A new month means new movies on Peacock! And that’s always the best time of the month for subscribers. Almost every other week in January is filled with sporting events, NBC dramas, and wall-to-wall news shows from Universal’s cable networks.
This month’s picks for the three underrated movies on Peacock that you need to watch in January include Bombshell and Compliance, two films that were inspired by real events. The third film, Leatherheads, plays a little looser with history, but it’s also inspired an age of football that passed almost one hundred years ago. Considering that the NFL playoffs are right around the corner, it seemed like an appropriate choice. Keep reading for more info about this month’s picks.
Bombshell (2019)
Bombshell is based on the true experiences that Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) had while working for Fox News under Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). As Carlson suffers unrelenting sexual harassment from Ailes, she prepares to personally sue him. When Carlson makes her legal move, Kelly is pressured to publicly support Ailes even when she has first-hand knowledge he had done the same thing to many other women, including herself.
The film also invents a composite character, Kayla Pospisil, for Margot Robbie (Barbie) to play. Unlike Carlson or Kelly, Pospisil has no power inside or outside of Fox News. Not even Pospisil’s casual work fling, Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), is willing to risk her own job at Fox News when Pospisil is victimized by Ailes.
Watch Bombshell on Peacock.
Compliance (2012)
There’s no mystery at the heart of Compliance, as it’s clear almost immediately that Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) isn’t who he says he is when he calls a restaurant and accuses an innocent worker named Becky (Dreama Walker) of stealing money from a customer. The tension arises from Becky’s boss, Sandra Frum (Ann Dowd), who Daniels far too easily fools into subjecting Becky to abuse and even a highly-illegal strip search.
The entire affair unnerves the restaurant’s workers, but few employees are willing to defy the so-called cop on the phone or their manager. Becky’s ordeal gets progressively worse, and the consequences of everyone else’s actions could destroy their lives.
Watch Compliance on Peacock.
Leatherheads (2008)
Football didn’t always look like a modern-day NFL game. In director George Clooney’s Leatherheads, the story focuses on professional football’s struggle to survive in 1925, long before many of the innovations that made the game into America’s favorite sporting event.
Clooney also cast himself as Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, the captain of the Duluth Bulldogs who is willing to do almost anything to save the league and the sport that he loves. That’s why Jimmy recruits college football star Carter Rutherford (The Office‘s John Krasinski) to play on the team. However, their camaraderie is short-lived when both men compete for the heart of Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), a reporter looking into the truth behind Carter’s supposed heroics in World War I.
Watch Leatherheads on Peacock.
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