What to watch this weekend: Netflix’s Squid Game returns for another deadly round, plus Clint Eastwood Juror No. 2 is not guilty on all charges | Canada Voices

Squid Game, Season Two (Netflix, starting Dec. 26)

Just like Seong Gi-hun, hero of the first season of Netflix’s South Korean phenomenon Squid Game, I’m back for another round of streaming. Many thanks to my colleague J. Kelly Nestruck, who picked up this column’s slack while I was off working on a venture to be revealed shortly (hint: it rhymes with “Last & Spurious”). And I could not have picked a better time to return to the “What to Watch” beat, as this weekend marks the long-awaited return of one of Netflix’s biggest ever success stories. Picking up three years after Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) walked away a quote-unquote winner from the deadly contest, Season 2 of the series follows our hero as he once again dives into the mysterious inner workings of the survival game. Will Gi-hun uncover the truth about the games and expose his tormentors? Will he reunite with his young daughter? Will audiences find themselves just as in love with the series’ sick sense of humour as they were back in 2021, when our collective brain chemistries might have been altered by the pandemic? Game on.

Juror No. 2 (Crave)

Fresh from its quick and cursory release in a handful of theatres last month, Clint Eastwood’s 40th directorial effort deserves far more than its studio Warner Bros. afforded it. Pivoting on a twisty high-concept premise – what if you were serving on a jury, only to discover that you inadvertently were responsible for the murder being prosecuted? – Eastwood brings the high drama back down to earth at every turn. Starring Nicholas Hoult as the titular juror, his one-time About a Boy co-star Toni Collette as the conflicted prosecutor, and a half-dozen other greats in the margins (it’s one thing to have J.K. Simmons, but we also get Kiefer Sutherland, too?), Eastwood’s latest is just the kind of solid, no-frills, old-fashioned courtroom thriller that used to dominate multiplexes back in the 1990s. If this is indeed Eastwood’s final film – the man is 94 years old, though Ridley Scott is just seven years younger and no one has put a countdown on his filmmaking clock – then the director is acquitting himself with the best kind of justice-is-served verdict. Give yourself a better-late-than-never Christmas present, sequester yourself from your squabbling family, and hunker down for top-tier drama.

Nutcrackers (Disney+)

Another film that deserved at least some attention on the big-screen circuit, David Gordon Green’s family dramedy Nutcrackers is just quietly sitting on Disney+, waiting for audiences to discover it. Featuring Ben Stiller’s first lead role in six years, the film follows a high-strung workaholic named Mike (Stiller, of course) who is suddenly saddled with being the primary caregiver of his four rambunctious nephews, all played by real-life siblings. You can see where Green’s film is going long before Mike can, especially once the beautiful and conveniently single social worker played by Linda Cardellini enters the picture. After the unholy mess that was Exorcist: Believer, Green needed a hit, and while Nutcrackers isn’t exactly a tour de force, it has enough charms and comforts to spare, fully in line with the director’s low-key comedies Prince Avalanche and The Sitter. The shagginess is a feature, not a bug.

Kneecap (Hoopla)

When writer-director Rich Peppiatt first decided to make a fictionalized movie chronicling the rise of the controversial real-life Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap, who rap in a blend of English and the endangered Irish mother tongue, the filmmaker wanted to cast the musicians as themselves. Except Peppiatt had no idea whether Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh could act. Turns out, the three young men can, and then some, riffing on both their stage personas and day-to-day personal lives with the kind of slick charm that cements the lads as natural-born performers. Shot with the zigzagging energy of an incendiary rap battle and laced with the sharp politics of a generation that’s been too long disenfranchised, Peppiatt’s film is both a rags-to-semi-riches success story, and a treatise on Irish geopolitics post-Troubles. Think 8 Mile meets Trainspotting, shot through with a lightning bolt of don’t-give-a-fig ferocity.

It also cannot be emphasized just how impressive Naoise, Liam and JJ are onscreen. So much so that it’s difficult to figure out where the performances stop and the real men start. The trio might be especially busy with their on-stage careers, but should Kneecap ever fizzle out as a troupe, each member has a bright future in the movies. But if they want to take a cue from Eminem and just stick to music, that’s fine, too.

Joy (Netflix)

Unfairly lost in the fall-season shuffle, director Ben Taylor’s biographical drama Joy is just the kind of handsomely made and sincere film that once upon a time would have been feted on the film-festival circuit and given a thorough awards push by the likes of Miramax. Today, it’s sitting in your Netflix queue, waiting for your algorithm to pick it up. Starring Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton, the film follows the British scientists responsible for delivering the world’s first “test-tube baby.” Nighy is, as always, sharp and smart as British obstetrician Sir Patrick Christopher Steptoe, while McKenzie – best known for her fantastic performance in the 2018 off-the-grid drama Leave No Trace – plays nurse and fertility pioneer Jean Purdy with the kind of mature grace beyond her years.