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.