What to Watch this Week (22-29 Aug)
The best films to watch this week on the big screen, the small screen and your laptop screen, including the pilot of I Love Dick, the new film from Pedro Almodóvar and Lonely Island music spoof Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
What to stream this week: I Love Dick + Amazon's other pilots
It’s currently Amazon pilot season, where the streaming giant offers up a few shows for your consideration, the best of which make it to be fully formed series (this is how the brill Transparent started life). Three potential shows are on the current slate. There's meta action-comedy Jean-Claude Van Johnson, in which action star Jean-Claude Van Damme plays an action star named Jean-Claude Van Damme, who’s also a retired black ops assassin named Johnson.
There's also The Tick, based on the hilarious 80s comic and 90s cartoon of the same name created by Ben Edlund about the world’s dimmest superhero (British comedian Peter Serafinowicz dons the blue Tick costume); in the age of Batman v Superman, we need The Tick more than ever.
So far, though, the show that’s got everyone talking is I Love Dick, which is based on Chris Kraus’s celebrated cult novel of the same name set within the avant-garde art world. Like the book, it tells the story of a struggling married couple (here played by Kathryn Hahn and Griffin Dunne) and their obsession with a charismatic professor named Dick (played by Kevin Bacon with all his lizardy charm). The creative mind behind the pilot is Jill Soloway – who also wrote, produced and directed the aforementioned Transparent.
You can watch I Love Dick, Jean-Claude Van Johnson and The Tick over at Amazon pilot season now for free – and if like them, they’ll make more.
What to watch in cinemas this week: Julieta
After the little-loved camp comedy I’m So Excited, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar is back on familiar territory with this family melodrama with a noirish flavour. Told mostly in flashback, the film follows the title character as she looks back across her past in the form of a letter to her estranged daughter. Her life seems split in two parts separated by a tragedy, with two actors playing Julieta in each stage. Thrillingly, the change of performer takes place mid-scene. As ever with Almodóvar, the film is ravishing, with wardrobe and decor saying as much about the characters as the dialogue.
Released 26 Aug by Pathe
Also worth a watch: Popstars
The Lonely Island boys became the masters of the parody music video with tracks like I'm on a Boat and Dick in a Box, the latter featuring Justin Timberlake. Ol' Trousersnake is clearly an inspiration – along with a healthy dose of the other Justin, Mr Bieber – for this mockumentary following Conner4Real, a narcissistic pop singer who split from his successful boy band to become an even more successful solo artist. The film stars Andy Samberg, the Lonely Island trio’s alpha, who can often let his own vanity get in the way of the jokes, but if Popstars can reach the level of the comedy troupe's last feature, the surrealy stupid Hot Rod, this could be a winner.
Released 26 Aug by Universal
What to watch at home this week: Weiner
With the American elections approaching, Weiner’s arrival on DVD and Blu-ray couldn't be better timed. You won’t be able to look away from this doc following the campaign of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner as he puts himself up for election as New York’s mayor in 2013.
Weiner stood down from politics two years earlier when he accidently posted a dick-pic on Twitter, and Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg's film was planned as documentary following his glorious comeback. The problem is that he seems to have continued, after the first humiliating incident, to send pictures of his junk to women he meets online, and just when he begins to gain traction in the election these photos start to surface. Amazingly, the hubristic and self-destructive Weiner allows the documentary to continue, and we watch with lurid fascination as his political ambitions spiral down the pan.
Release on DVD 22 Aug by Dogwoof
What to listen to this week: Scott Walker's original sound track for Childhood of a Leader
If you followed last week’s recommendation to see Brady Corbet’s extraordinary first feature The Childhood of a Leader you’re sure to have the film’s ominous, bow-shredding score by avant-garde icon Scott Walker rattling around in your head. If you want the nightmarish mood to continue you’re in luck as Walker’s OST is now available to stream.