The best films to watch on Binge

Bowing at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and scooping Outstanding Television Movie at the 2020 Emmies, it’s truly bizarre this HBO movie never went to cinemas. But the big screens' loss is our streaming gain, as Hugh Jackman plays a Long Island school superintendent caught up in a whiffy credit card fraud scandal in this true story that only gets wilder as it goes on. Directed by Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds), it's a jaw-dropper. It includes bonus West Wing’s Allison Janney content, so you really shouldn’t waste any more time getting stuck into this wicked delight, which also has a plum role for local hero Geraldine Viswanathan.

What’s better than Natalie Portman playing the full diva Black Swan-style as a vicious pop star totally off the rails? The added bonus of The Killing of a Sacred Deer breakthrough Raffey Cassidy playing the exact same angelic-voiced star, only younger, before she’s gone the full diva, opening the movie with her narrowly escaping a shocking school shooting. The latest stunner from actor-turned-auteur Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader) is A LOT, but in the very best way. It also features Jude Law as a skeezy agent, because of course.

While we’re on the topic of total divas, we absolute love Neighbours alumna Radha Mitchell as an opera singer gone to seed. Haunting the tropical loopiness of Queensland’s surreal Paronella Park like Miss Havisham but with higher humidity, her attempt at a comeback sets the scene for a steamy melodrama. Director Ben Hackworth zooms in on the long shadow of a family tragedy that intrigues and teases a forbidden love between Mitchell and the easy-on-the-eye Thomas Cocquerel, with Odessa Young (Shirley) in the mix for good measure.

Much like the fake schnozz threatened to upstage Nicole Kidman’s stellar performance in The Hours, the physical transformation she undergoes in Girlfight director Karyn Kusama’s brilliant hardboiled LA noir Destroyer is staggering, if a little distracting. Playing worn-out cop Erin, she’s haunted by an undercover sting gone horribly wrong some 16 years previous. The slow-burn mystery flits between then and a fairly haggard now. On a road to nowhere, both in terms of the cutting cold case and her relationship with her estranged daughter (Jade Pettyjohn), Erin has little left to lose, but one last shot to come good. A hangdog ode to a gritty city, it had us gripped from go to woe.

For large swathes of our readers, the sight of Robert Pattinson glistening with sweat while shovelling coal into a furnace will be enough to recommend this black-and-white gem. For others, the fact it’s the latest trippy psychological horror from Robert Eggers (The Witch) will have you dancing round your pentagram. Or maybe it’s the sight of Willem Dafoe as a salty old sea dog getting into a spot of biffo with the younger man in this ‘what would go wrong on a remote island cut off by storm’ that will sell you. Whatever, it’s a dark-hearted cracker replete with sick-making seagull scene and an even more disturbing roving tentacle. It’s barmy, and brilliant. 

If you need some light viewing, mainline this adorkable fusion of political satire and saucy romantic comedy that somewhat inexplicably pairs the stunning Charlize Theron with, errrr, Seth Rogen and somehow gets away with it? She’s the workaholic Secretary of State aiming for the Oval Office, and he’s the former childhood friend-turned-unemployed lefty journalist tapped to write her speeches. Soon they're getting hot and bothered while under terrorist assault, and not long after that she has to avert an international incident while pinging. Plus there’s a Roxette needle drop. Veep it’s not, but it is very, very sweet.

An oddity, for sure, but the always excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal is near the top of her game in this New York-set remake of Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s movie. A frustrated poet who begrudges her position as an early childhood educator, suddenly her two worlds collide when a young boy under her care starts spouting seemingly philosophical verse she could never hope to imagine. So she steals it instead, passing it off as her own in night classes with a hunky tutor (Gael García Bernal). Adapted by writer/director Sara Colangelo, what starts off as cringey comedy soon takes a darker turn and wowzas, we did not see that coming.

Speaking of dark-turn comedies, Australian filmmaker Abe Forsyth put rancorous racial division under a wonky spotlight in deliriously wicked Down Under. His follow-up crashes headlong in the zombie sub-genre of horror that’s a little bit busy, but he manages to make it feel fresh. Again, it’s centred on a kindergarten teacher, played by Star Wars hero Lupita Nyong’o, who later went a bit zombie herself in Us. She has to save her kids from a flesh-eating outbreak with questionable help from a game Alexander England as an ocker young lad keen on getting her number. Josh Gad throws Frozen under the bus as a maniacally self-serving children’s TV star.

If you want to freak yourself out with a straight-up nail biter, then this stressful dramatisation of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks will have your heart palpitating right out of your chest. Helmed by Australian director Anthony Maras, it features magnificent Lion star Dev Patel as a waiter at the Taj Hotel. It became a focal point of the assault, with guests held hostage for days. Call Me By Your Name’s Armie Hammer plays one, alongside Homeland’s Nazanin Boniadi, with local star Tilda Cobham-Hervey (I Am Woman) as their nanny, who desperately tries to hide her infant charge. Harrowing, in a can’t-stop-looking kinda way.

For a straight-up classic, you can’t go past Robert De Niro powerhouse performance as a Vietnam vet-turned-New York cabbie Travis Bickle, who really needed to find a less stressful line of work. Like cleaning nuclear reactors. Forget The Irishman (oh, you already did?), this 1976 masterpiece is some of Martin Scorsese’s finest work, doing ‘I neeeeeeed to catch my breath’ cinema way before the Safdie brothers were in nappies. A young Jodie Foster does unforgettable work in a very difficult role, with Harvey Keitel in a full sleaze mode, and Cybill Shepherd also great. It’s one hell of a ride.

If that cinematic classic is a little too much for you, then revert to this John Hughes golden oldie instead. Hot on the heels of Sixteen Candles, it solidified Molly Ringwald’s reign as the teen queen of the ‘80s and turbocharged Emilio Estevez’ career too. A dramedy set in after-school detention, it’s basically set the mould for outsiders coming together and paved the way for shows like Beverly Hills, 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, making libraries look cool way before the latter. Ally Sheedy’s emo and her dandruff steal the show, as does the closing credits song from Scottish band Simple Minds.

For a very different type of teen movie take a dash of The X-Files and a dab of 28 Days Later for this London council estate-set horror comedy is an absolute hoot. Written and directed by Joe Cornish, it’s also the film that launched John Boyega on his way towards a galaxy far, far away as he plays a teen delinquent whose forced to put his destructive tendencies to good use, staving off an alien invasion of fanged furballs that look a lot more Critters than Chewbacca. Funnily enough, he has another alien on-side, the future Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker.