Have a day off work today for Presidents Day and don’t know what to do with yourself? Or just need a movie night to get you through another cold spell? Here are 10 movies about to expire from streaming services in the next week (yes, March is one week away!) well worth your time and attention.
The Conversation, Hulu
This is the rare movie I won’t necessarily recommend you watch on the biggest screen possible. Instead, watch The Conversation with the best sound you can. Frances Ford Coppola’s other 1974 film (he won Best Picture that year for The Godfather Part II) is an aural odyssey of the highest caliber as Gene Hackman’s audio surveillance pro begins to sense his operation will be used to put his subjects in danger. It’s a lot of him recording, unscrambling, looping, and listening … yet it’s riveting to watch a master at work, pulling out various threads from a pool of white noise.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl, HBO Max
Marielle Heller stormed out of the gate as a director to watch with The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and we should have known what greatness was in store from the beginning. Though some contemporaneous commentary fixated on the relationship between Bel Powley’s titular teen and Alexander Skarsgard’s stepfather-like figure, nothing feels exploitative or nasty about it. Ultimately, this is a story about a young woman learning to control her own sexual agency, and Heller is not afraid to dwell in the messiness that comes along the road to gaining confidence.
Gone Girl, Hulu
Perhaps no film understands and plays with the Ben Affleck star image quite as well as Gone Girl. I haven’t revisited in the wake of either BenAna (RIP) or the resurgence of Bennifer, but my guess is that David Fincher’s wickedly witty and subversive thriller would be like holding up an X-ray to the tabloid image of the actor. As Nick Dunne, the obvious suspect in the disappearance of his cunning wife Amy, Affleck’s character is ultimately one whose survival depends upon manipulating the media to get his triumphant message out there — for both an audience of one and of millions. Sound familiar?
Little Fugitive, Criterion Channel
I caught this quick little 80-minute gem earlier in February at Film Forum as part of their series on a post-war film renaissance in NYC and really cannot recommend it enough. Little Fugitive was a key inspiration on the seminal The 400 Blows (which subscribers learned about in a recent HBO Max Syllabus), leading the way on portraying the perspective of a young child protagonist. The film captures not just little Joey’s story as he spends a day hiding out at Coney Island — it also recreates his sense of scale, sight, and time. Little Fugitive is truly transporting back to childhood not as a time but as a state of being.
Mother, Amazon Prime Video
Bong (Joon-ho) Hive — start digging back into the Oscar-winning director’s back catalog as we await his upcoming collaboration with Robert Pattinson. Mother, not to be confused with the exclamation point-laden film of the same name by Darren Aronofsky, is a thrilling journey with a woman determined to clear her son’s name after he is accused of murdering a young girl. If absolutely nothing else, you’ll love the destination — the final scene ends on one of the more memorable notes in recent movies.
Keeping the Faith, HBO Max
This is one of those comedies that my family always stops to watch when channel-surfing. Keeping the Faith is a rom-com with perhaps the most improbable love triangle given that one side is a rabbi played by Ben Stiller … and the other is a Catholic priest played by Edward Norton. It’s got laughable lines and situations to spare, yes. But it’s worth returning to for the depth with which the film explores the idea of faith — to yourself, to your community, to your religion, or to another person — and what happens when those allegiances overlap.
Kindergarten Cop, Peacock (free with ads)
We recently lost one of the great directors of twentieth-century comedy in Ivan Reitman, the director best known for Stripes and Ghostbusters. While his heyday was undeniably the early ‘80s, he kept cranking through some really solid post-Cold War comic capers like Kindergarten Cop. I may not have the timing right, but this Schwarzenegger-starrer feels like it was my gateway drug into PG-13 comedies. Something about the little kids helps make it seem more innocuous! (If I were ever to do a ranking of the greatest movie line readings, “IT’S NAHT A TUHMOHR” would probably land very high on the list.)
