Holding an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film stars four Oscar nominees.
Our TV movie pick for tonight (Sunday, 29 June) is The Sisters Brothers, the 2018 Western based on the beloved novel of the same name by Patrick deWitt.
The film stars Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) and Oscar-nominee John C. Reilly (Chicago) as the gunslinging assassin brothers Charlie and Eli Sisters in the 1850s American Northwest.
Hired to kill a gold prospector named Hermann Warm (Oscar-winner Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal), the brothers pursue Warm and the private detective (Oscar-nominee Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain) he has formed an unexpected bond with over 1,000 miles.
Throughout the brothers’ journey, which is plagued by misfortune, Eli starts to have doubts about his chosen career – with Hermann possibly being able to offer a better alternative.
The English language debut of acclaimed French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Emilia Pérez), The Sisters Brothers was a box office bomb, grossing only around $15 million on a $38 million budget.
It’s a real shame because the movie is stunning to look at, perfectly capturing the wide-open vistas of classic Westerns.
This is as the movie’s screenplay – which is partly a buddy comedy, partly a portrait of dysfunctional brothers, but with a heap of existentialism and tragedy added in – fascinatingly subverts many of the genre’s tropes.
Holding an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score, The Sisters Brothers is airing on TV tonight at 12 am on BBC One.
It is also available to rent on Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft, Rakuten TV and the Sky Store.
Other movies on tonight are:
Past Lives – BBC Two – 11pm
Arthur and playwright wife Nora are happily settled in New York. Her childhood first love Hae Sung visits the city from South Korea, supposedly on holiday, and she agrees to show him the sights. It has been more than 20 years since Nora left Seoul with her family, bound initially for Toronto, and changed her birth name of Na Young. In the interim, she has only exchanged a few video calls with Hae Sung. Nora is compelled to reflect on what might have been. Romantic drama, starring Teo Yoo, John Magaro and Greta Lee.
Maze Runner: The Scorch – BBC Three – 9pm
The children who escaped from an isolated community at the centre of a mysterious labyrinth find themselves in a desolate wasteland. As they seek the truth about the organisation that imprisoned them, they face a series of terrible dangers. Sci-fi adventure based on the second of James Dashner’s series of novels, starring Dylan O’Brien and Kaya Scodelario.
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