5 things to watch this weekend – 17 to 19 January

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Reteaming his Forrest Gump (1994) stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright 30 years later, Robert Zemeckis’s new film has been harshly received in many quarters but is surely bolder, more suggestive and more aesthetically adventurous than many of this year’s more feted awards candidates. Adapted from Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel, it gives us a fixed-frame view of a single spot in New Jersey, using expanding pop-ups on screen to move non-chronologically between the prehistoric era, pre-colonial America and the generational comings-and-goings in the house that was built there at the turn of the 20th century. The main focus is the Young family, who move in after the Second World War and whose lives we follow in a scrambled order and – with the aid of eerie de-ageing effects – over several decades. 

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Timothée Chalamet does an absorbing impersonation of folk-era Bob Dylan in this solid biopic from Walk the Line (2005) director James Mangold. A Complete Unknown follows Dylan’s life from his arrival in New York as a young Woody Guthrie wannabe in the early 60s, through his meteoric rise as a protest singer, and up to the infamous moment when he was branded ‘Judas’ for plugging in his guitar and turning his back on folk. Edward Norton got a BAFTA nomination this week for his avuncular turn as folk stalwart Pete Seeger, despite being about 15 years too old for the part. But then even the youthful Chalamet – also nominated – is a few years older than the astonishingly precocious early twentysomething Dylan who took the world by storm.

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Despite winning the top prize at Venice last autumn, this rustic Italian drama from Maura Delpero has been oddly absent from year-end lists and awards fever. But it shouldn’t be overlooked: it’s a calmly observed and beautifully rendered domestic epic in the spirit of Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978), with a wartime Alpine setting reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019). In this secluded location, the conflict seems to be happening someplace far off, but a deserter arrives in the village and becomes involved with the eldest daughter among the seven children of the local teacher. 

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

With those deliciously barbed comedies A New Leaf (1971) and The Heartbreak Kid (1972) behind her, Elaine May took this bracing detour into John Cassavetes-type terrain. Mikey and Nicky pitches Cassavetes himself and his longtime collaborator Peter Falk as two criminal pals thrown together on a ragged all-night odyssey as Cassavetes’ Nicky attempts to flee town, convinced the mob has a number on him. Raw and often abrasive, it becomes a piercing study of male friendship, with the kind of livewire, present-tense energy that the Safdie brothers have since made a career out of. The transfer on Criterion’s Blu-ray was supervised by May herself, who has sadly only made one more feature – 1987’s Ishtar – ever since.

Where’s it on? BBC2, Saturday, 1pm

Ahead of Paul Newman’s centenary next week, BBC2 has a Saturday afternoon double bill: this steamy Tennessee Williams adaptation from 1958, followed by cowboy caper Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Cat on a Hot Tin Roof captures Newman near the beginning of his screen career but already getting his first Oscar nomination. He plays boozehound former football player Brick Pollitt, who is married to Elizabeth Taylor but harbours secret repressed desires that a 1958 production doesn’t quite know what to do with. His crutch tells you a lot though, and there’s a good deal of class to this MGM film, directed by Richard Brooks and with a supporting cast featuring Burl Ives, Jack Carson and Judith Anderson.