Film & TV Picks: Magellan, Alien: Earth, Peacemaker 2

Magellan (R21)

163 minutes

This portrait of the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan traces his expedition to the Spice Islands (present-day Indonesia) and the Philippines, where he would die in battle, after which his ships sailed under a new commander and completed the first circumnavigation of the world.

Celebrated Filipino writer-director Lav Diaz spent seven years developing this historical epic, which covers the period the explorer’s thinking changed from being driven by the joy of exploration to becoming filled with religious zeal by the time he meets his fate in Cebu.

The film, starring Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal in the title role, explores the ideas of colonisation and resistance. It screens on Sept 6 at 4.30pm at the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium.

Magellan is said to be among Diaz’s most accessible films and is the latest in an illustrious career marked by prizes such as the Locarno Film Festival’s Golden Leopard for the drama From What Is Before (2014) and the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for the drama The Woman Who Left (2016).

Magellan is the opening film for Painting With Light, National Gallery Singapore’s signature film festival dedicated to international films on art.

Where: Various venues at National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew’s Road, including Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and UOB Theatrette
MRT: City Hall
When: Sept 4 to 14
Admission: $10 (standard), $7 (concessions); closing film ($20 for a standard ticket)
Info:

nationalgallery.sg/paintingwithlight

Alien: Earth (NC16)

Disney+
★★★★☆

Two years before Ripley and her team of space truckers experience the horrific events of seminal sci-fi film Alien (1979), humans had already met the xenomorphs – on Earth.

This prequel series follows Wendy (Sydney Chandler), an experimental humanoid robot with a human mind harvested from a dying child. She comes from the laboratories of Prodigy, one of several mega-corporations that operate as de facto governments on Earth.

When a ship belonging to Weyland-Yutani – the greedy organisation behind the events of Alien and its sequel and prequel films – crashes on Prodigy territory, Wendy and a team of kid-machine hybrids are sent to salvage its payload of biological specimens, unaware that they are hunting cargo that can hunt them back.

Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley (Fargo, 2014 to 2024) has filled the three episodes released thus far with wildly imaginative and gruesome ideas about parasites and hosts – both in nature and in human society, where oligarchs have enslaved children by trapping their minds in synthetic bodies.

Peacemaker 2 (R21)

HBO Max

Only one episode of this DC Comics superhero show has aired so far, but critics with access to previews are gushing, with many calling the new season a more thoughtful improvement on the first, while also ramping up the action and emotion.

In the first season, released in 2022, Chris Smith/Peacemaker (John Cena) came to understand that his violently jingoistic ways are the result of trauma inflicted by his white supremacist father Auggie (Robert Patrick).

In Season 2, he is trying to change his ethos, which he defines as “cherishing peace so much that I don’t care how many people I have to kill to get it”.

Peacemaker 2 is part of the newly revived DC Studios, so the show will share stories and characters with recent films, including The Suicide Squad (2021) and Superman (2025).

After all, James Gunn, co-chief of DC Studios, directed both movies and several episodes of Peacemaker.

As the title character, Cena has won praise with his strong comic timing, a trait that Gunn exploits by putting Smith/Peacemaker through humiliating rituals that highlight the chasm that lies between his real self and his superhero persona.