Weekly Streaming Recap: Week ending 12/10/2021

Hawkeye Episode 4 (Disney+): There has not been a tv show with such open contempt for the audience’s time and patience the way Hawkeye has been. It is not even a question at this point as to if the series could have been a movie with some minor reworks in preproduction; an enterprising film student with a pirated copy of Final Cut can turn this into a movie with minimal effort. Well, at least they fulfilled a promise that was left in one of this year’s theatrical offerings in this episode and next week’s will “break the internet” so might as well trudge on.

Wheel of Time Episode 5 (Amazon Prime): As the show nears its end, there has to be some infighting that leads to the conflict not being a clean-cut ending. The Aes Sedai don’t trust each other and, accordingly, this leads to muddying the waters when they should be focusing on making sure the world isn’t destroyed.

Voir (Netflix): Voir is a miniseries of half hour episodes so, should one decide to take the plunge, there is not a huge time investment. That said, if someone is genuinely interested in cinema history, the person should probably just get a subscription to the Criterion App and watch the video essays from film historians there. They are longer and go more in depth about the films there so this feels like an attempt to capitalize on what other streamers and even networks (Turner Classic Movies for example) have done better. There are dozens of YouTube channels and podcasts that do what this series does and does them better.

You May Have Missed

Fast Color (Netflix): Released in only 30 theaters nation-wide the week before Avengers: Endgame, Fast Color was a victim to the failings of its distributor to ensure that a wide audience saw this movie. Now, rather than having to take a day to travel to the closest major city, it is available on Netflix to watch on whatever device one feels comfortable with. It is the story of three generations of women who have the power to disassemble and reassemble things with their minds and how they deal with a world that fears them. Basically, it is the best X-Men movie that has ever been made. It is low budget science fiction at its best and that does not even take into consideration the powerhouse performance by Gugu Mbatha-Raw at the core of the story.