Hustle (NC16)
118 minutes, Netflix
3 stars
The story: Adam Sandler is a weary basketball scout staking his future on a Spanish street ball talent. He brings the wunderkind back with him to United States despite the boy's chequered past and many adversities. Can the pair of underdogs prove they have what it takes for the pro league?
Three reasons to watch this film:
1. It is predictable, but...
Hustle has heart. Sandler's rumpled performance with Queen Latifah as his supportive wife and Ben Foster as his spiteful boss makes this a satisfying, yet unsentimental, sports drama about the hard knocks and rewards of a decent family man.
2. Juancho Hernangomez's hands
They are human paddle boards, ridiculously huge. Hernangomez, a US National Basketball Association (NBA) power forward, plays the recruit in a winning acting debut.
3. Everyone has a ball
Julius Erving, Anthony Edwards, Doc Rivers and Kenny Smith are among the two dozen other NBA appearances. The movie would be an NBA promo if these all-stars did not contribute such pizzazz to the court action. From angles high to low, director Jeremiah Zagar (We The Animals, 2018) captures the hoop action in fluid camerawork set against hip-hop bangers.
Sandler, an avowed basketball fan, is a producer. There is a real love of the game here.
Navalny (NC16)
98 minutes, HBO Go
3 stars
The story: The poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on board a commercial flight in 2020 shocked the world. This eponymous documentary follows Navalny's dramatic efforts to expose his assailants during his convalescence in Germany, right until his detention at the airport upon returning home in January 2021. The arrest incited Russia's widest anti-government protest in years.
Three reasons to watch this film:
1. Never say die
Not everyone lives to tell of his or her own near-assassination, certainly not with Navalny's telegenic charm and sardonic humour, much less his moxie. Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic-nemesis will not be silenced, whatever the mortal danger.
2. Espionage intrigue
Canadian film-maker Daniel Roher is frustratingly vague on Navalny's politics, too admiring to get into his subject's nationalist past.
The movie is mainly a fleet-footed true-life investigative spy thriller on the botched murder operation, and the sleuthing by Navalny and his inner circle leads to an astonishing scene: Navalny prank-calling an unsuspecting Kremlin operative, who duly confesses to administering the lethal nerve agent Novichok.
3. A story in the making
Navalny, now 46, remains in a penal colony east of Moscow. In March, he was sentenced to nine more years. His struggles against authoritarianism wait on an elusive happy ending.
