Picks for what to Stream and what to Read right now!
The Party (2017) is a great little “black comedy” film from England. Janet, a British opposition MP (probably Labour) is promoted to shadow minister of health. She invites six good friends over for a celebration. In addition to someone finding a gun in the bathroom, and various false starts in love – the conversation is political and fun. Great acting! Worth watching on Kanopy—here is the trailer.
The Florida Project (2017) is excellent. The performances by the three bored 8-year-olds is astounding. The action centres on residents of a down-and-out lavender-coloured motel just a few miles down the highway from Disney World. It’s July, and families such as Moonee and her mother, who live on social assistance in a motel room and a bathroom, have little to do and nowhere to go. Moonee invents imaginative – sometimes scary — games and ways for her and her friends to pass their days– full of joy and trickery. Her mother Halley, unemployed and on assistance, sells knock-off perfumes in malls before being chased away. Someone tips off social services about Halley selling sex to men – while Moonee, unaware, takes a soak with her toys behind the closed bathroom door. Trouble ensues. You won’t take your eyes off the screen guaranteed. Here’s the trailer. You can watch it on Kanopy.
“The trick of the job is…,” starts Zara,
from the trailer for Steal
“Not to die of boredom,” finishes Luke.
Steal (2026) is an excellent 6-part series that is both a mystery and a fast paced financial thriller. A disciplined group of thieves target a trading floor of a major pension investment fund in London’s Canary Wharf. With the secret help of two employees, Zara and Luke who have rather mundane jobs at the company, the thieves manage to boost more than £4 billion – from pensioners around the UK. The tables are turned more than once; this is a fascinating tale on CBC-GEM. The trailer is here
To Kill a Tiger (NFB) was my favourite film of the month. You can watch it on CBC-GEM. Tiger is a 2023 Hindi-language Canadian documentary film, directed by Toronto filmmaker Nisha Pahuja. Ranjit is a farmer in a small village in central India; he has a wife and three children. He is most proud of his eldest, a 13-year-old daughter “J” who he hopes will go on to university and have a better life. One night after a village wedding, J was brutally attacked and gang-raped by three boys barely five years her senior. Not only do her father and mother stand by her, but they insist the boys have to be charged and tried. The village elders and the boys’ mothers were furious; they suggested J marry one of them, then the incident could be forgotten. But J’s mother asks facetiously which boy should the her daughter marry? Then what should happen to the other two? This is an emotionally deep and yet satisfying documentary. The bravery of this family is amazing and it’s well worth watching. Here’s a trailer.
War is on Crave (2026, first season). This is an epic battle between a very wealthy couple for a divorce. Pitted against each other are two high class London law firms who pull out all the stops (including recruiting a legal spy) to win for their client – meaning the law firm stands to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds as a fat fee for the winning team. Great acting, and lively with twists and turns few see coming. Trailer’s here.
In preparation for seeing You Can See Everything, the new blockbuster documentary in the cinemas, you could watch the 2019 documentary The Inventor: Out for blood in Silicon Valley the Story of Elizabeth Holmes. As you have read by now, Holmes founded the Theranos company that she said invented a blood testing machine to make routine tests cheap and easy. Forbes magazine called her the first female self-made billionaire in the US. The problem was she got more than $700 million from captains of industry, by issuing fraudulent statements among others. The device she invented did not work, yet it took years to “catch” her. She is now serving an 11 year jail sentence. This doc on Crave is two hours long, repetitive and a bit boring—it was made way before her financial and legal woes were exposed. Here is the trailer.
Rogue Agent is a British thriller/mystery released in 2022. Based on a true story, Robert Hendy-Freegard, claims to be an MI5 agent while recruits three young people to spy on IRA activists allegedly at the students’ university . It turns out to be an exercise in mind control, that leads Freegard to extort more than £650,000 from the students’ wealthy families. He’s not in MI5 but a confidence man whose targets are usually well-to-do women. Nicely done, it’s on Netflix– here’s the trailer.
The Gift (2015) is on Netflix. It’s worth watching. A couple has moved into a splendid designer house somewhere in California to begin a new life – after some rough bumps for them in the midwest. Simon a wealthy businessman and Robyn, a designer, are dogged by Gordo, an old high school buddy of Simon he can barely remember. Gordo starts to insinuate himself into their lives; he leaves them expensive gifts on their doorstop, and tries to get together with either or both partners. He’s creepy but things start to go over the edge, and we realize the “stand up” husband Simon has some explaining to do. Well done! Here’s the trailer.
