5 things to watch this weekend – 27 to 29 September

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

A review on Letterboxd memorably calls Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, grandest folly the “season finale of American cinema”, and for anyone who’s been gripped by that particular show, it’s quite the send-off. Filled to bursting with pie-in-the-sky ambition and visual largesse, Megalopolis imagines Adam Driver as a visionary urban planner brushing up against power-hungry politicians in the future city of New Rome – an alternate vision of New York steeped in the decadence of Ancient Rome and the monumental architecture of 1920s German expressionism. The product of four decades of dreaming and redrafting, Coppola’s earnest, dazzling, divisive film is – at the very least – heroically out of step with current cinematic trends, and is made with a conviction and sincerity that inspires frequent awe.

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

One of two Aubrey Plaza movies coming out this week (she has a pivotal role in Megalopolis as the venal and colourfully named media star Wow Platinum), this teen comedy brings us back down to earth, although it has a time-warping high-concept of its own. On an 18th birthday camping trip with her besties, Elliott (Maisy Stella from TV’s Nashville, here making her film debut) gets high on mushrooms and is joined around the campfire by her 39-year-old self (Plaza). Underwhelmed to hear of her future as a PhD student on the cusp of middle age, the younger Elliott nonetheless takes heed of a warning to steer clear of men called Chad – but then the next day she meets an apparently flawless charmer called just that. Megan Park’s glossy comedy is at its best when Plaza’s lived-a-lot cynicism is on screen to cut through the sweetness elsewhere. 

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

These days, directors live or die by their first feature – it’s important to make your mark quickly. In the 1930s, there was much more of an apprenticeship model: you cut your teeth on programme fillers and, if you proved yourself with half a dozen or more of these, something bigger might come along. So it was with Michael Powell, about the finest director these isles have produced, but whose years of toiling on so-called ‘quota quickies’ (cheap productions made to fulfill a government quota) have remained in the shadows of his 1940s imperial phase, which produced such all-timers as Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). This Blu-ray set collects five of these quickies, all brisk, atmospheric capers and mysteries barely troubling 60 minutes long. The films are Rynox (1931), Hotel Splendide (1932), The Night of the Party (1934), Her Last Affaire (1936) and a 1944 reissue version of The Man Behind the Mask (1936).

Where’s it on? Selected cinemas nationwide

The only film this week that can claim to be bigger than Coppola’s Megalopolis is this venerated, three-and-a-half-hour action epic from Akira Kurosawa. Rereleased in cinemas in a 4K restoration to sound the starting gun on the BFI’s upcoming celebration of action cinema, it’s a film that borrows a set-up from a cowboy picture – villagers sick of being pillaged by wandering bandits call on a group of wandering samurai to defend them – and renders it with an almost Shakespearian feel for human foibles and big-canvas storytelling. Its closing battle in the mud and rain introduced a new dynamism and intensity into on-screen action cinema that’s still being copied and fallen short of.

Where’s it on? Talking Pictures TV, Saturday, 16:45

Although Ealing is fondly remembered for its comedies, one of the studio’s best films is this alternative history thriller about a Nazi invasion on English soil. War was still raging at the time of filming, but Alberto Cavalcanti’s film has a hopeful framing device set in a peaceful future, with an ageing villager recounting the time when German invaders nearly got their claws into the fictitious village of Bramley End, arriving in disguise as a troupe of British soldiers. Based on a story by Graham Greene, Went the Day Well? must have stoked genuine terror at the time for its depiction of fifth columnists at large in the British countryside. But it would also have inspired pride in the courage and resilience with which the villagers are shown to meet the threat within.