5 things to watch this weekend – 7 to 9 March

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Six years after his globe-conquering thriller Parasite (2019), Bong Joon Ho returns with this colourful dystopian comedy – a snowbound creature feature in the more cartoonish mood of his films Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017). Set in the year 2054, it boasts a joyously eccentric performance from Robert Pattinson playing the grifter who has volunteered his services for a human printing programme that clones his body after death, enabling him to live (and die) over and over again. It makes him a perfect footsoldier for a perilous space colonisation programme spearheaded by Mark Ruffalo’s buffoonish, egomaniac politician. Mickey 17’s gleeful mix of broad satire and outrageous sci-fi matches Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997).

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Among the most striking debut features to premiere last year, On Falling is Laura Carreira’s affecting portrait of a Portuguese woman, Aurora (Joana Santos), working as a ‘picker’ in an Amazon-style warehouse in Glasgow. The invisible part of the chain that enables the ready convenience of online shopping and fast delivery, she’s one of a target-driven crew employed to collect goods from the shelves of the vast fulfillment centre. On Falling shows the dehumanising nature of the work, and the impact it has on Aurora’s own sense of self, at the same time that it gives a relatably human perspective on the precariousness of life in the gig economy. Carreira’s film is produced by Ken Loach’s company Sixteen Films.

Where’s it on? Blu-ray and 4K UHD

Performance begins as a grimy London gangster movie, as James Fox’s hood kills an associate and then goes looking for somewhere to lay low. But when he ends up at the West London home of Mick Jagger’s hedonistic rock star, the dial shifts into psychedelic psychodrama as Fox’s character begins to lose the moorings of his persona amid a heady atmosphere of sex, drugs and slipping identity. Performance is the debut film by both Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell, made during the hangover from the Summer of Love but shelved by Warner Bros until 1970 – “Even the bath water is dirty”, a Warner Bros exec reputedly claimed.

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

Hancock’s Half Hour had made a massive comedy star of Tony Hancock on both radio and TV in Britain during the 1950s, so it was only a matter of time before he’d get a big-screen venture. 1961’s The Rebel turned out to be a British comedy classic, a hilarious dig at the bourgeois art world in which Hancock plays a bored nine-to-fiver who sees an opportunity to escape the monotony of the daily grind by reinventing himself as an abstract artist. There’s much fun at the expense of art-world high-mindedness but also at the pointless toil of the office work that this ruse enables Hancock’s character to escape. The Rebel is being released on Blu-ray by Studiocanal alongside another Hancock vehicle, 1963’s The Punch and Judy Man.

Where’s it on? BBC2, Sunday, 00:25

If Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated turn in A Complete Unknown (2024) has brought Dylan a whole new generation of fans, BBC2 is spoiling them with a long night of Dylan documentaries and performances this weekend, kicking off with a screening of Martin Scorsese’s epic 2005 documentary No Direction Home. In the early hours of Sunday comes this 2021 film of an intimate performance Dylan gave during the Covid-19 lockdown, captured in noirishly atmospheric black and white by Israeli filmmaker Alma Ha’rel. Along with his masked-up backing band, Dylan works his way through jaunty, barroom versions of a 1960s-focused playlist – the highlight being the saloon sway of ‘Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues’.