The Downstream: December 2024
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
Down to those final two days of getting in those seasonal rewatches of Elf and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation! (Plus throwing the wretched and unfunny A Christmas Story in the dustbin, I hope.) But if you’re already starting to look past Santa Claus’ arrival, maybe it’s wise to stream one of these ten titles before the great rights rearranging of the major platforms takes place on January 1.
Alien, Hulu
Horror still doesn’t get much better than Ridley Scott’s Alien, still kicking ass 45 years later. This is genre filmmaking at its finest, combining a smart and well-executed script with ideas about non-human life with Scott’s tense, taut direction that amplifies the scares. That creature design remains a hallmark in the sci-fi space for a good reason, though the real highlight among characters is the crew of the Nostromo. No wonder the latest entry in the franchise, Alien: Covenant, felt it had to resort to AI trickery to bring back one of the dead cast members.
Barton Fink, Criterion Channel
I can’t say I’d ever made the connection until now, but the Coen Brothers made a hell of a one-two punch of Hollywood satires 25 years apart. 2016’s Hail, Caesar! sent up the silliness of a self-righteous industry where an upright man was a necessary but dying breed. 1991’s Barton Fink, on the other hand, functions as something as a prologue to the extinction event of virtue in the movie business. John Turturro stars as the titular playwright who struggles with immense writer’s block when he’s brought out to serve as a hired hand in Hollywood. Ironically, this sui generis black comedy that curdles into outright horror that made the filmmaking duo is exactly the film that made them true mainstays in their field.
Eagle Eye, Amazon Prime Video
If you’re looking for pure fun in an action movie that doesn’t require much from you, Eagle Eye is one of the better casual post-Patriot Act surveillance thrillers. Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan star as strangers on the lam after being caught in a conspiracy plot extending beyond their wildest imagination. If it amounts to little more than a big action setpiece followed by a reveal that yep, the government is still able to track them, it gets by on the sheer adrenaline rush it provides.
Jaws, Netflix
Though Spielberg gets a bad rep for ushering in the blockbuster age at the expense of the more personal “New Hollywood” — prior to Jaws, it was not a common practice for a movie to open nationwide simultaneously — this is unimpeachably brilliant filmmaking. Unlike so many derivative studio products that would follow its release pattern, the horror of this pulpy shark attack film is rooted in firm human stakes and richly observed characters. Jaws would sink in its back half were it not for the unconventional yet totally believable camaraderie between Brody, bookish marine biologist Hooper (a somewhat Fauci-like Richard Dreyfuss) and eccentric shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) as they take to the seas to hunt down the great white menace. Many people now take it upon themselves to watch the film on the 4th of July, and I quite like the tradition myself. Jaws feels like a parable, a crowning jewel in American cinema whose understanding of the national character — refusing to accept short-term economic pain and psychological disappointment in the name of public safety — is piercing and trenchant.
Johnson Family Vacation, Hulu
I’m not going to take the time to crunch the numbers, but I would not be surprised if Johnson Family Vacation is the lowest-rated movie I’ve ever recommended on this newsletter. (It holds a whopping 6% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) This low-rent rip-off of National Lampoon’s Vacation is not exactly shy about where it draws influence. And yet, my family couldn't care less. This is a treasured Shaffer classic with infinite quotables from the way Cedric the Entertainer says “let’s roll” to “we got to be on the I-10 by 10” (dead giveaway someone from L.A. didn’t write the movie), “I’m just trying to take my family to the reunion,” and “SHOT!” In many ways, Johnson Family Vacation is a most noble exemplar of the power of cinema. It doesn’t even take something great to bring people together.
Rust and Bone, Amazon Prime Video
Look, another reminder that the director of Emilia Pérez can make a good movie! His Rust and Bone is a hymn to the resilience of the human spirit as it takes two characters down to their most starkly naked vulnerability, putting them through an emotional and physical gauntlet that tries them and the audience. Marion Cotillard’s Stephanie is a former whale trainer at the French equivalent of SeaWorld turned Cannes penthouse-dweller after a tragic accident in the water. Matthias Schoenaerts’ Alain is a well-meaning but deadbeat dad as well as a street fighter for cash on the side just to get by. They meet at the beginning of the film when Alain kicks Stephanie out of the bar after she starts a fight; while it’s a strange connection, apparently it was enough for her to call him when she gets lonely in her insurance claim-purchased apartment. Sure, the precipitating event may be a little bit of a stretch, but what ensues as they build an incredible rapport to shelter each other from pain makes up for the lack of believability. The duo doesn’t have a prototypical romantic chemistry, but their connection feels all the more real and human because of it.
