Five things to watch this weekend: Netflix shows how the West was won with American Primeval | Canada Voices

American Primeval (Netflix)

If you have already binged your way through the second season of Squid Game, Netflix would very much like you to stay put for the debut of American Primeval, the streaming giant’s new and similarly very expensive-looking six-part miniseries. A rough-and-tumble collaboration between writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor), the drama follows the exceptionally violent conflict that went into establishing and controlling the American West. Think of the frequent violence of Sons of Anarchy crossed with the frontier mythos of Deadwood, and you’ll be close. Bonus: The series collects the very best character actors out there (Shea Whigham, Dane DeHaan, Canadian Kim Coates) with an eclectic collection of leads (GLOW’s Betty Gilpin, frequent Berg player Taylor Kitsch).

Red Riding Trilogy (Prime Video)

Besides featuring every notable British character actor of the past three decades – including Mark Addy, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Rebecca Hall, Sean Harris, Peter Mullan and David Morrissey – this sprawling and dark 295-minute epic brilliantly covers a decade of greed, corruption and secrets in one northern England town. Adapted from David Peace’s bestselling book series of the same name, the U.K. production was originally broadcast as a Channel 4 miniseries, but released as three separate films (titled Red Riding: 1974, Red Riding: 1980 and Red Riding: 1983) on a handful of North American movie screens back in 2009. I recall scrounging up a DVD rental hiding on the shelves of Toronto’s Queen Video back in the day, when video stores still existed. But for everyone else, the entire series is now finally available to stream in full on Prime Video Canada. Come for the chance to see a young Andrew Garfield as a cocky cub journalist covering a series of grisly murders, stay for the opportunity to see where the Game of Thrones casting department came up with all their wonderful ideas.

The Worst Person in the World (MUBI)

Speaking of under-the-radar trilogies: Before the coming-but-undated release of his new dramedy Sentimental Value, there’s no better time to revisit the wonderful Oslo Trilogy work of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, starting with the film that made him a (sorta) household name in 2021. Starring the director’s long-time collaborator Renate Reinsve (better known in North America for her role as Jake Gyllenhaal’s lover in the Presumed Innocent reboot), The Worst Person in the World follows the various loves and losses of Julie, a young woman in Oslo who never seems to be able to finish what she started. And for those who will fall quickly in love with Reinsve, don’t worry: She’ll be starring in Sentimental Value, too. And hopefully soon.

Anora (on-demand, including Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store)

Ever since Sean Baker broke out with 2012′s Starlet, the director has used the backdrop of sex work to trace the sometimes quiet and distant, sometimes extremely loud and incredibly up-close lives of those trying to find their place within society’s margins. Typically, those journeys are embodied by either relatively undiscovered performers or names who have been written off, each actor finding themselves thrust into the awards-race spotlight after Baker tapped into their unbeknown and/or underutilized talents. Also: For reasons unknown, Baker really, truly, weirdly loves the saucy, faux-elegant Aguafina Script font, using it in every one of his films since 2015′s Tangerine. (One possible justification: It’s free through Google).

Pull all the threads together, though, and Baker reveals himself to be one of American cinema’s most successful practitioners of discovery. He finds and then elevates – some might argue exploits – the unique elements of this world that the rest of us cannot be bothered to see. And Anora, which surprisingly left the Golden Globes empty-handed last week, is a Baker film through and through. But in its relatively gigantic ambitions, nuanced texture, bifurcated structure and ferocious performances, this darkly comic tale of a New York stripper (Mikey Madison), who finds herself being torn in several directions after marrying the selfish scion of a Russian oligarch, is also a capstone for the director: a once-in-a-career triumph that exists on the back of everything else, the goodwill it generates impossible to divorce from the experiments and triumphs encountered along the way. Baker should feel a remarkable sense of exhausted achievement – which is only fitting as audiences will likely finish Anora feeling similarly out of breath and faint.

Becky and The Wrath of Becky (Netflix)

While most members of Adam Sandler’s posse continue to ply the same old shtick to increasingly lazy effect, one-time Happy Madison utility player Kevin James has done something Sandler himself does every five years: commit himself to subverting expectations. In the 2020 Canadian comedy-thriller Becky, a tremendous piece of cinematic viciousness, James doesn’t play the dopey shlub or the put-upon husband or anything resembling the durrr-durrr-dumb-dumb comedy on display in Sandler’s Grown Ups, Pixels, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry etc. Instead, James embraces the pure, cold-blooded villain here, playing a vicious escaped con who terrorizes an inventive 13-year-old girl (Lulu Wilson) in the woods of Ontario. While the 2023 sequel The Wrath of Becky is absent of James, the title character – now 16 and even more mean – faces off against a thug played by American Pie’s very own Stifler, Seann William Scott, another comic actor stretching his considerable stuff in the bad-guy role. It’s all good, bloody, Canadian-made fun.