Leigh Paatsch streaming guide: What to stream this week

IT’S going to be another cold, wet weekend so make the most of it with some quality time on the couch. Here’s your guide to the best movies and shows to stream.

IT’S going to be another cold, wet weekend so make the most of it with some quality time on the couch.

Here’s your guide to the best movies and shows to stream this week.

BEST MOVIES FOR THE KIDS THIS SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

BELLE & SEBASTIAN: FRIENDS FOR LIFE REVIEW

The one that has all the rom and all the com you need

SET IT UP (M) ***1/2

NETFLIX

Netflix has been churning out original rom-coms at a rapid-fire rate throughout 2018.

This casually witty and utterly adorable ball of meet-cute fluff is the ninth vehicle to roll off the assembly line and it is easily the best.

The finest romantic comedies are invariably comfortable in their own skin without once getting under yours and Set It Up checks both of those boxes emphatically.

A scene from Set It Up.

Harper (Zoey Deutch) and Charlie (Glen Powell) are overworked executive assistants both toiling for over-demanding bosses (Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs) in the same Manhattan corporate HQ.

To make their lives easier, Harper and Glen conspire to bring their slave-driving overseers together. And wouldn’t you just know it? The scheme backfires in ways that brings them closer together instead.

Don’t worry about that very familiar premise here. Focus instead on the effortless chemistry between Deutch and Powell (both clearly destined for bigger, better things soon), some subtly sharp writing and a lovely vibe of infectious, undemanding escapism.

Set It Up is easily Netflix’s best rom-com this year.

The one that raps up an intro to a new Australian star

PATTI CAKE$ (MA15+) ****

FOXTEL NOW

Hey, kids! You wanna make it as a hip-hop star? Then perhaps best not tear any pages from the playbook of aspiring rapper Patti Dombrowski (played by Danielle Macdonald).

Rhyming under the handle of Killa P, Patti is going to need a miracle to beat the odds every aspect of her life is stacking against her.

Danielle Macdonald as Patti and Siddharth Dahanajay as Jeri in Patti Cake$. Photo: Jeong Park.

Nevertheless, there is something about this tough, talented and tubby New Jersey waitress that suggests it will take more than relentless poverty, squalor and misfortune to make Patti give up her dream.

What will grab you about this surprisingly infectious feel-good tale is the truly original shape Patti’s otherwise familiar dream can take.

Her musical recording posse includes a hyperactive Indian pharmacist, a secretive black anarchist and, I kid you not, her nanna.

This is a big-hearted, beautiful and downright uplifting movie which should seem predictable, but comes on oh-so-fresh thanks to an ferociously convincing and endearing debut lead performance from Australian unknown Macdonald.

The one that has all the costumes and all the drama you need

VICTORIA & ABDUL (PG) ***

FOXTEL NOW

Dame Judi Dench has played the famously long-serving, short-tempered British monarch Queen Victoria before, so this lightweight costume drama set in the ruler’s twilight years should be a walk in the park.

Judi Dench as Queen Victoria in Victoria & Abdul.

Nevertheless, Dench sets a cracking clip, forcing the rest of the movie to keep up with her impish, sly and open-hearted performance.

This is the story of Queen Vic’s unusual relationship with Abdul Karim (played by Bollywood star Ali Fazal), a lowly clerk from India who rose through the ranks of the royal household to become her closest confidante and spiritual adviser.

Much of this malarkey probably didn’t really happen, but it doesn’t really matter. Dench and Fazal are a very endearing team indeed.

The one that tears a recent page out of the history books

ZERO DARK THIRTY (M) ****1/2

SBS ON DEMAND

From the makers of The Hurt Locker, a searing, challenging factual drama all about looking for a needle in a haystack.

The US government is in possession of every last detail worth knowing about the needle — Osama bin Laden, the most effective terrorist in history.

THE FILMS LEIGH PAATSCH GAVE FIVE STARS TO

The problem is that no-one knows where the haystack might be. It will take the CIA the best part of a decade to work it out.

And then exactly 25 minutes to eliminate their target once they do. As a blast from our recent past — reported quite clinically and decidedly powerfully in the present tense — Zero Dark Thirty does not undercharge the explosive nature of its subject matter. Stars Jessica Chastain.

The one with Cuba, cigars and Castro

CHE: PARTS ONE & TWO (MA 15+) ****

STAN

With Benicio Del Toro’s excellent new movie Sicario: Day of the Soldado in cinemas this week, Stan have picked up the project this Oscar-winning actor ranks as his finest work. This mammoth two-part biopic of the famous Latin American revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is not the kind of work to be seen on a whim.

Part One accounts for the strongest section of the pic, detailing Guevara’s linchpin role in Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba in the late 1950s.

Part Two follows Che to Bolivia, where his leadership of a guerrilla insurgency is destined for a tragic end. Superbly filmed by director Steven Soderbergh, and Del Toro’s immersive performance in the title role is of the highest class.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

The one that stands up for women everywhere

SUFFRAGETTE (M) ***1/2

SBS ON DEMAND

An arresting period drama isolates a crucial point in time for the movement that fought for the right to vote for British women. In the year 1912, Maud (Carey Mulligan) is a young working mother despairing her destiny has hit a dead-end.

A transformative spark catches alight as Maud experiences the extraordinary lengths the Suffragettes must go to for their voice to be heard.

The film really comes into its own when it rams home to the viewer the daunting risks that came with a commitment to what was very much an unpopular, outlaw cause at the time. Watch out for Meryl Streep, used sparingly, but powerfully here as famous Suffragette spearhead Emmeline Pankhurst.

The one that goes absolutely nowhere

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON (M) *1/2

NETFLIX, FOXTEL NOW

As long there will be fans of the martial arts, there will be movies about the life, times and legacy of martial arts legend Bruce Lee. And you can bet your bottom dollar most of them will be kinda terrible.

A scene from Birth of the Dragon.

This cheaply produced and oddly unfocused drama is underwhelming in the extreme.

This is supposed to be the story of one of Lee’s most infamous fights, a private one-on-one Kung fu battle with imperious instructor Wong Jack Man in an empty warehouse in California in the mid-1960s.

The big fight — and weirdly, Lee himself — take second and third billing behind a fictional subplot about a young actor who falls in love with a Chinese-born lass. Avoid.

Originally published as Leigh Paatsch streaming guide: What to stream this week