Gripping thrillers, stellar comedies – these are all the Bafta-nominated films showing on TV right now. Find out where to watch them this weekend…
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic about the atom bomb inventor
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Sky
Two films dominated the summer of 2023. One was Greta Gerwig’s brilliant, neon-bright Barbie movie, but the other was this darkly stunning account of obsessive scientist J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his part in the Second World War Manhattan Project that created the world’s first atom bomb.
Visually stunning and intellectually complex (it is shot through with foreboding about just what Oppenheimer’s terrible creation might mean for all mankind), it’s a film packed with great performances, with Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr and Emily Blunt all on fine form. The film is dominated by Murphy’s turn as the titular scientist, though, a driven, hypnotic figure creating something that only serves to destroy. Expect it to go head to head with Barbie again come awards season. Available to buy or rent on Sky Store. (181 minutes)
How to Have Sex
Molly Manning Walker’s startling coming-of-age drama about consent
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Mubi
There’s something special about movies that capture the experience of being young and on an adventure, even if that adventure takes an awful turn. Such films serve as time capsules for generations and How To Have Sex is certainly that but, most importantly, it’s also a startling lesson in sexual politics and consent. Written and directed by Molly Manning Walker, this BAFTA-nominated coming-of-age drama follows three British teenage girls on a boozy holiday in Crete, and what happens when they meet a group of boys in the same resort.
It’s been described by Walker as loosely autobiographical, which partly explains why it all feels so authentic – and also makes the dark turn it takes when one of the girls is separated from the others hit all the harder. At times, this story of friendship and blurred boundaries feels like a slow-moving horror movie, one fuelled by entirely believable performances from all of its young cast, but especially from Mia McKenna-Bruce as Tara (the girl who gets separated). Despite the film delivering a lesson, it never feels preachy. By the end it actually leaves a lot unsaid, but somehow says it all the louder as a result. (91 mins)
Rye Lane
South London-set rom-com full of light and life
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Disney+
When lovelorn accountant Dom runs into free spirit Yas at the opening of an art gallery just off Rye Lane in Peckham, south London, he’s swept up into a day and most of a night of adventure. Soon the pair are wandering across the city, dropping into parties, attempting a little light breaking-and-entering, and generally pinballing from joyously funny situation to situation.
This is a genuinely lovely and properly funny movie packed with heart and goodwill. It will have you falling in love with its two leads (Industry’s David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah from Class) just as quickly and completely as they lose their hearts to each other, and the film’s sense of place is as specific as it is joyful. (82 minutes)
Saltburn
Emerald Fennell’s darkly hilarious, class-conscious thriller
Year: 2023
Certificate: 18
Watch now on Prime Video
Emerald Fennell became widely known when she took over as head writer on Killing Eve from Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Also an actress (she was Emmy-nominated as Camilla on The Crown), Fennell has since blazed a trail into Hollywood, winning an Oscar for her screenplay for 2020’s Promising Young Woman. The boldly twisty, darkly comedic thriller Saltburn is her sensational follow-up to that.
It’s the class-conscious story of Oliver, a dedicated, up-by-the-bootstraps student at Oxford who’s invited back to the estate of his laid-back, posh friend for summer. The estate is called Saltburn and it’s the kind of place you dress for dinner, and the occupants – including riveting characters played by Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant – are fascinated by him. We won’t say more about what comes next because this is the kind of movie you want to go into knowing as little as possible, but be prepared for the odd horrific moment among it all – and to not like anyone on screen. (131 minutes)
Napoleon
Ridley Scott’s epic about the French emperor, starring Joaquin Phoenix
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
Ridley Scott’s biopic is just the kind of grand, awards-magnet of a drama that tends to come out towards the end of a year, ready to do battle in the Oscars – but that doesn’t make it any less of a staggering filmmaking achievement. Joaquin Phoenix is laser-focused as the brutal, ambitious yet slightly vulnerable Napoleon, while The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby brings great depth to the role of Napoleon’s Josephine, who sees that ambition and decides to shape it.
The power dynamic between the two of them is one of the most fascinating human elements of a film that features some truly jaw-dropping feats of production. The battle scenes (six of them, no less) are sequences that Scott has clearly spared no expense in creating – and creating largely for real, too, rather than in a computer. It’s a long old movie for sure, but you can’t say it doesn’t earn that runtime through all the blood, sweat and tears that must have been spilled for it to be made. Available to rent and buy on Apple, Amazon and Sky. (158 minutes) Martin Scorsese directs a 1920s-set tale of murder and deceit on Native America land
Killers Of The Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese directs a 1920s-set tale of murder and deceit on Native America land
Year: 2023
Watch now on Apple TV+
Part Western, part crime drama, director Martin Scorsese’s latest epic centres on the Osage tribe in northeastern Oklahoma in the 1920s. Made incredibly wealthy almost overnight when oil is discovered on their lands, the tribe becomes the target of unscrupulous white men who will stop at nothing to secure that oil money for themselves.
