This Week in Streaming (June 11th)

Dumb Money (Netflix) It’s an outrage that this retelling of the GameStop meme stock frenzy and the populist resistance led by YouTuber Roaring Kitty (Paul Dano) came and went from theaters last fall without the attention it deserved. But now that the notoriously reclusive man-myth-legend is back on the stream, it’s as good a time as any to revisit the most remarkable moment of stick-it-to-the-manness that came from the COVID era. The movie’s whip-smart script actively avoids the self-righteous trappings of other “stock market for dummies” movies like The Big Short while its top-notch ensemble cast, including Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Nick Offerman, American Ferrara, and Shailene Woodley gives it a smarmy energy that rivals the heyday of 90s indies. It’s the best proof in recent memory that sophistication and Hollywood entertainment aren’t as diametrically opposed as they increasingly seem.

Mad Men (AMC+ and Prime) Earlier this spring, The New York Times’s James Poniewozik articulated what we’ve been saying for years: TV has been mid for the last half-decade––as sleek yet disposable as a Nordstrom Rack cardigan. But the real problem is that nothing has come close to the sheer artistry of Matthew Weiner’s zeitgeist show since it ended its eight-season run in 2015. As ad exec Don Draper, Jon Hamm navigated masculinity in crisis while serving as the paragon of the difficult man to which we should all aspire. Biting, hilarious, and more heartfelt than its reputation would indicate, it’s the very definition of Peak TV.

Lisa Frankenstein (Peacock) Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody teams up with Robin Williams’s daughter for an 80s-steeped retelling of Frankenstein about a teenage semi-Goth New Waver (Kathryn Newton) who would have resurrected the Victorian boy of her dreams (Dylan Sprouse) if not for his murderous tendencies. It may have been DOA at the winter box office, but it’s one of the few movies to capture the beauty and brutality of 80s adolescence in a way that would make both John Hughes and Stephen King proud. Sure, it received the same polarizing reviews Cody’s Jennifer’s Body did fifteen years ago. Look how that turned out.