The Downstream: January 2024
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
I am back in New York now to watch Sundance titles just as the filmmakers intended: on my iPad on an elliptical machine!
I’ve still got another day of scarfing down festival films. (I know, woe to me.) For those who might not have access to the Sundance portal, here are 10 movies you should consider checking out from your standard streaming services before they expire at the end of the month.
Oh, and before I get into the recommendations — I did a big podcast taping over the holidays, and the first of those guest spots has dropped!
Come listen to me discuss Edson Oda’s Nine Days and whether I’d recommend it.
Chicago, Amazon Prime Video
We’re in a golden (ok, maybe gilded) age of movie musicals that are ashamed to be such. Wonka, The Color Purple, Mean Girls … they all want what Chicago has. This movie musical managed to have it both ways, staging elaborate musical numbers but making life a literal stage to highlight the unreality of the satire. Anyways, one of the better Best Picture winners!
Client 9, Max
We’re awash in documentaries about public figures embroiled in scandal, largely because they just won’t stop making big mistakes. Client 9, which follows the stunning collapse of then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s career, goes beyond the what and gets into the why of its story. Prolific documentarian Alex Gibney looks at the nature of power itself, getting at understanding of what makes men at the pinnacle of their careers make such self-defeating mistakes.
Contagion, Hulu
Coming up on 4 years since COVID began its spread … still too soon? “The film follows the outbreak of a mysterious viral outbreak beginning, it appears, with the death of Gwenyth Paltrow’s Beth Emhoff,” I wrote in my initial review, “[And] from there, it hits at just about every angle to provide a full perspective on what a modern-day pandemic would look like – and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t wind up looking EXACTLY like Soderbergh’s cinematic vision.” Um, never been so bummed to be wrong? It’s also just great filmmaking, but that goes without saying when you’re talking Steven Soderbergh.
In the Line of Fire, Netflix
I swear I must have seen the finale of In the Line of Fire about a dozen times growing up on TNT — even though it was rated R, which was usually a no-go, my dad somehow made an exception for just the end of this movie. A recent assignment in my movie club allowed me to watch it in full, and I’m glad I did. It’s such a classic ‘90s thriller that I had no choice but to enjoy myself. I particularly enjoyed how the movie had a winking awareness of its retrograde gender politics as exhibited by making Eastwood’s aging FBI agent, still reeling from letting the JFK assassination happen, report into Rene Russo at the bureau. The film is constantly letting us KNOW that misogyny is bad, but not so bad that they can’t resist indulging it a few times.
The Lady Eve, Criterion Channel
This old-school romantic comedy that combines just about everything you’d want from the genre: witty banter, razor-sharp dialogue, slapstick comedy top-lined by show-stopping pratfalls and sizzling chemistry between the two leads, Henry Fonda (yes, Jane’s dad) and Barbara Stanwyck (a dynamite leading lady who rivals Katharine Hepburn for my money). Like the best comedies of its era, The Lady Eve finds great cinema out of disrupting the established power dynamics between gender, especially as it pertains to romance and marriage. It’s a raucous good time.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Hulu
Hey, look, another Steven Soderbergh movie! People ragged on Magic Mike’s Last Dance as the weakest of the unlikely trilogy, but I fully enjoyed myself with it. Sodebergh and star Channing Tatum take what could have been just a lazy cash-grab of a commercial for their lucrative stage show and turn it into a rousing statement of purpose about their artistry altogether. (My full review for The Playlist, should you be interested in hearing my full intellectualization.)
Prometheus, Netflix*
It’s fairly easy to pick holes in the Alien sequel Prometheus (I, for one, really want to know why people are apparently unable to run laterally a century from now). But this is heady and hearty sci-fi that wants nothing less than to ponder some deep theological, ontological, and existential questions using a schlocky space creature. It’s got some aces performance work from Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace, too!
*You actually have until February 14 before this departs Netflix, but don’t save this for a Valentine’s Day watch.
Taken, Netflix
One of my great movie watching mistakes remains thinking it was a good idea to watch Taken the day before I flew out of the country for the first time. For anyone who says culture has no influence, I submit that this movie is responsible for planting some deep-seated fear within me that sex traffickers are never far away at any major transportation center. Wish this was a one-and-done thing for Liam Neeson rather than entire late-career reboot, but oh well. At least I got to ask him how he felt about being a meme … only to learn I needed to explain to him what a meme was.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Amazon Prime Video
Frustrating that the Academy’s acting branch did not recognize Leonardo DiCaprio’s great work in Killers of the Flower Moon, where he plays so brilliantly against type as a dumb wallflower thrust into a genocidal conspiracy. I bet the film would make a great double bill with his first Oscar nomination, 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, where he plays a child with a developmental disability who’s already outlived his life expectancy. The film does focus more on the titular character played by Johnny Depp (derogatory), but DiCaprio lights up the screen with effervescent energy any time he’s in a scene.
Zola, Amazon Prime Video
It’s hard to keep track of where A24 movies are streaming these days; they’ve been bouncing around between a few different output deals. So maybe Zola is immediately bound for someplace else, but for now, don’t miss your chance to see a movie whose praises I have sung in two major newsletters. This wild ride is more than just a story based on a Twitter thread — it practically is Twitter in the way it chooses to tell and present information. It’s a defining movie of the social media era.
I’ll hold the Sundance reviews for my full recap, but for now … subscribers got to ready a diary of a day in my life at the festival.
I also had an interview on Slant Magazine published with filmmaker John Sayles, a giant of the early American independent cinema. This is not something I’m proud to admit, but I had not seen any of his films until this year. With his border-set ensemble epic Lone Star coming to the Criterion Collection, I’m sure glad I started catching up.
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