Edited by Patrick Harrington, Culture Vulture operates from an alternative viewpoint — one that refuses to accept that culture is only what the big platforms push at us. We’re interested in work that has something to say, that remembers history, that puts ordinary people back into the story. This week, three titles stand out. 🌟 Lawrence of Arabia (Film4, Monday) remains the supreme statement of big-screen ambition — beautiful, conflicted, and still urgent about empire and identity. 🌟 Richard Burton: Wild Genius (BBC Two, Wednesday) gives us the face, the voice, and the cost of greatness. And on streaming, 🌟 Mrs. Playmen (Netflix, Wednesday) looks at a woman who used print, desire, and sheer bloody-mindedness to shake a conservative society. Around those pillars we have strong documentaries (Breaking Ranks, The Real Hack), classic British craft (Odette, Colonel Blimp), and some high-gloss modern cinema that still remembers to ask moral questions. That, for us, is culture.
Streaming Choice
🌟 Mrs. Playmen — Netflix, all seven episodes available from Wednesday, 12th November
A lush Italian drama inspired by Delina Cattio, the publisher who dared to bring sexuality, fashion, and moral critique into one rebellious magazine in 1970s Italy. On the surface it’s about glamour, but underneath it’s about who is allowed to speak and who is silenced.
The central performance (played as a woman who is both strategist and romantic) shows the cost of radical visibility. She wants to open a space for women’s desire, but she runs into the old enemies — the church, the state, the press, and, worse, the men who love her but don’t want her to be powerful.
Visually, it leans into period detail — lacquered hair, heavy fabrics, proto-feminist interiors — but it also shows the grubby backstage: lawyers, printers, censors. The show understands that every “liberated” image has to be physically produced somewhere, usually by overworked people.
What makes it a Culture Vulture pick is that it treats erotic publishing not as titillation but as politics. Who sets the boundaries? Who gets to define “indecent”? Cattio pushes back.
In the end, Mrs. Playmen is a reminder that cultural change often begins with one awkward, stubborn, brave person putting something in print and refusing to say sorry.
The Flight Attendant — ITVX, both seasons from Sunday, 9th November
Kaley Cuoco’s Cassie wakes up in the wrong bed, in the wrong country, with the wrong corpse. A darkly funny thriller about bad choices, blackout memory, and the way trauma keeps us running long after the danger has passed. Stylish, modern, and ideal for a November binge.
Saturday, 8th November 2025
Titanic: Secrets of the Shipwreck — Channel 4, 8:00 PM (Part 1 of 2) and 9:00 PM (Part 2 of 2)
Two linked hours on the most famous maritime disaster of all. Using fresh tech and archival testimony, it peels back myth and looks for the human story — class, hubris, survival. Good, serious factual TV for a Saturday night.
The Concord Isle: Crossroads of the Mediterranean — PBS America, 9:05 PM
A quietly absorbing documentary on Sicily’s layered past — a place conquered, traded, and transformed. History people will love this.
La La Land (2016) — BBC Two, 12:40 AM
Los Angeles. Sunlight on car bonnets. A traffic jam becomes a musical. From the first sequence, Damien Chazelle tells you that this is a film about people who refuse to stop dreaming even when the city tells them to get real. La La Land is a romantic musical, yes, but under the song-and-dance is a very adult sadness about timing, compromise, and careers.
Emma Stone’s Mia is one of the best portraits of an artist not-yet-seen: all auditions, embarrassment, and tiny humiliations. Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian is her mirror — a purist, slightly ridiculous, determined to preserve jazz from hotel-lobby death. Together they’re magical, but the film never lies: love doesn’t always survive ambition. That’s what gives it bite.
Visually the film is gorgeous. Rich blues, bright yellows, old-Hollywood spotlighting, tap numbers that nod to Astaire and Kelly without copying them. The camera glides; the city glitters. But Chazelle uses that style to heighten the ache. Every beautiful moment seems to say: enjoy it, it will go.
Thematically, it’s about the price of the dream. You can make the art, or you can keep the person, but sometimes not both. The devastating “what if” coda — that alternate life — is one of the finest endings of modern cinema because it dignifies both love and work.
For us, this is more than a pretty musical. It’s about the working life of artists and performers — the ones we write about all the time. It understands that art is work, rejection is normal, and sometimes the most loving thing is letting someone go so they can become who they are.
