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The Age
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
What to stream this week: Mark Ruffalo's sad dad, plus five more to add to your list
This week's picks include a gentle dramedy with Mark Ruffalo as a hopeless dad, Law and Order star Mariska Hargitay's documentary about her famous mum, and Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney's new thriller. Hal and Harper ★★★★ (Stan*) The gap between the casual and a crisis is worryingly small and always unclear in this quicksilver US dramedy. 'I feel like a fragile sculpture,' says Harper (Lili Reinhart), one of the show's titular twenty-something siblings. She's drily referring to her new haircut, an experiment with a fringe that speaks to mishandling unease, but a different, altogether more painful, definition is close at hand: crack, crumble, collapse. Hal and Harper is a show that is deeply attuned to emotional upheaval overwhelming the everyday. It's an intriguing, idiosyncratic vision from creator Cooper Raiff, the independent filmmaker (Cha Cha Real Smooth) who transitions to television by writing and directing all eight episodes. Cooper, who also plays younger brother Hal, wants to dig into the unspoken. His Californian characters are poised on the precipice of change they can no longer avoid. Hal is about to finish university, but is still emotionally dependent on Harper, who has a dead-end first job and a relationship, with Jesse (Alyah Chanelle Scott), that's imploding. The two are, in so many ways, the children of Michael (Mark Ruffalo), the novelist and single father who raised them with a pronounced lack of emotional support; Harper has been mothering Hal since she was nine and he was seven. When Michael announces that his girlfriend, Kate (Betty Gilpin), is pregnant, the celebratory news lights a fuse to individual reckonings. He's terrified of failing another child, and his adult children can't avoid facing their childhood trauma. It seems our performative ease with therapy-speak doesn't actually fix anything. Raiff crafts these little earthquakes with droll exchanges, lived-in eccentricities and roiling montages that feel like they're lifting the characters out of the plot's safe space. His innovations skirt the absurd to find deeper truths, most notably in lengthy primary school flashbacks where Reinhart and Raiff play the younger Harper and Hal. She's an old soul, he's nervy and enthusiastic, and there's something solemn and bittersweet about seeing the adults these two children will become, learning about life. The little jokes and quick reassurances the grown siblings swap with each other and those close to them are a coping mechanism that can't endure. 'She broke my heart,' adult Hal laments of a fellow student, Abby (Havana Rose Liu), before Harper stumps him by asking, 'What's her last name?' The performances have a low-key desperation and deeply held churn. Solving these issues isn't the crux of Hal and Harper, it's actually just being able to acknowledge them. That's both sad and a joke, which is exactly where this first-rate show wants to be. My Mom Jayne ★★★½ (Max) Separating the public from the private is a near impossible task in this documentary from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay. The actress was just three years old when her mother, Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield, died in a car accident in 1967. Hargitay, who was asleep in the vehicle's back seat, has spent her life struggling to understand a famous parent she has no memories of. This feature-length documentary is her attempt at reconciliation. With an outlook on fame that feels contemporary, the platinum blonde Mansfield was the most photographed woman in the world in the 1950s. 'She was always on display,' recalls her former publicist, the now 99-year-old 'Rusty' Strait. The film untangles the divide between Mansfield as sex kitten and loving mother, and charts her increasingly perilous career and marriages, including her second with Mickey Hargitay, a former Mr Universe. Mariska Hargitay directs the film, and is often on camera, including interviews with her siblings. There's no outside scrutiny to this story, but the trade-off is a deeply genuine sense of loss and longing; an outsider couldn't deliver the raw exchanges these family members share. Hargitay folds in her youthful rebellion and belated yearning and, in a nod to the entertainment industry she's spent her whole life adjacent to, there's an almighty twist in the third act that completes this heartfelt journey. Echo Valley ★★★ (Apple TV+) Written by Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown) and set in rural Pennsylvania, this familial thriller from British director Michael Pearce (Beast) has a familiar shape and the overqualified cast to paper over the cracks. Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney play estranged mother and daughter, reunited when the latter's latest misdeed brings her home to the former. Helping your child is just another form of debt that must be collected, but the film keeps the leads apart while fraying the plot with twists and double-crosses. The story lacks a visceral edge. Countdown ★★½ (Amazon Prime Video) Amazon's yen for 'Dad action' in shows such as Reacher and The Terminal List – all hard-nosed action sequences, stoic leading men, and a sardonic commentary while doing good – goes a step too far with this crime drama about a US task force whose murder investigation uncovers a vast conspiracy. Countdown is efficient but generic, too often echoing the procedural roots of creator Derek Haas (Chicago Fire). Supernatural star Jensen Ackles knows how to embody the protagonist, LAPD detective Mark Meachum, but he's not given a great deal to work with. Predator: Killer of Killers ★★★ (Disney+) Of the many ageing intellectual property franchises being tended and exploited by Hollywood studios, Predator may well be having the most interesting second act. The 1987 original remains an action classic, but recently there's been some smart additions to the science-fiction series about the alien warrior race that periodically hunts humans. After directing the underrated 2022 live action feature Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg returns with this animated anthology about Predator encounters with different historic eras. It's all bloody ultra-violence and comic book excess which is a good change of pace. Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem ★★½ (Netflix) Trainwreck is Netflix's modern scandal documentary franchise: occasionally tragic, mostly tawdry, with a focus on jaw-dropping testimony over historic analysis. Alongside the newly released holiday nightmare Poop Cruise, the Mayor of Mayhem is indicative of the Trainwreck process. It recounts the fireball career of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, a populist who assumed the position in 2010 and within three years was the headline subject of a video that showed him smoking crack cocaine. Was Ford an addict? Yes. Does that hold as much weight here as his propensity for saying bonkers stuff in public? No.
