What to Watch this Week: 21-28 Nov

The best things to watch this week on the big screen, the small screen and your laptop screen, including David O Russell's short Past Forward, starring Girls’ Allison Williams, and Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, starring Williams' co-star Adam Driver

What to watch online: David O Russell short Past Forward

David O Russell goes all Antonioni with Past Forward, a super stylish new short film he’s made for Prada. The black-and-white silent film, described by the Three Kings director as “a surreal dreamscape with an eclectic cast replaying scenes in shifting combinations,” follows Allison Williams, Freida Pinto and Kuoth Wiel, who all seem to be playing the same woman. John Krasinski, Connie Britton, Paula Patton, and Sacha Baron Cohen also turn up in roles in the 12-minute film.

It's quite a departure from Russell’s scrappy screwball style, and plays instead like the paranoid art films Antonioni used to specialise in. “I almost think the whole thing is almost a premonition of how the country feels right now to me,” Russell told Vogue. “Because the movies that I love, the dreams that I love, have a feeling of uncertainty in them. You can still find love or locate yourself in them, but they’re tinged with a feeling of uncertainty.” Watch Past Forward in the player above.

What to stream: The Divines

French-Moroccan filmmaker Houda Benyamina’s debut feature The Divines, a tale of crime and friendship in the poor Paris suburbs, may be going straight to Netflix in the UK, rather than getting a cinema release, but that makes it no less of a brilliant addition to the banlieues cinema tradition that includes similarly intense dramas La Haine and Girlhood.

Like the latter, this is a stirring tale of female friendship centred on the raw energy and scrappy good humor of a young woman looking for an escape from poverty. And like Céline Sciamma’s film, The Divines is bursting with joy within the misery. There are even a couple of stunningly cinematic moments of magic realism, which will have you lamenting the fact you’ve been denied the chance to see the film on the big screen. Streaming on Netflix now.

What to watch in cinemas: Paterson

Jim Jarmusch’s latest stars Adam Driver as a bus driver who also pens poetry about everyday life. Reports are it’s a low-key cracker. “Like a sonnet that grows more profound with each reading, the cyclical rhythms of Paterson take the monotony of working-class life and transpose it into art,” says our reviewer Patrick Gamble.

“This isn’t to say Jarmusch is blind to the harsh realities of life, and the film is peppered with subtle allusions to the outside world, be it the toy gun one character wields during a protracted break-up, or the framed photo of Paterson in full army regalia that suggests the film could be read as an allegory for PTSD. But this effortlessly cool film inhabits its own world, a wistful one in which language still has the power to cultivate art from the mundanity of everyday life.” Released 25 Nov by Soda Pictures.

What to watch to get you in the Chistmas spirit: Bad Santa 2

If you haven’t already noticed the plummeting temperatures and the increased volume of shoppers on your high street, Christmas is almost here, and with it come the Christmas movies. First off the block is Bad Santa 2.

The original film from 2003 was a spiky little Christmas cracker that now feels like a holiday classic, and a nice palate cleanser to the usual saccharine films we get on TV this time of year. Will this belated sequel live up to that film's wicked charms? Head to cinemas this weekend to find out. Released 23 Nov by EOne

What to watch at home: The Hired Hand Blu-ray

One of the great 70s westerns, The Hired Hand follows Peter Fonda as a man returning home to his wife and child after abandoning them seven years ago to wander the plains. He brings with him his best pal and fellow outlaw (Warren Oates). But the wife, played by Vera Bloom, is having none of it. Rather than welcoming Fonda’s wanderer into their marital home, she tells him to shack up with Oates’s character in the barn instead.

A molasses-slow rekindling of their romance follows, with all three actors giving soulful and beautifully nuanced performances. It’s also one of the most gorgeous westerns ever committed to celluloid. This new Blu-ray from Arrow looks a treat. Released 21 Nov by Arrow