We keep hearing that the nation is facing its biggest crisis since World War II, yet one of the things the British do during challenging times is go to the pictures.
Cinema attendance rocketed during the war, and the war years yielded some wonderful films such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and David Lean’s Brief Encounter.
That’s not an option this time. Cinemas are closed, releases postponed, production halted. Luckily, we live in an era of streaming and downloading services, so that unique brand of pure escapism which great movies provide is increasingly available to us at home, just when we need it most.
Hats off: The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a roving troubadour even quicker on the draw than he is with a lyric
It might be, in the coming weeks, that more and more major studios and distributors will make planned cinema releases accessible at the click of a few buttons. Universal has already started the ball rolling, announcing that its Dreamworks animation, Trolls: World Tour, will be available on-demand on the same day as its proposed theatrical release in April.
Here, until the cinemas re-open and life starts getting back to normal, I will focus on what is available to you at home, starting this week with five different films of varying types that might have passed you by, and didn’t all get the critical and commercial attention they deserved.
They’re all terrific in various ways, the perfect solution if you need to lose an afternoon or fill an evening.
Happy viewing!
GREAT WESTERN
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
(15, Netflix)
If you’re the sort of person who prefers a meaty novel to a collection of short stories, you might object to the format of this singular film, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
On the other hand, it gives us half a dozen bursts, for the price of one, of the Coen brothers’ glorious creativity. The film is divided into six chapters, all featuring different actors (including Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson and Tom Waits) telling different stories.
All that unites them is that they each tell a tale of frontier life in the Old West, starting with the chapter after which the picture is named. Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a roving troubadour even quicker on the draw than he is with a lyric — think George Formby crossed with Billy the Kid.
All these chapters are marvellous, showcasing the Coens’ quirkiness and storytelling flair, but the one I loved most is The Gal Who Got Rattled, featuring Zoe Kazan as an unworldly, anxious wagon-train passenger on her way to an arranged marriage with her brother’s business partner. It’s sweet, tragic and unforgettable.
GEM OF A DRAMA
UNCUT GEMS
(15, Netflix)
Another pair of brothers, the Safdies, wrote and directed this extraordinary film, which makes you feel as if you’re plugged into an electric socket even watching it. Adam Sandler is the source of most of the energy, giving a half-crazed but riveting performance as a New York diamond dealer, an incorrigible ducker, diver and compulsive gambler called Howard Ratner.
Howard has managed to import an uncut black opal from an Ethiopian mine. He sees it as his passport to riches, but first he is talked into lending it to a famous client — basketball player Kevin Garnett, playing himself — who is convinced the rock brings him luck.
In its wild, freeform way, full of signature Safdie tics such as overlapping dialogue, the film follows Howard as he tries to appease his creditors (who include his menacing brother-in-law), his long-suffering wife (Idina Menzel, an awfully long way from Frozen’s Princess Elsa), and his sweetly loyal mistress (Julia Fox).
It’s a challenging spectacle in many ways. In fact, my wife wanted to duck out after the first ten minutes, but my sons and I persuaded her to stick with it — and she’s glad she did.
WEIGH TO GO
BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON
(15, Amazon Prime)
Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo was inspired by the experience of a close friend, a real-life Brittany, to write and direct this hugely engaging comedy, his feature-film debut, which reminded me in some ways of 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding. That’s as good a recommendation as any.
In the film, Brittany (Jillian Bell) is 28, single and overweight, with worryingly high blood pressure. After deciding that she’s fed up being the fat, jolly sidekick to all her skinny friends, she resolves to run the New York City marathon.
Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo was inspired by the experience of a close friend, a real-life Brittany, to write and direct this hugely engaging comedy
It becomes her passionate goal, to which end she loses lots of weight, acquires a boyfriend and learns a number of truths about herself and others — for instance, that perfection exists only in the eye of the beholder. Everyone has issues of one sort of another.
