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.
A Spy Among Friends (Prime Video)
Anna Maxwell Martin and Damian Lewis in A Spy Among Friends.Sony Pictures Television
A first-class, old-school espionage thriller, the new Prime Video series A Spy Among Friends is pure Cold War comfort food. Based on the bestselling non-fiction book by master intelligence-agency chronicler Ben Macintyre (Operation Mincemeat, The Spy and the Traitor), the new series follows the real-life friendship between MI6 agents Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) from the Second World War to the 1960s. The big twist, which is revealed right off the top: Philby is a double agent working for the KGB. The pleasure in where the series goes from there is figuring out just how Philby deceived his closest friend, and what happens to a man who turns his back not just on his country, but his entire life. Pearce is great as (almost) always as the shifty Philby, who recounts part of his tale to his new KGB handler after defecting to the Soviet Union. But it is Lewis who surprises as the wounded Elliott – the actor perhaps could have been typecast as the turncoat Philby after his time on Homeland, but he is so much better used as a man whose reality is completely shattered.
Project Wolf Hunting (on-demand, including Apple TV and Google Play)
Director Hong-seon Kim’s Project Wolf Hunting.Cheum Film
The sickest, most bananas Midnight Madness entry in this past fall’s Toronto International Film Festival – which is really saying something – the South Korean slasher Project Wolf Hunting is a dozen cult movies crammed into one demented package. At first, director Hong-seon Kim’s film presents itself as a standard cops versus criminals saga, with police tasked with transporting dangerous prisoners aboard a freighter. But then it is revealed that the officials are also transporting one very dangerous superhuman weapon that threatens to wipe out both good and bad guys alike. Supremely violent and knowingly silly, Project Wolf Hunting is perfect weekend viewing for those looking for a blood-soaked blast.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Netflix)
Mila Kunis and Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures
For those looking for more heart and less blood this post-Valentine’s Day weekend, you could turn on the new Ashton Kutcher-Reese Witherspoon rom-com Your Place or Mine ... but I can’t exactly tell you whether that is a good or bad idea, given that Netflix didn’t make the film available to critics. So instead I’ll point the lovebirds out there toward one of the best, funniest rom-coms of the past decade and a half: 2008′s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Featuring a prime sad-sack performance from Jason Segel and delightfully no-nonsense love-interest work by Mila Kunis, director Nicholas Stoller’s Hawaii-set film holds up incredibly well. Especially once you realize that they quite literally don’t make them like this any more, thanks to studios pretty much abandoning the genre a few years ago, letting streamers like Netflix pick up the pieces. (You’ll have to ask Kutcher and Witherspoon how that plan is going.)
La La Land (Paramount+)
Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land.Dale Robinette/Courtesy of Entertainment One
More good news for the lovebirds out there: Damian Chazelle’s La La Land has made its way to nascent streamer Paramount+. With its instantly classic musical numbers, hypnotizing colour scheme, ridiculously smooth choreography, and Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s palpable level of chemistry (there’s a reason why these two have worked together three times now), the film dances its way into your heart with an almost stupid level of ease. And then right after watching it, you can give your head a spin by playing Chazelle’s Babylon, which is as (intentionally) disorienting as La La Land is smooth.
Jerry Maguire (CTV app)
Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire.Columbia TriStar via The Associated Press
The latest stop on my 2023 Tom Cruise marathon in the lead-up to the new Mission: Impossible sequel is perhaps the actor’s high-water mark, and sad proof that Hollywood simply isn’t interested in making these kind of original, low-concept character dramas. Writer-director Cameron Crowe’s 1996 film about a sports agent (Cruise) who suffers an existential crisis is a tiny little gem, all these years later: the dialogue is crisp, the pacing perfect, and the casting impeccable. Not only Cruise, but also a young Renée Zellweger as the single-mom Dorothy who pulls Jerry from the brink, Bonnie Hunt as Dorothy’s disapproving sister, and, yes, Cuba Gooding Jr. as the cocky wide receiver who is Jerry’s one last hope. I don’t care how annoying “Show me the money!” turned out to be in the ensuing years – Gooding’s performance, and the rest of the movie, deserve to be remembered forever.
Barry Hertz