Observe and Report, Netflix
There were many a trend piece in 2009 about the prevalence of movies about mall cops. While Kevin James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop arrived first and became a cultural punching bag, Seth Rogen’s Observe and Report came a few months later … and no one knew quite what to do with it. I’d argue they still don’t! (I’ve never watched HBO’s Vice Principals or The Righteous Gemstones, but this is from the same creative team — if that helps set your bearings at all.) This film uses the ridiculousness of its central character to expose and send up the glorification of violence that runs rampant in American movies … and goes uncommented upon. Rogen’s overzealous enforcer forces us to look at a pure product of our society dead in the eyes. It’s mostly funny, yes, but the overall takeaway is perhaps one of feeling unsettled.
A Woman is a Woman, Criterion Channel
French New Wave iconoclast Jean Luc-Godard is not for everyone! In fact, most of the time, he’s not for me! I think part of what holds back the ability to enjoy — if not appreciate — his films is the fact that Godard’s frame of reference for reality is almost entirely cinematic. He’s reflecting back the warped reality he receives of what it means to be a living person through the lenses of genres like urban crime thrillers or melodramas. For modern audiences, a lot of those conventions are lost on us because those movies have evolved so much. But A Woman is a Woman, Godard’s cheeky deconstruction of the movie musical, still scans because that genre’s tropes are largely unchanged. At the very least, you might find some of its playfulness a little easier to digest!
Where the Wild Things Are, HBO Max
No one quite knew what to make of Spike Jonze’s take on Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book when it came out in 2009. The larger-than-life creature design was genuinely startling, both in its own right and in its avowed refusal to just go the easy CGI route. But perhaps more controversial was the excavation of a darker, moodier underbelly lying just beneath the surface of Where the Wild Things Are. Though I haven’t revisited this in a while, I admired Jonze’s willingness to take a big swing with a beloved property when it came out. If the shock value overwhelmed you on the first go, perhaps it’s time to give this another shot.
A brief mid-newsletter note!
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WHAT I WATCHED
A little Channing Tatum, a little pre-Code comedy at MoMA, a lot of interview preparation.

WHAT I HEARD
I’ve been taking in a few films in a (delayed) centennial celebration of Toshirō Mifune, the Japanese actor most renowned for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa. His work is a major blind spot of mine, mostly because — sorry — the imposing three-and-a-half-hour epic Seven Samurai bored me to tears when I had to watch it in college.
This time around, I took the time to prime myself for what I was about to see, which helped the experience significantly. (It also helped that a sold-out crowd brought out some of the rich emotion and humor that passed me by in my dorm room.) Here’s some audio that’s worth your time!
WHAT I READ
If you’re reading this, chances are you enjoy having quality writing about movies delivered directly to your inbox thanks to the magic of Substack. If I’m correct in that, then perhaps you’d like The Reveal, published by ace writers Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps. I love the stability of their old-school weekly review roundups, and I’m always excited to see what the other piece of free writing will be. This week’s edition was one of my favorites thus far … and you might enjoy it too if you’ve gotten swept away in The Worst Person in the World hype train.
No NSFW imagery here, which feels like a necessary disclaimer for this IndieWire trend piece breaking down the prominence of the phallus in a bevy of new releases. (I haven’t seen the talking one in Pam & Tommy yet, though I think the amount I saw in Jackass Forever more than compensates for it.)
Also, I’m fascinated by Vulture’s reporting into how Uncharted was almost a David O. Russell movie.
WHAT I WROTE
Nothing beyond my Uncharted review has been published since the last public newsletter, so might I draw your attention to some of the new streaming lists I’ve taken over ownership of? Though some of these blurbs and recommendations are not my own, they’re becoming more of my own with each month:
Also, subscribers got some tips of the trade from my experiences interviewing artists — with an eye to how they are broadly generalizable to any field! Sign up today and get access:
That’s it for this holiday Monday! Back in subscribers’ inbox with an idea that struck me this weekend about a new release.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall