This Week in Streaming (August 20th)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Max) It may have fallen victim to some dunderheaded girlboss marketing, but the latest entry in George Miller’s five-decade postapocalyptic epic could go toe-to-toe with its predecessors. As the younger iteration of Fury Road’s breakout character, Anya Taylor-Joy proves herself a bona fide action star while Chris Hemsworth brings an off-kilter menace that shows he’s more than just a dim demigod who can weld a hammer. Living-room viewing sure ain’t IMAX, but, as we said earlier this summer, it and The Bikeriders are the perfect transit referendum double feature for those concerned Mayor O’Connell’s plan demonstrates no awareness of the importance of the open road to the American mythos

Bad Monkey (Apple TV+) Vince Vaughn stars in this new series as a disgraced private dick working as a Miami restaurant inspector who can’t repress his noir instincts when a severed arm turns up in a tourist spot. Snarky P.I.s haven’t been this good since The Long Goodbye and Chinatown. Plus, Vaughn finally reveals himself as a major leading man who has been inexplicably punching below his weight for much of his career. 

“Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson” (The Criterion Channel) Those who missed seeing Magnolia with the Mayor at the kickoff to the Belcourt’s 1999 series in May can spend the dog days of summer with America’s greatest living filmmaker thanks to Criterion. Witness Paul Thomas Anderson’s unrivaled early millennium run of Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will be Blood, and The Master while seeing the best work Tom Cruise, Adam Sander, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Joaquin Phoenix have ever done. Top it all off with Anderson’s latest, Licorice Pizza, a movie that somehow ends up as much a tribute to young love and the 70s San Fernando Valley as it is a treatise on the failure of the politics that led to the rise of Reagan. The perfect deep dive before The Belcourt’s 35mm screenings of Boogie Nights that send off the summer on Labor Day Weekend.