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
The Dig: Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown 28 January, 2021 01:00
Possessor: Andrea Riseborough as Tanya Vos
THE DIG (Cert 12, 111 mins, streaming from January 29 exclusively on Netflix, Drama/Romance/War)
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Johnny Flynn, Lily James, Ben Chaplin, Monica Dolan, Ken Stott.
TERMINALLY-ill widow Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) is convinced that treasures lie beneath the surface of the grassy burial mounds on her estate in Suffolk.
With the Second World War beckoning, she hires pipe-smoking archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to excavate the site. I ve been on digs since I was old enough to hold a trowel, he confides warmly.
Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan rethink their safety protocols in The Dig
THE DIG (Simon Stone). 112 minutes. Available to stream Friday (January 29) on Netflix Canada. Rating:
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Not very much happens in The Dig, the new Netflix period drama about an archaeological excavation in Suffolk just before the start of the Second World War.
There is a dig, obviously, undertaken by Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) at the behest of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), a widowed mother convinced that the ancient mounds on her land are hiding something of historical value. And over the course of a summer, as Basil works the land, he and Edith come to understand each other very well.
CST
Netflix presents a film directed by Simon Stone and written by Moira Buffini, based on the novel by John Preston. Rated PG-13 (for brief sensuality and partial nudity). Running time: 112 minutes. Opens Friday at Landmark Century Centre and on Netflix. Based on a 2007 novel by John Preston that was inspired by the incredible true story of one of the most significant British archaeological finds ever, “The Dig” maintains a dignified and restrained approach, even when the material gets a little salacious in the form of not one but two “forbidden” romances. Melodramatic relationship developments aside, this is primarily about the well-off widow Edith Pretty (Mulligan) and the skilled but relatively unschooled excavator and amateur archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), who in 1939 is hired by Edith to poke around the mounds of earth on the property of her house at Sutton Hoo. (Stories had been circulating for years about potential treasure buried beneath the la
Johnny Flynn and Lily James in
The Dig.
Photo by Larry Horricks/Netflix When archaeologists appear in movies, it’s almost always as part of some treasure-hunting adventure. From Indiana Jones to Lara Croft to
The Mummy, the story tends to forgo the actual process of finding ancient relics and focus instead on the danger that characters must go through in order to get them. A very different type of archaeologist is at the center of
The Dig. In 1939, Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) is hired by Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) to excavate mounds on her English country estate, Sutton Hoo. Both suspect they were some kind of long-forgotten burial sites, but neither has any clue what they will actually find there.