Every week, we take a look at what’s hitting cinemas and streaming to bring you our top picks.
It’s a bit of a quiet Weekend Watch List for cinema, with only Kogonada’s new modern fantasy and Jay Roach’s black comedy remake worth a drive-by. We do fare better on streaming, but man – sometimes it’s just crickets and tumbleweeds. Ah, well.
In Cinemas
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie co-star in this time-shipping metaphysical love story from director Kogonada, whose 2021 lo-fi sci-fi After Yang, also starring Farrell, is worth seeking out. After a meet-cute at a wedding, David (Farrell) and Sarah (Robbie) find themselves on a road trip to various points in their lives that will show them how they came to meet. This is not a metaphor: this all happens courtesy of a magic rental car from a company run by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline, which puts this in fantasy or, generously, magical realism territory. If you dug Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, you’ll enjoy this.
The Roses
The 1989 film War Of The Roses, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner was a beautifully black comedy, mainly thanks to the cynical sensibilities of director Danny DeVito. Remake director Jay Roach’s main claim to fame is the Austin Powers movies, and he can’t hope to match DeVito’s venom, but this is fun enough stuff. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are the long-married and successful couple at the heart of the story, whose increasingly ruthless tactics when they decide to divorce lead to more and more savagely funny set pieces.
Streaming
Gen V Season 2
It’s back to Super Uni in this spin-off of Prime Video’s The Boys, set in a college with a 100% superhuman student body. Much like its predecessor, expect plenty of sex, violence, and black comedy as Marie (Jaz Sinclair) flees from the forces of Vought International after escaping the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center, while back at Godolkin University, Emma (Lizze Broadway) learns that the students are being groomed for a coming war between supes and normies. Seems timely.
Futurama Season 10
When someone tells you The Simpsons is good again, they’re wrong. When someone tells you Futurama is good again, they’re also wrong, because Futurama was never bad, just occasionally and regrettably absent. We’re off to the 31st century once more with Fry, Leela, Bender, and the rest of the Planet Express gang for more high-minded low humour in Matt Groening’s best series. On Disney+.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière wrote the recent (and absolutely awesome) French Three Musketeers duology, and they’re on both writing and directing duties for this new adaptation of another Alexandre Dumas novel. Pierre Niney is the wrongfully imprisoned Edmond Dantès, who returns under the identity of the titular Count, determined to wreak revenge on those who wronged him. The secret identity business prefigures superheroes by about a century, but never mind that: this is the sort of big, rollicking historical adventure we don;t get enough of.
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