SHERWOOD (BBC iPlayer). Murders in a Nottingham village. The murderer uses a cross-bow and arrow. There are divisions in the community and in the police force. As you might expect from a script by James Graham, there is a strong political dimension and agenda. There are flashbacks to the Miners’ Strike in the 1980s which continues to inform the villagers’ bitterness. Scabs are never forgiven. This much praised TV series loses its grip in its final episodes. Leslie Manville, Robert Glenister and David Morrisey head a strong cast.
RAIN MAN (BBC iPlayer) This enjoyable, touching, funny 1988 Oscar-winning road movie is a buddy movie with one major difference: the relationship is one-sided. A yuppie car salesman (Tom Cruise) is transformed from repellent conman and fortune hunter to likeable guy by his autistic and institutionalised brother (Dustin Hoffman) who has difficulty communicating and understanding emotions. Hoffman’s, passive, self-absorbed performance, is very convincing. Cruise’s excellent performance deserved an Oscar nomination, too.
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOSIE (StudioCanal). Luis Bunuel’s 1972 film takes a surreal approach. Every meal a group of friends sit down to eat is interrupted. Most of these sequences turn out to be dreams. It is a trick which Bunuel plays so often that you would think you could not be caught out any more; but invariably you are. The film is a witty satire on the middle-classes and their eating habits and their fears of death. It is acted with style by Delphine Seyrig, Stephane Audran and Fernando Rey.
7 GREEK DANCES (YouTube) are choreographed by Maurice Bejart to music by Mikis Theodorakis. This performance by Bejart Ballet Lausanne was recorded by Medici TV in The Orangery at Chateau Versailles in 2014. The boys, torsos bare, are in white trousers; the girls are in black tunics. The Greekness is in the music and only occasionally in the dance, which is light, charming, gently humorous and very pleasant to watch. The cast is headed by the charismatic Oscar Chacon. Valentin Levalin and Kathleen Thielhelm have a delightful duet.
PROM (Netflix). The Broadway musical is turned into a cringe-making film with a loud message: It’s OK To Be Gay. The music is by Matthew Sklar. The lyrics are by Chad Peguelin. A lesbian teenager (Jo Ellen Pullman) in Indiana wants to take the girl she loves to the high school prom as her partner. The PTA decides to cancel the event. This part of the story is based on fact. Meanwhile, two narcissistic Broadway stars (Meryl Streep and James Cordon), who have just had a monumental stage disaster, decide it would be a good publicity for them to become involved in a Civil Right inclusivity issue.
APPOINTMENT IN LONDON (StudioCanal). This is a tribute to the 65,000 who were killed in Bomber Command in World War II. The actors (led by Dirk Bogarde) play a secondary role to the planes and the highly dangerous night raids over Germany. The odds of coming out of a sortie alive were not good. Only 4 crews out of 10 survived. Few men lived after they had done 20 sorties. Director Philip Leacock takes a stiff-upper-lip documentary approach
BOYS IN THE BAND (Netflix). Screaming promiscuous queens, living in New York, some full of self-hatred and feeling sorry for themselves, celebrate a birthday with a cruel and degrading truth game. Matt Crowley’s play, a camp, sour, bitchy, pre-AIDS period piece, was ground-breaking when it premiered in 1968. The 2018 Broadway revival was made up exclusively of openly gay actors, The same cast appear in this 2020 film which is directed by Joe Mantello. Robin de Jesus is the gayest gay. Jim Parsons is the guiltiest.
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