Check out our selection of the top films and TV box sets available this week
SOMEHOW, Glenn Close has never won an Oscar. That could finally change after her mesmerising performance in taut literary drama The Wife.
Also this week, you’ll be amazed by what you can do with cardboard in indy quirk-fest Dave Made A Maze. And the latest Predator redux misses the target.
(15) 100 mins, out January 28
BRITS will cheer for Olivia Colman’s larger-than-life turn in The Favourite but the Best Actress Oscar is surely headed the way of Glenn Close. She is mesmerising as author Joan Castleman, who must look on as her cheating hack of a husband (Jonathan Pryce) is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature off the back of her efforts.
“Without her I’m nothing,” Pryce admits in a rare moment of candour. Close mothers him as much as she does Pryce’s petulant, oafish son David (Max Irons) -- a drip off the old block, if ever there was one.
Yet this is not simply a tale of self-sacrifice. Close has hard edges and ambition to match her towering talent. “Don’t paint me as a victim,” she tells Christian Slater’s pushy biographer Nathaniel. “I’m much more interesting than that.”
Her predicament -- trapped in an agonising construct largely of her own making -- is occasionally hard to watch. With bitter irony, Pryce pays tribute to his “beautiful daughter” and “beautiful wife”, as if being admired for their looks is all any woman could aspire to.
Both excel in the a ferocious, cathartic climax, while Slater offers a welcome reminder of what a winning screen presence he can be, more than 20 years after playing a similar scribe in Interview With The Vampire.
The Wife isn’t perfect. The early stages of the couple’s courtship, shown in flashback, fail to convince. It’s hard to imagine what she ever saw in him. And that raw, raging climax teeters on the brink of melodrama. But those are footnotes to Close’s turn for the ages. Give her an Oscar, if not a Nobel Prize.
★★★★☆
(15) 107 mins, out January 28
PREDATOR sequels have done little to burnish the legacy of the classic original. Or, really, tarnish. They simply exist, lacking the cruel determination with which Ridley Scott has gone out of his way to infuriate Alien fans.
The Predator franchise is a sandpit. Do what you like with it. Director Shane Black plays this oddball instalment for laughs -- and gets a few with his trademark quick-fire smartassery. Aptly, it calls to mind a bloodier Men In Black.
Dialogue echoes previous movies in shameless fanservice and there is a genuine double-take moment when Jake Busey crops up as the son of the character his dad played in the 1989 sequel. Those familiar musical cues will redden fans’ heat signatures and it’s a couple of steps up from the dismal Alien Vs Predator spin-offs. But it’s no better than 2010’s Predators, which at least had Adrien Brody sleepwalking through it. And, you know, some Predators. They are almost incidental here, buried beneath myriad subplots and narrative tics. The CG is patchy and the stakes non-existent, with none of the tension that made the original great.
★★☆☆☆
(15) 81 mins, out on Blu-ray and digital download January 28
THIS quirky, creative little gem starts off with Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) returning to the flat she shares with boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) from a weekend away to find a jumble of connected cardboard boxes. Dave's voice emerges from inside, sounding slightly tinny, and there's smoke emerging from part of his self-constructed labyrinth.
But Dave is very anxious that Annie not try to come in to find him, nor try to pull apart the boxes. Soon all their hipster friends are around to see if they can help coax Dave out of his self-imposed imprisonment. Is he having a mental breakdown? Or is there more to his maze than meets the eye?
The cast of little-known comic actors (at least, unknown on this side of the Pond) do fine work selling the tricksy concept. The visuals are superb -- it's amazing what can be done with cardboard -- and the surreal, offbeat adventure just about wraps up before overstaying its welcome.
★★★★☆
JAYME BRYLA
(18), 98 mins, out now
SPECTACULARLY ill-judged zero-budget crime drama that hurls the guns-and-guvnors playbook out the window and plays like Guy Ritchie’s deathbed fever-dream. Unremittingly nasty and aggressively stupid, lowlights include a woman burned to death for no apparent reason, a breathtakingly poor-taste phony-rape scene and That Bloke From The Bill having angry sex over the kitchen sink with his crossdressing, cake-baking male lover. To aim this low yet fall this short is remarkable in itself. But the real mystery is how something so wildly offensive could also be so crushingly dull.
★☆☆☆☆
(15) 342 mins, out January 28
THE BBC bids to recapture the magic of 2016’s transcendent The Night Manager with another adaptation from spymaster John Le Carre… and doesn’t quite nail it. This Seventies-set six-parter hits plenty of high notes but the pacing is uneven, at times feeling rushed, at others oddly padded.
Florence Pugh is an agreeably spunky lead but Michael Shannon, as the Israeli puppetmaster orchestrating a complex anti-terror sting, hasn’t enough to do after the first couple of episodes -- a bit of speechifying here and there, mostly standing around in an amusing wig. Though he does a very good job of that. Watchable, especially for Pugh’s star-making turn, but not a classic.
★★★☆☆