Darkest Hour (2017) — BBC Two, 6:00 PM
Set in May 1940, when everything seemed lost, Darkest Hour is less a war movie and more a study of political will. It asks: what does leadership look like when surrender would be easier? Gary Oldman’s Churchill is not the cartoon bulldog of pub tea towels; he’s clever, vain, frightened, and absolutely determined.
Oldman’s performance is the big draw. Buried under prosthetics, he still gives you a mind at work — listening, calculating, occasionally panicking. The supporting turns (Kristin Scott Thomas as Clemmie; Lily James as the secretary drawn into history) humanise him without softening his edges. This Churchill is a man surrounded by doubt — in Parliament, in the War Cabinet, even in the palace.
The style is smoky, enclosed, almost theatrical — corridors, bunkers, House of Commons benches. Director Joe Wright stages politics like a thriller. The famous speech moments (“we shall fight on the beaches…”) are earned, not handed out like greatest hits. The London Underground scene — sentimental to some — is about Churchill looking for legitimacy among ordinary people.
At heart it’s a film about words as weapons. Churchill can’t fight the Nazis himself; all he has is language. The film understands that rhetoric, when used this well, is not decoration but strategy.
From an alternative viewpoint, Darkest Hour is interesting because it shows an elite figure forced to listen downwards — to the people — in order to stand up to other elites who prefer compromise. That’s a dynamic we still see in politics, unions, and media now.
Quiz Show (1994) — Great! TV, 9:00 PM
Robert Redford’s elegant drama goes back to 1950s American television, when quiz shows were the great democratic theatre — until it turned out they were rigged. It’s a true story, but Redford isn’t just telling us what happened; he’s asking what TV does to morality.
The film pivots on two men: John Turturro’s Herbert Stempel, the awkward, working-class Jewish contestant who knows too much, and Ralph Fiennes’s Charles Van Doren, handsome, educated, the kind of man TV execs want America to love. One is pushed out, the other is pushed forward. That class aesthetic is key.
Visually and tonally it’s restrained — mahogany desks, studio lights, Ivy League drawing rooms. Redford shoots corruption like a period costume drama, which makes it more chilling; this is genteel fraud. The performances are beautifully judged, especially Paul Scofield as the disapproving father.
What the film keeps circling is complicity. Everyone is slightly dirty: networks, sponsors, contestants, even Congress. No-one wants to blow it up because the illusion is profitable. When Stempel finally talks, he’s made to look bitter — a pattern that should feel very familiar in 2025.
That’s why the film still matters. It shows how media manufactures “acceptable” intelligence and how people from the right background are always forgiven more. For Culture Vulture, it’s a parable about culture industries: talent isn’t always the thing being rewarded.
T2 Trainspotting (2017) — Channel 4, 11:30 PM
Twenty years on, Renton comes back. Time has passed, bodies have aged, grudges haven’t. Danny Boyle does something brave here: he doesn’t try to remake Trainspotting; he makes a film about what it means to remember Trainspotting. It’s a sequel about memory and masculinity.
Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, and Jonny Lee Miller all slip back into their characters, but now they carry disappointment. Renton is fit but hollow, Begbie is rage with grey hair, Spud is still the tragic heart. The performances are full of history — they play men who know they’ve squandered things.
Stylistically, Boyle keeps the kinetic edits, the bold music cues, the flashes of surrealism — but they’re haunted now. Moments from the first film appear like ghosts. Edinburgh, too, has changed: gentrified waterfronts replacing old haunts. The past is still there but monetised.
Underneath the banter is a serious point about working-class boys who were never meant to grow old. What happens when the hedonism ends? When the state doesn’t need you? When your friends are reminders of who you were? The film says: you make something, or you die. Spud’s writing becomes the answer.
For our purposes, T2 is a cultural artefact about continuity — about how you tell stories over decades and keep them honest. It’s also about loyalty and betrayal, which are union themes too.
The Mercy (2017) — BBC One, 12:15 AM
Donald Crowhurst was an amateur sailor who tried to cheat fate and ended up swallowed by it. The Mercy tells his story not as a tabloid scandal but as a quiet tragedy. Colin Firth plays him as a gentle, optimistic man who makes one bad decision and then can’t get out.
Firth’s performance is inward, delicate. He shows you the shame, the panic, the desperate hope that the lie will somehow become true. Rachel Weisz, as his wife, gives the film its emotional ballast — the scenes at home are as painful as the scenes at sea.
Visually the film moves between the vast, indifferent ocean and the cramped, slightly shabby English domestic world. That contrast tells you everything: a man trying to do something heroic from a life that doesn’t give him the tools.
