What’s new to VOD and streaming this weekend
Including reviews of The Little Things, The Dig, Palmer, Jiu Jitsu and Penguin Bloom. By Norman Wilner and Glenn Sumi
Jan 29, 2021
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OW critics pick what’s new to streaming and VOD for the weekend of January 29. Plus: Everything new to VOD and streaming platforms.
The Little Things
(John Lee Hancock)
Set in 1990 – just before cell phones and forensics would have resolved its dumb, brooding story in minutes instead of hours – The Little Things spins out its threadbare procedural narrative as though it were exquisite serial-killer noir. Denzel Washington plays Joe “Deke” Deacon, a Bakersfield sheriff’s deputy who used to be an ace detective in Los Angeles. While visiting L.A. on routine business, he learns of a woman who appears to be the latest victim of a murderer Deke was hunting five years earlier, leading Deke to join forces with the hotshot (Rami Malek) currently on the case. Washington is rock-solid as Deke, playing him as a broken man grasping at straws in search of redemption. But nothing else in the movie is up to his standard; not writer/director Hancock’s dull script, which depends on mind games that just aren’t that interesting, nor his pedestrian approach to telling his story. By the time it introduces a bug-eyed Jared Leto as Deke’s prime suspect, The Little Things has already lost all hope of being interesting. And that’s before a climactic flurry of twists that’s meant to make us question everything we’ve seen… but only leave us wondering why these actors thought this movie was a good use of their time. 128 min.
28 January 2021
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Mongolia is to honor its best-known rock band, The HU, with the release of a special Bank of Mongolia commemorative silver and gold coin featuring the fast-rising Ulan Bator folk-metal quartet.
Currently adorning the cover of January’s Metal Hammer, The Hu have been ear marked as one of the bands taking metal into a new era, The HU are enjoying a high profile start to their 2021, and the minting of this new coin, scheduled for release next month, can only boost the quartet’s profile further.
Speaking in this month’s Metal Hammer, the group are keenly aware that they’re now being looked at as trailblazers for the Mongolian music scene, and indeed the global metal scene, but are relishing the challenge of reaching a wider audience.
Alone Review: An Entertainingly Tenebrous Take on the Survival Road Thriller
Alone Review: An Entertainingly Tenebrous Take on the Survival Road Thriller
Alone is a pulse-pounding entertainingly tenebrous take on the standard chased by a maniac thriller.
Road thrillers are a fun subgenre with few misses, and while many favor electrifying action sequences and zany charm in their psychotic assailants, recently-released
Alone relies on a remote, woodsy setting and an emotionless feel to pull audiences along a grimmer road to survival.
Given we're still sitting deep in the strictly streaming period of films that will continue unforeseeably, I'm grateful for anything new and remotely interesting hitting a platform I use.
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The actress completed her look with a green suede purse, blue corduroy jeans and multi-colored Vans sneakers.
Lena's look: Headey was spotted wearing a black long-sleeved top with multi-colored crescent moons and stars
The 300 star was not seen with her new beau, actor Marc Menchaca, who she was first linked to back in late October.
The relationship comes just after Headey split with her childhood friend Dan Cadan in 2019, after one year of marriage.
The exes share five-year-old daughter Teddy together, and the actress also has a 10-year-old son Wylie from her first marriage to musician Peter Loughran.
New beau: The 300 star was not seen with her new beau, actor Marc Menchaca, who she was first linked to back in late October
New on DVD: 'Synchronic' takes twists through time
Katie Foran-McHale
Tribune News Service
One man's treacherous time-travel tops the new DVD releases for the week of Jan. 26.
"Synchronic": Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) have worked together as New Orleans EMTs for decades, and as such, their flaws and their wounds sit near the surface of their friendship. Frequently hungover Steve is in his 40s and still partying; Dennis resents this, as well as his role as husband to Tara (Katie Aselton) and dad to Brianna (Ally Ionannides), who's leaving home soon. But things shift after a bizarre, disturbing call from dispatch, wherein Steve is stabbed and they find a long serrated weapon that doesn't seem from this day and age jammed into the wall ("Time is a lie" is also scrawled on the other side of the room, a relatable message for the quarantine era).
Exclusive: Dread Talks the Journey to ALONE With Director Hyams and Writer/Producers Olsson & Åkesson By Jerry Smith
Alone was one this writer loved (
top 10 of 2020 list). It’s rare for a film to really knock me on my ass, so to speak, so when this road trip from hell graced us with its presence last year, it caught us all off guard.
After championing the film for a while, I had the pleasure of speaking with Henrik JP Åkesson (producer of
Alone) and Mattias Olsson (writer of
Alone) regarding not only 2020’s exceptional pressure cooker, but the long journey of bringing the film to life. A journey that began with the Olsson-written and Åkesson-directed film