All of this sounds like it could be cheesier than all the snacks she keeps munching before her big lifestyle change, but actually it’s not cheesy at all. Colaizzo’s whipsmart script, and Bell’s delicious performance, keep it real.
RUFF DIAMOND
ISLE OF DOGS
(PG, Apple TV)
I’m excited about Wes Anderson’s next film, The French Dispatch, not least because his collaborators on the story are Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, who helped him write Isle Of Dogs. Like so many of Anderson’s films, such as 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, this is beguilingly funny and clever.
It’s a stop-motion animation set largely on a godforsaken island just off the coast of Japan, to which all the canine inhabitants of a nearby city have been banished in a tide of hysteria following an epidemic of dog flu.
Don’t worry, though; it’s not too disconcertingly topical. When the mayor’s young son decides that he misses his doggy bodyguard, he steals a light aircraft and flies to the island, cue some very funny adventures. In the meantime, a stray called Chief (voiced by Bryan Cranston) falls for the refined Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson). He’s her bit of ruff.
The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Edward Norton and even Yoko Ono, voicing a scientist called Yoko Ono. It’s that kind of film: strange, original and huge fun, if a little bit barking.
IT’LL GRAB YOU
FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY
(12, Amazon Prime)
Not all wrestling films are gripping. Walk Like A Panther (2018) was dismal, a kind of feeble half-hour sitcom stretched, like Big Daddy’s leotard, beyond endurance.
But this one is really delightful and, better still, it’s true, inspired by a Channel 4 documentary about a Norwich girl, Saraya-Jade Bevis (Florence Pugh), who became a star of World Wrestling Entertainment, the American showbiz behemoth known as WWE.
Florence Pugh and The Rock in Fighting With My Family. A fine cast also includes Nick Frost, Lena Headey and Jack Lowden as Saraya’s father, mother and brother
I promise you don’t need to love wrestling to love this film, which is very nicely written and directed by Stephen Merchant. He pops up in it, too, as does its executive producer, former WWE giant Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
A fine cast also includes Nick Frost, Lena Headey and Jack Lowden as Saraya’s father, mother and brother, but it’s Pugh who deserves most of the plaudits. She wasn’t the most obvious young actress to cast as a wrestling champ, but she gives an absolute powerslam of a performance.
A French tale that is lacking panache
The Truth (PG)
Rating: 
Verdict: So-so
This picture was due for release in Curzon cinemas — which, like almost all others, have now closed — but it can still be viewed from today on the videoon-demand streaming service, Curzon Home Cinema.
I saw it at last year’sVenice Film Festival, where it had the honour of being the festival’s curtain-raiser.
It was a strange choice, actually. Venice usually opens with a Hollywood allsinging or all-action whopper such as La La Land or Gravity. The Truth is a playful French-language melodrama (with occasional bursts of English) which somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
Those parts are pretty impressive, though. Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne, a grand old French actress, but also a vain, bitchy, selfabsorbed diva, who depicts herself in her forthcoming autobiography as a selflessly attentive mother.
Her long-suffering screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), who is married to a second-rate American TV actor (Ethan Hawke), knows otherwise.
Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda delivers some priceless moments. There’s one that raised a huge laugh in Venice, when Fabienne is musing that more than a few great actresses have initials of the same letter: Simone Signoret, Greta Garbo. When someone then ventures Brigitte Bardot, she gives a hilariously disdainful little Gallic shrug.
The Truth is worth seeing for that cherishable moment alone. But as a whole the film doesn’t quite deliver on all its abundant promise.
