Full Stream Ahead: Michael Greyeyes, ISIS terrorists and eternal androids top this week’s best underrated releases – The Globe and Mail

With Canadian movie theatres still caught in capacity-restriction limbo and theatrical titles continuing to hopscotch around the release-date calendar there is comfort in knowing that, thanks to streaming and video-on-demand, we can all program our own double (or triple, or quadruple) bills at home. Heres a look at this weeks best under-the-radar films, and where to find them.

Artificial Immortality (digital TIFF Lightbox until Oct. 7, streaming on Crave starting Oct. 8): If you feel like 2021 has gone on forever, then perhaps skip Ann Shins new documentary examining all the many ways in which scientists are advancing the live-forever market. But for those who can push past the daunting reality of our long-winter world, Artificial Immortality offers a fascinating look at what lengths people will apparently go to in order to never, ever die. While a survey of next-gen tech might drag in feature-length format, Shin wisely and poignantly wraps the narrative around her own family history and anxieties about leaving this mortal coil. The result is a thought-provoking and, for some, entirely relatable treatise on what it means to rage against the dying of the light.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Wild Indian (VOD, including Google Play and Apple TV/iTunes): After the raves that greeted Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.s drama following its Sundance Film Festival premiere this past January, I expected more promotion around Wild Indians general release. Instead, I just happened to stumble upon it while scrolling through Apple TVs new release tab, unaware it had been added to the flooded VOD market weeks earlier. While Corbines murder-mystery drama might be a bit too stage-y for the cinema, it unfolds perfectly in the comfort of a living room. But the real reason to watch is Canadian actor Michael Greyeyes, who adds to his of-the-moment reputation following the zombie drama Blood Quantum and television series Rutherford Falls by delivering a searing performance as a man outrunning his horrible past.

Story continues below advertisement

Courtesy of BEZELEVS and Focus Features

Profile (VOD, including Google Play and Apple TV/iTunes): About a year and change ago, I wondered aloud whether the pandemic might cause Hollywood to, at least temporarily, pivot to a new form of filmmaking screen-life films, whose stories take place entirely on someones computer screen in order to avoid utilizing large crews and crowds. That, fortunately, didnt become reality, though this year has seen a trickle of screen-life movies, including Profile, from the genres champion, Timur Bekmambetov (Searching, the Unfriended series). Profile isnt exactly a pandemic-era film it was produced back in 2018 but its storyline following a young London journalist cat-fishing an ISIS recruiter, told entirely through the journalists social-media feeds and video chats, feels extremely, uncomfortably and, thrillingly, circa 2021.

Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter. Sign up today.

See the rest here:

Full Stream Ahead: Michael Greyeyes, ISIS terrorists and eternal androids top this week's best underrated releases - The Globe and Mail