (Zhang Ziyi)? Forbidden romance and kung fu action in one stylish package.
Monday 17 January, 6.40pm, Great! Movies
Nobody
Ilya Naishuller’s deeply silly action thriller is redeemed by the surprisingly convincing casting of Bob Odenkirk as the lead character. His mild-mannered Hutch, family man and ground-down office worker, reluctantly brings his brutal past in black ops back into play when his house is burgled and he falls foul of a Russian mobster. The Better Call Saul star adds several new skills to his CV, particularly in a superb close-quarters fight sequence on a city bus.
Friday 21 January, 12noon, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
A Hero
This involving Iranian drama deservedly won a major prize at Cannes last year for its director, Asghar Farhadi. Amir Jadidi’s sign painter Rahim, an ambiguous smile forever flickering on his face, is in prison for non-payment of a debt. While on temporary release, he’s given a handbag containing gold coins found by his secret girlfriend. After returning it to the owner and being publicly feted for the selfless act, he discovers that no good deed goes unpunished, as his little white lies – told to simplify matters – put him into a hole he can’t dig himself out of.
Friday 21 January, Amazon Prime Video
Munich: The Edge of War
We are in prime Robert Harris territory here. The author’s interest in the second world war and the spy game is served well by Christian Schwochow’s film of his novel, as George MacKay’s fictional civil servant Hugh Legat crosses paths with real figures, principally Neville Chamberlain. Revolving round the prime minister’s dealings with Hitler on the eve of the conflict, it’s a stirring tale of derring-do and political manoeuvring, with Legat and his old friend, German foreign office official Von Hartmann (Jannis Niewöhner), trying to expose Hitler’s belligerent ambitions.
Friday 21 January, Netflix