Tár (2022)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide
Cate Blanchett’s turn as a supremely talented, supremely intimidating symphony conductor is every bit as formidable as you’d expect. She plays Lydia Tár, the thoroughbred maestro who’s limbering up to record Mahler’s fifth with her Berlin orchestra (the Philharmonic in all but name). Like Citizen Kane (1941), Tár begins with a rundown of its celebrated protagonist’s extraordinary life and achievements before drawing back the curtain to paint a more complicated picture. Todd Field’s drama – his first since 2006’s Little Children – is an absorbing, sometimes provocative plunge into the world of classical music in the era of cancel culture and #MeToo.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Where’s it on? Talking Pictures TV, Sunday, 1.35am
The greatest of all courtroom dramas, Otto Preminger’s gripping, methodical 159-minute film sees James Stewart playing a lawyer in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula. He’s enjoying a retirement of fishing and jazz piano-playing (the film’s score is by Duke Ellington) when he’s called upon to defend an army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) charged with killing a local innkeeper. The lieutenant claims his victim raped his wife (Lee Remick). Preminger’s very sober, intelligent treatment of its adult themes – including use of certain words previously frowned on by the censor – results in a legal drama of unusual complexity and implications. Saul Bass designed the famous poster.
Enys Men (2022)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI Southbank
Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin had a breakout success with 2019’s low-budget gentrification drama Bait. His new film is set on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast, where a naturalist is observing and collecting data on the growth of a rare flower. But things take a turn for the strange as the loneliness begins to get to her and her grip on reality goes south. Like Bait, Enys Men is filmed on 16mm film, which seems to have absorbed the dank atmospherics of the island: the wind, lichen and seaspray. Its sense of uncanny landscapes and lingering secrets harks back to the 1970s heyday of folk horror.
Unsane (2018)
Where’s it on? Film4, Sunday, 11.45pm
All filmed on an iPhone 7, Unsane is one of Steven Soderbergh’s periodic plunges into taut, thrifty genre fare. It stars Claire Foy as a Bostonian woman who, in attempting to evade her stalker, is unwittingly committed to a psychiatric hospital. There begins a paranoid ordeal, which Foy’s character experiences through a fog of distrust and disorienting meds. With its confined location, cheap production values and air of anxiety, Unsane now looks like a forerunner of many pandemic lockdown movies. It does a fine job of wrapping us up in its escalating nightmare, for all the story’s contrivances.
Heart of the Angel (1989)
Where’s it on? BFI Player
Part of a huge collection of films by Canadian-British documentary maker Molly Dineen being added to BFI Player this week, Heart of the Angel is a 40-minute doc she made for the BBC about Angel tube station. Documenting the life of the station and its idiosyncratic workers just prior to its major refurbishment, it’s an extraordinary glimpse into a corner of 1980s London that feels almost pre-modern to 21st century eyes. A serviceman roams miles of long dark tunnels looking for faults. Cleaners handpick fluff and other potential flammables from the tracks. A lift operator holds forth about whether the world is round or flat. It’s wonderful history.
