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.
What to watch in 2023: Our favourite new movies
Creed III (on-demand, including Apple TV and Google Play)
Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed in a scene from Creed III.Eli Ade/MGM via AP
It’s tremendously weird that Creed III is already available to watch at home when it’s still topping the box office, but this is our new reality. We must accept it! Just like Creed III accepts that it works best as a remix of every other Rocky movie in the franchise, blending the elements into a sort of rock-’em-sock-’em comfort food, so fighting-form slick it slides down your gullet like a raw-egg smoothie. After becoming the heavyweight champion of the world, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) is living the high, semi-retired, eight-pack-ab life. But then a long-forgotten figure from his past, one-time boxing prodigy Damian (Jonathan Majors), reappears in Adonis’s life, fresh from serving 18 years in jail and eager for a shot on the world stage.
There is nothing deceptively simple about this plot – it is just simply simple. Adonis has to once again face his traumatic upbringing by getting into the ring, his family once again has to balance their love for him with their fear for his health, and an ostensible villain once again gets to be both despicable and sympathetic. And, naturally, everything is backgrounded by an intense desire from first-time director Jordan to deliver at least one, if not two or three, stand-up-and-cheer moments. Read review.
Witness (CBC Gem)
Witness is a six-part documentary series, streaming on CBC Gem.Courtesy of CBC Gem
Amar Wala’s storming of the Canadian cultural landscape continues apace, as the Toronto director’s latest production from his company Scarborough Pictures has hit the CBC with the best kind of sharp and deep impact. Over six episodes, the docuseries Witness takes an adventurous, surprising approach to exploring the most viral videos of the day, focusing not on the subject of the oft-disturbing footage so much as the people who captured it. Wala and fellow Canadian directors Yasmine Mathurin and Carol Nguyen take that old adage of “going behind the story” to new and extreme heights.
21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street (Crave with Starz)
Channing Tatum, left, and Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street.Scott Garfield/Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP
The movie that apparently healed Kanye West’s antisemitism (not really) is back on streaming, as is its even better sequel. Given the relatively dire state of big-screen comedy, it is a true head-shake to revisit the pair of Jump Street movies, which have a hard and fast laugh-to-minute ratio and feature a pair of lead performances in odd couple Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum that are truly, splendidly charming. A while back, there were rumours that the third Jump Street movie would somehow tie itself into the moribund Men in Black franchise. That never came to pass … but it’s never too late to get the boys suited up.
Shoplifters (CBC Gem)
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, streaming on CBC Gem.Courtesy of CBC Gem
I hold a special end-of-year memory in my heart of watching Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters in that grey-zone week between Christmas and New Year’s back in 2018. During a particularly rough patch in my life, I sought refuge from the cold and merry outside world by huddling inside the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto to catch a weekday matinee of Kore-eda’s wry, wrenching dramedy, which followed a makeshift family of thieves operating on the fringes of Tokyo. The film, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier that year, was just the kind of light-touch dose of humanity that made me feel, briefly, whole. It helped carry the waning days of a year gone sour. And I’m pleased to reveal it works just as well at home.
Collateral (Paramount+)
Tom Cruise in Collateral.Frank Connor/DreamWorks Studio via Reuters
My continuing Tom Cruise watch-a-thon has revealed a curious trend: the star rarely plays bad guys, but when he does, they’re always more likeable, if not more so, than the ostensible heroes. So just like in Interview with the Vampire, Collateral finds its killer strength in Cruise’s villainous silver-haired assassin, whose larger-than-life charisma easily quashes that of his counterpart, a sad-sack taxi driver played by Jamie Foxx who is coaxed into chauffeuring this madman around town. While Cruise is aces here, the film’s real asset is director Michael Mann and his night-slicked L.A. atmosphere, all neon nightclubs and winding thruways.