Miranda Priestly returns, and the last 20 years have not softened the fashion magazine editor’s hauteur one iota. In David Frankel’s couture-drenched comic sequel, her former callow assistant Andy, played by Anne Hathaway, is now an award-winning investigative journalist. Hired by the owner to improve Runway’s reputation, she can take all that Meryl Streep’s disdainful Priestly throws at her.
This time, the main conflict is with the internet, as declining print sales and clickbait competition threaten the publication’s future. It is a jolly, aspirational outing, buoyed by scene-stealers Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, even if the gags are largely from the preloved rack.
Wednesday 29 July, Disney+
What is Lurker about?
At first sight, Alex Russell’s Lurker is about a pop singer stalked by an obsessive fan. Théodore Pellerin’s LA clothes shop worker Matthew talks himself into the entourage of the apparently easy-going Oliver, played by Archie Madekwe, a British musician on the up.
As Matthew sidles from obsequious gofer to would-be documentary profiler, his neediness is embarrassing going on excruciating – but it also flatters Oliver. And as their relationship develops over weeks, the power balance between them shifts drastically.
Saturday 25 July, 6.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
What does Monster explore?
Japanese film-maker Hirokazu Kore-eda has long been a brilliant illuminator of children’s fractured, often inarticulated lives. This 2023 Cannes winner is another compelling look into their inner worlds, framed as an episodic narrative.
First, we see events from the point of view of Sakura Ando’s single mother Saori, who thinks her son Minato, played by Sōya Kurokawa, is being bullied by his teacher, Mr Hori, played by Eita Nagayama. But then we get Hori’s side of the story and, crucially, Minato’s; what emerges is a heartbreaking tale of friendship and difference.
Saturday 25 July, 10.25pm, BBC Four
What is Eleanor the Great about?
Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor the Great may be not what you’d expect from the Black Widow: it is a moving comedy revolving around the lies a 94-year-old woman tells about the Holocaust. June Squibb plays the twinkly eyed Eleanor, who relocates from Florida to live with her daughter in New York after her longtime best friend and housemate Bessie dies.
Partly through grief and loneliness – but also to keep the memories alive – Eleanor begins to pass off Bessie’s tales of surviving Nazi atrocities as her own.
Sunday 26 July, 6am, 2pm, 4.10am, Sky Cinema Premiere
How does The New Boy approach history?
The Australian state’s former policy of separating Indigenous children from their parents, to assimilate them into western culture, gets a sideways take in Warwick Thornton’s mystical period drama. Aswan Reid stars as a blond-haired Indigenous boy found in the outback and taken to a Benedictine orphanage run by Cate Blanchett’s unconventional Sister Eileen.
It is an alien world to him, but when he displays miraculous powers, Eileen sees in him a very Christian divinity.
Tuesday, 11.05pm, BBC Two
What makes Primate a slasher film?
Johannes Roberts’s brutally efficient Primate employs all your favourite slasher movie tropes – remote location, invincible foe, gut-wrenching dismemberings, final girl – but makes the serial killer a chimp. Ben was the test subject of a linguistics professor who has recently died, and can communicate using sign language; he now lives with her widower Adam, played by Troy Kotsur, and teenage daughters Lucy, played by Johnny Sequoyah, and Erin, played by Gia Hunter.
But a mongoose bite turns the cute ape into a rabid menace and the family’s Hawaiian clifftop home into a deathtrap.
Wednesday, Paramount+
What kind of film is Normal?
If you’ve seen Bob Odenkirk in the black ops caper Nobody, you’ll know what to expect from Ben Wheatley’s Normal. He plays Ulysses Richardson, the temporary sheriff of the small town of Normal, Minnesota.
There is nothing normal about Normal, of course, which Ulysses discovers when a bank heist goes wrong and he realises it is not the robbers he has to be worried about. The slapstick gunplay of Wheatley’s own Free Fire mingles with the deadpan drama of Fargo and the still delicious incongruity of Odenkirk packing heat.
Friday, 8.25am, 8pm, 1.10am, Sky Cinema Premiere
