Movies On Demand: This Week’s Picks

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Available on: HMV

There’s nothing like a dame, and you get two for the price of one in this feel-good British comedy about OAPs jetting east to spend their twilight years in exotic Jaipur. Judi Dench and Maggie Smith head an all-star cast that includes Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame. The real star, of course, is bustling India itself, a land of colour and contradiction that may get a few more tourists thanks to this likeable heart-warmer.

Jeff, Who Lives At Home

Available on: iTunes

Jason Segal found time between The Muppets and The Five-Year Engagement to appear in this gentle comedy about a numbers-obsessed slacker whose deadbeat existence gets a much-needed jolt when he is recruited by his brother (The Hangover’s Ed Helms) to help him spy on his cheating wife. Susan Sarandon plays these sorry siblings’ mother in a wry tale from Jay and Mark Duplass, leading lights of the so-called “mumblecore” movement that is currently sweeping the world of US indie cinema.

John Carter

Available on: LoveFilm

Destined to remembered as the one of the biggest movie flops of all time, this sci-fi epic is not quite as terrible as you might have been led to believe. In fact it’s quite a lot of fun in a retro sort of way, Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton recalling the likes of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon with his tale of a Civil War soldier who finds his fighting skills come in handy after he is teleported to Mars.

Margaret

Available on: LoveFilm

Filmed in 2005, this intriguing look at a young woman tortured by guilt in post-9/11 New York spent seven years in limbo as its director and studio bickered over final cut. Now it has finally seen the light of day though, it emerges as a fascinating psychological portrait with an award-winning central performance from True Blood’s Anna Paquin at its centre. Matt Damon, Jean Reno and The Avengers’ Mark Ruffalo lend strong support in a wordy but worthwhile human drama.

X-Men: First Class

Available on: Sky Movies

Michael Fassbender is a magnetising Magneto in Matthew Vaughn’s comic book prequel, which reveals how the mutants first came to be united under the benign tutelage of James McAvoy’s telepathic Charles Xavier. Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones and Zoe Kravitz (daughter of Lenny) swell the female contingent in a thrilling and spectacular blockbuster that cheekily references James Bond, The (British) Avengers and the Cuban missile crisis as it sets up the world we know so well from the original X-Men trilogy.