Pick of the week
Oppenheimer
Fresh from crushing all in its path at the Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s terrifying historical epic finally makes its way to television. The life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer – from would-be teenage poisoner to inventor of a device designed for mass murder – is explored at length by Christopher Nolan in colossal IMAX-shot close-up. We already know that Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr are tremendous as Oppenheimer and his Salieri figure Lewis Strauss respectively, but you could spend a lifetime marvelling at the film’s wider cast. Blunt. Damon. Branagh. Pugh. Oldman. Malek. Monumental in every sense of the world.
Friday 12 Apr, Sky Movies Premiere
Scoop
You can see why Scoop – based on the memoir of former Newsnight producer Sam McAlister – was such an irresistible dramatic prospect. A retelling of the world-shaking interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis (the one so catastrophic that the Queen had to step in and fire her own son for the sake of the monarchy) the film is basically what Frost/Nixon would have been if Richard Nixon was convinced that he couldn’t sweat and also slightly obsessed with Pizza Express. Billie Piper is McAlister, Gillian Anderson is Maitlis and Rufus Sewell is a convincingly doughy and slimy Prince Andrew. A gripping, occasionally quite camp, treat.
Out now, Netflix
The Blair Witch Project
We’re about as far as we can get from Halloween, and there’s a strong argument that this makes for the best way to experience The Blair Witch Project. Hyped beyond all sense of itself on release in 1999, and quickly diluted by parodies and underpowered sequels, the film – about three filmmakers lost in the woods, losing their minds – still retains the ability to shock and surprise in equal measure. The final third in particular, where a cacophony of offscreen noises pile up beyond all reasonable expectations, is still one of the most frightening things ever committed to screen. Perhaps the only way to experience the purity of that moment again is to accidentally stumble across it during the Easter holidays on BBC Three. Who knows?
Saturday 6 April, 10pm, BBC Three
Horrible Histories: The Movie - Rotten Romans
Think Horrible Histories and your mind will probably fly straight to the core cast of the original CBBC show, all of whom went on to become beloved national treasures thanks to Ghosts. However, you won’t find any of them here, in this 2019 spin-off movie centred around the Romans. In their place, however, is a staggering new cast. Everyone from Alexander Armstrong to Jamie Demetriou to Warwick Davis to Kim Cattrall is here, all gamely giving their best. And while it might not quite recapture the alchemy of the original (which was, in its time, the best sketch show in the country), it doesn’t come far off.
Sunday 7 April, 3;05pm, BBC One
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Hit the Road
Thanks in part to his 2011 documentary This is Not a Film –self-filmed under house arrest, and smuggled out of the country inside a cake – Jafar Panahi has become one of the most respected Iranian filmmakers. Which must have been big boots for his son Panah to fill when it came to making this, his 2021 debut. Fortunately, though, Hit the Road is an enormous amount of fun. A film about an Iranian family trying to smuggle their adult son across the border to Turkey, it is light and sweet and uproariously funny.
Wednesday, 2am, Channel 4
Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp
Unless you happen to be a freakish peckerhead, you might not remember 2017’s Woody Woodpecker movie. And you’d be forgiven for that, since it came and went in a flash, seemingly embarrassed by its own existence. However, the sequel looks set to make a bigger splash, not least because it’s landing on Netflix. And while it doesn’t retain the first film’s greatest asset – the spry and self-aware Timothy Omundson – it nevertheless retains the spirit of the original character. There is a woodpecker. He is the most annoying woodpecker in the world. Chaos ensues. Loud, obnoxious and enough to keep your kids occupied for a morning before they go back to school.
Friday 12 April, Netflix
The Greatest Hits
Although he’s best known now as a writer on the MCU’s standalone Black Widow film, Ned Benson’s masterwork remains 2014’s ambitious, romantic The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. This is the template that Benson returns to with The Greatest Hits, a giddy rush of a film about a young woman who realises that certain songs can physically send her back to moments in her past. Back there she can spend time with a perfect ex who died in unexpected circumstances. In the here and now she can tend to a newer but less idealised relationship. Put this on a triple bill with Past Lives and Robot Dreams
Friday 12 April, Disney+