Now streaming
HUSTLERS
110 minutes (MA15+)
J.LO hustles like a pro in this glossy account of the rise and fall of a high-class escort. It’s easy to buy the 50-year-old Latina actress as a hard-headed opportunist who employs her feminine superwiles to relieve an army of Wall Street bankers of a good portion of their ill-gotten gains. And she clearly put a lot of work into the steamy pole dancing routine — there’s a YouTube video to prove it. But there’s something deeply dishonest about this cynical spin on the Robin Hood myth, in which a bunch of strippers drug their wealthy clients in order to fleece them of large amounts of cash.
Now on Amazon Prime Video and via digital release
THE ASSISTANT
87 minutes (M)
THE unnamed Boss – clearly modelled on disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein — doesn’t make a physical appearance in writer-director Kitty Green’s compelling indie drama. But his behavior infects the entire office, which conversely, also provides a fertile environment in which it can breed. Such is the moral complexity of The Assistant, which explores sexual politics from an overlooked yet uniquely qualified perspective — that of a silent, or rather silenced, witness. In contrast to the headlinemaking stories of sexual violence and abuse, the title character (superbly played by Ozark’s Julia Garner) experiences quieter, more insidious forms of discrimination.
Now at Golden Age Cinema and Bar, Surry Hills and The Randwick Ritz. Also available via digital release
MYSTIFY: MICHAEL HUTCHENCE
102 minutes (MA15+)
FROM the older sister who raised him to the vivacious British TV presenter with whom he had a child ... it’s the women in Michael Hutchence’s life that shape Richard Lowenstein’s documentary. And their intimate perspective gently recalibrates the INXS frontman’s public image. Producer Michelle Bennett, Hutchence’s first love, and one of the last people he spoke to before he took his life, recalls the early days in a share house. Kylie Minogue talks fondly — and for her, remarkably candidly — about their two years together in the late-’80s/early-’90s in what feels like the film’s most revelatory sequence. It's a measured and personal account of the man behind the myth.
Now on Docplay and via digital release.