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: The best movies (so far)
The Covenant (Prime Video)
Guy Ritchie’s latest thriller is a curious arrival on two fronts. First, it’s the director’s second film of 2023 – after Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre – to open wide in U.S. theatres, but skip Canadian cinemas altogether. (Blame wonky territorial rights.) But The Covenant is also the second film of 2023 whose story focuses on a soldier who must save the life of his Afghan interpreter, after this spring’s Gerard Butler action movie Mission Kandahar. Bizarre coincidences aside, Ritchie’s film is an impressively solid and charged production, one of the director’s more serious and slightly grounded efforts in the vein of Wrath of Man versus the jokey violence of Operation Fortune or The Gentlemen. And as the hero who walks back into enemy territory to save his friend, Jake Gyllenhaal gives the proceedings serious dramatic heft.
Lac-Mégantic – This Is Not an Accident (CBC Gem)
Unfolding in four hour-long chapters, Quebecois director Philippe Falardeau’s startling new documentary balances extraordinarily emotional moments with rigorous research into the various institutions and agencies that failed the residents of Lac-Mégantic, whose town was obliterated by a train derailment in 2013. Enlisting seasoned doc producer Nancy Guerin as his co-writer, Falardeau managed to get dozens of people to sit down in front of a camera, including Edward Burkhardt, the former chief executive of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, which owned the derailed train. Each interview is shot in the anamorphic widescreen format of 2.39:1, while the film’s structure eschews a narrator, both decisions giving the project a distinctly cinematic feel. Already released on Quebec television this spring, the docuseries’ English-language premiere arrives via CBC Gem, with the first two episodes debuting July 6, and the final two July 7.
You Hurt My Feelings (on-demand, including Apple TV, Google Play, Cineplex Store)
Nicole Holofcener’s latest comedy of manners focuses on the kind of characters who once found a home inside Woody Allen’s New York – or really the Manhattan of Holofcener’s own canon, which includes the gently prickly dramedies Enough Said and Friends with Money. These are movies about wealthy people, comfortable in their Restoration Hardware-furnished homes, their personal dilemmas decidedly minor-key. But that doesn’t mean they are not also compelling, carefully crafted characters inhabiting warm and witty worlds. Reteaming with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of Enough Said, Holofcener focuses her story on Beth (Louis-Dreyfus), an author struggling with the umpteenth draft of her new book, and her husband Don (Tobias Menzies), a checked-out therapist. Quickly, Beth and Don’s union is torn asunder after she overhears him telling a friend that, well, her new book just isn’t very good. Nearly every performance here is excellent, a beautiful balance of nerves and neuroses. Read review.
Parks and Recreation, full series (Crave)
Perhaps the shiny, optimistic, Obama-era politics of NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation haven’t aged quite as well as those of its mockumentary predecessor, The Office (the two series sharing creative teams and performers). But I still cannot think of a modern sitcom with as stellar a series-long run as Parks, minus its wobbly six-episode first season, which can be entirely skipped. Consistently hilarious, and so obviously in love with its own characters, the series is viciously sharp and big-hearted warm at the same time, a jagged barb encased in bubble wrap. Rightfully making stars out of Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Nick Offerman, and Aziz Ansari, Parks and Recreation deserves the best binge that you can muster.
Carlos (on-demand, Apple TV)
For truly no reason in particular, I popped in the Criterion Blu-ray of Olivier Assayas’s Carlos the other day, a decade-plus since I last watched it. This turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in some time, as the director’s epic production – originally released as a three-part miniseries on French television in 2010 – is a masterclass in political filmmaking. Following three decades in the life of the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, Assayas’s epic is riveting, propulsive thought-provoking cinema, no matter on which screen most audiences consumed its 338 minutes. And as the title character, star Edgar Ramirez is a wonder, embodying a man who starts off as a cocky idealist and ends up his own worst enemy. The only shame is that few other filmmakers have figured out what to do with Ramirez – who can now be seen headlining the buzz-free Netflix series Florida Man – since.