Sydney Morning Herald
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
What to stream this week: Mark Ruffalo's sad dad, plus five more to add to your list
This week's picks include a gentle dramedy with Mark Ruffalo as a hopeless dad, Law and Order star Mariska Hargitay's documentary about her famous mum, and Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney's new thriller. Hal and Harper ★★★★ (Stan*) The gap between the casual and a crisis is worryingly small and always unclear in this quicksilver US dramedy. 'I feel like a fragile sculpture,' says Harper (Lili Reinhart), one of the show's titular twenty-something siblings. She's drily referring to her new haircut, an experiment with a fringe that speaks to mishandling unease, but a different, altogether more painful, definition is close at hand: crack, crumble, collapse. Hal and Harper is a show that is deeply attuned to emotional upheaval overwhelming the everyday. It's an intriguing, idiosyncratic vision from creator Cooper Raiff, the independent filmmaker (Cha Cha Real Smooth) who transitions to television by writing and directing all eight episodes. Cooper, who also plays younger brother Hal, wants to dig into the unspoken. His Californian characters are poised on the precipice of change they can no longer avoid. Hal is about to finish university, but is still emotionally dependent on Harper, who has a dead-end first job and a relationship, with Jesse (Alyah Chanelle Scott), that's imploding. The two are, in so many ways, the children of Michael (Mark Ruffalo), the novelist and single father who raised them with a pronounced lack of emotional support; Harper has been mothering Hal since she was nine and he was seven. When Michael announces that his girlfriend, Kate (Betty Gilpin), is pregnant, the celebratory news lights a fuse to individual reckonings. He's terrified of failing another child, and his adult children can't avoid facing their childhood trauma. It seems our performative ease with therapy-speak doesn't actually fix anything. Raiff crafts these little earthquakes with droll exchanges, lived-in eccentricities and roiling montages that feel like they're lifting the characters out of the plot's safe space. His innovations skirt the absurd to find deeper truths, most notably in lengthy primary school flashbacks where Reinhart and Raiff play the younger Harper and Hal. She's an old soul, he's nervy and enthusiastic, and there's something solemn and bittersweet about seeing the adults these two children will become, learning about life. The little jokes and quick reassurances the grown siblings swap with each other and those close to them are a coping mechanism that can't endure. 'She broke my heart,' adult Hal laments of a fellow student, Abby (Havana Rose Liu), before Harper stumps him by asking, 'What's her last name?' The performances have a low-key desperation and deeply held churn. Solving these issues isn't the crux of Hal and Harper, it's actually just being able to acknowledge them. That's both sad and a joke, which is exactly where this first-rate show wants to be. My Mom Jayne ★★★½ (Max) Separating the public from the private is a near impossible task in this documentary from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay. The actress was just three years old when her mother, Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield, died in a car accident in 1967. Hargitay, who was asleep in the vehicle's back seat, has spent her life struggling to understand a famous parent she has no memories of. This feature-length documentary is her attempt at reconciliation. With an outlook on fame that feels contemporary, the platinum blonde Mansfield was the most photographed woman in the world in the 1950s. 'She was always on display,' recalls her former publicist, the now 99-year-old 'Rusty' Strait. The film untangles the divide between Mansfield as sex kitten and loving mother, and charts her increasingly perilous career and marriages, including her second with Mickey Hargitay, a former Mr Universe. Mariska Hargitay directs the film, and is often on camera, including interviews with her siblings. There's no outside scrutiny to this story, but the trade-off is a deeply genuine sense of loss and longing; an outsider couldn't deliver the raw exchanges these family members share. Hargitay folds in her youthful rebellion and belated yearning and, in a nod to the entertainment industry she's spent her whole life adjacent to, there's an almighty twist in the third act that completes this heartfelt journey. Echo Valley ★★★ (Apple TV+) Written by Brad Ingelsby (Mare of Easttown) and set in rural Pennsylvania, this familial thriller from British director Michael Pearce (Beast) has a familiar shape and the overqualified cast to paper over the cracks. Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney play estranged mother and daughter, reunited when the latter's latest misdeed brings her home to the former. Helping your child is just another form of debt that must be collected, but the film keeps the leads apart while fraying the plot with twists and double-crosses. The story lacks a visceral edge. Countdown ★★½ (Amazon Prime Video) Amazon's yen for 'Dad action' in shows such as Reacher and The Terminal List – all hard-nosed action sequences, stoic leading men, and a sardonic commentary while doing good – goes a step too far with this crime drama about a US task force whose murder investigation uncovers a vast conspiracy. Countdown is efficient but generic, too often echoing the procedural roots of creator Derek Haas (Chicago Fire). Supernatural star Jensen Ackles knows how to embody the protagonist, LAPD detective Mark Meachum, but he's not given a great deal to work with. Predator: Killer of Killers ★★★ (Disney+) Of the many ageing intellectual property franchises being tended and exploited by Hollywood studios, Predator may well be having the most interesting second act. The 1987 original remains an action classic, but recently there's been some smart additions to the science-fiction series about the alien warrior race that periodically hunts humans. After directing the underrated 2022 live action feature Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg returns with this animated anthology about Predator encounters with different historic eras. It's all bloody ultra-violence and comic book excess which is a good change of pace. Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem ★★½ (Netflix) Trainwreck is Netflix's modern scandal documentary franchise: occasionally tragic, mostly tawdry, with a focus on jaw-dropping testimony over historic analysis. Alongside the newly released holiday nightmare Poop Cruise, the Mayor of Mayhem is indicative of the Trainwreck process. It recounts the fireball career of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, a populist who assumed the position in 2010 and within three years was the headline subject of a video that showed him smoking crack cocaine. Was Ford an addict? Yes. Does that hold as much weight here as his propensity for saying bonkers stuff in public? No.
