The Downstream: June 2022
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
One week left until we’re one-half of the way through 2022 — eek! Here’s what to take advantage of on streaming this month before the mid-year great realignment.
Aliens, Hulu
In case the trailer didn’t get you excited for Avatar 2, try seeing what James Cameron has done with sequel properties in the past. With Aliens, he managed to successfully shift the original horror film into a more action flick register. It both stays true to the spirit of the series while evolving it in key new ways. (And gives one of the all-time great mic drop lines to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley.)
Blue Jasmine, HBO Max
Not-so-hot take: Cate Blanchett will be the next actress to win three Oscars. If you want to fight this, just take a look at Blue Jasmine, the last film to net her a trophy. Her twist on Blanche DuBois by way of the Madoff family is a marvel of subtlety and soapiness. She’s as effective in the melodramatic moments as the melancholic ones as a woman unable to thwart her own tragicomic fate.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Netflix
There’s something in the air (I think a touch unfairly) about the kind of lost, mopey white dudes and the art they make. An example of how to do this subgenre of comedy right, in my opinion, is Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel is ruthlessly self-deprecating, opening himself up with a scalpel to lay all his emotional and physical junk bare. It’s a pleasantly unconventional comedy about how no one needs to feel sorry for someone who is wrapped up feeling sorry for themselves.
Gimme the Loot, Hulu
“Adam [Leon]’s movies are like the soul of New York,” Vanessa Kirby told me in our interview earlier this year. There’s a real scrappiness and spirit to the director’s work that mirrors the kind of inspiration the city provides. I still think he’s never topped his debut Gimme the Loot, a day-in-the-life madcap adventure of two teenage graffiti artists that crackles with all the boisterous banter of youthful possibility.
In a Lonely Place, Amazon Prime Video
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me,” laments Humphrey Bogart’s fantastically named screenwriter Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place. This 1950 classic dabbles in a number of genres — melodrama, mystery, film noir, romance — but feels remarkably consistent thanks to the steady hand of director Nicholas Ray (best known for helming Rebel Without a Cause). It’s remarkable how much devastation this movie packs in its relatively slender package. While maybe this doesn’t get a ton of canonical recognition, it’s a classic well worth your time.
Into the Wild, Netflix
I don’t think I’ll say it much better than I did last year on The Distancer, so I’ll lift a graf from there as I encourage you to (re)watch Into the Wild not for individualism but for communalism:
“The tragic irony pervading the film is that McCandless fixates so clearly on his endgame that he misses the proverbial forest for the trees. Writer/director Sean Penn cleverly intercuts his foolhardy survival escapades with the people he meets along the way to the wilderness destination. At each step of the journey, he comes into an eclectic group of authentic individuals who provide all those things he was lacking in life: friendship, mentorship, romance.”
Lenny Cooke, Criterion Channel
Did you know the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems, Good Time) also made a sports documentary? No knock against 30 for 30 docs, but their film Lenny Cooke really blows the standard-issue material out of the water. It’s like a contemporary Raging Bull as the titular former high school basketball phenom desperately clings to the tattered remains of his former glory. The Safdies contextualize his story within the shifts of eligibility for the NBA Draft, slyly undermining the meritocracy myth that pervades sports. Were the timing just slightly better for Lenny, perhaps it’s be him on the court rather than LeBron James.
MouseHunt, HBO Max
The way I have probably seen this movie a hundred times thanks to cable play (and it featured in last week’s list post for that reason) only for it to still amuse me endlessly … the power that MouseHunt has! While I had little appreciation growing up for the craft behind this antic comedy of a mouse terrorizing a house, a recent rewatch solidified how much the vision of director Gore Verbinski adds to the film. (He’d later go on to direct the Pirates of the Caribbean films, in case the name doesn’t sound familiar.) It’s the kind of family movie that fires on all cylinders for kids and adults alike.
My Fair Lady, Netflix
Great gowns, beautiful gowns … if you love the lavish movie musicals from the golden age of the genre, then My Fair Lady will more than scratch your itch. I jab at its aesthetics in my senior thesis on the stage-to-screen aesthetics, and I still make no apologies for that. So long as you fully expect filmed theater, it ought to satisfy.
78/52, Hulu
Film history buffs ought to get a real kick out of 78/52. Documentarian Alexandre O. Phillippe has now made something of a cottage industry out of elevated behind-the-scenes films that your film studies professor can show in class. The title refers to the number of setups and cuts in the infamous shower scene from Psycho. Phillippe breaks down both how the sequence came together as well as the enormous cultural and artistic impact it had. It’s entertaining and educational in equal measure!
I used the holiday weekend in the U.S. to do some quite aggressive watching!
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd.
You’re not imagining it: there are just way fewer movies in theaters this summer. This episode of The Town breaks down what that means for the business within the larger context of how COVID shifted consumption patterns.
Having friends who are talented writers is fun! Steph Green breaks down the long shadow of the Watergate scandal over at Inverse in honor of the scandal’s 50th anniverary, while Rafaela Sales Ross uses the release of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande to analyze more nuanced portrayals of sex work on BBC Culture.
A joy to write a rave for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a work of true magic, for The Playlist. It opens tomorrow in NY/LA but will fan out across the country over the next month or so. Don’t miss it.
Back to you soon! I had a fun Gemini SZN related post that’s now lost the thematic peg but should be coming your way over the weekend.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall