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| Pesci and Liotta in Goodfellas |
Martin Scorsese's passion for filmmaking shows little sign of dwindling, with the 80-year-old's latest, Killers Of The Flower Moon, premiering in Cannes last week to critical acclaim. This classic from his back catalogue is adapted from the non-fiction work by Nicholas Pileggi and charts the rise and fall of two-bit wiseguy Henry Hill. It was Joe Pesci who took home the Oscar for his portrayal of Hill's loose cannon friend Tommy DeVito but this is ensemble work at its finest, with Ray Liotta perfectly cast as Hill alongside Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway. Beyond the acting, the film thunders along at pace and features a soundtrack that's tough to beat.
Close To Vermeer, 9pm, BBC4, Tuesday, May 30
Jennie Kermode writes: What is it that makes the work of Johannes Vermeer so compelling? If you've never paid much attention to art, do yourself a favour and skim through some of the most famous works of the 17th Century online. You will see that this stands out not simply for their subjects (usually women engaged in domestic activities) but because many of them look like photographs - they're the closest we can come to looking directly at a vanished world. There's a reason for that, and you can see it more clearly than ever in this documentary, which put some of his most famous works under the microscope to reveal the secrets of their construction. It's a story about science as much as art, about the developing optical technology of the period and the forensic technology available today. It helps to build up a portrait of a little-known man and reveals details in the pictures hitherto unknown. There's also coverage of a controversy which rocked the art world. Vermeer's greatest gift lay in understanding light, and this film shines new light on his achievements.
A Private Function, 11.15pm, Talking Pictures TV (Freeview Channel 82), Wednesday, May 31
Everything about this Alan Bennett-scripted comedy is a treat, from Michael Palin's chiropodist's talk of verrucas to his social-climbing wife Joyce (Maggie Smith) instructing her piano student, "Da Capo, Veronica!". The plot, set in post-war Britain, revolves around a black market pig and quickly descends into farce, as Bennett blends elements of Ealing comedy and slapstick with much edgier stuff that anticipates the likes of The Royle Family. As always with Bennett there's a poignancy underlying the fun, particularly with regard to women's position in society at the time.
The Death Of Stalin, 11.45pm, BBC2, Wednesday, May 31
Armando Iannucci may have cut his teeth on biting satire about British politics but he proves just as adept at putting us in the thick of it as the Russian politburo descends into farce after the demise indicated by his film's title. Like a Grand National of Russian politics, everyone is jockeying for position, including the sharp-witted Kruschev (Steve Buscemi), chief of police Beria (Simon Russell Beale) alongside Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), who is not the sharpest tool in the box, and Molotov (Michael Palin, again), who has really had enough of all this. The cast, which also includes Jason Isaacs and Paul Whitehouse, runs as wide and deep as the humour is cutting and pointed.
The Worst Person In The World, 10.50pm, Film4, Thursday, June 1
Anne-Katrin Titze writes: You will be able to think of a number of people much worse than anybody we encounter in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, co-written with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt. The title expresses perfectly, though, a feeling of surfeit, in a not-yet-adult-at-any-age-and-aware-of-it kind of fashion. Julie, played by Renate Reinsve (Best Actress winner at Cannes) takes us on trips of reinvention attempts and new beginnings. A female narrator’s voice tells us in 12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue, the tale in a timeless, soothing tone, as if all will be well eventually. Overwhelmed by something in a relationship or beyond, the self or the other may feel like the worst to the best of us. When Julie, in her late twenties, meets Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), successful comic book author, the mutual attraction is palpable. The scenes with Julie’s father (Vidar Sandem), who remarried and has a teenage daughter, are revealing and poignant. Time speeds up, slows down, seemingly stands still and before you know it, the end announces itself with a grin. If you fancy a Trier double-bill stay tuned for Thelma - which starts at 1.35am.
In The Earth, streaming now on Netflix
Jennie Kermode writes: Plants talk to each other. It's not something which is widely recognised because it takes place on a very slow timescale and it mostly concerns things like moisture levels, nutrient deposits and insect behaviour which humans don't find very interesting, but roots connected to delicate networks of fungal mycelia down in the soil are always active. They've inspired a number of fictional works, notably playing a role in Game Of Thrones. Ben Wheatley, with a freer hand than usual and doing his own editing, takes viewers, along with a recently bereaved scientist, deep into a patch of forest where such communications have speeded up and very strange things are happening as a result. The scientist is looking for a missing doctor. He finds outcasts and squatters who seem to have been affected by the woods. By the time he understands how, it will be too late, but whether that's for good or ill is ambiguous in a film which interweaves botany, mycology and folklore with human drama. Powered in part by hallucinatory experiences, it incorporates fantastic visual and auditory montages, inviting altered perception as a means to explore truly different ways of thinking. It's not Wheatley's most accessible film but it's one of his best.
Wildlife, 12.25am, BBC2, Monday, June 5
Anne-Katrin Titze writes: An avid observer, Joe Brinson (Ed Oxenbould), the 14-year-old protagonist of Wildlife is our eyes and ears. We behold the world through him and with him - which is not the same. It is 1960. His family recently moved to a small town in Montana, where his father Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) works at a golf course. His mother Jeanette (Carey Mulligan), a former substitute teacher is, by the father's decision mostly it seems, a housewife and mother now. Joe has been given such a bland first name by his parents so that he could go anywhere and be anybody. Feeling trapped, going places, struggling for survival and retaining dignity are the marrow of Paul Dano's impressive, devastatingly piercing directorial début, which he adapted together with Zoe Kazan from Richard Ford's novel. Landscape and music and everyday objects are used to splendid effect. A moody pink sky is accompanied by a soundtrack that echoes a far-away train and a flute. The kitchen rubber gloves are pale green and foreshadow what Jeanette calls her "desperation dress," a taffeta creation in the same hue with the most beautifully cut back. Gyllenhaal makes this angry, proud, disappointed, loving man fully come alive with all his explosive tenderness.
We're wrapping up this week's Stay-at-Home Seven with a spot of animation in our short selection. This comic debut from Ed Foster got his career off to a good start and he's gone on to direct animated kids' series The Rubbish World of Dave Spud and Little Princess.
ANNA SPUD from Ed Foster on Vimeo.
