Do you feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload Era. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
X-Men ′97 (Disney+)
Just like the cartoon X-Men, I have returned from an extended break in the cultural space. So my thanks to J. Kelly Nestruck – the Cyclops to my Wolverine – for covering this column while I was gone. But back to those darn X-Men, whose Saturday morning cartoon adventures dominated so many childhoods (including mine) during the show’s original 1992-97 Fox Television run. While Marvel Studios and corporate parent Disney are still figuring out exactly how to bring new live-action iterations of Professor X and Co. into the big-screen Marvel Cinematic Universe (this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine feature film should go some ways toward establishing a path forward), someone at the company made the exceptionally smart decision – we’re talking Mr. Sinister-level evil genius here – to resurrect/reboot the original X-Men cartoon for Disney+.
There are new storylines and characters in X-Men ‘97 – not to mention a darker, more mature energy – but the old-school, herky-jerky nineties animation remains the same, as does the all-timer theme song. The decision to keep one foot in the future and one in the past allows the series to hit all kinds of nostalgic pleasure centres for now-adult audiences, while also appealing to younger audiences who might be tired of the same old boring CGI animation dominating today’s animated landscape. Best of all: X-Men ‘97 has reunited most of the original series’ stellar voice cast, including Canadian performers Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, George Buza as Beast, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, and Lenore Zann (a one-time Liberal MP!) as Rogue.
Dune: Part Two (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)
Speaking of interesting studio-executive decisions: I’m sure that someone at Warner Bros. Discovery knows what they’re doing in allowing Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic to hit digital while it’s still sitting near the top of the theatrical box-office charts. Although perhaps Hollywood has just ceded the war of impatience, and sees an opportunity to make money hand over fist in the home-entertainment market (where they’ll get a larger cut of sales), leaving their partners in theatrical exhibition out to dry like so much an Arrakis sandworm.
Either way, audiences who haven’t yet had a chance to catch the eye-popping and ear-splitting Dune: Part Two the way it was meant to be seen (in IMAX) can now watch it on the screens of their choice. And while Villeneuve’s sequel is not as narratively flawless as the sands of desert planet of its title are harsh, the Quebec director’s epic arrives as a big, sincere and essential reminder that film is the home of true push-the-limit visionaries. It is a medium of transformative dreams and immersive nightmares. Or it can be when its powers are harnessed by artists like Villeneuve, a storyteller who is willing to spill the entirety of his imagination on the screen, damn the consequences – and size.
We’re All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel), Season 2 (Crave, starting April 19)
If anyone involved with the Order of Canada happens to read this column, here’s an idea: honour Jay Baruchel, posthaste. The actor/writer/director has to be one of this country’s most unabashedly patriotic performers, putting all his creative efforts and energies into building up a screen sector made by Canadians, for Canadians. And with the second season of his nifty and zippy docuseries project We’re All Gonna Die, Baruchel has also produced something both terrifyingly entertaining and hopeful at the same time.
As in the first season, each episode of We’re All Gonna Die tackles some awful threat to humanity, with Baruchel playing anxiety-wrecked inquisitor to experts on everything from artificial intelligence to insects. But while the deep-ish dives might initially provoke heart palpitations, each episode ends on a sort of warm and fuzzy note, with Baruchel suggesting that the end might not in fact be so nigh. Each slick half-hour episode also acts as a neat full-circle moment for Baruchel, given that the Montreal-raised actor got his start hosting another informative-yet-fizzy info-series, Popular Mechanics for Kids.
The Beekeeper (Prime Video, starting April 19)
There is no anxiety in this increasingly stressful world that cannot be soothed by watching Jason Statham kick someone in the throat. This is a universal truth known all too well by the makers of The Beekeeper, a knowingly ridiculous new entry into the all-powerful genre that I’m going to christen Cinema Stathama. You know the kind of movie: Statham plays a stoic badass who is equal parts bald and British (always British; the guy is the last movie star standing to never have attempted to perform in an accent other than his own). Whether his onscreen hero fights mercenaries, madmen or megalodons, Statham gets to save the day with a smirk while moviegoers get to experience the vicarious thrills of zero-consequence murder. Win-win, especially if the movie opens in the dead of January, a hungover stretch of non-time in which movies requiring audiences to exercise brain cells should be legally barred from opening. By Cinema Stathama considerations, The Beekeeper is a masterpiece – the best B(ee)-movie of the season.
Argylle (Apple TV+)
Consider this an anti-recommendation: No matter how many stars the new Apple TV+ spy thriller Argylle throws at the screen, and no matter how bored you might be any particular evening, your time will be spent in a far more economical manner staring at the wall, wondering how many coats of paint is ideal for the colour taupe. Maximizing director Matthew Vaughn’s worst habits (faux-cheeky violence set to disco-pop songs, chaotic editing, juvenile humour that gives a bad name to middle-schoolers) and jettisoning his best (the anarchic wit of Kick-Ass and the first Kingsman movie, the sharp casting and performances of Layer Cake and X-Men: First Class), the filmmaker’s latest is a marathon-length migraine that wastes not only hundreds of millions of Apple’s precious movie-studio dollars, but also the talents of stars Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cena and Henry Cavill.
Barry Hertz