What to Watch When You're Hiding Under the Couch
Some movies to lighten your existential load this week -- or to confirm it.
A quick weekend what-to-watch for paid subscribers, as I’m still catching up on post-TIFF sleep, I have a nasty head cold, and the country is ripping itself in two as I write. One of these is more important than the others. (And, oh, to be in Toronto for seven days, among Canadians light of step and clear of brow. Remember what that felt like? Just going about the day without a Steinway of civic dread dangling over your head?)
Most people prefer to flee into a comfort watch when the world gets too much, and I can’t blame them. Others prefer the vinegar of bad news, as if watching a downer movie might steel them for the hard road ahead. For those viewers – and I am among them, if not all the time – allow me to recommend the films of Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose portraits of Russia in the Putin era have an epic, funereal and occasionally mythological beauty.
I mention Zvyagintsev because “The Return” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2), the 2003 breakthrough that won the director the Golden Lion at that year’s Venice Film Festival, has just popped up as a $4.99 rental on Apple TV after a long period in the streaming bardo.
