Streaming guide: What to watch this weekend
The weather for our first weekend of second lockdown is perfect for staying indoors. So curl up on the couch to watch J-Lo as a mickey-slipping stripper or Bryan Cranston as a mobbed-up money launderer. Here’s what to stream this weekend.
Leigh Paatsch
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THE ONE WHERE J-LO HITS AN ALL-TIME HIGH
HUSTLERS (MA15+)
***1/2
FOXTEL, AMAZON
This ripping true-crime drama is dominated by women from start to finish. The females get the best of every scene as written. The males are just there for punctuation. This adaptation of the 2015 New York Magazine article ‘The Hustlers at Scores’ tells the story of a ring of mickey-slipping strippers who systematically drugged the clientele of an elite men’s club frequented by haplessly horny Wall Street types. Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) is the brains, the beauty and the body of the operation, which sees its victims swiftly parting company with their consciousness and their credit cards. Destiny (Constance Wu) is a conflicted second-in-command who can’t say no to the easy money, but can’t always endorse the treacherous tactics employed to make it. Lopez (a career-best for her) and Wu (now officially a rising star after this and Crazy Rich Asians) are a dynamic double act throughout, exploring a complicated relationship where the nurturing warmth of true friendship is slowly iced by a rising pile of cold hard cash.
THE ONE THAT’S PUNCHING CLEVER
ALI & CAVETT: THE TALE OF THE TAPES (PG)
**1/2
BINGE, FOXTEL
It is almost impossible to make a bad documentary about legendary heavyweight boxing champ and standout human being Muhammad Ali. While this new one is hardly the most essential of an extensive array of Ali docos, it also cannot fail to entertain or enlighten. Such is the boundless charisma and vitality of the man. The set-up is very simple here. The doco sifts through Ali’s twelve appearances on the US TV talk program The Dick Cavett Show, and finds gold just about everywhere. Footage spans the late 1960s through to the 1990s, and while Cavett is not that well known here in Australia, rest assured he is an intelligent and sharp interviewer who got the best out of the bloke they called ‘The Greatest’ time and time again.
THE ONE DRESSED FOR SUCCESS
LADIES IN BLACK (PG) ***1/2
FOXTEL
A sincerely sweet bundle of nostalgic joy, unwrapped amid a lovely, light-drenched and laid-back Sydney of yesteryear. It is the summer of 1959, and to while away an agonising wait for exam results that may get her into university, a bright teenager lands a position as a sales assistant at the city’s finest department store. While learning a little about style, commerce and customer service during working hours, Lisa (a luminous Angourie Rice) learns a lot about life after hours from Magda (Julia Ormond), the imperious head of the store’s glamour outfits section. Though the movie trades ably on its glorious looks – the period production design and vintage fashions are both exquisite – there is a thematic substance behind all that style which is not to be denied. The acting ensemble, which includes Rachael Taylor, Susie Porter, Noni Hazlehurst and promising newcomer Alison McGirr is flawless. In fact, it is hard to recall a better-cast Australian movie in recent times. Directed by Bruce Beresford from the novel by Madeleine St. John.
THE ONE THAT WINS THE DONKEY VOTE
THE MULE (MA15+) ***1/2
ABC IVIEW
The year is 1983. An Australian tourist returning a footy trip in Thailand has been detained by security officials at Tullamarine. There is reason to believe that the burly gentleman with the pants around his ankles and a torchlight illuminating his posterior might be carrying drugs of some kind. As it turns out, Ray Jenkins (played by Angus Sampson) is indeed transgressing the law. Lodged in his stomach a kilo of pure heroin. According to the legal fine print of the era, if the drugs leave Ray’s person within 7 days, it is jail time for a long time to come. But if Ray can stay in a state of suspended self-constipation for a full week, the fuzz have to let him go. Though there is a decidedly comic angle to this surreal standoff, The Mule is really a whip-smart crime film with an air of menace and a sly take on suburban Australian life that demands to be taken seriously. Co-stars Hugo Weaving, Ewen Leslie, Noni Hazlehurst.
THE ONE WHERE DOING A JOB MEANS DOING MUCH DAMAGE
THE ASSISTANT (M)
****
RENT VIA FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE PLAY, YOUTUBE MOVIES
This is a monster movie where you never actually get a direct line of sight on the belligerent beast. In this case, you do not need to. The unseen, unnamed creature in question is disgraced studio boss and serial sex abuser Harvey Weinstein. In a faintly fictionalised and unapologetically blunt manner, writer-director Kitty Green trains her focus on those who enabled the likes of Weinstein to exploit a staggering number of women. In particular, it is a female film production assistant named Jane (a mesmerising performance from Julia Garner) that we see reluctantly, yet relentlessly covering the tracks of her pathological philanderer of a boss. A movie that unfolds in a chilling ethical vacuum that says more about the #MeToo movement than you wish to know. Just as unsettling is the tough question posed to people such as Jane: can those who spend their days looking the other way still look at themselves in the mirror when those days are done?
THE ONE THAT CROSSES OVER TO THE NARC SIDE
THE INFILTRATOR (MA15+)
****
RENT VIA FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE PLAY, YOUTUBE MOVIES
Couldn’t get enough of the fine, ferociously precise acting work of Bryan Cranston in that torrid TV series Breaking Bad? Then you’ll be wanting to track down the compelling real-life crime drama. An utterly gripping true story unfolds in the late 1980s, a period where notorious Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel moved mountains of cocaine into the United States with ease. Cranston plays Robert Mazur, a US Customs agent based in Florida who went deep undercover as a mobbed-up money launderer to reach the highest echelons of the Medellin’s incredibly secretive operations.
THE ONE WITH PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
LOVING (PG)
****
SBS ON DEMAND
The quietly sobering and shocking true story of interracial married couple Richard and Mildred Loving (flawlessly played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), banished from their home state in 1958 for defying an edict that rendered their union illegal. You won’t find the usual tropes that accompany factual dramas with fires in their bellies. No big speeches, grandstanding theatrics or manipulative music score. Simply a poignant portrait of rebellion in its purest, most dignified form. Edgerton goes to another level here as an actor, by the way. He is now in the prime of his career. Directed by Jeff Nichols (Mud).
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