Pre-Christmas offerings from streaming platforms

As someone who grew up within 100 yards of two cinemas, I was going to films almost as soon as I could walk. If someone told me I wouldn’t be in one more than a dozen times this year I’d probably have told them to send for the men in the white coats. But that’s what happened with the coronavirus. More often than not I had to exchange the big screen for the small one.

Referring to television as ‘the small screen’ is probably a misnomer nowadays. When we got our first set in 1962 it certainly was minute but today, particularly with people who’ve installed home cinemas,  the term is hardly applicable. Nothing can compare with the atmosphere of a cinema to get the full film experience but widescreen televisions help to reprise it somewhat.

As we get closer to Christmas you may wish to order some of the yuletide classics like Holiday Inn or It’s a Wonderful Life but the likelihood is that these will be on some television channel or other anyway, which would make such purchases superfluous.

Veering away from seasonal fare, Sky Atlantic has The Undoing, a six-part thriller that’s also viewable on NOW TV. Hugh Grant plays an oncologist who’s married to therapist Nicole Kidman. Their cosy world is turned upside down when a mysterious woman is murdered. Mr Grant’s character had an affair with her but denies having had anything to do with her murder.

Along similar lines, in The Bay of Silence, available on DVD and download, stars that fine Scottish actor Brian Cox. He plays a character who begins to suspect his wife may have been involved in their son’s death.

The BBC Player has Steve McQueen’s anti-racist drama Small Axe. It’s based on the real-life experiences of London’s West Indies community between 1969 and 1982. Another film on a related theme is Time, available on Amazon Prime. It’s a documentary about a black woman battling to get her husband’s 60 year prison sentence for robbery reduced.

Documentary

On the IFI Home Player there’s an interesting Norwegian documentary, The Painter and the Thief. It deals with an unusual relationship that develops between an artist and a man who robbed one of her paintings.  She becomes a carer for him after he has a car crash and even asks him to sit for a portrait before their relationship undergoes a sea-change.

VOD (Video on Demand) has One Man and His Shoes, a documentary about Air Jordan, the company endorsed by the American basketball champion Michael Jordan. It’s a parable about the huge power consumerism exerts in the sporting world. Nike runners are so sought after, people have been killed trying to procure them.

Younger viewers will be attracted to the Chinese-American animated musical feature Over the Moon. It’s a moving story about a young girl who decides to build a rocket to fly to the moon to meet a mythical goddess her mother told her about before she died.