The Downstream: December 2023

10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.

Greetings from mid-air¹! I’m headed back to Houston for the holidays, where I’m hoping to do a fair amount of unplugging (and movie-watching, of course). If you’re looking for the movies you need to catch up on for awards purposes, that post has already been written…

But if you want a list of recommendations that’s a bit more practical for streaming expirations, here are 10 shuffling off their current streaming homes.

Before Midnight, Max

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t understand the marital strife at the heart of the Before series’ capper when I first saw it at age 20. A rewatch of the trilogy last month showed me how much a little distance can do to help understand something. The anti-romance of Before Midnight casts what came before it in a stark new light as consequences for impulsive decision-making come calling for Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celine. I can’t wait to see how I feel about this in another 10 years. It’s more than just a bummer — it’s a vital reframing that allows us to see the events that came before with greater clarity.

Ben Is Back, Amazon Prime Video

The better of the 2018 addiction dramas starring an ex-boyfriend of Lady Bird … and a kind of unexpected Christmas movie, too. As I wrote in my /Film review at the time, Ben is Back unfurls “over just one highly eventful day when Ben (Lucas Hedges) makes an unexpected return home for the holidays. His unannounced return sets off a flurry of frenzied responses, from the hopefulness of his mother Holly (Julia Roberts) to the trepidation of his sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and the righteous concern of the family's new patriarch Neal (Courtney B. Vance). After Ben's previous exploits, which gradually come into focus as plot developments organically reveal them, coming back is not as simple as it seems. His presence both triggers past trauma and threatens to create new wounds if Holly cannot closely monitor his erratic behavior.”

Defending Your Life, Max

Albert Brooks ran in Defending Your Life so The Good Place could fly. If you like great content about the afterlife served with self-deprecating humor and introspection, this is a movie for you. The film begins like many a purgatory/afterlife narrative: the hero dies and ends up in an in-between state where he's forced to account for his life on earth before determining where he goes next. But Brooks’ Daniel Miller’s plans get determined in a courtroom-style legal proceeding where the newly deceased must ... well, defend their life and prove they showed a sufficient amount of courage in it. Not unlike the aforementioned TV show, I'd recommend putting your phone down and paying more attention than normal to the film, as Brooks hides many a sight gag in the background or on the periphery for engaged viewers.

Diner, Max

I’m mostly just doing a pulse check to see how much my dad is reading this on a granular level. I will admit that despite being great at giving recommendations, I am often terrible at taking them. For years, my dad kept asking when I was going to watch Diner, a shaggy Baltimorean coming-of-age story with four forerunners of prolonged adolescence. I finally caught it at a MoMA screening series in 2018, and it was a great time. It’s almost enough for me to forgive Barry Levinson for giving us Sam.

eXistenZ, Criterion Channel

A little bit of body horror, a dash of future forecasting, and a touch of early video game anxiety … that’s the recipe for a Cronenbergian good time in eXistenZ. This 1999 curio from the great Canadian master of horror is rougher around the edges than more fully realized works like Videodrome or his recent Crimes of the Future. But it’s a film so bursting with ideas and energy, some of which feel lightyears ahead of their time, that it’s still recommendable.

Garfield, Hulu

Before the upcoming Chris Pratt animated remake destroys all goodwill for the comic strip Garfield, let me go on the record and say that the Bill Murray-voiced version is perfectly pleasant! (The 2006 sequel A Tale of Two Kitties is a legitimate calamity, however.) I will always, always laugh when I think about the urban legend that Murray signed on to the film because he thought it was a Coen Brothers film — not realizing that there is another, far more lowbrow Joel Coen (who wrote this script) in Hollywood.

Hell or High Water, Hulu

“3 tours in Iraq but no bailout for people like us,” reads an eerily accurate graffiti tag on a West Texas building in the opening shot of Hell or High Water.”The scrawled phrase of anger provides a fitting epigraph for the events to follow. Within the framework of the Western sheriff and bank robber folklore, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan finds the ideal setting for an examination of post-recession fallout and the remnants of small towns left behind by the behemoth economic forces of urbanization and globalization. Coupled with his killer sense of the ironies that time and chance have in store for us all, Sheridan’s script transcends its location and genre trappings. It’s a key text about the hollowing out of the American heartland and what such losses mean for us all.

Long Shot, Amazon Prime Video

This rom-com bombed in theaters but now seems to be enjoying a nice second life on streaming, at least anecdotally speaking from family. And deservedly so! Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron sell both pieces of the genre equation here with aplomb as a semi-slacker journalist and uptight politician, respectively, who find love flourishing on a foreign trip. Never mind that she used to babysit him (if you can’t stomach the age gap romances of 2023). This is a nice mix of silly and sweet that I’m sure plays very well on a small screen.

Saving Private Ryan, Netflix

A classic for a reason. That D-Day sequence opening Saving Private Ryan may well be the most impressive sequence Spielberg ever filmed, which is an extraordinarily high bar. While I find some of the rescue that follows can descend into occasional fits of hokum, this tale of American valor is notable for reflecting on what heroism costs. No wonder it inspired a wave of WWII vets to open up about their experiences.

Us, Netflix

I still maintain that Us plays a little too much like Jordan Peele read all the Get Out thinkpieces. But even still, his sophomore feature is a chilling vision of doubles and the compounding sins of racial oppression in America. It already looks ridiculous that Lupita Nyong’o got snubbed for Best Actress, especially just so Renée Zellweger could get a second Oscar for **Judy**?! (“Awards are not life’s report card,” I continue to insist as I slowly shrink and turn into a corn cob.)

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.

To paraphrase a quippy tweet that rattles around in my brain, here is when Willem Dafoe because Willem DaFRIEND.

I enjoyed these year-end NYT trend pieces around depictions of the Holocaust and the return of messy sex scenes (both gift articles).

While I disagree with many points in this analysis of Natalie Portman’s performances on Slate, I do think it’s a great springboard for discussion.

Re-upping my review of Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers from earlier this fall now that it’s about to open in theaters.

Subscribers got to read this fun conversation over the weekend with Savina Petkova about Poor Things and Yorgos Lanthimos.

You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.

It’s ranking time next week!

Anatomy of a Fall, 2023. © NEON

Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall

1. My computer died mid-flight with ONE small thing left to update. I’m keeping it!