Thematically it’s about masculine pride, the pressure to succeed, and the way British society can push people into pretending. Crowhurst would rather fake the voyage than admit defeat. That social shame kills him.
From an alternative, working-person’s perspective, The Mercy is a warning about impossible expectations. When you’re locked into a narrative of “success at all costs,” you can start falsifying reality just to survive. We see versions of that in workplaces and politics right now.
Sunday, 9th November 2025
🌟 Trespasses — Channel 4, 9:00 PM (1 of 4)
A Belfast-set thriller with Lola Petticrew, Tom Cullen, and Gillian Anderson. It mixes romance, sectarian tension, and past secrets — very much in the Irish Gothic tradition.
The Real Hack — ITV1, 10:15 PM
A factual follow-up to ITV’s drama The Hack. This looks at the real phone-hacking scandal around Murdoch’s media interests — how it happened, who was hurt, who looked away. Still relevant.
1917 (2019) — BBC Two, 10:50 PM
Sam Mendes’s First World War film is famous for looking like it’s done in one continuous shot, but the technique is never a gimmick — it’s there to trap us in the same unbroken anxiety as the two young soldiers sent across no man’s land. We march when they march. We crawl when they crawl. We don’t get to look away.
George MacKay carries the film with an astonishingly physical performance — tired, scared, stubborn. Dean-Charles Chapman gives him warmth to care about. Around them, famous faces (Firth, Cumberbatch, Strong) appear like gods of war, issuing commands and vanishing. It works: the soldiers’ world is made of brief encounters and long silences.
Visually it’s a bleak kind of beauty. Dead horses, ruined orchards, flares lighting up night skies, abandoned trenches half-full of water. Roger Deakins’ cinematography makes you feel the mud. The score is spare, letting the tension build.
But what gives 1917 lasting power is its humanism. This isn’t a jingoistic war movie; it’s about the small acts — carrying a message, saving one man, singing in a wood — that stand against mechanised slaughter. The film says: within horror, people still choose to be good.
For Culture Vulture, it’s worth watching now because it reminds us what real stakes look like. In an age of drone wars and remote conflict, 1917 pulls us right back to the body, the mud, the cost.
Starship Troopers (1997) — ITV4, 11:15 PM
Paul Verhoeven made a film that many people in 1997 took at face value — a glossy space-war romp about beautiful people shooting bugs. But it was always a satire on fascism, militarism, and media propaganda. Watch it now and it feels prophetic.
The performances are deliberately stiff, almost like recruitment ads — Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer — because the point is that the society has bred emotional simplicity. You’re meant to notice the shallowness. Neil Patrick Harris turning up in an SS-style coat is not subtle.
Stylistically it’s bright, plasticky, full of fake newsreel clips (“Would you like to know more?”). The film shows how media turns war into entertainment, how it dehumanises the enemy (here, literal bugs), and how young people are channelled into violence.
The satire lies in what’s not said. No-one questions the war. No-one questions the state. Everyone accepts “service guarantees citizenship.” That’s the horror.
From an alternative viewpoint, Starship Troopers is a useful text. It shows how easy it is to get people to march when you give them an enemy, a uniform, and a screen. Worth revisiting — especially for younger viewers who’ve only seen the memes.
Monday, 10th November 2025
Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War — ITV1, 9:00 PM
A rare, soldier-centred look at the recent Gaza conflict from inside the IDF — conscripts, reservists, and veterans speaking about what they saw and what they were asked to do. Serious, difficult TV.
Verdun: The Battle of the Great War — PBS America, 7:15 PM
Forts of Verdun — PBS America, 9:00 PM
Two linked documentaries on one of the bloodiest battles in history. Industrial war, fortifications, and human endurance.
The Infinite Explorer with Hannah Fry (South Korea) — National Geographic, 8:00 PM
Hannah Fry goes to South Korea to look at the tech and social changes driving a modern nation. Smart, accessible, good for families.
Odette (1950) — BBC Two, 3:20 PM
This is the kind of wartime film British TV should never stop showing. Odette tells the true story of Odette Sansom, the SOE agent captured by the Germans, tortured, and yet unbroken. Made only five years after the war, it still carries the sincerity of people who just lived through it.
Anna Neagle plays Odette with restraint — no melodrama, no shouting, just quiet stubbornness. That’s what makes it moving. She’s not a superhero; she’s an ordinary woman who keeps saying “no.” Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov add dignity to the cast.
Stylistically, it’s very much in that late-40s/early-50s British mode — straightforward direction, clear storytelling, emotional scenes earned rather than forced. You can see the influence of wartime propaganda films, but this is gentler, more personal.
