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| The Outrun Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute |
The Outrun, Netflix, streaming now
Putting what is quite possibly the best English-language central performance from the past year not to make the Oscar shortlist, Saorise Ronan is riveting as a recovering alcoholic trying to get her life back together on the Orkney Islands. She plays Rona, whose meltdown with booze we see in London set flashbacks, which director Nora Fingscheidt - who co-adapts Amy Liptrott’s memoir for the screen with the writer - weaves seamlessly with the present. Everything hinges on Ronan’s carefully calibrated performance which carries us from the alcohol-fuelled highs, without ever celebrating them, to the additional challenges she faces back home, where her bipolar father (Stephen Dillane) struggles with his own mental health. There may be some familiar beats to this story but the way Rona is framed by and draws strength from nature strikes a unique note.
The Angry Silence , 2.30pm, Talking Pictures TV (Freeview Channel 82), Monday, March 3
Writer Bryan Forbes breaks with the traditional portrayal of working-class strikers as heroes in this social realist drama. Here, they are portrayed as vengeful wildcats in the face of one man's right to look after his family. Richard Attenborough plays Curtis, the man who refuses to go on strike in the face of ostracisation, revealing the pressure his character is under in sudden bursts of emotion, flaring but quickly stifled. Controversial at the time it was made, it even faced a brief ban in Welsh miners' clubs. Attenborough's magnetic central performance and the strong female characters make this well worth a look, even though the secondary performances are a bit hit and miss. Director Guy Green, who cut his teeth as a cinematographer, also shows an eye for a strong image, particularly on the factory floor.
No Other Land, streaming on All4 now and at 11.15pm, Channel 4, Tuesday, March 4
Jennie Kermode writes: Fresh from taking home the Oscar, you can catch this Palestinian-Israeli co-production exploring a quarter century of struggle over the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor offer an intensely personal look at what it means when a more powerful entity sets its mind on possessing land that others call home. Right at the start we see bulldozers move in to crush homes whose occupants, many of whom were born there, have only a few minutes to rescue what possessions they can, and it only gets grimmer from there. Israel wants the area for military testing. The locals want to tend their animals and continue their quiet village lives. They are fearful of being left with nowhere to go but for tiny apartments in cities where their traditional skills will do nothing to help them gain employment. They try to rebuild, only to be crushed again and again. Some are shot, others taken away. A young soldier, less comfortable with cruelty than some of the others, tells them that he's just following orders. There are no statistics here; there is very little talk of politics; just the raw experiences of people who fear that if they allow themselves to be driven from their homes, they will no longer remember who they are.
The Death Of Stalin, 10.40pm, BBC4, Thursday, March 6
Armando Iannucci may have cut his teeth on biting satire about British politics but he proves just as adept at rattling the absurdity of Russian state roulette as the 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), who has really had enough of all this. The cast, which also includes Jason Isaacs, Andrea Riseborough and Paul Whitehouse, runs as wide and deep as the humour is cutting and pointed. The vantablack of satire. Also screening on BBC1 on Monday at 11.55pm (but not on BBC1 Scotland).
Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon , BBC1, 2.15pm, Saturday, March 8
If you’re in the mood for humour of a simpler sort that the entire family can enjoy, then Aardman will never let you down. Shaun may not be a talker but when it comes to silent movie capers, he’s the best - if you’ll pardon the pun - baa none. His adventures are easily accessible no matter what age or nationality you are - just one of the reasons his franchise has proved so successful. This time out, Shaun finds himself trying to help an alien who has crash-landed near the farm. It might not be peak Shaun, but there's plenty here to enjoy and, as always for Aardman, the laughter is balanced nicely with some moving emotional moments.
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, 9pm and 10.55pm, BBC2, Saturday, March 8
If the recent Oscar-nominated biopic A Complete Unknown has made you even more curious about the enigma that is Bob Dylan, then this film - carved into two parts for television - is a good place to start. Martin Scorsese's two-part superior consideration of the musician's work was made with the blessing of the man himself and some interviews. The result is a fascinating portrait of an artist who has deliberately cultivated an air of mystery right through his career. There's an element of myth-busting to this documentary that, like A Complete Unknown, chiefly, though not wholly, focuses on Dylan's rise to fame in the early to mid-Sixties. It also features a wealth of archive footage plus interviews with those who know him, including Pete Seeger and Dylan's ex Joan Baez (played by Ed Norton and Monica Barbaro in the fiction feature).
Get Carter, 10pm, BBC2, Sunday, March 9
The grimy world of gangsters is to the fore in Mike Hodges' feature debut, the tale of a man on a mission of vengeance in Newcastle. Michael Caine feels as sharp and raw as a jagged knife edge in the role of enforcer Jack Carter, who is determined to get to the bottom of his brother's death. Unashamedly brutal in its approach to violence - including the memorable dispatching of Corrie regular Bryan Mosley - matched with snappy dialogue and Caine's dry delivery, this is gangland with all the grit that offers a time capsule of a Seventies underworld long paved over. You can also see Michael Caine in action in The Ipcress File and Funeral In Berlin on Saturday, March 8 on the same channel from 1.05pm.
This week's short selection is proof that slapstick never grows old. Matthew O'Callaghan's Roadrunner adventure Rabid Rider.
