Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 18 February

The Road to Patagonia (Hannon, 2024)

One of the tools of the reader here at Funerals & Snakes is the website JustWatch which is a comprehensive* survey of what’s currently streaming on which platform in whatever country or territory you choose.

As a pro user of the service, I get quarterly media releases showing which streaming services have the most users. The stats are based on the number of users who have selected a platform as one to monitor, or who have marked a film or show as ‘watched’ on a platform.

The results for the quarter to the end of December 2024 are fascinating (and in some cases surprising).

Netflix remains number one but the first surprise is that Prime Video (Amazon) is number two. I think that’s because there are still ISP and phone providers who are bundling Prime with their other services. It can’t be because their originals are of a consistently high quality because they are not. It’s also only NZ$10.99 compared with Netflix Premium (which is NZ$27.99) and the basic plan is still ad-free in New Zealand.

Disney’s brand proposition sees them come third (NZ$18.99) and Neon ($19.99) are close behind because they still have the pick of the TV content from HBO etc. in the U.S.

Then you have the free services from our domestic television providers, TVNZ+ and ThreeNow.

What staggers me here is that Apple TV+ is so low in the rankings that it joins the likes of AMC+ in the “other” category.

I could recommend an Apple film or show every week here. They may not have the biggest selection but it is the most consistent. It has been programmed with taste from the beginning and, if you are only just signing up, all their previous originals from the past five years are still there. In fact, their fifth highest ranked movie is still Greyhound, the Tom Hanks WWII movie from 2020.

Apple TV+ is in the mid-range of monthly costs (NZ$14.99), has impeccable technical quality (which I can’t say for the worst streamer in New Zealand, Sky Sports Now) and if you buy an Apple product you get six months free. You’re nuts if you don’t get into it, I think.

In the U.S, Apple TV+ has started adding some blockbuster catalogue movies in 4K to their offering but it’s still only originals (including Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon) here in Aotearoa.

By the way, if you go to the F&S Substack home page, you’ll notice that I have divided entries up by streaming provider, in case you are looking for something on a particular platform,.

Now to my recommendation for today – on a service that also sits in that “other” category, DocPlay.

The Road to Patagonia played cinemas in Aotearoa in the middle of last year and was one of my most pleasant surprises:

No expectations is the best way to enjoy the Australian documentary, The Road to Patagonia. It starts with a car crash that grabs you by the lapels and demands that you pay attention. Once it has that attention, it becomes multiple different films over the 90-minute running time: a travel documentary, surf movie, love story, anthropological study, spiritual journey, ecological treatise and campaign for conservation. Amazingly, it does all of those things really well.

Matty Hannon is an explorer – in more ways than one. Realising that a dead end desk job in Melbourne was giving him depression and anxiety, he decides to sell everything he owns and go and find himself on an epic journey to experience the best surf breaks on the Pacific coast of the Americas, from Alaska in the north to the southern tip of Latin America in Patagonia.

He thinks that being alone in the wilderness will help sort his head out but it turns out that other people – friends and lovers – are more important than he realised. Also, that horses and rivers can be people, too.

Also in that June 2024 review: Linklater’s Hit Man; and Despicable Me 4 (co-written by The White Lotus’ Mike White.

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Where to watch The Road to Patagonia

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Rest of the world: Not currently available online

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Further listening

Here’s a link to last Friday’s conversation with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights. Emile was in Wellington on Friday so I was able to go into the studio and do the segment face-to-face. What fun!

*JustWatch doesn’t show some video-on-demand rental streamers like AroVision or NZ Film On Demand.