Streaming Options: From Jennifer Lopez’s Performance to Other Must-See Titles

Jennifer Lopez delivers an impressive performance in the latest Netflix film “The Mother,” directed by Niki Caro, who is best known for her Oscar-nominated films “Whale Rider” and “North Country.” In the movie, Lopez plays a former underworld assassin of the US military who is persuaded to give up her child for adoption after an operation goes awry and her life is threatened. The Mother emerges 12 years later, after a trusted FBI source alerts her that her daughter is being targeted by her enemies. To keep her daughter safe, she takes on the challenge of teaching her survival skills out in snowy wilderness. The film’s storyline is a classic “hero with no name”-type, and its basic contours are well-worn and somewhat generic. Nevertheless, Lopez and Caro manage to bring a personal touch to the script and infuse old pulp archetypes with real feeling. The film is ostensibly an action movie, but with plenty of quieter scenes of maternal bonding between the Mother and her daughter interspersed in all the chases and shootouts. The stakes of the movie are centered on the heroine’s main objective of “motherhood.”

The Five Devils Explores The Strong Bonds of Family

Léa Mysius’s French drama “The Five Devils” tells the story of a young girl named Vicky (Sally Dramé), who is bullied at school. To escape the harsh reality, Vicky retreats into her favorite hobby of replicating other people’s scents, using a mix of ingredient gathering and witchcraft, which she stores in glass jars. Vicky begins having visions of her mother Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and her aunt Julia’s (Swala Emati) tragic story and how their forbidden love caused a scandal and destroyed lives in their picturesque mountain town. Mysius and her co-writer Paul Guilhaume use Vicky’s mystical powers to explore how Joanne and Julia’s scandalous past affects the young girl in the modern day. The film is alluring and emotionally powerful, but it can be frustratingly oblique at times. Vicky’s family keeps trying to shield her from their past mistakes, but their regret remains palpable, clinging to them like a stench.

Crater Offers Hope as Its Young Characters Explore New Worlds

Kyle Patrick Alvarez directs Disney’s “Crater,” a kid-friendly dystopian science-fiction movie. The film is about five teens living on a lunar mining colony run by an exploitative bureaucracy who accidentally stumble across a new, hidden world inside the moon’s barren surface. The heroes dance on the edge of danger throughout, but their optimism and exploration in the grimmest situations are infectious. The movie is aimed at a younger audience, and though it skews sugary at times, it offers fragments of hope embedded even in the grimmest landscapes. The young characters’ outlooks are a clever use of metaphor to build an appealing world of wonders.

In conclusion, all three of these new streaming films are worth watching, each with their unique storyline and premise, suitable for different genres and age groups. Lopez superbly channels the ‘hero with no name’ type in “The Mother” while “The Five Devils” explores the strong bonds of family using mystical powers. Finally, “Crater,” the new Disney movie, offers a hidden world of wonders and a source of hope in a seemingly straightforward dystopian setting.