If you have 90 minutes
A Real Pain Rent or buy from Apple TV +
Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in this bittersweet dramedy about two cousins on a roots-tracking Holocaust tour in Poland, but Kieran Culkin steals the show with his Oscar-winning performance as cousin Benji — gregarious, troubled, easy-going but deeply traumatised and a compelling centre of the story.
If you have 90 minutes
Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna on Disney +
This documentary examines the life of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on the film Rust. The film made tragic headlines in 2021 after a prop gun — negligently loaded with a live round — fired on set by star Alec Baldwin wounded the director and killed Hutchins. The terrible accident became the focus of frenzied global media attention and law suits, while forgetting about its victim.
If you have 2-and-a-half hours
A Complete Unknown Rent or buy from Apple TV +
Director James Mangold’s by-the-numbers account of folk legend Bob Dylan’s formative years and meteoric rise from the early ‘60s folk scene of the East Village to his infamous plugged-in performance at the Newport Festival in 1965. Timothée Chalamet does solid Oscar-nominated impersonation work, but whether the film offers much of in the way into of new insight into one of the most mythologised icons of 20th century popular culture remains up for much-heated debate.
If you have 2 hours
Steinheist Episodes 4 and 5 Showmax
Director Richard Gregory, journalist Rob Rose and the rest of the team behind the hit 2022 documentary series that explored the life and nefariously shady dealings of Markus Jooste and the Steinhoff scandal, return with two episodes. They pick up the story in 2022 — follow it through to Jooste’s shocking suicide last year — and tease the many questions that still remain, in the wake of his death, for the others implicated in the biggest financial fraud in South Africa’s history.
If you have 8 hours
The Residence Netflix
Produced by Shondaland, written by Paul William Davies and based on the non-fiction book about life inside the private world of the White House by Kate Andersen Bower. This decidedly fictional murder mystery caper series stars Uzo Aduba as eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp, who — when a murder happens in the White House — begins to learn the workings of “the upstairs, downstairs and backstairs” of the most famous house in the US as she closes in on the perpetrator.
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