Sean Connery plays Alex Murray, a selfless Scot sawbones in Africa. It sounds dully virtuous. But don't write off the movie yet. Based on William Boyd's 1981 novel, the film has a touch of Evelyn Waugh — though the satire is served dry, it has still got a kick.

one side, there's good Dr. Murray, on the other, there's Fanshawe (John Lithgow), an exploitative Brit bureaucrat, and Adekunle (Louis Gossett Jr.), an exploitative local politician. Morgan Leafy (Colin Friels), a skirt-chasing English diplomat, must decide whose side to take. There's little surprise in the choice, but compensation comes in the tasty performances and in the light touch of Bruce (Driving Miss Daisy) Beresford, a director who knows the value of small pleasures.

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”