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| Agent Of Happiness Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute |
In Bhutan, happiness is no laughing matter - they take this stuff seriously, sending surveyors out to quiz the populace on their lives in order to create the Gross National Happiness index. This quirky and thoughtful documentary from Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó takes us on the road with happiness agent Amber as he conducts his survey - which covers questions about wellbeing as well as possessions, including donkeys and cows. Gathering weight as it goes, as the directors encounter people from a variety of backgrounds, and look at Amber's own pursuit of love, they hold the multi-faceted nature of what we call “happiness” and how we quantify it. Battarai told us there's a lot to be said for living in the moment. "We especially learned from people in rural areas where they were pretty much living life on a very daily kind of basis. They were not thinking into the future but more of today and accepting their own happiness," he said.
Misery, 1.25am, Film4, Friday, November 22
Cinematic adaptations have often not been kind to the work of Stephen King, not least, I suspect, because his books are frequently lengthy, packed with character and plot and slip between time periods with ease. William Goldman, who later had less success adapting Hearts In Atlantis and Dreamcatcher, capitalises on the claustrophobia of King's taut psychological horror in Rob Reiner's take on the tale of a writer (James Caan) who has a car crash and his "number one fan" (Kathy Bates), who takes him in at the same time as taking less than kindly to his decision to kill off her favourite character. Applying physical violence with restraint - although it hits home when it counts - this is all about the psychological sparring between the two, with Bates getting all the best lines, and winning an Oscar for her trouble. The subtext, regarding celebrity and fan service, has surely only become more relevant with the passage of time.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, 1.10pm, Saturday, November 23
In a show of proof that the Oscars never quite fall how you think they will, Richard Dreyfus was not even among the film's nominees for Steven Spielberg's tale of allen first contact, although his co-star Melinda Dillon was. He plays Roy Neary, a man whose sighting of a UFO acts as a sort of epiphany - the irony being that he can communicate with aliens more easily than his family - and who encounters Jillian Guiller (Dillon), who is searching for her son. Somehow, Spielberg manages to retain Dreyfus’ everyman quality despite his obvious flaws, while also touching on one of the director's favourite themes, suburban anxiety in Middle America, fuelled by family breakdown to job loss. The visuals have stood the test of time and hover at the sweet spot between awe and horror. John Williams’ five note sequence has long passed into collective memory as a short-hand for spookiness.
2 Guns, 9pm, Great Movies, Saturday, November 23
This might not be the best film Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur has ever made but he gives the mismatched buddy framework a decent workout. Mark Wahlberg's low level criminal is paired with Denzel Washington's smarter and tremendously named Bobby Beans as the pair of them plan a heist against a drug cartel. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything as it turns out, which allows the Icelandic director to lay on a smorgasbord of action set-pieces. A bit plot heavy but the central pairing keeps things interesting. Also, as with Gladiator II, you can actively sense that Washington is enjoying himself tremendously.
Shrek, Amazon Prime, streaming now
This has just returned to the streaming service and given the huge variety in the modern animation landscape it's worth remembering what a game-changer this DreamWorks film was on its release. Featuring a grumpy ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) as its focal point, it took a sideswipe at fairy tales in ways which, at the time, would have had Disney clutching at its pearls. Although the tale of the need to rescue a princess (Cameron Diaz) is a familiar one, the fact that our hero Shrek is less than heroic as he sets of on a quest with a donkey (Eddie Murphy, on top form) is all part of the fun as writer Ted Elliott skewers Disney and serves it up with a side salad of fun. John Lithgow is also hugely entertaining as the vertically challenged bad guy Lord Farquaad.
In Camera, MUBI, streaming now
Debuts don't come much more ambitious than this one from Naqqash Kahlid, which is centred on a struggling actor whose own sense of self becomes increasingly slippery. Nabhaan Rizwan is impressive as actor Aden, whose housemates, junior doctor Bo Bo (Rory Fleck Byrne) and stylist Conrad (Amir El-Masry) offer very different examples of modern masculinity. How that is shaped by our neo-liberal world is a key element of a film that is often hallucinatory and deliberately disconcerting and enigmatic. Kahlid told us: "It's a puzzle. It's an emotional process, an intellectual puzzle, but it's very much the best articulation of all of these years of ideas coming together."
No Bears, BBC iPlayer, streaming now
Iranian director Jafar Panahi plays a version of himself in this film that mixes fact and fiction. He plays a director who, due to a travel ban (something Panahi was also under until it was reportedly lifted recently) who is in a border town directing a docufiction film remotely. A playful outing that skewers ideas of tradition and rules, while also examining notions of freedom and fear. A film in which reality's little absurdities also make themselves felt with a dreadful bite.