What’s interesting watching it now is the way it treats female courage. There’s no attempt to masculinise Odette. Her strength is in endurance, loyalty, love of country — all coded feminine, and all absolutely heroic.
For Culture Vulture (with our interest in workplace, union, and resistance stories), Odette is a good reminder that the people who hold the line are often the ones history doesn’t reward loudest. It belongs in this week.
🌟 Lawrence of Arabia (1962) — Film4, 4:40 PM
Here it is — one of cinema’s great mountains. David Lean’s epic about T.E. Lawrence is about deserts, yes, but also about identity, empire, and the seductions of greatness. You don’t watch it; you enter it.
Peter O’Toole’s performance is the key. Tall, blond, almost ethereal, he plays Lawrence as a man both fascinated by and alien to the Arab world. He longs to belong but also needs to be special. That contradiction drives the whole film. Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, and Anthony Quinn give magnificent counterweight.
Visually, it is breathtaking — the long desert crossings, the mirages, the camel charges, the blinding sun. Lean uses scale to show how small human politics are next to the land, and yet how destructive our ambitions can be. Maurice Jarre’s score lifts it into myth.
But the film is not naive. It shows how the British (and others) used Arab aspirations during the war and then betrayed them. It shows how charisma and violence are linked. It shows how men like Lawrence are created, used, and discarded by empires.
From our alternative viewpoint, that’s the heart of it: Lawrence of Arabia is a film about imperial manipulation and the tragic figure caught between peoples. Watching it in 2025 — after Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza — it still speaks. That’s why it gets the star.
Public Enemies (2009) — Film4, 10:50 PM
Michael Mann’s take on John Dillinger is cool, meticulous, and more melancholy than you remember. It’s not a guns-blazing gangster romp; it’s about the last days of a certain kind of outlaw.
Johnny Depp plays Dillinger as a man who knows he’s living on borrowed time — charming, yes, but watchful, alert to modern policing closing in. Marion Cotillard gives the love story depth. Christian Bale, as Purvis, is the state’s answer to Dillinger — clinical, ambitious, slightly hollow.
Visually, Mann shoots 1930s America with his usual digital clarity — you can feel the cloth, the metal, the damp prison walls. The gunfights are loud, chaotic, unromantic. This is crime as work, not fantasy.
The film keeps returning to the idea that the world is changing. Dillinger’s bank-robbing style is being replaced by organised crime, by the FBI, by institutions. Individual glamour can’t survive bureaucratic power.
Tuesday, 11th November 2025
In My Own Words: Cornelia Parker — BBC One, 10:40 PM
The celebrated British artist talks us through process and meaning — ideal for viewers who like art explained without being patronised.
James May’s Shedload of Ideas — Quest, 9:00 PM
Vintage May: curiosity, tinkering, half-genius, half-daft. A good counterpoint to the heavier docs this week.
Barbie Uncovered: A Dream House Divided — Sky Documentaries, 11:15 PM
A smart look at the brand behind the doll — reinventions, feminism, backlash, and big money.
In Which We Serve (1942) — BBC Two, 3:00 PM
Made in the middle of the war by Noël Coward and David Lean, this is part tribute, part morale piece, part memory. It tells the story of a British destroyer and the men (and women at home) linked to it. Because it was made during the conflict, there’s no cynicism — just gratitude.
The performances are understated, very British, very 1940s. People do their duty without lengthy speeches. But that restraint makes the sacrifices more affecting. There’s a democratic spirit to it — officers and ratings both matter.
Shot in black and white, it has that sturdy, no-frills realism that Lean later took to epic level. Wartime London, naval action, domestic interiors — all handled with care.
What stands out now is the emphasis on collective effort. Nobody’s the hero alone. The ship is the hero. That’s a useful lesson for our age, which overpraises individuals.
As part of this week’s schedule, it sits nicely alongside Odette and Colonel Blimp later — a triptych of British wartime storytelling, each saying: ordinary people did extraordinary things.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) — Film4, 11:25 PM
Yes, it’s a crowd-pleaser and yes, it smooths some edges, but Bohemian Rhapsody works because Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury is so alive on screen. This is a film about performance as armour — about making yourself bigger than the pain.
Malek captures the voice, the strut, the impishness, but also the loneliness. The band — Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor), Joseph Mazzello (John Deacon) — are played as a family who argue, split, and reunite because the music is better when they’re together.
