What to stream on Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Now this week
WOULD you rather chill on the couch than get up early for the blood moon this weekend? Here’s your guide to the best new movies to stream on Netflix, Stan and Foxtel Now.
Leigh Paatsch
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WOULD you rather chill on the couch than get up early for the blood moon this weekend?
We’ve got you sorted with a mockumentary on cycling cheats, a Keanu Reeves blockbuster and an inspirational film about the NASA women who helped launch men into space.
BREAKER UPPERERS A COMEDY GRADUALLY FALLING APART
The one that is one wild, wired ride
TOUR DE PHARMACY (MA15+) ***1/2
FOXTEL NOW
Just in time for the last week of the world’s premier cycling event the Tour de France comes a short, sharp, shonky and very funny mockumentary taking the entire two-wheeled sport to task.
The action takes place at an imagined version of the 1982 Tour de France where all 170 riders are taking anything and everything to get a competitive edge on their rivals.
You don’t have to be a cycling buff to get where head writer and star Andy Samberg (TV’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and his collaborators (many of whom worked on his 2015 tennis spoof 7 Days in Hell) are coming from here.
However, if you are peeved by the role illicit substances have played in ruining modern sport, you will find this silly satire hits many satisfactory targets. Samberg’s fellow dopers are played by Orlando Bloom, John Cena, Freddie Highmore and Daveed Diggs, who are all on the same whacked-out wavelength needed.
The only sticking point for some viewers will be the willing (and not so amusing) participation of disgraced Tour champ Lance Armstrong.
The one that is one fast, furious and friendly ride
MCLAREN (PG) ****
STAN
For the sake of balance, here is a real sports documentary for those who prefer sticking with the truth.
Petrolheads in particular will relish this fascinating and genuinely illuminating portrait of the late New Zealand motor racing icon Bruce McLaren.
In a career that spanned little more than ten years before he died in an accident aged just 32, McLaren became an all-conquering figure in Formula One circles.
Somehow he also found the time to lay the foundations for one of the greatest race car manufacturing operations in history. Not bad for a laid-back lad who started out racing for peanuts in NZ beach rallies, then invited all his friends along for a wild ride to the big time overseas.
The one which looks so pretty, hits so hard
JOHN WICK CHAPTER 2 (MA15+)
FOXTEL NOW, NETFLIX
Many thought 2014’s surprisingly good John Wick was a bit of a fluke. Many expected the sequel to be a bit of a did. Not so at all.
The return of Keanu Reeves as the title character — a black-suited, blank-faced assassin — is nothing short of a transcendentally trashy triumph. When we last saw him, Johnny W was about to retire, having satisfactorily reduced the ranks of the Russian Mafia for killing his dog and stealing his car.
Now he’s back in the game at the behest of a fellow assassin to whom he owes a favour. What John must do is not nearly as important as how he does it: all you need to know is every heavy-duty henchperson he helps to an early grave had it coming. Alluring visuals and audacious combat choreography are impeccably fused together, to the extent this could be the most beautiful bludgeon-fest ever filmed.
The one which the whole family will enjoy
HIDDEN FIGURES (PG) ***1/2
FOXTEL NOW
Few inspirational true stories are told in such infectiously upbeat fashion as Hidden Figures. his is the untold tale of a group of black female mathematicians employed by NASA during the crucial pre-Apollo years of the US space program.
The film focuses on three high-achievers on this remarkable team: aspiring aerospace engineer Mary Jackson (played by singer Janelle Monae), pioneering computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and the brilliant geometrics analyst Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson).
What truly impresses about this movie is how a fine balance is maintained between charting the personal journeys of the trio — who endured widespread discrimination both inside and outside NASA — and establishing the wider significance of their important contributions to the US space program.
Overall, a great all-ages experience. Co-stars Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst.
The one that stars out weird, then just gets weirder
THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (MA15+) ***1/2
FOXTEL NOW
This relentlessly strange drama rents a room in your mind, and keeps renovating it without your permission. Colin Farrell plays Steven, a heart surgeon who has taken an interest in the welfare of Martin (Barry Keoghan), the teenage son of a patient who recently passed away. After seeing the perfect life Steven shares with his wife (Nicole Kidman) and children, Martin issues a chilling ultimatum.
Steven must choose one member of his family to die, so that amends can be made for the death of Martin’s father. An oppressively clinical atmosphere and obtusely coded storytelling do not prove to be the drawbacks one would expect here.
Written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster).
The one with Russell Crowe that slipped through the net
FATHERS & DAUGHTERS (M) **1/2
FOXTEL NOW, NETFLIX
At once ambitious, yet coyly compromised, this highly-strung drama divided audiences and critics alike when first released in America.
The divisive reaction meant the movie never made it to Australian cinemas, which is highly unusual for a project headlined by Russell Crowe. He plays Jake, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author in the throes of a complete breakdown after the death of his wife and the possibility he may lose custody of his daughter.
While this section of the movie can be both moving and powerful, a second storytelling timeline tracking the difficult life facing Jake’s daughter (played by Amanda Seyfried) a few decades later is not so successful. Not a total write-off, but it will be pay to be a bit forgiving of its many flaws.
The one where the forecast is not so hot
GEOSTORM (M) *
FOXTEL NOW, NETFLIX
A D-grade disaster movie where the world’s weather has turned suspiciously malicious. Our only hope rests with the last of the great bare-knuckled meteorologists, played by the Daniel Day-Lewis of dumb action flicks, Mr Gerard Butler. Gezza must zoom up to the International Space Station to shake his fists and throw some spanners at a ring of weather-controlling satellites that have gone rogue. The underlying premise of Geostorm would have us believe that these satellites use laser beams — yes, laser beams — to manipulate extreme warm and cold fronts down on Earth. In your face, climate change! As rubbish as this undoubtedly sounds, Geostorm might still have worked had it gone the Sharknado route, and openly acknowledged its badness. But no, Geostorm does not give any sign it is interested in being fun for anyone. Butler and the rest of a grimacing, vein-popping cast play it way too straight in a movie fundamentally telling all conventional logic to go and get bent.
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Originally published as What to stream on Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Now this week
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