Do you feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload Era. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
Anyone But You (Crave)
The Sydney Sweeney renaissance continues apace as this past December’s runaway-success rom-com finally hits streaming. Although I guess it wouldn’t be fair to give the Euphoria star all the credit here – half of this frothy spin on Much Ado About Nothing should go to Sweeney’s as-in-demand co-star Glen Powell, who turns the charm up to 11 as the perfectly sculpted faux-object of the actress’s affection. While the two performers have already moved on to bigger and perhaps better things (Sweeney in the nun-horror film Immaculate and a half-dozen other projects completing development, Powell in the coming comedy Hit Man and the summer sequel Twisters), Anyone But You can act as a mid-budget time capsule of when the pair were still relatively fresh-faced, and able to wildly enliven the most middling of screenplays.
Memory (Hoopla)
In the new drama Memory, Jessica Chastain stars as Sylvia, a New York social worker and single mother who is struggling to raise her teenage daughter while reckoning with her past as an alcoholic. Peter Sarsgaard, meanwhile, plays Saul, a widower suffering from early onset dementia who strikes up a tenuous relationship with Sylvia, one that may or may not be rooted in their shared past. Directed and written by Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco, a polarizing force on the art-house circuit, Memory sometimes strains under the weight of its aggressive self-seriousness. Yet Chastain and Sarsgaard are both remarkable from beginning to end, each finding something honest and captivating in characters that Franco doesn’t seem to have thought about all that deeply, or even care much for. The way that the two stars dig into Sylvia and Saul, two obviously broken people who have little chance of making the other one whole, is a stubbornly impressive magic act that requires determination, imagination and deep reservoirs of empathy.
Hello, My Name Is Doris (Netflix)
The failed experiment of 80 for Brady aside, it is rare to find a woman over the age of 50 (or, really, 35) top-lining her own movie – and even more unlikely for that film to centre on said woman’s sexual desires. Yet against all odds, 2016 delivered the underrated Hello, My Name Is Doris, a sharp dramedy focusing on the romantic stirrings of a lonely office worker, played with considerable wit and verve by the then-69-year-old Sally Field. While director Michael Showalter is best known for his work on the absurdist comedies Wet Hot American Summer and They Came Together, he shows a deft hand here, too, gently guiding Field’s singleton through the minefield that is modern romance. Field, meanwhile, has rarely been better – though perhaps that’s simply because it’s been so long since the Oscar-winner has been given the chance to play anything but grandmothers and overprotective aunts – a reality that’s still accurate eight years later.
The Taste of Things (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
The culinary-cum-cinematic magic of this new French romance smacks you across the lips right from the start, when director Tran Anh Hung offers a half-hour long sequence detailing the preparation of a deceptively humble lunch. It is 1889 in the French countryside, and Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), the “Napoleon of culinary arts,” is overseeing the day’s meal prep alongside two young apprentices and his long-time house chef, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) in his home kitchen. As the camera swirls about the hectic space – deftly weaving in, out, around and on top of Dodin and Eugénie, the way a particularly adept server might navigate a hectic restaurant kitchen – Hung not only reveals the meticulous steps involved in cooking a grand, almost painfully appetizing meal (veal loins, crayfish, baked Alaska), but he also sketches out the details of a curious relationship. With onscreen food styling from Michelin-starred chefs Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Nave and the kind of quietly propulsive pace that drives the most proficient restaurant, Hung has created a film that is all warmth and comfort.
Land of Bad (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
A muscular but ultimately standard behind-enemy-lines thriller that should play far better on the small screen than it did on the big one when it was first released this past February, Land of Bad gives itself a mission that has already proven impossible: turn Liam Hemsworth into an action hero on par with his older brother Chris. But if the Hunger Games, Independence Day and Expendables franchises couldn’t do it, I’m not sure what possessed Land of Bad director William Eubank to think that he was the man for the job. While the younger Hemsworth never quite grows into his lone-soldier role, the first hour of Land of Bad offers a number of diverting narrative and aesthetic choices to distinguish it from its dozens of genre competitors, including the huffing and puffing presence of Russell Crowe as a remote-stationed drone-pilot operator who becomes Hemsworth’s eye in the sky. Imagine if Tony Soprano had opted for a life in the armed forces, and you’d be close to zeroing in on Crowe’s approach here.
Barry Hertz