Stylistically, it’s glossy, with fast-cut recording sessions, tour montages, and of course the Live Aid reconstruction, which is unabashedly triumphant. The music carries it — difficult not to be moved when 70,000 people clap back at “Radio Ga Ga.”
Beneath the sheen, it’s about identity — being Parsi, being gay, being an immigrant’s son, being unapologetically yourself in a country that doesn’t always get you. Freddie’s life is shown as a series of rooms he walks into and owns.
From a Culture Vulture angle, it’s worth keeping because it shows how popular music can be the most democratic art form of all — a queer migrant kid becomes the voice of everyone. That’s the kind of story we like to tell.
Wednesday, 12th November 2025
🌟 Richard Burton: Wild Genius — BBC Two, 9:00 PM
A searching and compassionate portrait of the Welsh actor who seemed made of contradictions — brilliance and ruin, intellect and appetite, poetry and drink. The documentary doesn’t smooth those edges; it lets them clash. Drawing on rare letters, interviews, and newly restored footage, it gives us Burton not as legend but as man.
The film opens in Pontrhydyfen, the mining village that shaped him. You feel the grit of it, the sense of a world he carried in his voice long after he left. Then comes Oxford, theatre, and the quick climb to international fame. The contrast between those places — pit and playhouse — defines the life.
His marriage to Elizabeth Taylor is treated neither as gossip nor as glamour but as tragedy: two people too large for ordinary life. The excerpts from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? still burn — art and life fused, destructive and beautiful.
Stylistically, it’s restrained: archive balanced with slow pans over letters, cigarette smoke curling through old clips. The narration avoids hagiography; it listens, it lets the silences speak.
For Culture Vulture, this is essential because Burton’s story is also the story of post-war British culture — a working-class talent exported, commodified, and finally exhausted by the very system that celebrated him.
Paris: Stories from the City — PBS America, 7:50 PM (1 of 3)
An elegantly shot new series tracing the architectural evolution of Paris — from medieval lanes to Haussmann’s boulevards and today’s glass towers. A love letter to design and civic imagination.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) — BBC Two, 2:35 PM
Powell and Pressburger’s wartime masterpiece follows one British officer from youthful idealism through to late-life obsolescence. It’s witty, humane, and quietly radical — a Technicolor film that questioned patriotism while the war still raged.
Roger Livesey’s Clive Candy begins as blustering Edwardian and ends as bewildered relic. Deborah Kerr, playing three incarnations of the woman he loves, threads time and memory together; Anton Walbrook, as the German friend, provides the moral core.
Visually, it’s sumptuous. The famous duelling scene, the mirrored pool, the transitions through decades — all astonishing for 1943. Yet it’s never just style: the beauty serves irony. Colour is used to mourn the loss of innocence.
Its argument — that decency without flexibility becomes cruelty — was bold for its moment and remains relevant. Candy isn’t mocked; he’s pitied for believing that honour can survive mechanised war.
From our alternative viewpoint, Colonel Blimp stands as an early critique of the British establishment’s self-image. It shows a country clinging to ritual while history changes around it. Every generation has its Blimps; every generation needs to outgrow them.
Green Book (2018) — BBC Two, 11:30 PM
Peter Farrelly’s road movie pairs Mahershala Ali’s refined pianist Don Shirley with Viggo Mortensen’s rough Italian-American driver Tony Vallelonga. On paper it’s odd-couple comedy; in execution it’s a study of prejudice, dignity, and friendship in 1960s America.
Ali plays Shirley with cool precision — a man trapped between worlds, performing for audiences who admire his art but deny his humanity. Mortensen’s Tony is coarse but open-hearted, and the chemistry between them makes the film sing.
The cinematography paints the Deep South in faded postcard tones, the jazz clubs in golds and greens. The soundtrack (real Shirley recordings mixed with new score) reinforces the sense of motion and melancholy.
Critics argued about tone, about whose story it was, but beneath the awards chatter the film’s heart is simple: two men learning each other’s rhythms, finding respect where society offers contempt.
Green Book is about labour and empathy — about how shared journeys, literal or not, change people more effectively than slogans. It’s humane, humorous, and quietly radical in believing that decency can still surprise us.
Thursday, 13th November 2025
Play for Today: Never Too Late — BBC One, 9:00 PM
A welcome revival of the classic anthology strand. Anita Dobson is magnificent as Cynthia, a fiercely independent widow resisting life in a care home. Tracy-Ann Oberman plays the daughter caught between worry and respect. Wry, unsentimental, and full of small truths about ageing and agency — a drama that earns its tears.