Never Forget Gaza
NAZA has taken the world by storm. Recently released to theatres across Canada, this film shows interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers, experts and whistleblowers — all swathed in dark shadows from a terrace in Tel Aviv — about the everyday almost factory-like killings of Palestinians. I’m going to see it this Friday night!
What to Read…
I hadn’t read a good courtroom drama since – well maybe since my reading jag with John Grisham last year. I just finished Presumed Guilty, a 2025 drama/mystery by Scott Turow. In cottage country near Chicago, Aaron Housely, age 22, is a bit of a free spirit. A university drop out, he wants to improve his design portfolio to apply for a place at art school. His on-again-off-again girlfriend, May, is found brutally murdered at the campsite where they’d gone to get away from their families. He is Black, adopted by a mother who is a white professional. May, is white and the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the county; her father is a state prosecutor. When Aaron is charged with May’s death, the lawyer pledged to defend him is his mother’s fiancé, Rusty Sabich. Turow draws the characters with skill and sympathy. Though Aaron’s mother seems a bit soppy, she has more guts than anyone would have guessed. It’s a great read.
Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City by Anand Giridharadas. I first read Giridharadas’ writing in a series for The Ink called The Epstein Class – brilliant. Man in the Mirror is the shocking true story of Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man–a Michael Jackson impersonator who was dancing around on a New York subway car in May 2023 when a white ex-marine, Daniel Penny, put him in a chokehold and killed him. A year later, the trial was a sensation—and the verdict was both a shock and a warning about who has the right to kill whom in the US today. The section on jury selection was fascinating, read this:
“Likewise, in Dimitrius’s [selection expert for the defense] work, you prospered by identifying the juror who seemed favorable to the other side, such that the other side didn’t object to them, but who you sensed was actually good for you. Or you weeded out people who might have seemed on your side but you realized were trouble.”
The most interesting part of his book is the author’s interrogation of homeless shelters in New York – and a law that won’t allow people to sleep on the streets but will offer a shelter bed any night. This is a very good book – Giridharadas looks at key politicians, the prosecutors, the defence lawyers and their connections to the powerful. He examines how the jury was selected. He interviews friends of Neely and many others who supported the killer.
I’m just about finished the Audible version of American Scoundrel, by Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark (2026). This is a biography of the vicious and corrupt New York lawyer, Roy Cohn. The name may be familiar because he was second chair to the prosecutor in the Rosenberg trial in the early 1950s. A rabid anti-communist and right-hand man to Senator Joe McCarthy, Cohn was architect in chief of the prosecutions during McCarthy era, and responsible for imprisoning many Communists or “fellow travellers.” In the next decades, Cohn made a fortune successfully defending Mafia dons and hitmen. He was gay but not out of the closet. His deep friendship with a far younger Donald Trump is well drawn, and he was clearly a mentor to Trump until Cohn’s death from AIDs in 1986. This book is spellbinding.
Staying in the US, I read the new novel, The Hill (2026) by Harriet Clark. Clark is the daughter of Judith Clark an ex- member of the Weather Underground and a founder of the M19 movement. In 1981, she was arrested for driving the getaway car in a Brink’s robbery in a New York suburb in which two policemen and a security guard were killed. Sentenced to three life terms in prison, Clark left her baby daughter Harriet to be raised by her grandparents. Harriet visited her mother every Saturday at the prison until she was age 15. This novel describes a childhood defined by a mother’s imprisonment and a daughter’s prison visits, her mother’s aging Communist friends and very bleak view of adulthood. Outstanding.
And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence by Pamela Cross (2024) is an excellent book. It is one of the recent Canadian books that expose the issue of intimate partner violence (IPV) – what some used to call ‘family violence.’ Cross, who is a lawyer in Ottawa, exposes stories about survivors of IPV from both her 30 years as a legal practitioner –more importantly as an advocate and resource person.
Failures and Fiascos by Dan Soucoup (2013) explores Atlantic Canada’s biggest boondoggles – from the $27.50 cucumber in Newfoundland, to the Bricklin car built in New Brunswick, to Clairtone’s demise in Nova Scotia. Sometimes humorous, it is also sobering reading – and a real eyeopener about what, in Saskatchewan, we used to call “Next Year Country” and business here insists will create jobs and keep people here on the east coast.
