What’s on this weekend? From Cameron’s For the Record to Ad Astra

By The Week Staff

last updated 20 September 2019

The Week’s best film, TV, book and live show on this weekend, with excerpts from the top reviews.

TELEVISION: Criminal

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“Congratulations to Netflix: After over seven years of commissioning original series, it finally got around to creating its own Law & Order…[It] manages to flip our expectations, offering up surprising twists that highlight the humanity of the accused, who are never quite as evil as you might think. It’s a tricky balance, finding ways to ensure that each episode feels unique but also relatable, yet Criminal makes it work.”

“Brad Pitt never looked more beautiful than in this mesmeric, flawed, superbly photographed and designed space adventure from director and co-writer James Gray. Pitt plays an astronaut in what is tantalisingly described as the near future and Gray’s camera traces the scorched and incised surfaces of distant planets with the same awe that it travels across Brad’s face, savouring the lattice of tiny wrinkles around the eyes, and the discreet harvest of his one-day stubble.”

“After three years of relative silence from the former prime minister, the excerpts from his book read alternately as public apology — of sorts — and personal defence from a man who is still being blamed by many Britons for the political chaos the country now finds itself in… The memoir touches on a broad range of issues: the death of Mr. Cameron’s son Ivan at age 6; his days smoking marijuana in high school at Eton; his university years in Oxford; and other high-profile, non-Brexit-related political issues, notably the Scottish independence referendum and the legalisation of gay marriage.”

“Subtle sophistication is found in this endearing musical version of that crucial first chapter of Mole-ean metamorphosis. I loved it when it premiered in Leicester in 2015, and again when it surfaced (revised) two summers ago at the Menier Chocolate Factory, each time hoping it might make it to the West End. I’m glad it has done so. It will surely induce nostalgia among those who struggled with adolescence in the Eighties. The giant inch-rulers that dominate Tom Rogers’s cartoonish set reference Adrian’s famous adolescent preoccupation with the size of his ‘thing’ but also imply other kinds of measurement: how far we’ve come from those bygone days, and whether kids today can relate.”

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