Orlando — Mubi.com
Sally Potter’s labour-of-love adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel has since its release in 1992 become a feminist and LGBTQ classic.
Starring Tilda Swinton and sweeping through different eras of history, it’s a hallucinatory story of fluid sexual identity way ahead of its time and still memorable for the way it creates cinematic poetry that serves as an extension to the themes of its source material. Swinton in her art house, pre-mainstream breakout era is mesmerising and demonstrates the enigmatic quality that has gone on to make her a global star.
The Birdman of Alcatraz — Prime Video
Burt Lancaster was one of Hollywood’s classiest acts and in John Frankenheimer’s 1962 prison drama classic he delivers some of his finest work.
Based on the book by Thomas E Gaddis, the film tells the story of Lancaster’s Robert Franklin Stroud, a surly convicted murderer serving a life sentence who finds new meaning in life through his interest in birds. As he transforms his cell from a sparse space of isolation and loneliness into one where his newfound passion can take hold, Stroud’s transformative story reinforces the belief that resilience and hope can become a means of escape from even the most terrible circumstances.
Materialists — Buy from Apple TV
Director Celine Song’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut Past Lives focuses, like its predecessor, on the sticky nuances of romantic relationships, though its approach is lighter.
Turning the traditional tropes of the romcom neatly on their head, Song crafts a gently funny, still relatable human tale of Dakota Johnson’s digital-era matchmaker and the romantic triangle she finds herself in with Pedro Pascal’s playboy and Chris Evans’ struggling actor.
Beauty and the Bester — Netflix
After Showmax’s docuseries last year, Netflix now launches its multi-episode documentary investigation into the strange case of con man and rapist Thabo Bester.
It follows his relationship with Dr Nandipha Magudumana, who went from role model to cautionary tale after she fell for Bester and became his accomplice in planning his escape from prison before the pair were finally apprehended in 2023.
Landman — Showmax
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan casts his rugged macho lens on the murky world of the West Texas oilfields in this epic drama starring the always-watchable Billy Bob Thornton as a beleaguered oil industry fixer whose life is complicated by Mexican drug cartels, greedy bosses and his own dysfunctional family in a series of life-threatening events.
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