I’m genuinely delighted to see the revival of Play for Today — a strand that once defined bold, socially engaged British television. Originally broadcast on the BBC from 1970 to 1984, it was a crucible for new writing, giving voice to working-class experience, political dissent, and emotional nuance in a way that still resonates. It launched or nurtured the careers of writers like Mike Leigh, Dennis Potter, and Caryl Churchill, and brought unforgettable dramas to the screen. Standouts include Blue Remembered Hills, Dennis Potter’s haunting tale of childhood performed by adults; The Spongers, Jim Allen’s devastating critique of welfare cuts; and Bar Mitzvah Boy, a tender coming-of-age story by Jack Rosenthal. What made Play for Today so vital was its commitment to new voices and its refusal to flinch from difficult truths. It treated television as a public space for argument, empathy, and imagination — and we need that spirit now more than ever.
The Running Man (1987) — Film4, 10:55 PM
Before reality television made competition into cruelty, Stephen King imagined it. Paul Michael Glaser’s adaptation puts Arnold Schwarzenegger in a dystopia where convicts fight to the death on live TV. Loud, lurid, and weirdly prophetic.
Schwarzenegger gives one of his better performances — the mix of muscle and moral outrage works. Richard Dawson, as the smirking game-show host, steals scenes; he understands he’s playing the future of media.
The production design is garish fun: neon corridors, corporate logos, absurd gladiators. Watching it now, it feels less fantasy than blueprint — the entertainment industry feeding on humiliation.
What’s easy to miss beneath the explosions is the political anger. The film came out in Reagan’s America; deregulation and celebrity culture were merging. The Running Man saw where that led.
From our point of view, it’s an anti-capitalist action movie in disguise — bread and circuses for a distracted population. If you stream or tweet while watching, you’ve proved its point.
Friday, 14th November 2025
Guy Garvey: From the Vaults — Protest Songs — Sky Arts, 8:00 PM
Elbow’s frontman curates a set of vintage performances where musicians used melody as megaphone. Expect Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and early Clash. Protest as art, art as protest.
Empire with David Olusoga — BBC Two, 9:00 PM (2 of 3)
Olusoga traces how the movement of peoples within the empire still shapes the modern world. Scholarly, eloquent, and necessary.
The Creator (2023) — Film4, 9:00 PM
Gareth Edwards’ The Creator imagines a near future where humans and AI wage total war. Yet it’s less about machines than about empathy. Against vast digital landscapes, a soldier (John David Washington) must decide whether the “enemy” child he protects deserves the same rights as humans.
Washington gives the film its emotional anchor — weary, conflicted, gradually awakening to compassion. Madeleine Yuna Voyles, as the child, brings quiet intensity; she’s the film’s soul.
Visually, it’s astonishing: shot on location with lightweight cameras, blending real terrain and digital wonder so seamlessly you forget what’s CGI. The score by Hans Zimmer and the electronic textures create a feeling of spiritual sci-fi, somewhere between Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner.
Thematically, it asks big questions: what is consciousness, who decides who counts as alive, and why humans repeat their cruelties against anything new. Its sympathy lies with creation itself — the capacity to imagine rather than destroy.
From our alternative lens, The Creator belongs to a lineage of anti-imperial science fiction. It exposes the military-industrial urge to control and the human need to empathise. Not flawless, but bold and heartfelt.
The Hitcher (1986) — Legend, 11:00 PM
Rutger Hauer’s nameless hitchhiker is one of horror cinema’s purest nightmares — evil without motive, charm without mercy. Robert Harmon’s lean thriller turns a stretch of desert highway into purgatory.
C. Thomas Howell plays the young driver who makes the fatal mistake of offering a lift. What follows is cat-and-mouse stripped of explanation: the hitcher kills because he can, because he sees fear as proof of life.
The direction is spare and tense. Daylight rather than darkness, open space rather than confinement — terror in plain view. Hauer’s performance is hypnotic: amused, precise, terrifyingly calm.
Under the surface, the film is about masculinity and guilt. The hero spends the story proving he isn’t weak, even as violence consumes him. It’s Reagan-era paranoia, the fear that innocence itself invites attack.
It’s cult cinema at its best: small budget, big anxiety, executed with craftsmanship. A final reminder this week that sometimes the most revealing mirrors are the ones smeared with dust and blood.
Closing
Across this week’s screens — from the lonely courage of Odette to the moral deserts of Lawrence and The Creator — the question is constant: what do people owe to truth, to each other, to the stories they live inside? Culture Vulture keeps asking because the answers keep changing.
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