10 (More) Great Net Flicks
In honor (?) of EMILIA PÉREZ
This past week has seen the release of Emilia Pérez on Netflix … but also to social media via wildly out-of-context clips. In the case of this movie, however, I’m not sure context helps all that much. I saw Jacques Audiard’s movie that can best be described as “Mrs. Doubtfire meets Sicario and also it’s a musical” at NYFF earlier this fall, and the number below caused about half the audience to look around at each other to make sure we weren’t hallucinating it. (I’m still not sure we haven’t.)
It says everything about the shifting sands at the streaming giant that something this big, loud, and bad is getting the might of their awards push while something genuinely profound like Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters gets buried. Even though I didn’t really care for much of Emilia Peréz, I wouldn’t necessarily tell you not to watch it. Audiard’s film swings wildly between different tonalities and spirits that it’s hard not to get whiplash as you wonder whether the project might just be fundamentally misguided. (Zoe Saldana innocent.)
But such is the strange and contradictory nature of Netflix’s originals — on the one hand, largely derivative and disposable as the streamer tries to replace linear TV altogether. And yet, the platform (in seemingly dwindling numbers) funds some genuinely great movies in spite of — or perhaps more likely because of — the content they develop to be watched while also on your phone. I did one of these back in 2022…
…and figured it was a good time to round up another 10 great Netflix original films that fly in the face of our expectations of the “gourmet cheeseburger” baseline the platform sets for its offerings.
I’ll admit to being slightly biased on this one as it’s directed by Craig Johnson, a friend in the industry who I’ve gotten to share many candid conversations with about the joys and challenges of filmmaking. But in a blind taste test, I do think his Alex Strangelove could hold up! I think this is the movie many people wanted Love, Simon to be — a coming-out story that isn’t scared of its own shadow. The film feels like any other teen romance, not because it’s watered-down for mainstream appeal but rather because it recognizes a universal adolescent language of yearning for connection and acceptance. It’s sensual, sweet, and sensational.
I hear the haters, and I choose to tune them out! I’m going to try my best not to channel the “Megalopolis is a secret masterpiece and time will prove you all wrong” bros because Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is a movie with some serious flaws and blindspots. Yet I’ll be damned if I wasn’t bowled over by its pitiless look at the phantasmagoric fame machine’s warping effect on the life and career of Marilyn Monroe. As I wrote out of Venice for Decider in 2022, “de Armas’ bravura performance works so well because every choice is calibrated in service of the project’s larger aim, which is not so much portraiture as it is a parable.”
The generation that grew up on Spielberg has tried to channel his Amblin-era of childlike wonder in entertainment to varying degrees of success. I was preparing for the worst when I got assigned to review Chupa by Jonas Cuáron, the nepo baby of Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuáron. But this thinly veiled reimagining of E.T. with a baby Chupacabra completely won me over! It’s the classic “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” but instead of a mid-budget adult drama, we’re talking about family entertainment. “By recreating feelings and details, not just indulging nostalgia,” I wrote last year, “Cuarón provides more than just a copycat. It’s a soaring adventure film that provides the kind of entertainment for the whole family that has recently been farmed out to franchises.”
Word of advice: do not make the mistake I did and try watching Daughters on a workout machine. If you’ve ever wondered what it is like to try and full-body sob during the middle of cardiovascular activity, it wasn’t pretty. I was very pleased that the Critics Choice’ Documentary Awards, of which I am a voter, honored this gorgeous film with a prize at our ceremony last week. This documentary chronicling a program that hosts father-daughter dance inside prisons is the kind of work that makes you weep for a world of dignity and decency. The family reunion at the center of the film is the starting point of the incarcerated parents showing up for their children, not its culmination. When we think about how cycles break, this is where that occurs.
Margaret Brown’s Descendant, produced by the Obamas’ Higher Ground, is probably not the movie about the historical legacy of slavery you might be expecting. It’s far more poetic than polemical as the progeny of the last slave ship to reach American shores try to locate the vessel’s remains. The film seems to end almost arbitrarily before it reaches its expected conclusion, but that doesn’t manifest as a flaw in the documentary. Brown draws attention to the open, festering wound that the entire Mobile community has learned to live with — and asks people to dare to imagine what closing that sore would look and feel like. “The story may reach a crescendo, yet it never really concludes,” I wrote in my review for Slant Magazine back in 2022. “Leaving a chronicle of American racism unfinished may be the only possible way to reflect the inherent twists of fortune within a nation’s persistent problem.”
This should not be confused with the film of the same name about Jennifer Lawrence inventing a mop (good movie though) or, more pertinent for your future Netflix scrolling, their upcoming drama about the first IVF baby. Sudabeh Mortezai’s Joy is something pretty different as it follows the titular character as she tries to break a cycle of sex trafficking in Vienna. This Nigerian woman in Europe trying to support her family, she’s mostly resigned herself to accepting the state of affairs. But the same can’t be said for Precious, a new teenage girl on the streets unwilling to go so quietly. Mortezai’s film is remarkably unsensationalized and unsentimental as it focuses on people trying to make the right choices within a system that incentivizes the exact opposite. That’s not to say that she somehow approves of prostitution and trafficking, but rather to train our attention on why no solution to this social problem is as simple as it might seem in our heads.
It feels wrong that a Christian Bale performance should just get buried on Netflix, so allow me to draw your attention to The Pale Blue Eye. This is an unconventional origin story about Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe … in large part because he’s only a secondary character in the film (though memorably played by Harry Melling, best known as Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter series). Bale stars as a detective sent to investigate a series of grisly murders within the U.S. Military Academy that would later inspire the macabre writings of Poe, who was then enlisted there. You might think the story is wrapping up much earlier than it does, so be sure to stay seated for a third-act escalation right when you’re anticipating falling action. As I wrote in my full review for The Playlist back in 2022, “The game of twisted allegiances, false partnerships, and premature resolutions makes for a wicked mystery that continues unfolding in riveting ways.”
Who knew a movie stemming from civil asset forfeiture could be such a thrilling ride? Jeremy Saulnier (of Blue Ruin and Green Room fame) is very much back with the recent Netflix release Rebel Ridge, which features a performance by Aaron Pierre that finally made me understand why he’s been popping up on “actors to watch” lists for years. As a former Marine with a special set of skills, Pierre’s Terry Richmond finds a reason to deploy his training outside of a combat zone. He’s faced with a corrupt small-town police force deadset on denying him the money they seized in a traffic stop. The film is a pulse-pounding thriller that only stops to catch its breath whenever Saulnier wants you to take in just how astonishingly easy it is for people in positions of authority to turn their backs on the law and order they’re sworn to protect.
“I was just thinking this morning about how Adam [Leon]’s movies are like the soul of New York,” Vanessa Kirby told me back in 2022 when I interviewed the actress about her collaboration with the director. There’s a scrappiness and shapelessness to Adam Leon’s cinema that only makes sense when you think about them as products of their environment. Tramps starts out as a money exchange gone wrong for two young New Yorkers that blossoms into an unlikely romance between the driver (Grace Van Patten) and the bag man (Callum Turner). It’s got a breezy, Linklater-esque walk-and-talk feeling about it as the pair ambles about the city searching for their misplaced briefcase. I found it quite winning — and at a breezy 82 minutes, Leon knows not to overstay his welcome with a simple but sincere concept.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead
“If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to combine The Bucket List and Shaun of the Dead into a manga, now you’ll know,” I wrote when trying to describe Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead in the context of movies people might know. I went into this offbeat dark comedy completely cold when it was assigned to me, and I sure had a blast watching it. Maybe it’s not the worst thing to learn to see the bright side of the zombie apocalypse — or contemplate how much we’re beaten down by productivity culture if we see the opportunity to finally be free when we can tell the world is coming to an end.
Two interviews of new releases for Slant Magazine. First, I spoke (on election day) with Tyler Taormina — the filmmaker behind Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, a big-hearted family ensemble film that deserves a holiday watch.
Then, I had the chance to speak with the winner of this year’s Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Payal Kapadia, when she was in town for NYFF to present her film All We Imagine As Light. You can now read this deeply felt chat about her profoundly empathetic film now that it’s starting its theatrical rollout.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
It’s been a tough week, and I turned to a song that provides equal parts comfort and commiseration: “I Shall Be Released.” It’s been covered quite memorably many times since Bob Dylan recorded it nearly 60 years ago, and each version can convey such a different sense of helplessness or hopefulness. I’ve decided to compile them into a playlist ranking them from most depressing to most empowering for however we need to hear the words of the chorus: “I see my light come shining / from the west down to the east / any day now, any day now / I shall be released.”
On a happier note, I really enjoyed listening to this equal parts highbrow/lowbrow breakdown of some recent pop cultural developments, such as Leonardo DiCaprio turning 50 and The Rock sitting down for an extensive GQ cover story.
It’s worth hearing from someone who isn’t just a cisgender male on why Emilia Pérez is so rancid, and I would recommend Juan Barquin’s review in Little White Lies to breakdown what makes it so galling politically and artistically.
Back next week with the Downstream.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall