“Breathe,” Andy Serkis’ directorial debut, is an undeniably well-intentioned film. Serkis directs this true story of the parents of one of his best friends and producing partners, Jonathan Cavendish, and he does so with sensitivity and empathy. It’s hard to even imagine making a film about your parents, much less if their story was this essential to the quality of life for disabled people. If you’re thinking that making a story about someone that important to you might lead to the air of simplification that comes with hero worship, you’re not wrong. Of course, Jonathan Cavendish and his best friend should place Robin and Diana Cavendish on pedestals as high as they can reach, but that approach doesn’t really allow for three-dimensional filmmaking. The result is a film that sentimentalizes and softens what was clearly a very difficult situation, turning something that should be effective and honest into something that too often feels manipulative. The performances and th
Beautiful Boy, BBC Two, 10pm David Sheff (Steve Carell) is a senior writer for prestigious magazines, a man who famously conducted the last major interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980. His first wife Vicki (Amy Ryan) lives in Los Angeles, amicably sharing custody of their son Nic (Timothee Chalamet), while David builds a new life in San Francisco. David suspects Nic is in the grip of drug addiction and the concerned father persuades his boy to attend Ohlhoff Recovery Centre. Treatment appears to go well until the teenager goes AWOL and David applies his journalistic mind to learning everything about drugs and their treatment. Based on two emotionally raw memoirs, Beautiful Boy is a sobering account of one family s battle of attrition with a demon that sinks its jaws into a prodigal son and refuses to let go.