Before you turn on your television, iPad or laptop this weekend and drown in movie options, The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz presents three streaming bets that are worth your coveted downtime – even though they might make you miss the theatre more than you already do.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Crave
Dwayne Johnson, left, and Jason Statham in a scene from Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.Universal Pictures via AP
I’m with you, guys: The past few weeks have been dreadful – marathons in doom and gloom and anxiety. So for this edition of Full Stream Ahead, it’s pure, unadulterated action-packed escapism. But just because a film is packed with explosions doesn’t mean it has to be dumb. Each selection this week is instead knowingly dumb – you can check your brain at the door, but rest assured that the filmmakers did nothing of the sort. First up is this slice of hot-and-heavy ridiculousness from the minds of the forever-strong Fast & Furious franchise. Hobbs & Shaw will not develop any brain cells – you knew that already – but it is two fiery hours of planes, Dwaynes (as in Johnson) and automobiles. Um, maybe ignore the part of the film that revolves around a deadly virus, and just enjoy the many muscles and machine guns on display.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Netflix
Tom Cruise, seen here in a scene from Mission: Impossible – Fallout, is something of a next-generation human, writes Barry Hertz.Chiabella James/Paramount Pictures and Skydance via AP
When Tom Cruise’s latest Mission: Impossible film came out two years ago, I riffed that the actor was a living, breathing manifestation of pure determination. Exhausting himself to the brink in order to entertain, Cruise is the platonic ideal of a movie star. But Cruise is also something of a next-generation human. He runs, jumps, dives and thrusts himself into the action here with a delirious and insatiable glee – all while cocking his eyebrow, smirking and asking whether that’s all mortality’s got, huh? It is a lesson for us all.
The Warriors, Amazon Prime Video
Walter Hill’s 1979 urban warfare classic The Warriors is violent and dated, but fun as hell, writes Hertz.Paramount Pictures
If you have somehow gone this long without witnessing the grindhouse thrills of Walter Hill’s 1979 urban warfare classic, well, in the words of one of the film’s clownish street fighters: “Come out and plaaaaaaaayyyyyyy.” Very loosely updating the ancient Greek writer Xenophon’s Anabasis, The Warriors follows one New York City gang that must make a perilous journey from the Bronx to their home turf in Brooklyn after their members are framed for the murder of a rival. It is broad and angry and violent and dated … and also fun as hell.
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Barry Hertz