Stan: quick view
Stan: new to streaming
Next Goal Wins (23 Dec)
Film (2023). Following the story of the famously bad American Samoa football team, who lost a professional soccer match in 2001 by 31-0. Starring Michael Fassbender and Oscar Knightley.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (25 Dec)
Film (2012). Bilbo Baggins sets out to the Lonely Mountain with a spirited group of dwarves to reclaim their mountain home and the gold within it from the dragon Smaug.
Starring Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen.
Also streaming on 25 Dec: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).
Bump – Season 5 (26 Dec)
Series. The fifth and final season of the hit comedy-drama series, in what Stan calls a ‘Christmas tradition for Australian households’.
Created by Claudia Karvan and Kelsey Munro, and produced by Roadshow Rough Diamond, the popular series focuses on a contemporary, complicated and very diverse Sydney family that includes characters from Chile, Columbia and Argentina – as well as a matriarch (Karvan) who pursues midlife same-sex attraction. Read more …
300 (28 Dec)
Film (2006). King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fight against Xerxes and his massive Persian army in the ancient battle of Thermopylae. Starring Gerard Butler and Lena Headey.
Stan: recently added
Evil Dead Rise (18 Dec)
Film (2023). The reunion of two sisters takes a turn for the worse with the arrival of flesh-possessing demons. Starring Mirabai Pease and Richard Crouchley. Watch the trailer.
From ScreenHub’s four-star review:
‘After an opening involving the traditional cabin in the woods and a fairly effective reminder that the Deadites do not mess around when it comes to messing up the people they’ve possessed (or anyone else close by) we flash back to the day before, where a completely unrelated set of characters are hanging around a gloomy Los Angeles apartment block.
‘Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is a single mother with three kids: teenagers Danny (Morgan Davies) and Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), and youngster Kassie (Nell Fisher). Dad recently split and their apartment (in fact, the whole building) is condemned, so the mood is pretty grim when Ellie’s younger sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) shows up after months on the road as a guitar tech.
‘She wants to hang and decompress, Ellie is pissed at her sister’s lack of support during her recent rough stretch, then there’s an earthquake and before you know it Danny’s climbed through a crack in the basement car park floor and found a vault that contains an evil book that seems to have teeth. Uh-oh.’
Interstellar (21 Dec)
Film (2014). A certain amount of debate has circulated this Christopher Nolan science-fiction epic since it lit its afterburners in 2014 but now there’s a fairly a strong consensus that it is (a) a masterpiece or (b) not a masterpiece.
When the world becomes uninhabitable in the mid-21st century, a widowed ex-NASA pilot farmer guy is given the task of flying a spacecraft alongside a team of researchers to find a new liveable planet.
A favourite in awards shortlists on its year of release, and for many viewers since, it’s worth it for the star power (in every sense) and the rendering of a black hole.
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain.
