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.
Matt Damon, left, and Casey Affleck in The Instigators.The Associated Press
The Instigators (Apple TV+, starting Aug. 9)
The second Doug Liman movie rushed almost straight to a streamer this year (after March’s Prime Video redo of Road House), the new crime comedy The Instigators portends something disturbing about the current film industry landscape. Are a proven director, big star (Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House, Matt Damon here) and sizable budget no longer enough to justify a wide theatrical release? Perhaps. The Instigators got a blink-and-miss-it debut in theatres last week, but its marketing is pushing audiences to Apple TV+.
But maybe the trouble should be placed more directly at Liman’s feet, given that the filmmaker who once brought moviegoers out in droves with Edge of Tomorrow and Mr. & Mrs. Smith has been pitching a whole lotta streaming-ready softballs in the past few years. If you can remember watching Chaos Walking, Locked Down or The Wall, then you may have too good a memory.
So relax those brain cells once more while watching, or more likely half-heartedly glancing at, The Instigators. Despite boasting a Gerry/Ocean’s 11 reunion of Damon and Casey Affleck – plus a dozen other vastly overqualified character actors (Ron Perlman, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Ving Rhames, Michael Stuhlbarg) – the caper flick will steal only a few moments of your attention. Certainly, all the ingredients are here for a fun night in, from the absolutely killer cast (there’s also Hong Chau, Paul Walter Hauser and Jack Harlow!) to the familiar Damon/Affleck stomping grounds of Boston. But nothing quite clicks in this tale of charming low-life thieves trying to make off with the ill-gotten gains of a corrupt mayor.
Liman, no stranger to staging thriller chase scenes with Damon thanks to their work on the first Bourne film, pulls off one mildly entertaining crash involving half of the Boston police force, all set to Petula Clark’s Downtown. But the director cannot get a handle on the too-loose story, nor ignite any chemistry between real-life pals Damon and Affleck (the latter co-wrote the script). The movie might be impossible to ignore for Apple TV+ users navigating their way around the service, but if you do feel compelled to flick it on, at least grab a few piles of laundry before pressing play. The Instigators is a movie made for multitasking.
Harry Lawtey and Kit Harington star in Industry.Supplied
Industry, Season 3 (HBO/Crave, starting Aug. 11)
The rollicking British drama Industry returns this weekend for another salacious season of sex and stocks. And HBO is clearly more invested in the future of the series than ever, giving it the network’s prime Sunday-night time slot and adding Game of Thrones star Kit Harington to the proceedings as a green-tech energy mogul whose abs are as ripped as his altruistic motivations are suspicious. With its dialogue stuffed with trading-floor jargon and its action captured with such a lustful eye that it would put even Taxicab Confessions to shame, Industry is not for everyone. But for those audiences who crave a filthy soap chronicling the vices of the wannabe rich and powerful, the series makes a fine if more juvenile successor to Succession. Bonus: The series’ all-star investment-banker antihero Eric Tao (played with a ferocious swagger by Ken Leung) is back in full, frightening force.
Godzilla Minus One.The Associated Press
Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color (Netflix)
A surprise success during its underpromoted theatrical run this past December – and then unavailable digitally for months, even as the film triumphed at the Academy Awards, winning an Oscar for best visual effects – Godzilla Minus One has been available to watch on Netflix for the past few weeks. And now the streaming giant has added, or perhaps stripped, a new version of it: Like the original Toho Studios Godzilla film, Minus One is now available Minus Color – that is, in crisp black and white.
Like George Miller’s experiment in draining Fury Road to its black-and-chrome edition a few years back, there is something tantalizingly romantic about taking in a contemporary blockbuster in the stark shades of yesterday. And the aesthetic trick also plays nicely into the themes of Minus One, given that the film rewinds the franchise’s kaiju mythos back to the very beginning.
Director Takashi Yamazaki’s Japanese-language epic is set in the aftermath of the Second World War, with Tokyo in ruins and the national psyche shattered. Enter Godzilla, a being of pure radioactive carnage whose destruction spurs Japan’s walking wounded into action. Deftly political while still being a thrilling piece of entertainment, Godzilla Minus One is a true cinematic experience of the highest, largest order. Turn the colour off, but turn the volume way up.
Lupita Nyong'o in a scene from A Quiet Place: Day One.Gareth Gatrell/The Associated Press
A Quiet Place: Day One (on-demand, including Apple TV+, Cineplex Store, Amazon)
The third entry in the Quiet Place franchise might be, ultimately, unnecessary, but it’s worth watching for the first 15 minutes at least. It’s then that director Michael Sarnoski anchors the alien-invasion story from one of the more atypical and refreshing perspectives in contemporary blockbuster history: Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a terminally ill poet who happens to be in New York’s Chinatown with her hospice group the day ultrasonic creatures make landfall, unleashing carnage on anyone who makes a peep. She may not have long to live, but she sure as hell does not want to die at the claws of some pesky H.R. Giger rip-offs, which makes her initial struggle all the more intriguing.
The opening sequence, which involves military convoys and massive explosions, culminates in what can only be read as an allusion to 9/11, with dazed New Yorkers wandering smoke-choked streets, their faces covered in dust and ash. Sarnoski’s work here isn’t subtle. But just as his feature directorial debut, Pig, found new ways to interpret the clichéd intensity of Nicolas Cage, the director tweaks the notion of post-terror trauma just an extra degree or two toward nuance than a more conventional filmmaker (like, say, original franchise director John Krasinski) might, given the material.
Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce in Wet Hot American Summer.Supplied
Wet Hot American Summer (on-demand, including Apple TV+)
If your summer routine doesn’t involve an annual rewatch of David Wain’s cult comedy classic from 2001, then it’s time to re-examine your seasonal rituals. Although the film operates on an extremely particular wavelength – it benefits from, but doesn’t entirely depend on, viewers having a fondness for such teen-sex flicks as Meatballs and Hardbodies, and perhaps a history of spending summers at Jewish sleepaway camps – Wet Hot American Summer is a fascinating time capsule that any fan of millennial comedy can enjoy. Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Ken Marino, Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Meloni and Bob’s Burgers star H. Jon Benjamin voicing a talking can of vegetables – this movie has it all, people. And revisiting it today also sparks a fascinating conversation about the career evolution of co-writer/co-star Michael Showalter, who has gone on to direct such decidedly less subversive rom-coms as The Idea of You.