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.
Hit Man (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
The unique complexities of Canada’s film sector – namely, our adjacency to the United States – sometimes require me taking a portion of my week to explain to confused readers why they cannot watch a certain movie on a certain platform that U.S. marketing has led them to believe is the only place to watch said title. Such was the case this past week when Richard Linklater’s very fun new rom-com Hit Man made a big splash on Netflix. But not the Canadian version of Netflix. That’s because the film, which stars new Hollywood heartthrob Glen Powell as a college professor who masquerades as a killer-for-hire for the local police department in his spare time, had its Canadian rights acquired by local distributor VVS Films long before Netflix made a play to buy the film for other territories, including the United States.
This is both good and frustrating news for Canadian audiences. Undoubtedly, Linklater’s film deserves to be seen on a big screen with a packed audience – if only for one scene late in the film that, when it screened for a full house at this past fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, brought the crowd almost to its feet with applause and hooting. And VVS gave Hit Man exactly the theatrical release it deserved, opening the film wide across Canada on May 24. But not every Canadian moviegoer got the marketing message, and instead presumed that it was heading to Netflix last week. Oops.
But there is semi-good news: VVS has now released Hit Man on digital platforms, available to rent or purchase on all the usual on-demand services such as Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Cineplex Store etc. But that means Canadians who already subscribe to Netflix and want to watch the film now are going to have to pay to play – and that represents a financial and even psychological barrier for some audiences. As to when Hit Man will hit a subscriber-based streamer? That is anyone’s guess – but because of VVS’s long relationship with Prime Video Canada, don’t expect it to automatically land on Netflix Canada.
The Boys, Season 4 (Prime Video)
It is kind of wild to witness the wild success of The Boys, easily the most disgusting (but in an admirable kind of way) series to ever air in the history of television. What started off as an ambitious but narratively shaky adaptation of Garth Ennis’s adults-only comic-book series about fascist superheroes and the blokes who try to stop them has turned into a riotous, confident and superbloody satire of the Great American Dream, skewering everything from celebrity to politics. And in its fourth season – its penultimate run, with the series set to wrap after Season 5 next year, according to showrunner Eric Kripke – The Boys trains its laser-powered eyes straight on MAGA madness, with a special eye toward carving up the delusions that fuelled the Jan. 6 coup. It’s dark, daring stuff for a show that also traffics in head-explosions and eye-gougings. And if you ever get bored – which will be never – then you can also just play the fun game of spot-the-Toronto location, as the series has increasingly stopped trying all that hard to mask the local production landmarks.
Rye Lane (Crave)
The intricacies of the streaming era rear their head once again in the case of the delightful 2023 British rom-com Rye Lane. The zippy feature debut of Raine Allen-Miller first made digital landfall in Canada via Disney+ last year, given that the film was acquired by Searchlight Pictures, a division of the Mouse House. But this week, for whatever reason, it’s also made its way to Canadian streamer Crave. Listen: I’m not going to spend too much time questioning the shift, only to celebrate the increased access, given that audiences who haven’t yet heard of this Sundance Film Festival-certified delight should give it a spin on any platform available.
Following one momentous day in the lives of a sad-sack mamma’s boy named Dom (David Jonsson) and the free-spirited Yas (Vivian Oparah) as they seek to mend their broken hearts in and around the multicultural South London neighbourhoods of Peckham and Brixton. And take note, aspiring rom-com directors: You can do the entirety of a boy-meets/loses/wins back-girl arc in less than 83 minutes.
The Sweet East (available for rent or purchase on Apple TV)
One of my most memorable moviegoing experiences this past winter was catching a one-off screening of The Sweet East at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto. A deeply acidic comedy that is half road-trip movie, half down-and-dirty exploration of New York film culture’s more caustic corners, director Sean Price Williams’s film is operating on its own very particular wavelength. But if you are the type of audience to immediately clock references to such extremely online phenomena as PizzaGate, then you’ll have a grungy blast following the exploits of a high-school girl (Talia Ryder) who escapes from her class trip to Washington, for a picaresque journey through various East Coast subcultures. It doesn’t hurt that Williams and his screenwriter, the film critic Nick Pinkerton, also called in a load of favours from famous friends, with such indie-cinema fixtures as Jacob Elordi, Simon Rex, Ayo Edebiri and playwright/actor Jeremy O. Harris making memorable (sometimes traumatically so) appearances.
Ferrari (Prime Video)
Despite Michael Mann’s Ferrari walking away from last year’s awards season with almost no hardware – there was a moment when it looked like Penelope Cruz might snag a best supporting actress nod, but alas – I have the nagging sense that in five, maybe 10, years this searing and complicated drama will start to be reappraised as an unjustly ignored masterpiece. All the better now, then, to make your own assessment and watch Mann’s look at one tumultuous summer in the life of legendary Italian carmaker Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), his wife Laura (Cruz) and his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley).