This Week in Streaming (January 7th)

Juror #2 (Max) Hollywood’s last living legend proves the power of classical filmmaking in this taut courtroom drama about a juror (Nicholas Hoult) who finds himself in the position to exonerate the defendant in a hit-and-run while slowly realizing he may be guilty of the crime himself. Warner Bros. did Clint dirty by dumping this in a few theaters a couple of weeks before Wicked. Here’s hoping it earns the following it deserves. 

Columbo (Peacock) The January doldrums are the perfect time to go deep into the ten seasons and endless TV-movies featuring Peter Falk as the most inquisitive detective this side of Monk. Neither superhuman nor aspiring for higher status, Columbo may well be American TV’s first unabashed working-class hero. 

The Lodge (Hulu) This intense psychological thriller had the misfortune of releasing a month before COVID, but its focus on the depths of stir-crazy isolation cemented its status as the perfect post-pandemic snowpocalypse movie. Left alone at the family cabin by her much older boyfriend to tend to his kids during a rustic Christmas vacation, Grace (Riley Keough) nurses the onset of a breakdown. But whether her declining mental state is the result of trauma from growing up in a cult or the realization that her youth may not last forever remains up in the air. As if Keough’s intensity weren’t enough, the film also offers up a career-best for Alicia Silverstone.