Stuck for what to watch on the small screen? With our handy guide, you can enjoy the best of the week’s movies without checking your programme guide. Some of them are at strange times, so you could record them all and indulge in a weekend binge. Here’s our pick of the week’s best.
JFK
Sunday April 8, OSN Movies Festival HD, 2.20am
Kevin Costner heads an all-star cast as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who in 1967 filed charges against businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for his alleged involvement in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy. Gary Oldman plays Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of the president, in Oliver Stone's eight-time Oscar-nominated adaptation of the real-life Garrison's book. The movie was controversial on release, with many accusing Stone of indulging in conspiracy theories, including the implication that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, was involved in a coup d'etat to replace Kennedy, but it cleaned up both at the box office and at 1992's awards ceremonies.
Jackie
Monday April 9, OSN Movies First HD, 10.05pm
Keep up the Kennedy theme on Monday with Natalie Portman's Oscar-nominated performance in Pablo Larrain's biopic of JFK's media-darling wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The film follows Jackie's final days as first lady, and the aftermath of her husband's death, and features a solid supporting cast including Peter Sarsgaard as JFK's brother Robert, Greta Gerwig as the Kennedys' social secretary Nancy, as well as John Hurt, in his final film, as the couple's priest. The movie is really all about Portman's stunning performance, however, and she was unfortunate to lose out to Emma Stone at Oscars time, as La La Land swept the board.
An Inconvenient Truth
Tuesday April 10, OSN Movies Festival, 5.15am and 12.55pm
There’s a distinctly presidential theme to this week’s selection of movies on TV so far, with Davis Guggenheim’s documentary about former vice-president Al Gore’s campaign to educate citizens about the dangers of global warming, via a comprehensive slideshow presentation that he toured around the US, the pick of Tuesday’s movies. It’s not unheard of for a US politician to be the subject of an Oscar-winning movie, but it’s definitely unusual for him to be the star of that movie, and with Guggenheim set to appear at the Abu Dhabi Culture Summit the following day, you may want to watch in preparation if you’re attending.
Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi
Wednesday April 11, Sundance Channel, 1.50pm
In March 2013, a depressed university student disappeared from his accommodation at Rhode Island’s Brown University. The following month, he was identified as a key suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings inquiry. Neal Broffman’s film follows the incredible social-media witch-hunt for the misidentified Sunil Tripathi, fuelled by collective fear and herd mentality, the fake story being picked up by mainstream media, the death threats and abuse received by his family, and the eventual discovery of Tripathi’s body on April 23, 2013 – four days after the correct suspects had been identified and caught. An abject warning of the dangers of the social-media age.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Thursday April 12, OSN Festival HD, 12.15am
Billy Crudup and Ezra Miller are among an ensemble cast retelling the shocking story of psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. In the experiment, a group of volunteer students were randomly assigned roles as guards or prisoners in a mock-up prison at Stanford University. The planned two-week study was intended to test the theory that inherent personality traits were the prime cause of abuse in prison. Although the researchers attempted to pick out the most stable 24 applicants from those who applied, and none had a criminal record, the experiment soon descended into a nightmare of violence, psychological torture and emotional abuse, and had to be cut short after just six days.
Saw
Friday April 13, OSN Movies Thriller HD, 1.05am
James Wan’s feature debut, based on a story and subsequent short film by Wan and co-creator Leigh Whannell, is a modern psychological horror masterpiece. The film was picked up by distributor Lionsgate with the intention of releasing it direct-to-video, as is customary with low-budget horror flicks. Following a storming reception at 2014’s Sundance Festival, and the film’s selection to close the Toronto Film Festival later that year, Lionsgate swiftly altered their plans and pencilled in a full cinema release. The twisted tale of two men with a dark secret who awaken in a derelict bathroom with a corpse and a dark mission to complete certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted, but it was one of the most successful horror films of the era, grossing more than $100 million on a budget of around $1m. It’s the first in a franchise.
I am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced
Saturday April 14, Sundance Channel, 12.50am
Khadija Al Salami's harrowing 2014 drama tells the story of Nujoom, a 10-year-old Yemeni girl seeking divorce from an abusive marriage after she was married off to avoid a scandal following the rape of her sister. The film, which had its world premiere at DIFF in 2014, is based on the true story of Nujood Ali and her book I am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced. Nujood was nominated as Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year in 2008 and is now a key figure in Yemen's opposition to child marriages. The film was the first from Yemen to be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
