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New column on Digital ! On Friday, we will select three programs to watch during your weekend on streaming platforms. We start with a scary series, a bittersweet film and a most animated docu.
© Clifton Prescod/Netflix; Wild Bunch Distribution; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures France
Because it is not always easy to find your way through the endless catalogs of the various streaming platforms, we are inaugurating a new weekly column. Every Friday, we will now offer you a selection of three programs to watch during your weekend. To vary the pleasures, we will each time present a series, a film and a documentary or a cartoon from Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Canal+, OCS, or other less renowned platforms.
To get off to a flying start, let’s get the ball rolling with a series mixing gloomy and angst on Netflix, a film with not-so-artificial charm on Prime Video, and a documentary that will probably take you back to some childhood memories on Disney+.
Archives 81on Netflix
Inspired by a horror podcast, Archives 81 is one of Netflix’s latest phenomena. We follow a restorer of damaged video tapes commissioned by a rich client on a series of films made in the 90s by a student documentalist in a New York building. Isolated in a house lost in the middle of nature, our protagonist gradually understands that the building in question conceals heavy secrets, and that the young woman could well have thrown herself into the mouth of the wolf. Without reinventing the genre – we think in particular of certain parts of the saga Paranormal Activity for the appearance found footage —, this series produced by James Wan (Insidious) intrigues as it can terrify. Sects, demons and a few moments of gore intersect there, without falling into the easy spectacular. A good choice if you’re looking to shiver without feeling nauseous.
Heron Amazon Prime Video
Sweetened by its refined and dreamlike style, bitter for the loneliness of its characters, Her is a fable from which we do not emerge unscathed. This film by Spike Jonze is set in the near future and tells the story of Theodore Twombly, a dreamy and melancholy mustached man whose job is to write personal letters for others. Alone since a painful breakup, he will gradually fall in love with Samantha, an artificial intelligence designed to accompany him in his everyday life which evolves as his relationship with his owner progresses. If the pitch may seem absurd, we quickly get caught up in the game. The sheepish and touching acting of Joaquin Phoenix and the hypnotizing voice of Scarlett Johansson make this idyll as convincing as it is overwhelming. Everything is sublimated by the writing and the padded staging of Spike Jonze. One of the most beautiful love stories of the last decade.
waking sleeping beautyon Disney+
Released in 2009, this documentary retraces the revival of the Disney animation studios between 1984 and 1994. At the end of a period that was anything but prosperous, Uncle Walt’s house is on the verge of collapse. We must therefore raise our heads, and to do this, it will change direction by seeking leaders outside the Disney family for the first time. Led by Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew), the studio is going to start again, boosted in particular by an animation department where old veterans, survivors of the first golden age, and young wolves collaborate destined to become very big names in the future. A fascinating dive into the effervescence of the Hollywood industry at the end of the 20th century, waking sleeping beauty is at the same time captivating, inspiring, incredible and sometimes even overwhelming. Big bosses as visionary as they are puffed up with ego and bratty artists with incredible talent confront each other and collaborate in a joyous shambles. The result ? masterpieces like The beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion Kingetc