This Week on Streaming
Reviews
Play Dirty
Play Dirty is Prime Video’s latest attempt to ride the seemingly endless heist-movie wave. This time, Mark Wahlberg and Lakeith Stanfield team up to bring Richard Stark’s legendary thief Parker back to the screen. With Shane Black in the director’s chair, I had high hopes that a straight-to-streaming action-comedy might finally deliver. Unfortunately, those expectations were crushed within the first ten minutes and the film never really recovered.
Neither the action nor the comedy ever really land. The set pieces suffer from the kind of laughably bad CGI that has, unfortunately, become a hallmark of Prime original movies. I admit it, I did manage a couple of chuckles here and there, but only because I was laughing at the film, not with it.
Wahlberg and Stanfield’s performances are equally forgettable. I can’t quite decide whether to blame the weak material or their paycheck-collecting delivery, but either way, nothing here sticks. Their work is bland, unmemorable, and destined to be forgotten as soon as the credits roll.
There’s just enough happening in the central heist to keep it moderately engaging, so audiences might not be reaching for their phones too often. Still, the two-hour runtime feels bloated, stretching thin what little entertainment value it has.
In the end, Play Dirty isn’t one I’d recommend. If you’re craving a heist fix this weekend, there are far better and far more memorable options out there.
Reviews
Steve
Steve follows a single day at a struggling 1990s reform school, where headteacher Steve (Cillian Murphy) battles the looming closure and his own fragile mental state while a volatile student, Shy (Jay Lycurgo), wrestles with his past and uncertain future.
Given the character-driven focus of the movie, Steve ultimately succeeds or fails with the performances of its main cast. Fortunately, this is where it shines brightest. Both Cillian Murphy and Jay Lycurgo deliver standout work, capturing the drastic emotional swings that play out across one chaotic day. Their performances ground the story and bring an authenticity that keeps the audience invested.
The film does an excellent job of conveying the various emotional states its characters cycle through, and it would take the coldest of hearts not to be moved by their struggles. The steady deterioration of their mental health is emphasized throughout, creating a raw and deeply human portrait that many viewers will find relatable.
Outside of Murphy and Lycurgo’s roles, however, the supporting characters feel underdeveloped and underutilized. They function more as background pieces than fully realized individuals, which detracts somewhat from the overall quality and impact of the film.
Still, Steve remains a powerful and emotionally poignant drama, one that stands out among recent streaming releases. Bound to move many viewers to tears, it’s well worth checking out on Netflix this weekend.
Reviews
The Lost Bus
The Lost Bus recounts the true story of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, following a school bus driver and a teacher as they lead 22 children through gridlocked roads, suffocating smoke, and advancing flames. Based on Lizzie Johnson’s nonfiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, the film tracks their desperate attempt to navigate a collapsing community, capturing both the chaos outside the bus and the mounting fear within.
Director Paul Greengrass deserves credit for vividly portraying the chaos and trauma of a disaster on an almost unimaginable scale. The emotional weight on the audience is immense, and it’s hard to fathom the devastation experienced by those who actually lived through these events. Having tackled similarly harrowing stories in United 93 and Captain Phillips, Greengrass again demonstrates the sensitivity required to depict such a catastrophic disaster.
Visually, the film can be difficult to follow at times. The shaky-cam approach, intended to convey the fire’s chaos, occasionally makes it hard to fully grasp what’s happening, while some of the CGI struggles to convincingly depict the fire’s impact on towns and neighborhoods.
The performances across the board deserve immense credit, particularly the child actors, whose fear and panic are convincingly conveyed throughout the entire harrowing bus ride. Matthew McConaughey as Kevin McKay and America Ferrera as teacher Mary Ludwig also deliver strong performances, adding both realism and emotional depth to the film.
There’s also the seemingly unnecessary subplot of McKay’s family drama, which could have been omitted without affecting the main storyline, helping to trim some of the excess from an otherwise slightly bloated runtime.
It’s a shame that a movie of this magnitude was released straight to Apple TV. The Lost Bus deserved a theatrical release, as a film of this scale truly benefits from the biggest screen possible. Recent successes like F1 and the short theatrical run of K-Pop: Demon Hunters show there was no reason this film couldn’t have received the same treatment.