Based on real-life events, it’s a twisty and amoral account of murder and corruption told with Scorsese’s typical visual flair and with some jawdropping performances from an incredible cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow. It clocks in at well above three hours in length but it’s worth every second. (206 minutes)
Barbie
Margot Robbie stars in Greta Gerwig’s subversive box-office smash
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Sky
Has any movie been subjected to more scrutiny than the box-office smash of summer 2023? It says a lot for Greta Gerwig’s subversive take on the American doll that it could stand all that scrutiny and that, if you wanted to just ignore all the discussion of feminism and patriarchy that surrounded it, you could also just enjoy it – as a fun and surprising adventure comedy that carried an emotional punch about the way women live their lives.
Amid all that hubbub, it’s also easy to forget how terrific Margot Robbie is as the doll leaving Barbie Land for a shock in the human world, and how funny Ryan Gosling is as Ken – although it’s less easy to forget the latter as, ironically, he almost has more to do in the movie than she does. Don’t overlook how beautifully designed this film is, either. They’ve brought Barbie Land to life in such beautiful detail, and if you played with the dolls as a child there are lots of background details in this for you. That’s far from the end of it, though – we haven’t even got into the musical numbers, or Will Ferrell as the boss of Mattel… Available to rent or buy on Sky Store. (114 minutes)
Anatomy Of A Fall
Gripping, Oscar-nominated French courtroom thriller and family drama
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
When husband and father Samuel falls to his death at a secluded chalet in the French Alps, the police assume murder – and their prime suspect is Samuel’s wife, Sandra. What actually happened, though? Was it even murder? And what does their blind 11-year-old son have to say about it?
Anatomy Of A Fall is one of those films you’ll want to know as little as possible about before seeing, so we’ll leave out the description of the plot, but be prepared to be utterly gripped by this riveting mix of courtroom thriller and family drama. It boasts a particularly strong, justly Oscar-nominated performance by Sandra Hüller (also in the Oscar-nominated The Zone Of Interest) as the wife, but there’s not really a weak point in this movie except, arguably, the two-and-a-half hour running time.
Hüller’s nomination is one of five potential Oscars for the film and, even in this year’s strong Best Picture category, it says a lot that it’s in with more than a shot. Available to buy and rent on Apple, Amazon and Sky. (152 minutes)
Maestro
Bradley Cooper stars in a bold biopic of musical legend Leonard Bernstein
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
A titan of the American musical scene in the mid-20th century, Leonard Bernstein combined work as one of the most passionate conductors of classical music with a career as a composer of everything from symphonies and film scores to undying musicals such as West Side Story.
Directed by and starring Bradley Cooper as Bernstein himself, this ambitious film swirls dizzying amounts of great music around the audience but never forgets that relationships drive films. Here it’s the passionate and difficult love between the composer and his wife Felicia, played with incredible sensitivity by Carey Mulligan, that powers proceedings. Expect both actors to be in the running come Oscar time. (129 minutes)
Past Lives
Tender tale of lost love which foregrounds the migrant experience
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Netflix
It’s impossible not to shed a tear while watching this discreet and delicate film about two childhood sweethearts who were separated in youth and then brought together again as adults. South Korean-born Nora (Greta Lee) is best friends with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), but when her family move from Seoul to Canada the pair lose contact. Years later Nora, now a married writer living in New York, reconnects with her old friend. They reunite for one week – but do they regret the life they’ve lost together?
This extraordinary directorial debut by South Korean-Canadian Celine Song was indisputably one of the movie highlights of 2023. It manages to tackle big ideas such as destiny, identity and longing with a simplicity that charms everyone who sees it. (105 minutes)
Rustin
Biopic spotlighting the forgotten man behind Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
Famous for Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, the March on Washington is hailed as a landmark moment in the history of the US civil rights movement. Often forgotten in accounts, though, are the activities of the man who actually organised it, Bayard Rustin. One of King’s closest advisors, Rustin was also openly gay, a fact that meant his contribution to events at the time was quietly airbrushed out of history books.
He’s played here with real verve by Colman Domingo (with support from a fine cast including Chris Rock, CCH Pounder and Jeffrey Wright), and this intelligent and passionate film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s company will go some way to redressing that. (106 minutes) Spanish drama based on the infamous 1972 Andes plane crash
Society Of The Snow
Spanish drama based on the infamous 1972 Andes plane crash
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
The 1972 plane crash that stranded a Uruguayan rugby team deep in the Andes mountains with little hope of rescue is infamous. The story of how the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism in order to survive has already inspired one movie (1993’s Alive) and surely features in the DNA of the hit series Yellowjackets, but this Spanish-language retelling of events is perhaps the most hard-hitting and complex of the lot.
The sense of isolation, cold and hopelessness it conveys is crushing as the teammates make momentous decisions in order to stave off death long enough to find a way back to civilisation. (144 mins)
Still: A Michael J Fox Movie
The life, times and illness of the Hollywood star
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Apple TV+
One of the most famous actors of the 1980s, Michael J Fox was a big and small-screen legend before he even turned 30. He was also by that age diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and facing a life with a debilitating, progressive and incurable disease that increasingly left his body twitching and his face often immobile.
Don’t expect self pity from this documentary film, though. Chockful of archive clips, behind-the-scenes footage and dramatic re-enactments, this is a rollercoaster ride through the life of a man who refused to lie down and let his disease define him. It’s funny, romantic and exciting. Like all the best Michael J Fox films. (95 minutes)
Wham!
Backstage documentary about the 1980s pop sensation
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Netflix
There was a time when Wham! were one of the biggest pop acts on the planet. In the early 1980s they racked up hit after hit (Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Freedom, I’m Your Man and Last Christmas, to name but a few), collected millions of fans and even became the first western pop stars to play in China. Then in 1986 they brought it all to a close with ‘the most amicable split in history’ as George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley went their separate ways.
Crammed with interviews, never-before-seen home videos and behind-the-scenes footage, this feature-length documentary, which received a cinema release, tells that story with gusto and gives a proper sense of what life was like for the schoolfriends turned superstars. It may lack a bit of inquisitive depth, but it’s easy to forgive that when the experience of watching it all is so entertaining. (92 minutes)
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget
Cracking sequel to Aardman Animation’s hit adventure movie
Year: 2023
Certificate: PG
Watch now on Netflix
A playful spin on Second World War prisoner-of-war movies (not least The Great Escape), 2000’s Chicken Run saw Aardman (the animators behind Wallace & Gromit) craft a loveable tale of a gang of chickens plotting their escape from a poultry farm before the farmers can turn them all into pies.
Now this very welcome sequel picks up the tale a few years later with the escaped hens now leading an idyllic life on a remote island. But when Molly (voiced by The Last Of Us’s Bella Ramsey), the daughter of Ginger and Rocky (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi), decides to venture back to the mainland, the feathered few find themselves embroiled in a new adventure. The result is as bright-eyed and gleeful as the original, with Jane Horrocks, Imelda Staunton and Miranda Richardson returning alongside new voices courtesy of Romesh Ranganathan, Daniel Mays and Nick Mohammed. (101 minutes)
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
The universe-hopping follow-up to the brilliant animated superhero adventure
Year: 2023
Certificate: PG
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
In 2018 we met a new kind of cinematic Spider-Man when the animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse introduced us to bright but bumbling teenager Miles Morales, an accidental superhero who uses his newfound wallcrawling powers to team up with a bunch of alternate dimension spider-heroes in order to save the world. It was a bright, exciting, visually stunning affair that was just as good, if not better, than even the excellent live-action films starring Tom Holland.
This follow-up raises the stakes even further, introducing even more spider-heroes from different universes in a jaw-droppingly clever, beautiful to look at and surprisingly moving story. Part two in a trilogy (the epic concluding part, Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse is expected in 2025), it is genuinely one of the best superhero films ever made. (140 minutes)
Elemental
Pixar’s joyful romcom about what happens when fire and water mix
Year: 2023
Certificate: PG
Watch now on Disney+
There are four different types of residents in Element City – earth, air, fire and water. They all live side by side happily enough, so long as they obey the cardinal rule: elements cannot mix. So, what happens when a fire person and a water person fall in love? You know exactly where Pixar’s joyful animated family comedy is going from the start, but that doesn’t diminish the fun of it, nor the enjoyment of seeing how all the different elements’ worlds are created on screen.
In the execution of that concept Elemental is reminiscent of Inside Out and, while comparisons to that movie don’t do it any favours, it’s important to remember just how high a bar Inside Out set. Taken on its own terms, Elemental is a delight – it’s essentially a Pixar romcom, with an immigrants’ tale woven in. It’s also a stunning looking movie with lots of great details to enjoy if you choose to see them, and don’t miss the short film it was released with, either – Carl’s Date, which follows the older gentleman from Up. (101 minutes)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
Tom Cruise embarks on a seventh thrill-packed mission as superspy Ethan Hunt
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch on Now
Sitting alongside James Bond and Jason Bourne when it comes to the silver screen’s greatest secret agents, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has triumphed over just about every baddie the world has to throw at him. But even he may have met his match as he and his team (including Simon Pegg and new member Hayley Atwell) are called upon to bring down a rogue Artificial Intelligence in this seventh adventure.
Full of humour, excitement and stunts (many performed for real by the seemingly indestructible Cruise himself), this is a beast of a blockbuster adventure that builds to a cliffhanger finish ahead of a concluding instalment due in 2025. (164 minutes)
