Streaming guide: What to watch this weekend
Maggie Gyllenhaal has disappeared from movie screens over the past decade, but one of the finest actors of her generation breaks her six-year exile with a mesmerising performance worth streaming. Here’s what else to watch this weekend.
Weekly Guide
Don't miss out on the headlines from Weekly Guide. Followed categories will be added to My News.
In need of something to watch this weekend? Leigh Paatsch has it sorted for you.
THE ONE THAT WELCOMES BACK A GREAT
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (M)
***1/2
FOXTEL GO
Maggie Gyllenhaal has all but disappeared from movie screens in the past decade. It borders on inconceivable that one of the finest actors (male or female) of her generation is breaking a six-year exile from cinemas.
Though the film marking her return has its slight flaws, Gyllenhaal’s mesmerising performance has none whatsoever.
She plays Lisa Spinelli, a selfless New York kindergarten teacher experiencing a devastating identity crisis triggered by an unlikely source.
When Lisa discovers one of her infant students can compose and recite poetry of the highest, heart-rending calibre, her own carefully nurtured suite of talents – as a mother, educator and aspiring writer – fall apart alarmingly.
Gyllenhaal’s eerie chemistry with her 5-year-old co-star Parker Sevak channels instincts both maternal and Machiavellian. Until all we can see is someone so protective of another, it can only harm them both.
THE ONE WITH A SITE FOR PAW RISE
PET SEMATARY (MA15+)
****
Rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
The current golden era for high-concept, hellishly impacting horror we are living through continues with this excellent contemporary shocker based on the book by Stephen King.
All you need to know is that a city family has moved up-country to a spread abutting an ancient animal burial ground.
When their house cat carks it, then reappears days later as if nothing has happened, Dad (Jason Clarke), Mum (Amy Seimetz) and the kids (Jeté Laurence, Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) learn a little more about reincarnation than anyone should ever know.
This three-way collision between the whoa!, the wow! and the WTF? effortlessly induces fear, pokes fun and scars the memory.
THE ONE THAT IS ALL ABOUT THE PERFECT FIT
PHANTOM THREAD (M)
****
NETFLIX
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a renowned dress designer in 1950s England for whom fashion in not just a living.
Inside his focused mind, it is a living art form that transcends mere aesthetic excellence. Woodcock’s obsession has come at the expense of forming lasting relationships with the opposite sex.
That is until he falls under the spell of Alma (impressive newcomer Vicky Krieps), a self-assured young woman not about to settle for being anyone’s temporary muse.
The difficult romance that follows – and the eerie shift in intensity it brings to the designer’s work – is filtered through a captivating performance from Day-Lewis.
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia).
THE ONE WHERE IT PAYS NOT TO STAY
ESCAPE ROOM (M)
**1/2
FOXTEL GO
This enjoyably trashy thriller sometimes tiptoes into the horror realm, then thinks better of it.
The movie is cashing in on the current popularity of real-life escape rooms, where problem-solving punters are voluntarily locked away in a tricked-out enclosed space, then must correctly interpret whatever clues are lying around to find the exit.
It is in one such digital-age maze that we find a random group of strangers, all of whom have received the same invitation to go and get lost.
The first to make their way out gets $10,000 cash. And what of the others? Well, it is no spoiler to record that for some contestants, the game may be over before they ever get near that one door to freedom.
The players are a bland bunch of one-trait wonders (there’s a cocky one, a nerdy one, a needy one, a greedy one and so on), but that doesn’t matter so much.
The real star of the show is the ever-changing environment in which they are stuck, which can replicate anything from the inside of an oven to an open-air snowstorm.
THE ONE THAT KEEPS RAISING THE BAA
SHAUN THE SHEEP (G)
****
NETFLIX, FOXTEL GO
It was 25 years ago that the movie biz first took a gambol on young Shaun as a bit-part player in Wallace and Gromit’s Oscar-winning short A Close Shave.
Some 100-plus solo TV shows since then has Shaun and his Mossy Bottom Farm posse more than ready to take their big-screen bow.
The end result is a relentless delight, a kooky adventure yarn where Shaun must venture to The Big City to rescue The Farmer, who has come down with amnesia.
The ever-inventive stop-motion claymation of Aardman Studios holds the key, of course. There’s always something happening somewhere in every single frame of an Aardman production, and the in-jokes and out-there flights of fancy just never let up here.
THE ONE WHERE LIFE CAN BE TOO CRUEL FOR SCHOOL
THE DUFF (M)
***
NETFLIX, STAN
Why the title? It’s an acronym, standing for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, a social stereotype that supposedly acts as a buffer between attractive young females and any possible young male suitors. Ouch.
This being a Hollywood movie and all, the young woman who has been slapped with this less-than-flattering label is neither ugly, nor fat.
However, Bianca (Mae Whitman) does wear overalls a lot, which definitely makes her look a darn sight dowdier than her two hot best friends.
What follows is a moderately astute, consistently entertaining teen comedy about the evils of social-media shaming and the healing power of just being yourself.
Co-stars Ken Jeong, Alison Janney.
THE ONE WHOSE VOTE DOESN’T QUITE COUNT
THE FRONT RUNNER (M)
**
FOXTEL GO
Not often you see any movie get the better of Hugh Jackman.
Nevertheless, this dramatically impotent sex-scandal drama does a real number on the likeable and hardworking Australian star.
That wonky wig glued to his noggin is certainly a slight eyesore throughout. But hardly compares to the intense earsore caused by the empty platitudes and unconvincing denials continually coming out of Jackman’s gob.
In a selectively accurate telling of a true story that melted down the media in 1988, Jackman plays ill-fated US Presidential aspirant, Gary Hart.
During a break from the campaign trail, Hart was sighted on a boat off the coast of Florida in the arms of a woman that was not his wife. The boat’s name was Monkey Business. The woman’s name was Donna Rice.
The movie barely bothers depicting the incident or giving much of a voice to the traumatised Rice, preferring to instead lament how the hapless Hart and his advisers tried and failed to weather the media storm that followed.
READ MORE:
FORD V FERRARI: DAMON, BALE AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME