The Downstream: August 2023
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
August is a time of transition — out of summer, back to school, into Pumpkin Spice Lattes and flannels. Whatever the shift in your circumstances, here are 10 movies leaving their current streaming homes that you might want to check out as you get to where you’re going.
Fences, Amazon Prime Video
I saw the trailer for The Equalizer 3 over the weekend, and I would like to encourage Denzel Washington to keep getting that coin — he has earned the right to do whatever he pleases. But I’d like to see something more like Fences back in the pipeline again … there are still many August Wilson plays for him to adapt, after all. Since he owns the rights, he’s in control.
The Girl Next Door, Hulu
Millennials got their Risky Business in The Girl Next Door, a film where Emile Hirsch’s precocious prepster enters into a business and (eventually) romantic partnership with Elisha Cuthbert’s adult film actress who moves in next door. It’s a pretty fun high school movie, though maybe a bit rough around the edges. For anyone worried about graphic content, it’s a fairly standard R-rating that leverages pornography more as a key plot point than as true titillation.
The Graduate, Criterion Channel
Actually, this might make a great double feature with The Girl Next Door? (It should be so lucky to be considered in this category.) If that film is about the kind of shenanigans an impressionable but immature man can get into before he goes off to college, The Graduate provides a tragicomic look at what happens after and the conveyer belt of possibility stops its relentless march forward. This is but one way to look at Mike Nichols’ classic film, one of my all-time favorites that feels brand new each time I watch it.
Happy Gilmore, Amazon Prime Video
If you ever think I am just some highfalutin, out-of-touch coastal elitist who can’t enjoy a dumb movie, allow me to offer that I quote the line “The Price is WRONG!” from Happy Gilmore at least once a week. (By the way, Bob Barker … still alive! He turns 100 this year.) Adam Sandler has a promising new Netflix movie coming out this weekend, but I can’t blame you if you just want to fire up this old classic instead.
Hunger, Criterion Channel
We’re getting our first Michael Fassbender movie(s) this fall for the first time in six1 years! It’s as good a time as any to celebrate the end of the drought by finally working up the stomach (pun fully intended) to watch his harrowing hunger strike drama. As the legendary Irish republican resistor Bobby Sands, Fassbender does the method acting thing right by contorting his body to the needs of the role and minding his own business. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) ensures that the film’s real spectacle is not just his body but an extended 17-minute take where a priest tries to talk Bobby off his extreme position.
Knight and Day, Hulu
You’re telling me there’s another Tom Cruise movie where he plays a globe-trotting super spy, it deftly blends comedy and action … and wait a second, he actually has some chemistry with the female lead? Sure, it doesn’t have a Mission: Impossible budget, but Knight and Day deserves much more credit for being a fun popcorn movie.
Magic Mike XXL, Netflix
The first Magic Mike made my list of “mindless yet mindful movies” last month. While many people regard that movie highly, some will talk your ear off on the virtues of the sequel Magic Mike XXL as a revelatory piece of cinema. It’s easy to forget this K. Austin Collins essay, for example, is about a “dudes rock” stripper road trip movie and not some esoteric piece of European cinema.
Miss Sloane, Max
Does the Washington political thriller Miss Sloane embody everything that comedian Michelle Wolf mocked in her spot-on sketch “Featuring a Strong Female Lead?” Absolutely! It’s emblematic of the girlboss era that produced it, but even a half-decent Sorkin-adjacent story of Beltway intrigue is still enough to make for great entertainment. Jessica Chastain is steely and solid as always in her role as a lobbyist of questionable tactics but sterling morals.
She’s Gotta Have It, Netflix
That’s the double truth, Ruth: there’s Spike Lee before Do the Right Thing! His first feature out of the gate is a fascinating object to behold. It’s all the energy of a young filmmaker with a lot to say and looking for the best syntax with which to express those ideas. It’s a film not without some flaws, especially with regards to the depiction of women — so much so that it apocryphally inspired Cheryl Dunye’s creation of the Black lesbian classic The Watermelon Woman. So be warned, but seek it out all the same.
The great director Tamara Jenkins has only made three films (largely for family-related reasons), and they’re all bangers. A recent essay about the film by
on made me eager to revisit this acidic coming-of-age story. (For some reason, I just feel like this late ‘90s indie would make a great double bill with Welcome to the Dollhouse.) I haven’t seen this one since Natasha Lyonne’s great renaissance has beckoned, and I’d be curious as to what I’d unearth from this teen flick with far more on its mind than initially meets the eye.
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.
A fascinating listen on “Hollywood accounting.”
Two things I learned from this 20th (?!?) anniversary oral history of Freaky Friday: Annette Bening almost played the mom and Quentin Tarantino is, improbably, a huge fan. Taste!
For Slant Magazine, I interviewed director Laura Moss on their debut feature Birth/Rebirth, a riff on Frankenstein’s monster for the modern mother.
For Decider, I said skip it to 10 Days of a Bad Man on Netflix.
If you are a subscriber, you got to read about my 4DX screening of Gran Turismo:
My 4DX-perience with GRAN TURISMO
Thanks to Oppenheimer, people are learning theatrical exhibition modes faster than I could have ever anticipated — thanks, 70MM IMAX! I now feel compelled to stay ahead of the curve and continue to be a guinea pig for new formats that theater owners are trying to use to upsell customers and lure more butts back into seats.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Back to subscribers this weekend to chat about the re-release of Oldboy, which is now playing in theaters, and the career of its director Park Chan-wook.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
Did the 2019 X-Men film Dark Phoenix really happen if no one saw it?