THE POWER OF THE DOG (Netflix). How many Oscars is this film written and directed by Jane Campion going to win? Quite a few, I should think. Benedict Cumberbatch is unexpectedly cast as a rancher in Montana in 1925 who resents his brother (Jesse Plemons) marrying a widow (Kristen Dunst) with a teenage son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and treats them both cruelly. The behaviour is subtle, complicated, ambiguous, leaving audiences to come to their own conclusions. Many people will want to watch it twice. Ari Wegner’s photography (filmed in New Zealand) is beautiful.
THE GENTLE GUNMAN (StudioCanal). 1952 British thriller on the Anglo-Irish debate based on Roger MacDougall’s play. IRA gunman John Mills in 1941 recognises the futility of violence and rejects terrorism and incurs the wrath of the men running the organisation. Dirk Bogarde plays his younger brother. The famously bad-tempered broadcaster Gilbert Harding plays his irascible self and acts everybody off the screen. Extras include hilarious performances by Matthew Sweet and Phoung Lee as two critics discussing the film.
RANCHO NOTORIOUS (BBC Iplayer). This is a 1952 Fritz Lang Western. A story of hate, murder and revenge with a fine ballad. A cowhand wants to kill the man who raped and murdered his fiancée. Despite the cheap studio sets and the old-fashioned artificial acting, there are still people who, amazingly, think this is one of the great Westerns. Arthur Kennedy and Mel Ferrer give bland and limited performances. Marlene Dietrich, the woman they love, is only convincing when she sings.
THE CONVERSATION (BBC Iplayer). 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller. A moral dilemma. A major film in the 70’s precursor to the Watergate Scandal and still topical today. Gene Hackman, lonely, friendless, is a professional surveillance expert, the best wire-tapper in the West. Hired to track and tape a young couple, he becomes complicit in a murder and paranoid that his own privacy is being invaded.
SUNFLOWERS (Exhibition on Screen). There is not one version but five versions of Van Gogh’s painting in five cities: Amsterdam, Munich, London, Tokyo and Philadelphia. A suffusion of brilliant colour. It remains one of the most popular and instantly recognisable paintings in the world. Van Gogh considered these five works the most successful paintings he ever executed
DALGLIESH SERIES 1 (Acorn). Poet detective solves crimes in England in the 1970s. Three novels by PD James are adapted for TV and star Bertie Carvell as Dalgleish – Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, A Taste for Death. There is a cast of nurses, disabled, clergy and aristocrats, all potentially murderous. PD James, a shrewd writer, gives her fans what they want.
