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.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Netflix)
Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.Netflix/The Associated Press
As of press time, Netflix was still keeping its big summer blockbuster under wraps from most critics – not the best sign of a movie’s prospects, especially when the streaming giant regularly gives the media long-lead advance looks at any number of their out-and-out stinkers. But as a long-suffering Eddie Murphy fan who welcomes any project involving the actor that is not explicitly marketed to kids – this is a 48 HRS house, not a Dr. Doolittle domicile – I’ll hold on tight to the hope that Axel F. is at least as good as the second Beverly Hills Cop instalment. (And it cannot possibly be worse than the third one, right? Right??) Either way, I’ll tune in purely for the novelty in watching Murphy team up with almost every member of the original cast, including Judge Reinhold, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot, and the long-missing-in-action John Ashton. Netflix is betting you will, too – no matter if there are any actual reviews to read beforehand.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/The Associated Press
Even though it might-slash-should be considered a bootable offence in George Miller’s home country of Australia to view his latest epic on a small screen, the realities of today’s film industry mean that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is already available to view on the device of your choice when it really should still be shaking and rattling multiplexes. Oh well, I suppose any Furiosa is better than no Furiosa at all.
Separated into five chapters, the Fury Road prequel traces the origins of Charlize Theron’s badass, played here by the young Alyla Browne in the early going, then by Anya Taylor-Joy. The latter actor nails Theron’s thousand-yard-stare intensity, stewing in both toxic guilt and incandescent rage. And when the action sequences arrive, they are glorious. There are almost too many set-pieces to highlight, though an extended mid-film scene involving the attempted hijacking of a war-rig is executed with a precise kind of glee. Each swerve of the truck and each dispatch of a body feels frighteningly real, with each frame a perfectly formed puzzle of a million moving parts. Perhaps even more so than Fury Road, Furiosa is a movie that punishes you for blinking. Good luck on that TV.
In the Land of Saints and Sinners (Prime Video)
Liam Neeson and Jack Gleeson in In the Land of Saints and Sinners.Supplied
Remember the Liam Neeson who was nominated for an Academy Award for his heart-wrenching performance in Schindler’s List? Yeah, that guy is dead, throat-kicked by the current Liam Neeson, a take-no-prisoners badass who employs a particular set of skills to kill drug dealers, gangsters, sex traffickers, and, um, wolves. Ever since Neeson starred in 2008′s Taken, the actor has been pumping out low-rent revenge flicks at a remarkable pace. So much so that even the most hardcore Neeson fan can lose track. Take this nifty little Irish thriller that had an extremely limited theatrical run in the United States this past March before quietly making its way onto Prime Video Canada the other week. Set in the midst of The Troubles, the 70s period piece casts Neeson as a semi-retired assassin (of course!) who becomes entangled (sounds familiar!) in an IRA plot led by Kerry Condon (okay!). Neeson’s fellow countrymen Jack Gleeson, Colm Meaney and Ciaran Hinds co-star, which should be enough to sell you.
Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+)
Jake Gyllenhaal, left, and Renate Reinsve in Presumed Innocent.The Associated Press
Now more than halfway through its one-season run, David E. Kelley’s prestige reimagining of author Scott Turow’s legal thriller (and the Harrison Ford-led film that was adapted from it) gets a sizable boost from its killer supporting cast, with superstar character actor Bill Camp and star Jake Gyllenhaal’s real-life brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard dominating every scene that they’re in, which are thankfully many. I’m still skeptical of Gyllenhaal’s actual performance, with his accused killer Rusty Sabich not quite possessing the gravitas that Ford delivered so many decades ago. Yet I’ll keep watching – not only to see whether Kelley ultimately diverges from Turow’s original ending, but to watch Camp, Sarsgaard and bonus stealth supporting player O-T Fagbenle (who is using some kind of untraceable accent to make his district-attorney character pop off the screen) tap-dance across their legalese dialogue and courtroom shtick.
Tautuktavuk (Crave)
Tautuktavuk (What We See), co-directed by and starring Carol Kunnuk, left, and Lucy Tulugarjuk.KINGULLIIT PRODUCTIONS AND ISUMA PRODUCTIONS/Supplied
A potent verité-style Canadian drama that (perhaps not surprisingly) got lost in the shuffle after its TIFF premiere this past fall, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Carol Kunnuk’s new film Tautuktavuk (What We See) arrives on Crave like an act of small-screen healing. The co-directors, who are cousins in real life, play sisters here, struggling to reconcile their traumatic pasts and uncertain futures in the Nunavut hamlet of Igloolik. “I wanted to bring attention to the issue of violence against Inuit women in small communities,” Tulugarjuk told my colleague Johanna Schneller last year. “Being abused is exhausting, and so is passing on that abuse. I had to learn, through counselling, that it’s okay to feel anger, but okay to then let it go. I had to learn to say, ‘Enough, this is not mine, I don’t have to carry it.’ Not a lot of Inuit have the opportunity to hear that from a counsellor. The film is a way of sharing what I learned.” It is a painful lesson well worth reserving time to hear, and understand.