The stage hits that became big screen classics
Getting withdrawal pains now the playhouses of Britain have shut up shop? Theatre critic Patrick Marmion picks his favourite stage-to-screen classics, available to watch at home, for those in need of a fix…
ROMEO & JULIET
Star-crossed lovers: Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in the Franco Zeffirelli 1968 classic
Not the Baz Luhrmann mash-up from the Nineties, but the Franco Zeffirelli classic from 1968. Purists reckon Zeffirelli drove a coach and horses through Shakespeare’s verse, but I melt every time I see this film, which looks like a live action Botticelli painting. And Nino Rota’s score is still the high water mark for tear-jerking strings.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Like it or not Woody Allen is a comic genius. And Diane Keaton also stars in Still can’t decide what to watch? Here are ten of the most downloaded or streamed films of the past 12 months, or major releases newly available, all of which you can now watch at home…
OLIVER!
One from the golden age of British musicals — it’s still nigh on impossible not to sing along to Lionel Bart’s Oscar winning score. Ron Moody is hand-rubbingly good as master pickpocket Fagin, while Oliver Reed made sure the 1968 film had a properly dark side with his villainous Bill Sikes. And with Mark Lester’s (and his choir boy voice) as Oliver you’ll consider yourself delighted to be at home.
DANGEROUS LIAISONS
Christopher Hampton’s sizzling stage adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s French 18th century novel staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985 originally starred Lindsay Duncan, Lesley Manville, Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. It then became a Stephen Frears film starring Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and John Malkovich.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Vivien Leigh nicked the film role of Southern Belle Blanche DuBois from Jessica Tandy who starred in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ 1947 drama. Opposite them, Marlon Brando was never hotter than as the brutal Stanley Kowalski with lips as big as his biceps.
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
Before Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, there was Robert Bolt’s play that transferred to Broadway and also became this multi-Oscarwinning classic starring Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, who was martyred by Henry VIII. Whether you’re Protestant, Catholic or none of the above, the 1966 screen adaptation is a cracking story, rivetingly told.
All films are available either to rent and/or buy on Amazon, iTunes, Google, Sky and Virgin Media — apart from A Man For All Seasons and Play It Again, Sam, which are not available on Virgin Media.
And here are ten blockbuster treats on your telly
Still can’t decide what to watch? Here are ten of the most downloaded or streamed films of the past 12 months, or major releases newly available, all of which you can now watch at home…
The sequel to the gigantic 2018 hit Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle isn’t quite as good as the original, but it’s still huge fun for the whole family
THE IRISHMAN (15, NETFLIX)
Martin Scorsese’s epic tale of organised crime, with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino as charismatic union boss Jimmy Hoffa.
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (12, VUDU)
The final episode of the nine-part Skywalker saga that began in 1977 with Star Wars.
THE TWO POPES (12, NETFLIX)
A captivating drama and an acting masterclass by Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, as Pope Benedict and successor Pope Francis.
JOKER (15, SKY STORE)
Joaquin Phoenix deservedly won an Academy Award for his compelling lead performance. It divided critics, but I was hooked from first frame to last.
The INVISIBLE MAN (15, NBC UNIVERSAL)
A deft update of the 1933 film, itself inspired by the 1897 H.G. Wells novel. Elisabeth Moss is terrific as a woman scared witless.
A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON (u, NETFLIX)
Perhaps a notch below comedy genius, unlike the first Shaun movie, but still a delight, as a playful alien lands near Mossy Bottom farm.
BOOKSMART (15, HULU)
Even if you think you’ve had enough of U.S. high-school/coming-of-age comedies, here’s a singularly witty and entertaining one. A fine directorial debut by Olivia Wilde.
KNIVES OUT (12, AMAZON PRIME)
A perky, quirky twist on all those old Agatha Christie whodunnits, in which Daniel Craig has a ball as a detective with Southern-fried vowels.
MIDSOMMAR (18, AMAZON PRIME)
Ari Aster’s follow-up to the terrifying Hereditary is an unnerving folk-horror film set in Sweden, clearly inspired by the 1973 classic The Wicker Man.
JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (12, AMAZON PRIME)
The sequel to the gigantic 2018 hit Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle isn’t quite as good as the original, but it’s still huge fun for the whole family.