This Week in Streaming (July 23rd)

Land of Bad (Netflix) Liam Hemsworth gets stuck behind enemy lines in the Philippines after an ambush. His only hope is Reaper (Russell Crowe), a grizzled Air Force drone pilot back in the States benched from the field thanks to his problems with authority. What could have been another B-grade action flick ends up a tense-as-all-hell ride with plenty to say about American military decline while showing Crowe is more than ready for his own career renaissance. 

Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+) We may be at that Mid-TV moment where remakes of 90s Harrison Ford court dramas based on former bestsellers are fodder for prestige series, but at least this one boasts a career-best Jake Gyllenhaal as a Chicago prosecutor caught up in a murder investigation of a colleague. It’s the perfect melding of the classiness and local color that creator David E. Kelley brought to his previous juggernauts The Practice, Boston Legal, and Big Little Lies.

Cameraperson (Max) Kirsten Johnson spent a decade and a half as a cinematographer for documentary all-stars like Kirby Dick and Michael Moore. However, her 2016 directorial debut serves as a harsh rebuttal to the one-dimensional polemicism and artless style that have plagued the genre in the 21st century, Consisting of footage from her dozens of projects behind the camera, Cameraperson is an unorthodox archival film that spans continents and subjects on its way to becoming a deeply personal memoir as well as a dissection of documentary’s presumed infallible authority.