What’s Streaming
BIG TIME ADOLESCENCE (2020) Stream on Hulu. Pete Davidson plays a role model with platinum blond hair and a taste for weed in this coarse coming-of-age comedy, the debut film of the writer-director Jason Orley. The plot centers on a brotherly relationship between Davidson’s character, a 23-year-old named Zeke, and Mo (Griffin Gluck), his ex-girlfriend’s 16-year-old younger brother, whom he walks through the finer points of the suburban slacker lifestyle. The story also involves small-time drug dealing and Mo’s pursuit of a crush (played by Oona Laurence). “Though Davidson, Gluck and Laurence show star potential, Orley either boxes them into a too-conventional coming-of-age arc or gives them cloyingly charming characteristics,” Kristen Yoonsoo Kim wrote in her review for The New York Times. “Despite some moments of tenderness and easy chemistry between Zeke and Mo,” Kim added, “‘Big Time Adolescence’ doesn’t have enough heart or humor to save it from becoming just another movie about white dudes bro-ing out.”
THE 400 BLOWS (1959) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. More roving adolescent mischief can be found in this drama, a foundational work of the French New Wave and the debut movie of François Truffaut. The film follows Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a 12-year-old truant causing trouble on the streets of Paris. When it was released in the United States in 1959, Bosley Crowther referred to it as “a small masterpiece” in his review for The Times. “Where previous films on similar subjects have been fatted and fictionalized with all sorts of adult misconceptions and sentimentalities,” he wrote, “this is a smashingly convincing demonstration on the level of the boy — cool, firm and realistic, without a false note or a trace of goo.”
FEEL GOOD Stream on Netflix. “Can you just lie on top of me and tell me something Canadian?” That question comes early in this romantic-comedy series, which stars the comedian Mae Martin as a version of herself, a Canadian in London. Making the request is George (Charlotte Ritchie), an English woman whom Mae begins dating. Much of the drama comes from a pair of struggles: George, who hasn’t dated a woman before, is hesitant to come out to her family and friends, and Mae is a recovering addict. “It’s a work of fiction,” Martin recently told the British newspaper The Guardian. “But it’s got an emotional truth, because it’s based on experiences I’ve had.”
What’s on TV
AFTER TRUTH: DISINFORMATION AND THE COST OF FAKE NEWS (2020) 9 p.m. on HBO. In his 2011 documentary, “Page One: Inside The New York Times,” the filmmaker Andrew Rossi explored the inner workings of The Times at a moment when the paper was struggling to adapt to the internet age. His latest doc, “After Truth,” looks at one of the biggest issues to spike in media since: disinformation, and the way untruths are spread through social media.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
