There’s not so much scope for scares in swimming pool horror. Sure enough, the Duffer Brothers more or less maxed out the potential with the upside-downing of poor Barb in the first series of Stranger Things. The short film upon which Night Swim is based might have predated the ‘Justice for Barb’ movement by two years but essentially proved the same point. Kudos then to Bryce McGuire – one half of the original directing duo, with Rod Blackhurst – for his efforts in attempting to extend the mileage. Stick to what you know and all that. Come the closing credits, it’s not entirely clear it worth the bother but at least the definitive proof is finally out there.
Six hundred and sixty nine. That’s the number of, mostly Jewish, children Nicholas Winton helped to save from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Accounting for the generations since, the total lives in his debt now exceeds six thousand. And yet, until 1988, virtually nobody knew of his effort. Not until it was splashed in the Daily Mirror and on the BBC. It’s that story, as much as the 1939 narrative, at the core of James Hawes’ One Life, which comes adapted from the Barbara Winton penned biography. Sir Anthony Hopkins plays the elder Winton, the one set for an Esther Ransom shaped surprise on the Beeb’s That’s Life. Johnny Flynn is his junior counterpart of some fifty years prior. The film around them is every bit as moving as you’d expect.
If you can’t be the best in the world, there’s no shame in being the worst. Somebody has to be. A ranking’s a ranking, after all, and is it not better to have that place in history than none at all. When it comes to international football, American Samoa proved themselves a contender for rock bottom back in 2001. They lost 31-0 to Australia. Two decades on, it’s surely a dubious honour for the team to find themselves subject to the Taika Waititi treatment. Not that the team’s record breaking loss is Waititi’s focus here. Following the lead of Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s superior 2014 documentary, of the same name, Next Goal Wins concerns the hiring of Thomas Rongen as beleaguered coach some ten years later. Nothing like a white saviour to get the drama going.
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