This week starts with Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, great character actors all, in Netflix’s ‘The Power of The Dog’.

Directed by acclaimed New Zealander, Jane Campion, who brought us ‘The Piano’ all those years ago. Her new film is a 1920s set western about two brothers, a new wife, a stepson, and the relationships between all three. As Cumberbatch starts mentoring the stepson in the ways of the cowboy, his initial dislike of the boy’s less masculine ways give way to something unexpected.

It’s refreshing to see Cumberbatch play something other than a tortured genius for a change, and the film has had great reviews, so put it on your watchlist pronto.

NOW subscribers can now stream the wonderful ‘Riders of Justice’, an oddball revenge drama that manages to be unexpectedly funny and moving among the shootouts, going to places you would never have predicted.

Its unusual mix of screwball comedy, violence, and family drama shouldn’t work, but boy, it does. Mads Mikkelsen stars as a Danish soldier Markus, returning home to his daughter after the death of his wife in a train crash. Approached by misfit Otto, who tells him the train crash was no accident, but an attempt to silence a witness to a biker gang murder, Markus joins Otto and his equally odd friends to take revenge. ‘Riders…’ is more interested in grief than guns, the characters beautifully fleshed out with their own foibles and faults. A big twist partway through throws everything into question and causes the would-be vigilantes to acknowledge the consequences of their own behaviour. What may look like a straightforward action film is so much more interesting and unusual.

Hugely well reviewed, I promise you’ll enjoy it so much more than you might think you will, even The Guardian loved it!