What’s Streaming
JOJO RABBIT (2019) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. “Remember that joke Kate Winslet has in ‘Extras,’ where she says you’d better make a Holocaust film if you want an Oscar?” Taika Waititi asked in an interview with The New York Times last year. “People might think that’s kind of true, but there was never in my mind any reality where this film was going to be part of that conversation.” He was talking about “Jojo Rabbit,” the satire he wrote and directed, which had become an unlikely awards-season contender and would win him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. The movie, based a novel by Christine Leunens, follows Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10-year-old in Nazi Germany whose imaginary best friend is Adolf Hitler (Waititi) and whose mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their house. The film “risks going wrong in a dozen different ways,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “and manages to avoid at least half of them.”
THE CALL OF THE WILD (1972) Stream on Amazon and Tubi. Harrison Ford returns to theaters this weekend in a new adaptation of “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London’s 1903 novel about an outdoorsman and a dog. This earlier adaptation casts Charlton Heston in the lead role (the human one). Those curious to compare Heston’s and Ford’s takes might revisit it, but beware: Heston once called this film “the worst movie I ever made.”
ON POINT Stream on Crackle. Guest appearances by the N.B.A. players Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and Zion Williamson add a bit of celebrity might to this amateur basketball documentary series — but if the young players in the show have their dreams fulfilled, they’ll become stars, too. “On Point” follows high schoolers playing A.A.U. basketball. Reminiscent of shows like “Last Chance U,” it follows them on the court and off.
PLAYING FOR KEEPS Stream on Sundance Now. Those who prefer their sports with a side of murder-mystery can turn to this Australian series, which centers on the wives and girlfriends of a group of fictional Australian soccer players. Their flashy lives might be enviable to some — but the death of a player brings unsettling mystery and media scrutiny.
What’s on TV
THE UPSIDE (2019) 6 p.m. on Showtime 2. The 2012 French dramedy “The Intouchables,” about an unlikely friendship between an uptight aristocrat with paraplegia and an employee, was a box-office sensation overseas. This Hollywood remake stars Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. It keeps the main relationship the same (Cranston plays the rich man) but moves the action to New York. “Some squinting will be required to block out the race and class stereotyping, as well as the puddles of sentiment scattered throughout the highly predictable plot,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times. “Yet Jon Hartmere’s script has genuinely funny moments and is blessedly short on crassness: even a scene involving catheters and colon hygiene is less cringey than you might expect.”
Source: Television - nytimes.com
