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.
MoviePass, MovieCrash (Crave/HBO)
When MoviePass launched in the United States in 2017, the all-you-can-watch service seemed like a service too good to be true. For just US$9.95 a month, members could go to participating multiplexes as many times as they’d like, no matter the title, no matter the time of day. Preposterous? Well, yes. And it wasn’t long until the company bottomed out – although, as the new HBO documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash tells it, the downfall wasn’t purely based on economics alone. Adapting the stellar investigating reporting on the company by Business Insider journalist Jason Guerrasio, who is an executive producer and on-screen talking head here, director Muta’Ali’s new film chronicles a boom-and-bust story filled with as many turns as any Hollywood blockbuster.
The Iron Claw (Prime Video)
A horror movie body-slammed by the weight of a grimy beyond-the-mat wrestling expose, The Iron Claw is Canadian director Sean Durkin’s latest portrait of domestic miserablism (after 2020′s The Nest) that breaks the bone before it cuts right to it. Intensely dark and depressing – though not without its pressure-valve moments of levity – the based-on-a-true-story film is in the running for the bleakest release of the holiday season. Which is exactly Durkin’s point. This is a picture as severe as the real-life generational abuse that its director is chronicling, even if a few false steps mean that The Iron Claw ultimately lands as a technical knock-out. There is an authenticity to the world of The Iron Claw that feels built on a genuine love and appreciation of wrestling, even if Durkin has, somewhere along the way, become greatly disillusioned by it.
Jim Henson: Idea Man (Disney+)
After premiering (out of competition) at the Cannes Film Festival the other week, Ron Howard’s new documentary about the man, the myth, the Muppet-maker is heading to a quick debut on Disney+. While reviews from Cannes have so far promised nothing more than a perfectly nice and reverent overview of Jim Henson’s remarkable career, maybe straight-ahead is the best approach that any Muppet fan can ask for. At the very least, Howard’s doc will help lead Henson neophytes to the artist’s slightly darker, more adult-minded work, such as his early experimental short films. Or, you know, we could all just throw on an episode of The Muppet Show and be happy enough, too.
Challengers (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
Even though it’s still hanging in the top 10 box-office charts, modern movie-industry practice demands that films head as quickly as they can to the at-home market – even if many are best-suited to the theatrical environment. With that gripe out of the way, the new-to-on-demand romantic drama Challengers is the sexiest movie of the year ... to feature exactly zero sex scenes. A love-triangle drama set amidst the world of professional tennis, director Luca Guadagnino’s latest arrives like a ball swatted straight to the solar plexus. This is a startlingly entertaining, erotically charged movie that hits its many targets with a kind of ferocious and crazed accuracy that’ll knock the wind, among other things, right out of you.
Marry Me (Netflix)
Just as rumours swirl about her marriage to Ben Affleck – and reviewers pile on for her latest subpar Netflix genre flick, Atlas – Jennifer Lopez deserves some delayed appreciation for this nearly forgotten pandemic-era rom-com. Playing a pop star who is involved in a tabloid-friendly romance with a fellow celebrity, J. Lo gives Marry Me a giant wink and nod to her own biography, while at the same time reminding moviegoers that she’s also a hell of a singer (approximately 25 per cent of Marry Me’s run-time is devoted to Lopez singing, turning the film into an extra-long series of music videos; this isn’t a complaint).
The story kicks off when Lopez, I mean, Kat Valdez finds out that her fiancé Bastien (Colombian musician Maluma) is cheating on her … just before the two are set to get married live onstage in front of thousands. Heartbroken and confused, Kat picks out a random stranger from the crowd, high-school math teacher/single father/aw-shucks nice guy Charlie (Owen Wilson), and coerces him into exchanging vows instead for social-media engagement. But what starts off as a PR stunt slowly turns into a full-fledged (spoiler alert?) romance, with Kat and Charlie growing closer despite their two wildly different worlds. It’s all particularly dumb, but Lopez and Wilson actually, shockingly, make it all work.