5 things to watch this weekend – 1 to 3 November

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

With a sad lack of fanfare, the 40th feature film directed by Clint Eastwood is here. Not too long ago, this would have been considered a prime joint: it’s a handsomely mounted courtroom drama in the John Grisham vein, in which Nicholas Hoult plays the conflicted juror on an apparent open-and-shut murder trial in Alabama. It’s gripping on that level, and then some, but what makes it fascinating – even great – are the 94-year-old director’s layers of rumination on the legal system as an expression of American democracy, its strengths and fallibilities, and those of the individuals who play their part in it. Time could make this look like one of Clint’s finest.

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI Southbank

Here, by contrast, is a film that doesn’t want for critical attention. It’s already won the Palme d’Or, and we could see it troubling the Oscars too. And what an exhilarating ride Sean Baker’s latest is – a spiky and hilarious screwball fairytale (or anti-fairytale) that makes a star of Mikey Madison playing the sex worker who embarks on a whirlwind romance with a super-rich son of Russian money (played by newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn with something of the helium giddiness of Tom Hulce’s Mozart in Amadeus). Don’t read too much about it. It’s better if you let the Anora rollercoaster do its thing. There’s a twisting, propulsive, ultra-contemporary, present-tense storytelling here to rival Uncut Gems (2019).

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Post-Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy has scaled down for a small thing like this, an adaptation of a 2021 novel by Claire Keegan in which Murphy plays the coal merchant and family man who stumbles upon dark goings on at a Catholic home for girls while on his delivery rounds in the run-up to Christmas 1985. Although it boasts Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as producers, Small Things like These is an intimate, finely grained drama about an ordinary man’s struggle with a revelation that’s too great to bear, but which nobody in the community is ready to acknowledge or reckon with. Belgian director Tim Mielants’ film takes a certain amount of knowledge about the infamous Magdalene Laundries for granted. His film exudes a biting chill.

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

In Buenos Aires, an American drifter, Johnny (Glenn Ford), has made trouble for himself by cheating at craps, but he’s rescued by casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready) who offers him work as a kind of protégé or stooge. Only thing is that Ballin’s ravishing wife Gilda (Rita Hayworth) used to be Johnny’s lover, and their sexual heat hasn’t exactly dissipated. Gilda, which is back in cinemas in the requisite 4K restoration, is a film noir of warped erotic energy in which the pent-up perversity seems to have suffused into the abstracted production design – a nest of grids and shadows. In its most famous sequence, Hayworth sings ‘Put the Blame on Mame’, seductively peeling off her long, black gloves and flinging her hair back with abandon in what passes for a 1940s striptease.

Where’s it on? Talking Pictures TV, Sunday, 9:50am

This Raoul Walsh western may have missed out on classic status, but there’s plenty to recommend it. Clark Gable plays one of two brothers just loose from Confederate army service who rob but then team up with businessman Robert Ryan on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Jane Russell completes the triple-star-billing playing a settler they meet en route and who becomes romantically entangled with the two rivals. The screenplay is by Frank Nugent, a regular John Ford collaborator who was a year away from The Searchers (1956). It throws obstacles in the cattlemen’s path that won’t be a surprise to any western fan: marauding Sioux, wild weather, challenging terrain. But, shooting in colour and landscape-friendly CinemaScope, Walsh makes it all slide down very easily.