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Pick of the week
Harvest

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel looks like a homage to 1970s British folk horror films – complete with Wicker Man-style animal masks and rituals. But the evils turns out to be more economic and social than supernatural. In an unnamed rural Scottish village, the diffident Master Kent (Harry Melling) rules benignly over the agricultural workers, including his former servant, the reserved Walter (Caleb Landry Jones). But then Kent’s cousin (Frank Dillane) arrives with plans to enclose the common land and raise sheep. The inequities of power, and the way the dispossessed can blame outsiders for their lot, come to the fore in a brooding, earthy tragedy.
Friday 4 September, 11.05pm, BBC Two

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The Whisper Man

This is the first novel by bestselling British crime writer Alex North to be made into a film but, with the Russo brothers producing, it surely won’t be the last. The eight-year-old son of widowed author Tom (Adam Scott) has been abducted, in a way reminiscent of serial killer the Whisper Man. However, the murderer was caught years ago by Tom’s estranged detective father Peter (Robert De Niro). So is a copycat at work or did Peter arrest the wrong person? Michelle Monaghan co-stars as a new cop on the case in a thriller by up-and-coming director James Ashcroft.
Out now, Netflix

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Black Panther

Despite being created in 1966, it took until 2018 for the Marvel comic character of Wakanda’s African king T’Challa to reach the big screen. Still, it was worth the wait, as director Ryan Coogler and star Chadwick Boseman delivered a Black superhero with charisma and complexity. The plot, revolving round a challenge for the throne, explores self-determination, colonialism and power politics with a sideline in Bond-style action – globetrotting to Korea, Q-like gadgetry courtesy of Letitia Wright’s Princess Shuri, and a helpful CIA agent (Martin Freeman).
Saturday 29 August, 8pm, Channel 4

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Lee

Lee Miller’s life was one of many great adventures. And it’s her later career as a war photographer that director Ellen Kuras and star Kate Winslet focus on in their fierce film. Winslet – in a role she was born to play – is the magnetic, forthright Lee, a woman who won’t take no for an answer. When the second world war breaks out, she nabs a job taking pictures for Vogue, and gets herself front and centre for the London blitz, the liberation of Europe and, chillingly, the discovery of the Nazi death camps – snapping away in fury and shock at the inhumanity she sees.
Saturday 29 August, 9pm, Sky Atlantic

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The Fifth Element

Given that the first ever sci-fi film was French (Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon), it’s a pity there have been so few great ones from that nation since. But Luc Besson’s hyperactive 1997 movie is a real contender. Bruce Willis plays a cabbie in 23rd-century New York who finds himself in an end-of-days race against time when he meets the “ultimate warrior”, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who was created to defeat an evil entity. Featuring costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier, it’s got flair and wit to spare.
Monday 31 August, 7pm, Sky Sci-Fi

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Little Big Man

Arthur Penn’s revisionist western about the “sole white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn” may have Dustin Hoffman as its hero, but it is the Native Americans he meets, befriends and lives with who are at the film’s warm, melancholy heart. Hoffman’s 121-year-old Jack Crabb relates his picaresque history, from being orphaned after a Pawnee attack and raised by Cheyenne tribal leader Old Lodge Skins (a deadpan Chief Dan George) to surviving in a “civilised” white world of adulterers, snake oil salesmen and, most horrifically, genocidal soldiers epitomised by General Custer.
Wednesday 2 September, 11.45am, 5Action

***

Anora

Sean Baker’s brilliant indie drama, and surprise Oscar winner, showcases the writer-director’s ability to immerse us fully in the lives of society’s most marginal characters. His focus here is the titular Brooklyn stripper and sex worker, played by Mikey Madison from Better Things. When a Russian oligarch’s son, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), falls impetutously in love with her, Anora seizes the chance of a better life. But she is up against some formidable in-laws … Veering skilfully from slapstick comedy to gritty drama, it’s a superbly acted, manic treasure. SW
Thursday 3 September, Netflix