What to Watch • Streaming television • Streaming films
Streaming television
Amazon Prime Video
- The Capture has an intricately woven plot anchored in the issue of constant surveillance
AppleTV+
- Defending Jacob is a subdued mystery-distraction that looks stunning
- Home Before Dark: All the beguiling charm we need now
CBC Gem
- Whodunnit: CBC hits the true-crime jackpot with The Oland Murder
Crave
- HBO’s Run is a wild, strange, romantic ride for the risk-taking viewer (read our interview with showrunner Vicky Jones)
- The Plot Against America: History upended in a chilling cautionary tale
- HBO’s Westworld is back to drive you crazy with season 3, and thank goodness for that
CTV Drama Channel
- Killing Eve’s third season is killing it with dazzling energy and surprises
FX
- Mrs. America is a superbly-told story of the conservative backlash against feminism (read our interview with star Cate Blanchett and executive producer Stacey Sher)
Netflix
- How to be good: Ricky Gervais explores it all in second season of After Life (read our interview with Gervais)
- Dare Me is set in the world of competitive high-school cheerleading
- Feel Good: A Canadian makes a deliriously British rom-com
- Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood is inspiring, profound and thought-provoking (read our interview with star Jim Parsons)
- How one Mississauga teen beat out 15,000 other girls to star in Mindy Kaling’s new series Never Have I Ever
- Ozark’s third season is better but still messy and addictive
- The English Game, from Downton Abbey’s creator, is a sweet, sporting diversion
- The Valhalla Murders is the perfect crime-drama binge of the moment
- Tiger King is a hit because it makes our strange time more bearable
- No sex, no sin: Why Too Hot to Handle is an icky hit
Streaming films
Amazon Prime Video
- Selah and the Spades is the Clueless-meets-Godfather teen drama you never knew you needed (3 stars)
CBC Gem Hot Docs at Home series
- 9/11 Kids looks at American life through the eyes of the children sitting with George Bush that morning
- A Secret Love tells the story of a real-life League of Their Own player from Canada
- Finding Sally digs deep into Ethiopia’s diplomatic past for a whopper of a family secret
- Fake-art doc Made You Look sharply stokes skepticism of the one per cent’s favourite hobby (3 stars – read our interview with director Barry Avrich)
Crave
- HBO’s Bad Education offers Hugh Jackman the role of a lifetime (3 stars)
Netflix
- All Day and a Night gives Jeffrey Wright his delayed due, while affirming Ashton Sanders’s star power, too (3 stars – read our interview with Wright)
- Coffee & Kareem offers a double-double of vulgar trouble, thanks to Canadian director Michael Dowse (3 stars – read our interview with star Taraji P. Henson)
- Dangerous Lies is the Dollar Store version of Knives Out (1 star)
- Give Chris Hemsworth thriller Extraction a shot, if only for its tremendous one-shot action centrepiece (2.5 stars – read our interview with director Sam Hargrave)
- Love Wedding Repeat wants to be the Groundhog Day of marriage movies, but you’re best off saying, ‘I don’t’ (2 stars)
- Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story is a welcome shift from Netflix’s lurid true-crime docs (3 stars)
- United Nations drama Sergio fights the good fight, but succumbs to overly sexy silliness (2 stars)
- The Half of It is the admirably moodier cousin to the streaming giant’s sunny YA rom-com family (2.5 stars)
- The Platform is either the perfect, or worst, satire to watch while under COVID-19 self-isolation (3.5 stars)
- Tigertail is a beguiling blend of generational-divide drama and coming-to-America tension (3 stars – read our feature on director Alan Yang)
- Uncorked is a family drama as smooth, and safe, as merlot (2.5 stars)
- Zippy and dark The Willoughbys is here to save you from your Frozen 2-on-repeat nightmare (3 stars)
On-demand
- The wild, genre-hopping Bacurau’s innovative digital release may be the lifeline indie cinemas need right now (3.5 stars)
- Canadian zombie movie Blood Quantum is sharp colonialism take-down slash sticky splatter-thon (3 stars – read our interview with director Jeff Barnaby and actor Michael Greyeyes)
- Amateur and sloppy film Cave Rescue washes all the drama out of the 2018 Thai survival story (1.5 stars)
- Sloppy shoot-'em-up Guns Akimbo makes the Crank films look like subtle masterpieces of nuance (1 star)
- Abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a quietly devastating look at women’s health, and empathy (3.5 stars)
- Jesse Eisenberg-starring Resistance mines, but also mimes, a familiar Second World War story (2 stars – available on Apple TV)
- Unofficial Braveheart sequel Robert the Bruce is for anyone who has yet to see Mel Gibson’s epic. Or Netflix’s Outlaw King. Or read a history book (1.5 stars)
- Gerrymandering documentary Slay the Dragon turns politics’ least sexy word into a cri de coeur (3 stars)
- Swallow nearly chokes on its freak-show depiction of a genuine mental-health disorder (2 stars)
- Canadian drama Tammy’s Always Dying sorta tries, and sorta fails, to redeem Felicity Huffman (2 stars)
- The Informer is big and bloody ridiculousness, and another example of a lost Joel Kinnaman opportunity (2 stars)
- Canadian director Johnny Ma’s China-set To Sing to Live explores clashes between the old and new with empathy (3 stars – available on iTunes Canada)
- Why the glitter-drenched kiddie karaoke of Trolls World Tour might change the movie industry (2.5 stars)
- Timely but nerve-racking horror film Vivarium asks what it would be like if you could never escape your home (2.5 stars)
- Satanic-panic thriller We Summon the Darkness struggles to deliver itself from evil (2 stars)
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