Film4's blog

10:50pm Sunday, March 20 on F4

Joel Schumacher’s film stars Colin Farrell as a draftee into the US Army at the time of the Vietnam war. Determined to avoid being shipped out, he decides to rebel – only for his superiors to decide that his insubordination shows rare intelligence and he should instead be groomed as officer material. As he and his fellow misfit colleagues are trained to kill and not be killed, they wonder if they can manage to make it back alive in this low-key, gritty military drama.

9:00pm Saturday, March 19 on F4

Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning Film4 debut movie stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as Ray and Ken, two professional Irish hitmen. After a botched job, they’re sent by their boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) to hide out in Bruges. Ken loves the city and its history; Ray hates it, until he hooks up with beautiful drugs dealer Chloe (Clemence Poesy) and a mouthy dwarf actor, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice). Unfortunately, just as life seems to be improving for the two hitmen, psychopathic Harry phones to deliver stark instructions: the nature of the botched hit has offended his sense of morality and he’s decided to break up the partnership, ordering one of the duo to kill the other. This tests the bond linking the three men, and leads to a violent denouement in the ancient city’s cobbled streets.

11:00pm Friday, March 18 on F4

Hong Kong horror directors and brothers Danny and Oxide Pang’s Hollywood debut. Moving to a remote farmhouse in North Dakota, Roy and Denise (Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller) hope that a new life in a new home will help their troubled teenage daughter Jess (Kristen Stewart) move on from a traumatic incident in her past. When she starts seeing supernatural apparitions, her parents are initially sceptical until the manifestations become more apparent and violent in this chilling horror.

9:00pm Thursday, March 17 on F4

Everyone’s had holidays they would rather forget about, but few will have left a mark as profound as Stephen’s (Edward Hogg) appalling European trip. The journey so traumatised him that, in the 12 months since he’s returned, he’s not found the strength to leave the safety of his flat. The Mighty Boosh director Paul King’s comedy, made for �750,000 in just six weeks, has been widely lauded for its bravura invention, employing a panoply of devices – from animation and collage to hand-crafted backdrops – and wild leaps of the imagination. From the haven of his King’s Cross garret, Stephen recalls how the jaunt with his rakish, domineering friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby) morphed into the stuff of nightmares, climaxing in a terrifying encounter with the bull of the title. Among the bizarre characters they bump into along the way are a Hungarian tramp (Julian Barratt) and a suave bullfighter (Noel Fielding), and Stephen’s love interest, Spanish waitress Eloisa (Ver�nica Echegui).

9:00pm Wednesday, March 16 on F4

Jonathan Demme’s remake of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 thriller is updated to the Gulf War, with Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) as a member of a patrol saved by Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber). Shaw was awarded the Medal of Honor and is now standing for vice-president under the stern eye of his controlling mother Eleanor (Meryl Streep). But, unlike in the original film, she’s a pawn not of the communists but of big business, who want their own man in the White House. Marco, however, keeps having disturbing nightmares and discovers he is being controlled not by brain-washing but by implanted chips. As he attempts to unravel the mystery and stop Eleanor’s plot, so she is equally determined that her son will not be thwarted.

9:00pm Tuesday, March 15 on F4

The Farrelly Brothers all-out comedy film stars Jim Carrey as Charlie, a nice-guy cop who’s had a hard life – on his wedding day, his wife ran off with the wedding car driver, leaving him to bring up triplets. Fifteen years later, he’s had enough of the jokes and jibes and spontaneously out bursts ‘Hank’, a ‘bad cop’ side to his character who will bust anyone for anything. But then he and his long-suffering girlfriend Irene (Renee Zellweger) come across police corruption and, pursued by the evil Lt Gerke (Chris Cooper), the couple must go on the run, and need both Charlie and Hank’s special skills to keep them alive.

9:00pm Monday, March 14 on F4

The acclaimed team behind Shallow Grave and Trainspotting – led by director Danny Boyle – headed for America and delivered this hugely entertaining movie – in equal parts screwball comedy, road movie and romance. Ewan McGregor is a Scottish cleaner who gets sacked from his job and kidnaps his boss’s daughter (Cameron Diaz). But will the angels, played by Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo, persuade the errant couple to fall in love?

6:25pm Sunday, March 13 on F4

Debra Winger finally flees her suffocating mother (Shirley MacLaine) for an unsuitable marriage and MacLaine seeks solace with Jack Nicholson, her neighbour, an ex-astronaut. The years go by and the unlikely relationships grow and change until Winger is struck down by a fatal illness and her husband deserts her and their children. Now back home with mother, the scene is set for reconciliation and understanding in James L Brooks five Oscar-winning film that mixes deep emotion with offbeat comedy particularly from the sparky relationship between MacLaine and Nicholson.

9:00pm Saturday, March 12 on F4

When Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) goes sailing with her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood), she ends up charged for his murder on circumstantial evidence. Later, a phone call she makes from prison enables Libby puts two and two together: she’s been framed by her spouse and her best friend, Angie (Annabeth Gish). Unfortunately for them, Libby discovers that once someone’s been convicted of a crime, they can’t be tried for it again. With nothing to lose, she decides to make the pair pay the ultimate price for their treachery.

9:00pm Friday, February 25 on F4

Ben Affleck stars as CIA agent Jack Ryan in Paul Alden Robinson’s adaptation of Tom Clancy’s novel. Ryan faces a race against time to track down terrorists who have acquired a nuclear weapon and plan to detonate it at the Super Bowl, implicating the Russians as the perpetrators and triggering a nuclear exchange.