What to Watch this Week (1-7 Aug)
The best films to watch this week on the big screen, the small screen and your laptop screen, including Suicide Squad, Sid & Nancy and a streamlined reedit of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman
Best new film in cinemas this week: Suicide Squad
The big question of the week is: will Suicide Squad be awful? In the DC style, the trailers have been bombastic and confusing (not necessarily a bad thing for a trailer – who wants to know every plot beat going in?), so it’s been difficult to guess the flavour of the concoction director David Ayer has cooked up. Are we talking fiery genre-busting chilli or great hulking turkey? We’ll find out on Friday, when the film goes on national release, but here’s what we’re looking forward to so far.
• A break from stoic nice guys who are good at breaking bad guys arms – see Superman, Batman, Bourne. These bad guys will clearly have fun while breaking arms.
• Will Smith is back. His charisma was a gaping hole in the recent Independence Day sequel and, if the trailer is anything to go by, it looks like he’s taking up the Robert Downey Jr role here (i.e. the team’s motormouth dickhead.)
• Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Much has been made in the press about Jared Leto’s bizarre behaviour on-set (he allegedly mailed his co-stars some grotesque items, including dead rats and used condoms), but the most interesting performance on screen (if the trailers are anything to go by) looks to be from Robbie. Check out her antics in the Harley Quinn character promo below:
Released 5 Aug by Warner Brothers
Best classic film in cinemas this week: Sid & Nancy
Alex Cox’s sad, sordid story of Sid Vicious, bass guitarist for The Sex Pistols, and his destructive relationship with his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, makes a welcome return to cinemas this week. Some people sneer at Sid’s band leader Johnny Rotten, who mellowed with age and is now basically a national treasure.
Sid went the other way: he lived the punk lifestyle – and died it, at the tender age of 21. There’s no punk romanticisation here, though. Cox's film lets us circle the drain with his two protagonists, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Released 5 Aug by StudioCanal – on Blu-ray from 29 Aug
Best DVD release of the week: David Cronenberg’s Early Work
David Cronenberg has grown into one of our most elegant filmmakers. But in truth he’s always been pretty special. That’s why his low-budget horrors of the 70s and early-80s (Shivers, Rabid, The Brood) still look fresh while the similar genre fare of the era seem arthritic by comparison.
Unlike his contemporaries, Cronenberg’s horror was one of ideas rather than shock and gore, and ideas don’t date. That’s why film fans will be clambering to get hold of this boxset containing his early amateur feature films, which were shot in and around his university campus. The four films included are:
• Transfer (1966). “A surreal sketch of a doctor and his patient.”
• From the Drain (1967). “We finds two men in a bathtub, which may be part of a centre for veterans of a future war.”
• Stereo (1969). Cronenberg’s first official feature film, it concerns telepaths at the Institute for Erotic Enquiry where patients undergo tests by Dr. Luther Stringfellow.
• Crimes of the Future (1970). “Cronenberg works in colour and with a larger budget, where we find the House of Skin clinic director (Ronald Mlodzik, returning from Stereo) searching for his mentor, Antoine Rouge, who has disappeared following a catastrophic plague.”
Corrupt doctors, deadly plagues, telepathy, sinister institutions – it looks like Cronenberg’s future obsessions are all here in these early efforts.
Released 1 Aug by Arrow Video – order your copy here
Best film to watch online: Man of Tomorrow
One of the most fascinating films to turn up online all week is this fan edit of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, which turns Zack Snyder's two takes on DC's most famous characters into a single, two and a half hour film. Let’s face it, there’s plenty of fat to be trimmed.
The fan wielding the digital scissors is Job Willins, who has form condensing less than successful movies into more digestible form. He helped spliced David Fincher’s Alien 3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection into a single black and white feature called Ripley. He also edited together Ridley Scott’s two entries in the Alien series, Alien and Prometheus, to create new film Derelict. Can he work the same magic with Man of Tomorrow? Watch the video below to find out.
Best video essay of the week: Stranger Things and its 70s and 80s influences
Like the rest of the planet, you’ve probably become obsessed by Netflix’s sci-fi hit Stranger Things. While its Stephen King-like story of a missing kid, military conspiracy and dark alternate realities is juicy, compelling and addictively bingeable, its heady hit of 80s nostalgia is the real draw.
Series creators the Duffer Brothers clearly grew up on the films of Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and John Carpenter, and they cleverly weave in references throughout the show. To truly appreciate how much of a love-letter this is to cult films of the 70s and 80s, take a look at this killer video from editor Ulysse Thevenon, who’s made a side-by-side shot comparison revealing the Duffer’s influences.