Matt Damon and Casey Affleck have needled each other onscreen as far back as 1997’s Good Will Hunting, but their chemistry never really registers in this lacklustre heist comedy about a pair of mismatched thieves. As a contrasting duo recruited for an armed robbery – Damon’s Rory is a depressed former marine and Affleck’s Cobby is a chirpy ex-con – the pair try to put some emotional weight on their characters, but nothing here significantly shifts the needle.

The script, written by Affleck and Chuck Maclean, has some droll bits: as the thieves prep to rob the Boston mayor’s election victory party, Rory has to be reminded not to take notes. The duo gets a third wheel once the robbery goes awry, with Rory insisting they kidnap his therapist, Dr Donna Rivera (Hong Chau), to help them. She offers some ironic therapeutic conversation as they flee the corrupt mayor, the cops and a vengeful underworld boss.

The supporting cast has a surplus of overly qualified but underused actors, including Alfred Molina, Toby Jones and Ving Rhames. The surprise is that director Doug Liman, fresh from the no-holds-barred Road House reboot, can’t generate any excitement aside from a pair of tidy car chases. The bond that develops between Rory and Cobby is orderly despite the chaos around them. There’s a difference between understated and anaemic.

Strange Way of Life
Binge

The masterful Pedro Almodóvar puts aside Madrid’s funky fringes for the 19th-century wild west in this idiosyncratic but instructive queer-themed short film. Traversing multiple frontiers, the arthouse titan casts Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal respectively as Sheriff Jake and Silva, ageing gunslingers and former lovers whose reunion is both bittersweet and suspiciously timed. It’s a gorgeously stylised brief encounter, complete with flashbacks and all kinds of loaded imagery. The half-hour running time feels right – there wasn’t a feature in this mix of the arch and the melancholic, but the short suffices.

Kleo (season 2)
Netflix

One of the surprises of 2022, the first season of this German action-thriller, set during and just after the Cold War, filled a Killing Eve-sized hole. Funniest at its bleakest, the show started as a vehicle for the title character’s revenge on the East German spies who made her into an assassin and then betrayed her. In the new episodes, Jella Haase’s Kleo remains a daunting, unpredictable prospect, but now the old order has collapsed and pre-reunified Berlin is a smorgasbord for grifters and spies alike. Still bloody, still enjoyable.

Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown
Disney+

Made with grim focus by director Marian Mohamed, this three-part documentary series is a step-by-step recreation of the tragic final day in 1978 of the Peoples Temple, the compound in Guyana where cult leader Jim Jones and more than 900 followers died in a suicide ritual after a visiting delegation of US politicians and media were ambushed by gunmen on Jones’ orders. Survivors from all sides offer harrowing testimony, but amid the true crime horror is a more unsettling question: how did Jones attract and command so many people?

Late Night with the Devil
AMC+

A homage to the extremes of late-night television in the 1970s – there’s definitely some of The Don Lane Show in the DNA of this film – the latest horror feature from Australian filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) is a tale of demonic possession overtaking a live broadcast. American actor David Dastmalchian (Dune) inhabits the role of talk show host Jack Delroy, whose supernatural-themed live episode swiftly gets out of hand when sniping between the guests gives way to supernatural chaos. Assured in their craft, the Cairnes brothers deliver fulsome ratings satire and sharp scares.