From honorable Cannes award winners to a fun new action series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, this week has your high and low brow entertainment needs covered. Taut indie dramas meet mega blockbusters across streaming services. Plus, there are a few throwbacks that any movie lover will enjoy.
What to watch on Netflix
https://youtu.be/f6A56zcGeWE
FUBAR
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro star in this new action comedy. FUBAR (which stands for “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition”) features the action star as an undercover CIA agent on the verge of retirement who gets called back into the field for one last mission. While there, he discovers that his daughter has been hiding the same secret, and they’ve both been lying to each other about what they really do for years. But daddy-daughter issues be damned, as the two have to band together and take on their enemies as a family. FUBAR premiered Thursday, May 25th.
What to watch on Hulu
The Square
With the Cannes Film Festival currently in full swing, why not immerse yourself in some of the festival’s recent history with The Square? This 2017 Palme d’Or winner has the distinction of being written and directed by this year’s Jury president, Ruben Östlund, who also won the Palme last year for his Oscar-nominated Triangle of Sadness. The Square lampoons the contemporary art scene, taking a sharply satirical look at the ultra-privileged. Ambitiously excessive and irreverently odd, the film centers on a museum curator who goes a bit too far with a PR stunt. The Square will be available to stream starting Wednesday, May 31st.
Broker
This week’s list keeps the Cannes party going with last year’s Broker. Written and directed by frequent festival participant Hirokazu Kore-eda, this film focuses on a pair of laundry workers who secretly run a black-market baby adoption scheme out of their church. When a mother who left her newborn returns to see what has become of her child, she discovers the plot and decides to initiate a road trip with the men to find the potential parents. Naturally, they’re also on the verge of being discovered by the authorities. Parasite’s Song Kang-ho stars. Broker started streaming earlier this week.
What to watch on Amazon Prime
The Way Back
Few movie stars have gone through as many phases and stages in Hollywood as Ben Affleck. From Oscar-winning screenplay writer to action headliner to renowned director to superhero, he’s done enough to be a marquee name several times over. This is all to say that his recent pivot to lower-key dramas is all the more interesting, starting with 2020’s The Way Back. Affleck stars as a down-and-out alcoholic ironworker who deals with his traumatic family life by agreeing to coach the local high school basketball team, where he was a star as a teenager. Heartfelt and deeply emotional, it’s a fantastic spotlight for the actor. The Way Back is available to stream until the end of the month.
What to watch on Max
Reality
In Reality, Sydney Sweeney takes on a character quite different from the hair-twirling teenagers she’s known for playing. This drama sees the actress play Reality Winner, the woman arrested and imprisoned for leaking information to the media about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Directed by artist Tina Satter, Reality is adapted from her play Is This a Room, which takes directly from the transcript of the FBI’s interrogation of Winner. The film endeavors to take place in an almost real time, making the interrogation (and its inevitable outcome) all the more suspenseful and dread-inducing. Reality premieres Monday, May 29th.
What to watch on Disney Plus
Indiana Jones
If the Cannes coverage hasn’t gotten you excited for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, then maybe a massive Indy marathon will. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are all making the daring expedition to Disney Plus at the end of the month in anticipation of the newest entry in the franchise. From the 1984 debut of recent Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan to the iconic moment of Harrison Ford’s Indy bringing a gun to a knife fight, the series encapsulates cinematic history. All four Indiana Jones films will be available to stream starting Wednesday, May 31st.
What to watch on Peacock
Tár
The sheer brilliance of Tár may start with Cate Blanchett’s intense performance, but that’s hardly where it ends. Todd Field’s undefinable dramatic masterpiece stars the perennial award winner as conductor and composer Lydia Tár, whose transgressions both past and present come back to haunt her. Though the film takes place in the ultra niche, purposely pretentious world of contemporary classical music, it is an engrossing and absorbing piece of work. Plus, it has a closing scene worth gasping and cackling at, one that you’ll certainly be thinking about long after the credits roll. Tár streams until the end of the month.
What to Watch is a regular endorsement of movies and TV worth your streaming time.
