Leigh Paatsch streaming guide: Seven movies to watch this weekend
From Christmas family meltdowns to the sharpest coming-of-age movie you will ever see. Unwind ahead of the holidays with these movie picks streaming this weekend on services including Foxtel Now.
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Everyone loves a Christmas family meltdown when it’s not theirs.
Rachel McAdams. Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Danes combine holiday cheer and bad vibes in the comedy The Family Stone, streaming on Foxtel Now.
Here are some other top film picks to catch this weekend.
THE ONE THAT WINGS IT, BRINGS IT
LADY BIRD (M) *****
FOXTEL NOW
Do not miss one of the most graceful, funny, alert and alive coming-of-age pictures you will ever see. “I wish I could live through something,” says 17-year-old Christine McPherson (played by the incomparable Saoirse Ronan) on the eve of commencing her final year of high school. And you will be living through it right along with “Lady Bird”, the name by which Christine prefers to be called by everyone she meets.
Being a distinct one-of-a-kind isn’t doing her any favours in her home town, a dreary bastion of Californian conformity. There is the ferociously fractious relationship Lady Bird shares with her perpetually dissatisfied mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf). I could go on and on about the love of clever conversation this film sincerely promotes, its rare ability to pull a moment of palpable poignancy out of thin air, the magnificent performances of Ronan and Metcalf, and the miraculous writing and direction of Greta Gerwig. But I won’t. You’ll find yourself doing that anyway, once Lady Bird has taken flight before you.
BIGGEST MOVIE DISASTERS OF 2018
THE ONE WITH A BIG HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE
DUMPLIN’ (M) ***
NETFLIX
Anyone who thought Australian actor Danielle Macdonald might turn out to be a one-film wonder after making a sensational breakthrough in the US with last year’s excellent Patti Cake$ had better think again. Macdonald is going to be in it for the long haul, and the proof is there for all to see with yet another inspired performance in Dumplin’. The movie itself? Not so inspired. But it doesn’t really matter. As a feel-good comedy-drama, its heart is always in the right place. Macdonald plays Willowdean, the overweight teenage daughter of Rosie (Jennifer Aniston), a towering figure on the local beauty pageant scene. Tensions between mother and child have always been in play, but intensify when Rosie enters a coming pageant to honour the memory of a beloved aunt. It’s corny stuff in some ways, but also emotionally astute in others, particularly when it comes to getting inside the heads of teens who see themselves as outsiders. A winning soundtrack is compromised of choice cuts by the great Dolly Parton.
THE XMAS MOVIE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
THE FAMILY STONE (M) ***1/2
FOXTEL NOW
A great move by Foxtel to dust off a hidden treasure of a Christmas movie that has been absent from streaming platforms for too long. A terrific cast led by Rachel McAdams. Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Danes play three members of an extended clan whose end-of-year get-togethers rarely go as planned. Fully conscious of the fact those we call our loved ones can also be our loathed ones, The Family Stone happily basks in the warm glow offered by a domestic December meltdown. Remarkably for a Hollywood movie, this very entertaining comedy proves that the outward good cheer and inward bad vibes of the Christmas season can not only coexist, but amusingly feed upon each other. Do check out this lil’ rough diamond of a movie if you’ve never seen it.
THE ONE THAT PUTS THE SIGH IN SCI-FI
PASSENGERS (M) ***
STAN
An intriguing plot line positions this sci-fi thriller in the same broadly accessible universe of spacey storytelling as Gravity and The Martian. During a 120-year journey to a faraway planet, two snap-frozen passengers (Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence) are woken from their sleep pods 90 years early. Knowing they will die before the craft reaches their destination, this deep-space Adam and Eve gradually discover the luxury spacecraft that will be their home is anything but a Garden of Eden. Passengers does have its problems, some of which are never adequately solved. Pronounced lapses in momentum are the most marked shortcomings (even if they are due to certain key events in the story that cannot be mentioned here). However, there are benefits to be reaped if you can find a way to forgive these obvious flaws.
THE ONE WHERE SANTA IS A RED DEVIL
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE (M) ***1/2
SBS ON DEMAND
A supremely strange Christmas film, quite unlike anything you’ve seen before. In the ancient folklore of Finland, Santa Claus is not the cheery, chubby, CEO of a pan-global gift delivery company. The way the Finns remember it, Claus was a demonic tormentor of children who needed to be dealt with, once and for all. So they buried him beneath a mountain of ice. But now, centuries later, Santa is back in the bad-guy business, and no kid is safe. Director Jalmari Helander strikes a delicate balance between menace and whimsy that is almost impossible to resist. Equally striking are the snowy high-altitude locations, and of course, the many dark sides of Santa on display.
THE ONE THAT’S A CHIMP OFF THE OLD BLOCK
JANE (PG) ****
GOOGLE, iTUNES
Pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall has been the subject of several documentaries throughout her long, prominent and unique career. Via a stack of evocative footage seen for the first time, we meet Goodall in her late 20s, embarking on an ambitious research project in the wilds of Tanzania. Despite having no scientific background to speak of, Goodall was determined to earn the trust of a community of chimpanzees and chronicle their daily lives as intuitive social beings. Her interactions with the chimps evolve in sophistication and even emotion over time, and there are moments captured here that border on the truly miraculous.
THE ONE YOU MIGHT WANNA PASS ON
MOWGLI: LEGEND OF THE JUNGLE (M) **
NETFLIX
I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t there just a Jungle Book movie like, a year or two back? Indeed there was. And that Disney live-actioner grossed over a billion at the box-office. This expensive production is powered largely by motion-capture performance technology, which is why it is also directed by an acknowledged master of the form as an actor, the great Andy Serkis. Unfortunately, this version is dark, bleak and rather boring compared to that recent 2016 hit. Sure it looks good, but it feels off its game most of the time. Even the presence of a mo-cap cast led by Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and Benedict Cumberbatch cannot stop the sudden need for a snooze coming on.
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