Scarface, Netflix
I’m sure a quippy Letterboxd list to this effect exists, but there really should be a canon for movies where if you see a guy with the poster up in his dorm room, it means he didn’t understand the movie. You’d never know from the movie’s biggest devotees that hidden inside Scarface’s boiling bloodbath is a scalding takedown of America’s hidden class system. Not unlike The Godfather, made by director Brian De Palma’s peer, the film uses the underground economy as a metaphorical representation of the country at large. The same greed, machismo, and territorial closed-mindedness that locks Cuban-American Tony Montana out of the legitimate economy backs him into a corner of rage and madness that can only be exited via machine gun fire.
Serendipity, Max
Romantic comedies like to play footsies with concepts like fate, destiny, and chance, but none commits to the bit quite like Serendipity. The film ups the stakes between John Cusack’s Jonathan and Kate Beckinsale’s Sara, two strangers who meet at Bloomingdale’s over a pair of gloves. While each is committed to another relationship, they cannot deny the sparks that fly upon their meeting. After a failed night of testing the cosmos to prove their connection, the film jumps to a few years later when both Jonathan and Sara are engaged … yet neither can quite let go of the magical night they shared with a perfect stranger. Siloed from each other, both begin desperate attempts to reconnect with their lost love. It’s a loopy but lovable testament to the ends people will go to keep a flickering flame alive in their hearts.
The Third Man, Amazon Prime Video
One day I’ll stop teasing it and finally release my running list of “Canonical Movies I Think Are As Good As Their Reputation.” Spoiler alert: a recent rewatch of The Third Man at Film Forum this year got the movie a spot. This Vienna-set mystery-turned-thriller follows a writer of literal pulp fiction whose penchant for finding a story gets him caught up in one of himself. The twists and turns are enough to have you leaning fully forward on the first watch, but the gorgeous shadows in the photography keep you engrossed on rewatches when you know what’s coming. 75 years later, too, this film’s signature monologue still packs a wallop.
3:10 to Yuma, Netflix
James Mangold, director of the upcoming and underwhelming A Complete Unknown, is no stranger to taking potboiler material and making it sensational. (Heck, he even did it once with a musician biopic in Walk the Line.) Remaking a ‘50s Western might not sound like anything spectacular, but in his hands, this tale of a rancher (Christian Bale) trying to deliver an outlaw (Russell Crowe) to justice by arriving in time for a train car to prison becomes a clock-ticking thriller. You might think it would be a showdown between the two Oscar-winning leads, but the real firecracker in the mix is a young Ben Foster only just beginning to realize the extent of his power.
My final interview of 2024! I spoke with Maura Delpero, director of the Golden Globe-nominated film Vermiglio, for Slant Magazine. This opens on Christmas Day in select theatres and will expand outward in 2025.
Resurfacing some reviews from the fall festival circuit now that they’re opening in theaters! I adored Babygirl (opening wide on 12/25) and enjoyed singing its praises for Slant Magazine. Meanwhile, I seemed to appreciate the docufiction hybrid Asif Kapadia was attempting in his polemical 2073 (opening in select theaters on 12/27) in my review for The Playlist.
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.
Here’s an intriguing listen from the creative team behind awards darling Sing Sing on how they’re trying to disrupt traditional models of filmmaking compensation:
‘Tis the season for end-of-year reflections, and I thought Ian Wang in ArtReview and Mark Asch in Filmmaker both tied a nice bow on things.
If you’re the type who likes to nerd out on box office vs. streaming stats and theatrical windows, this Puck story from Matthew Belloni on Amazon’s Red One heading speedily to Prime Video ought to be like catnip.
After Christmas, get ready for some lists! First up: re-ranking my top 10 movies of 2014.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall