Do you ever feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload era, where there are so many new films and series being released on streaming platforms every day that it can feel hard to keep your head above the zeitgeist waters. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
Possessor (Netflix) In this tremendously disturbing retro-futuristic thriller, throats are slashed, jaws are wrenched, eyeballs are gouged and skulls are popped with glee. Can you already tell it’s a Cronenberg movie? Except, it’s not David at Possessor’s helm but his son, Brandon, who delivers here an enjoyably sick tale of an assassin (Andrea Riseborough) who virtually hijacks other people’s bodies in order to complete her missions. Let this one crawl under your skin for an evening.
Los Espookys Season 2 (Crave) Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of the first season of Los Espookys – the cult HBO comedy series initially took an exceptionally long while to make it to Canadian audiences on Crave. But those who have been exposed to the English-Spanish creation by Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega and former Saturday Night Live mainstay Fred Armisen know just what genre-skewing charms await, with the show following a group of friends trying to exploit their love of horror movies into a viable business. Think Nathan for You, but sweeter and sillier.
Films of Sofia Bohdanowicz (Criterion Channel) Every now and then in these pages, I rhapsodize about my favourite Canadian film franchise: the Sofia Bohdanowicz Cinematic Universe. The filmmaker, who specializes in slender and deeply affecting films that blend documentary and fiction, is steadily building one of the more impressive canons in Canadian cinema – a feat that the Criterion Channel has now recognized, programming her three features (Never Eat Alone, Maison du bonheur, MS Slavic 7) and eight short films, including 2020′s deeply affecting Point and Line to Plane.
Saloum (Shudder) After making its debut at last year’s sorta-virtual Toronto International Film Festival, Jean Luc Herbulot’s wild Senegalese thriller Saloum is finally making its way out into the non-festival world. An unpredictable, high-energy concoction that tosses The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Assault on Precinct 13, Beasts of No Nation and From Dusk Till Dawn into a blender hits “pulse,” the film is a pure ride from beginning to end.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (on-demand) A feature-length expansion of the viral short film that writer/actress Jenny Slate and actor/director Dean Fleischer-Camp conjured up more than a decade ago – which in turn spawned two follow-up shorts and a cute-as-a-button children’s storybook – Marcel the Shell with Shoes On represents a genre unto itself: half live-action, half stop-motion animation, all captured in a faux-documentary style. That might sound unbearably twee, but there is real emotion and purpose pumped into the tiny picture about a talking mollusk looking for his lost family. The film has a heart as big as its title character is small.
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