This week’s streaming highlight is Netflix’s first masterpiece, advises Dan Slevin.
Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma on Netflix. Photo: Netflix
Netflix are famous for making their most interesting product the hardest to find but they know they’ve got something special with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma – they are promoting it to you from the moment you log in.
Critics around the world – including our own Simon Morris – will tell you to watch it on a cinema screen rather than your home visual delivery system but that’s not possible for everyone and surely it is better that a film like Roma should have the widest, deepest and longest-lasting audience and Netflix makes that possible.
Still, Cuarón is sensitive to the fact that most home viewing environments are sub-optimal for a film that boasts visual and aural craft to the highest level so he has provided a list of tips to setting up your system so that you can see Roma at its best. Basically, every digital ‘enhancement’ that your TV manufacturer offers? Turn it off.
Photo: Supplied
Also new to Netflix this week is Michael Keaton in The Founder, a film I reviewed while filling in for Simon back in November 2016. I liked Keaton in it but the film will make you hungry for the McDonald’s burgers he is busy inventing.
New to rental this week on Lightbox is the surprise smash-hit Crazy Rich Asians and (from tomorrow) the brilliant Leave No Trace which stars Wellington schoolgirl Thomasin McKenzie in a role that has catapulted her to the A-List.
Straight to rental streaming is the documentary Wayne, about the Australian champion motorcyclist Wayne Gardner. It’s an Australia-NZ co-production from the people who brought you the documentary about Bruce McLaren last year.
Every week around this time, Dan Slevin highlights some of the best and most interesting feature films that are new to Kiwi streaming services.
