Leigh Paatsch streaming guide: What to stream this week

THE rain is here to stay over the weekend, so it’s time to cosy up on the couch for some quality TV time this winter school holidays. From a blockbuster classic to old-timey children’s delight, here’s what to stream this week.

THE rain is here to stay over the weekend, so it’s time to cosy up on the couch for some quality TV time this winter school holidays.

Here’s what to stream this week.

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The life and times of artist Brett Whiteley are laid bare in the James Bogle documentary.

The one that gets to the heart of the art

WHITELEY (M) ****1/2

ABC IVIEW

If you missed this impeccably crafted and deeply involving doco when it drifted through local cinemas last year, zip over to ABC iview and catch it for free while you can (it expires next Wednesday). This is a comprehensive chronicle of the extraordinary life, times and art of the late Australian painter Brett Whiteley.

Director James Bogle utilises a basic, no-frills approach, wisely surmising that Whiteley’s spellbinding visual gift will speak for itself. What emerges from the film — which uses audio recordings of the artist himself and those close to him as a refreshingly direct form of narration — are contrasting portraits of a man ahead of his time, and a man running out of time.

The versatility of style and the prolific rate of output are given a rounded and rousing context. So too is Whiteley’s self-destructive reliance on alcohol and drugs, which he believed both fuelled his talent and would ultimately send him to his grave.

Powerful, moving, frustrating and true to the maverick, masterful spirit of the subject.

Andrea Riseborough and Emma Stone in Battle of the Sexes. Picture: Melinda Sue

The one that wins, but only after a tough tie-breaker

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (PG) ***

FOXTEL NOW

In 1973 at the Houston Astrodome — before a sellout crowd and a global TV audience of 90 million — the best female player in the world, 29-year-old Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), took on a retired male pro who hadn’t won’t a title since the 1940s.

Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was a notorious 55-year-old hustler who dreamt up the exhibition match to conclusively prove the inferiority of women’s tennis. The media took the bait, and soon the public were also hooked on the antics of a man who described himself as “putting the show in chauvinism.”

Quite rightly, however, this mildly engrossing drama senses that this story should really be all about King, who at the time of the big game was engulfed by multiple professional and personal crises. A subtle and restrained performance from Stone lends an edge to the magnitude of King’s troubles (suffering galling gender discrimination as an elite player while suppressing her desire for a same-sex relationship) that the movie’s smooth and ambivalent scripting cannot.

Rosario Dawson and Chris Rock star in one of the coolest rom-coms in recent years.

The one that gets Rock away from a hard place

TOP FIVE (MA15+) ****

SBS ON DEMAND

This is not only the best movie thing accomplished stand-up comic Chris Rock will probably ever do. It is also one of the coolest and most endearing rom-coms of the past few years.

The plot is simply structured around 24 hours spent on the streets of New York City with Rock (playing a disillusioned movie idol) and co-star Rosario Dawson (a journalist).

However, if you’re expecting the pair to play it cute to win over the hearts ’n’ flowers crowd, you’ve come to the wrong place.

No, the way these two characters (both recovering alcoholics, as it turns out) keep walking, talking, connecting and disengaging throughout make them magnificently lively company

If you love Enid Blyton’s classics, you’ll love Swallows and Amazons.

The one that is an old-timey delight for kids

SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS (PG) ***

FOXTEL NOW

A charming, old-fashioned British family film, based on author Arthur Ransome’s much-loved novel for children. The year is 1935, and the five Walker children are on summer holidays with their mum (Kelly Macdonald) in the ultra-idyllic Lake District when they stumble upon a cute little boat named The Swallow.

After impulsively setting sail for a nearby island for a camp-out, the impish Walkers cross paths with two feisty sisters who call themselves ‘the Amazons’. After becoming fast friends, the posse become embroiled in a genteel mystery involving spies, journalists and standover men of ill repute.

The Enid Blyton-esque, picture-book-pretty vibe of the production is irresistible throughout.

Michael Keaton portrays McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc.

The one that reveals the secret history of Macca’s

THE FOUNDER (M) ***

STAN, GOOGLE

This intriguing biopic tells the little-known story of how the McDonald’s brand became a colossus in the world of fast food.

It was all the doing of a business-savvy travelling salesman named Ray Kroc (masterfully played by Michael Keaton), who stumbled upon the McDonalds operation by chance in the mid-1950s, when it was just a single burger joint in small-town California. Hardworking brothers Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) had no idea of the franchise goldmine they were sitting on.

While they tinkered with radical experiments in swift food preparation, Kroc swooped in and literally stole the business from under their noses.

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Tom Cruise caught in a Dubai sand storm in a scene from film Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.

The one that gets you ready for the next one

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL (M) ***1/2

NETFLIX

With a new Mission: Impossible flick (Fallout) hitting Australian cinemas next month, there’s no better to renew acquaintances with the long-running franchise. At its very best, Ghost Protocol has a leanness and meanness at its core that transcends all earlier M: I efforts.

A gritty, globetrotting adventure begins in the heart of Moscow, where veteran IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team (Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner) are blamed for the destruction of the Kremlin. To clear their name, the trio must take on dangerous undercover assignments in Dubai (watch out for a standout scene on the world’s tallest building) and Mumbai.

A fine effort, largely thanks to the inventive direction of Brad Bird (The Incredibles), and a starker tone more in keeping with Matt Damon’s Bourne series. Stunt work, special effects and combat choreography are all first-class, as is Cruise’s less-needier-than-usual performance.

Toni Collette and Matthew Goode’s performance can’t be faulted, but the material can.

The one that doesn’t leave much of a mark at all

BIRTHMARKED (MA15+) **

NETFLIX

Such are the incredible acting heights scaled by Toni Collette in the current cinema hit Hereditary that the next thing to come along bearing her name is almost doomed to disappoint.

So it goes for Birthmarked, a quirky comedy that fails to find many laughs in what seems a promising enough premise.

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Collette and co-star Matthew Goode play married scientists who treat their three children as living experiments. Holed away in exile deep in the woods, the kids are being deliberately reared and educated with fixed social-vocational aims in mind (one will be an artist, the others a pacifist and opinionated intellectual).

While the performances can’t really be faulted, the meekly oddball material they’re saddled with definitely can.