Streaming guide: What to watch this week

FROM true crime masterpieces to dark sci fi and a Hemsworth on horseback — Leigh Paatsch has your couch time covered. Here’s your guide to what’s new on Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Now and Google Play.

MAKE the most of the miserable weather with some quality couch time. Leigh Paatsch runs the rule over the latest movies and shows on your streaming services.

REVIEW: INCREDIBLES 2 WORTH THE WAIT

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The one to watch ‘cos you’re a true-crime treasure seeker

THE STAIRCASE (MA15+) *****

NETFLIX

Long before the true-crime genre became a thing on TV and in podcasts, there was The Staircase. Originally conceived as an 8-part docu-series in 2004, the ongoing mysteries surrounding the death of Kathleen Peterson have prompted further episodes over the years. Netflix recently added three more gripping instalments to the collection, and is now home to all 13 episodes of this enigmatically electrifying investigation.

Michael Petersen in a scene from Netflix drama The Staircase. Picture: Supplied

For those unfamiliar with the case, the basic facts run like this. On the night of December 9th, 2001, North Carolina mum Kathleen Petersen was found lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase in her home. Her husband Michael made the emergency 911 call and tried to save her. Was Kathleen the simple victim of a fall? Or did an unknown intruder push her? Was any of this really a surprise to her supposedly distraught spouse? The series attempts to answer these and many other baffling questions with a degree of forensic detail and storytelling sophistication rarely seen on the small screen. Unmissable stuff.

The one to watch ‘cos the world cup has started

GOAL! (M) **1/2

STAN

There is a bulky bundle of sports movie cliches to sort through here if you do intend to follow the rise of wizardly soccer winger Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker) from illegal Mexican immigrant to first-team regular in the English Premier League. Scripting and acting are a nil-all draw, but there is plenty of well-shot on-pitch perfection to please world football fans. If you are feeling particularly game, the saga stretches out to a trilogy — all of which can be found exclusively on Stan — with further instalments venturing to La Liga, the Champions League and, gulp, the World Cup.

Cruise delivers his best performance in ages in American Made. Picture: Universal Pictures

The one that has guns, fun and a man on the run

AMERICAN MADE (MA15+) ***1/2

FOXTEL NOW

Tom Cruise (delivering his best work in ages) plays Barry Seal, a small-time airline pilot recruited by the CIA to conduct top-secret surveillance flights across Latin America in the late 1970s. Seal also made a sneaky fortune running cocaine for notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Smith’s operations later expanded to delivering guns to rebel militia in Nicaragua, again with the covert support of US authorities (who even bought him a private airport and a fleet of planes). It must be said that the movie is much more effective at making light of Seal’s dangerously strange predicament than making sense of it. Nevertheless, the knowledge this actually happened — and could surely never happen again — keeps the vibe both fascinating and recklessly upbeat.

The one that has guns, no fun and a war to be won

12 STRONG (MA15+) ****

GOOGLE PLAY, ITUNES

A quietly impressive war movie, based on the true story of the 2001 military operation code-named Task Force Dagger. In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, a tiny US Special Forces unit — yes, there was only 12 of them — was sent to Afghanistan to lead a crucial offensive against the Taliban and al-Qaida. Conditions upon arrival were as punishing as they were primitive. The Daggers had little option but to do their best work on horseback, joining forces with a local war lord to gain control of a city of immense strategic significance in what would become the long-running ‘War on Terror’. A quality cast is led by Australia’s Chris Hemsworth, playing an inspirational squad captain who had never seen live combat before.

The one that brings on an incurable case of Scarlett fever

UNDER THE SKIN (MA15+) ****

STAN

It is a Scarlett Johansson movie, but not as we know it. It is a sci-fi movie, but then again, it is not. It might be a private joke. Or it could be a public service announcement, warning of the dangers of getting picked up by ScarJo in an unmarked moving van. Johansson plays a strange, solitary woman who spends her time prowling the roads of Scotland, luring men towards an eerily enigmatic date with fate. Many viewers — especially those possibly enthused by the news that Johansson misplaces all of her clothing on repeated occasions throughout — are going to find Under the Skin too abrasively abstract for words. Others prepared to extend the film both the respect and suspicion it truly deserves are going to be in for one of the most hauntingly unique experiences of the present decade. Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast).

Another one to watch ‘cos the World Cup has started

ZIDANE: A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT (G) ****1/2

YOUTUBE

One of the finest meditations on the round-ball religion ever filmed is yet to take a bow on the usual platforms, but it well worth the trackdown on YouTube. This is a hypnotic on-field portrait of the great French football artisan Zinedine Zidane, shot the year before the calamitous end to his career at the 2006 World Cup. During a standard weekend La Liga fixture in Spain, 17 cameras stationed around the arena are trained solely on Zidane’s every glorious move. If you believe soccer is indeed the beautiful game, then you’re destined to fall hopelessly in love with what you see here.

If you love football, you’ll love Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Picture: AFP

The one that will make you wish it would stay winter forever

THREE SUMMERS (M) *

FOXTEL NOW

A lifeless Australian comedy from go to whoa to no. This dumpster-fire-with-dialogue lethargically gathers all the sketchy caricatures writer-director Ben Elton can think of. The plot stretches a multitude of thin storylines across an annual folk music festival. Characters who have got it wrong about how to be a good parent, a good spouse, a good lover, a good kid or a good multicultural citizen will eventually come to their senses and get it right. But not before a viewer’s patience — or goodwill towards an appealing homegrown cast which includes Michael Caton, Deborah Mailman and Magda Szubanski — has been completely vaporised.

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