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.
Based off the 2016 animated feature Sausage Party, the series Sausage Party: Foodtopia follows Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy as they try to build their own food society.Courtesy of Prime
Sausage Party: Foodtopia (Prime Video)
Eight years later, and I still have vivid, disgusting memories of laughing till I felt sick while watching the final few minutes of the R-rated cartoon Sausage Party. A quick refresher for those who either missed the Seth Rogen-scripted farce or have memory-holed it since its 2016 release: Unbeknownst to humans, everything that we eat and drink has an inner consciousness, from hot dogs to baby carrots to the Jewish delicacy known as gefilte fish. And it turns out that most of the foodstuffs have dreams, sexual urges and incredibly filthy minds. But Sausage Party wasn’t just a movie about anthropomorphized Twinkies dropping F-bombs or endless wiener-in-bun jokes (though, yes, it is that, too) – the film was an exercise in extremes, in just how far a major-studio film can push the limits of religion, politics, sex, ethnicity, everything.
And now – as is the wont of most wannabe franchises – the wieners are back in series form, with the eight-episode Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Rogen, his regular collaborator Evan Goldberg, and the rest of Sausage Party’s original creative team – including Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir – are all back, as is the A-list cast lending their voices, including Kristen Wiig (as disconcertingly sexy hot-dog bun), Michael Cera (a deformed sausage), David Krumholtz (a piece of flatbread), and Edward Norton (a very Woody Allen-ish bagel). While Jonah Hill and James Franco seem to be sitting this go-round out. Will Forte, Sam Richardson and Natasha Rothwell have joined the libidinous antics. Picking up directly following the orgy-cum-revolution of the film’s final act, the series promises the kind of jaw-dropping offend-everyone comedy that should make Mel Brooks, or at least the pastrami sandwich Mel Brooks might be eating for lunch today, proud.
Faye Dunaway represents an era of high-gloss, higher-intrigue Hollywood glamour that seems to have faded into history.Supplied
Faye (HBO/Crave, premiering July 13 at 8 p.m.)
Very likely someone who will not be lending their vocal talents to any kind of Sausage Party production – though she was gracious enough to participate in one of the best-ever episodes of The Simpsons many years ago – Faye Dunaway represents an era of high-gloss, higher-intrigue Hollywood glamour that seems to have faded into history. Yet the new documentary Faye, directed by Laurent Bouzereau (HBO’s Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind) aims to prove that Dunaway’s contributions to cinema, and what might become her ultimate legacy, have been misunderstood. Centring on frank conversations with the star while contextualizing her tremendous career and personal challenges – including her struggles with alcoholism and bipolar disorder – the doc should at the very least remind today’s moviegoers that it’s the pictures, not the stars, that have gotten smaller over the years.
Crave has added all three of the tremendously fun Has Fallen films, in which B-movie superstar Gerard Butler stars as grizzled Secret Service Agent Mike Banning.Simon Varsano/Courtesy of VVS Media
Gerard Butler’s “Has Fallen” franchise (Crave)
Just in time for the lazy days of summer, Crave has added all three of the tremendously fun Has Fallen films, in which B-movie superstar Gerard Butler stars as grizzled Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, who has to save the U.S. President (Aaron Eckhart, eventually succeeded by Morgan Freeman) again and again from foes both foreign and domestic. The improbably successful franchise starts with 2013′s Olympus Has Fallen (in which the bad guys are North Koreans) and continues through 2016′s London Has Fallen (Islamic terrorists), and 2019′s Angel Has Fallen (rogue multinational mercenaries). Up next: Night Has Fallen! Yes, I’m extremely serious. Each film is ridiculous in its own way, but throughout each blood-soaked adventure – fortunately, these films are all hard-R affairs – Butler gives off the effortless air of an underdog fighter who knows nothing but survival. Stick with him, Mr. President, and you’ll make it through the night/the movie’s runtime.
ABC series Lost is finally making its way to Netflix.MARIO PEREZ
Lost, complete series (Disney+)
“We have to go back!” That’s been the mantra of certain branches of the U.S. media the past week, in anticipation of the entire ABC series Lost finally making its way to Netflix. In Canada, the situation is naturally different, but in a good way – it turns out that all six seasons of the show have been available on the Canadian version of Disney+ for a while now. So why not join in the fun of our American cousins and spend the rest of the summer diving into the phenomenon? The series was, after all, likely the last kind of network-television “appointment viewing” to come along. Sure, its final season was a maddening affair – no, I’m not going to accept any revisionism that the series finale actually worked – but up till that point, nobody on television was delivering as consistently entertaining, bewildering, thrilling television on such a large scale.
Ambulance follows two brothers, the do-gooder ex-Marine Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the erratic thief Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal).Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures
Ambulance (Netflix)
In his under-loved 2019 Netflix movie 6 Underground, director/disaster artist/Hollywood Satan Michael Bay kicked things off with an exhilarating, deliciously vulgar 20-minute car chase through Florence. In Ambulance, Bay’s similarly underrated 2022 movie, the filmmaker does himself six times better: The entire 136-minute action extravaganza is basically one extended L.A. chase scene, only hitting the brakes to take two brief on-the-ground breathers – a tense bank heist and a chaotic warehouse shootout – that are about as restful as a punch to the head during open-heart surgery (which is something that also happens during the movie).
A slick remix of Speed and Heat (with more than a few direct name-checks of Bay’s own filmography), Ambulance follows two brothers, the do-gooder ex-Marine Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the erratic thief Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal). In need of cash for his wife’s experimental cancer surgery, Will approaches Danny requesting a loan. Danny counters with a high-reward bank job that starts … like, right now. This early abandoning of genre conventions – usually in these type of set-ups there is a buildup to the robbery, with the characters going over the plan, the stakes, the contingencies – is the first whip-quick cue that Bay’s film isn’t going to take a millisecond to rest. From that moment, it’s all go-go-go-gotta-keep-going-don’t-stop.