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.
What to watch in 2023: Our favourite new movies
Platonic (Apple TV+)
It is almost the end of the summer, and still almost no one is talking about Platonic, the best comedy series that the streaming gods have delivered in ages. The 10-episode half-hour series follows two friends from college whose lives have drifted apart since taking on the burdens of adulthood. Sylvia (Rose Byrne) is a loving mother of three, tucked away in a cramped Los Angeles house and itching to get back into the legal field. Will (Seth Rogen) sits on the opposite end of things, single and relatively carefree after recently going through a divorce, his only responsibility tending to the tanks at the hipster-cool bar where he’s brewmaster. The pair reconnect after Sylvia notices an Instagram post from his ex, and from there proceed to rekindle – and then frequently disrupt – their friendship. As with most Judd Apatow-adjacent projects, the story here isn’t so much the thing as the vibe, as witty as it is warm. Every episode is beautifully shot, every role filled by an ace comic bit player, every song a bouncy banger. It’s not too late to fall in love with Platonic. Read review.
Who Killed Maggie Moore(s)? (Hoopla)
Through a combination of bad luck and worse timing, Jon Hamm has become the unofficial king of unfairly lost-to-VOD comedies. You really had to have your ear to the ground to have heard of Hamm’s Confess, Fletch from last year, even though the comedy is a stone-cold classic. And while the new dark comedy Who Killed Maggie Moore(s) – titled simply Maggie Moore(s) in some territories – isn’t as fine-tuned, it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable romp. Directed by Hamm’s former Mad Men boss John Slattery, the film stars Hamm as a small-town police chief who gets entangled with a murder-for-hire scheme that quickly goes Fargo. Co-starring Hamm’s one-time 30 Rock paramour Tina Fey, the film is an enjoyably slippery concoction that further proves Hamm has the leading-man chops that major studios so desperately need.
White Lie (Paramount+)
A character study that doubles as a ticking-clock thriller – or perhaps it’s the other way around – the excellent 2020 Canadian film White Lie focuses on university student Katie (Kacey Rohl), who has been faking a cancer diagnosis for the past few months. Every morning, she shaves her head, adopts an exhausted demeanour and lets the charade play out for dollars and sympathy. The trick has gone along smoothly enough so far – even Katie’s girlfriend (Amber Anderson) has been fooled – but as the movie opens, life is quickly catching up with the lie. This leaves Katie with about 48 hours to procure a forged medical record and keep her skeptical, estranged father (Martin Donovan) from blowing up her charade on social media. With its go-go-go pace, skeevy protagonist and nail-biting narrative, White Lie recalls Josh and Benny Safdie’s Adam Sandler vehicle Uncut Gems, albeit with a few million dollars less in its production budget. But just as the Safdies were only as successful as their anti-hero – and the shape-shifting comic actor who played him – co-directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas can trace a good deal of their film’s energy directly to Rohl, who is in the centre of almost every second of White Lie’s action.
Alice, Darling (Crave)
The directorial debut of Mary Nighy (daughter of newly Oscar-nominated actor Bill), the 2022 drama Alice, Darling starts off with an air of uncertain, nervy energy, introducing us to the title character (Anna Kendrick), a career-minded young woman enjoying her best life in Toronto, or at least an unnamed major metropolis that never hides its Toronto-ness. Alice seems to be successful at work and home, living in a fashionable apartment with her charming artist boyfriend, Simon (Charlie Carrick). But look closer just an inch, and there is something deeply unsettling about Alice’s bubble of a life. As Alice is pushed further and further to recognize Simon’s pettiness and anger, Kendrick is forced to explore dark, uncomfortable, complicated places – a challenge that the actress has rarely been asked to take on. Read review.
Riceboy Sleeps (Crave)
The second feature from the Vancouver-based Anthony Shim, Riceboy Sleeps is a fully bilingual affair that jumps decades and continents, bursting with ambition and energy, albeit in that quietly Canadian kind of way. A brief but dense prologue establishes Riceboy Sleeps’ backstory: So-young (Choi Seung-yoon) was orphaned at birth in South Korea. After meeting a man, falling in love and becoming pregnant, So-young was soon left alone again when her partner killed himself. With nowhere and no one in her homeland to turn to, the young woman moved to Canada to make a fresh start for herself and her newborn son, Dong-Hyun. The film is as impressive in its technical approach as it is in its storytelling. Shim shoots coverage with a single camera, affording the director luxurious single-take scenes that allow the audience to watch the action like secret observers hiding in the shadows of a room. And when the film’s action moves from Canada back to South Korea, the director shifts the aspect ratio to emphasize the wide, open space and possibilities of a home country that stretches forward, wide and seemingly endless. Read review.
Barry Hertz