The Downstream: November 2024
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
Does anyone else in America feel like spiritually it should just be Thanksgiving? I’m struggling somewhat with the existential dread of staring down the end of the month without having hit its major holiday milestone…
So anyway, I did what I always do at this time of the month and put together 10 titles that are about to leave their current streaming homes. Maybe they’ll be just what you need for an upcoming tryptophan nap, a respite from your marathon travel, or just any old day on the couch…
Demolition, Max
I wrote a whole piece for Decider on how the late Jean-Marc Vallée, director and occasional editor of Oscar-nominated films like Dallas Buyers Club and Wild, helped establish the visual template for prestige TV. You can see him pushing that impressionistic style to its furthest reaches in Demolition, which might otherwise be an unremarkable story about a man reeling from the wake of his wife’s sudden death. Vallée destroys the “scene” as it is commonly known. Shots bleed into each other, yet they also break off mid-thought and even jump wildly to a tangent. I think movies would be a lot more interesting if other filmmakers followed his lead by cutting on emotion as much as logic.
(I also got to “interview” star Jake Gyllenhaal about this movie, leading to the below rumination on stardom from the newsletter back in 2022.)
Frances Ha, Netflix
If you’re new to the Marshall and the Movies lore, I owe the better part of the last decade of my life to Greta Gerwig and Frances Ha teaching me about what it meant to choose the struggles of your twenties. I would rewatch it every year on or around my birthday to see what new sides opened themselves up to me. It’s been on Netflix for a while now but will only be there a short while longer, heads up if you’re overdue for a rewatch (or a first watch!)
High Noon, Amazon Prime Video
Gary Cooper’s Sheriff Will Kane is a man driven by duty even when it isn’t necessary. He is a protector of liberty even when he stands alone. He puts his life on the line even when the people he protects have left him out to dry. Is it any wonder that High Noon is beloved by almost every American president? Eisenhower said it was his favorite movie of all time; Reagan adored it; Clinton screened it 20 times. Though perceived as liberal upon its release, the film now feels about as bipartisan a story as there could be. Few movies extol the virtues of standing tall in your principles, even if it means you stand alone, quite like this. (And did I mention: 85 minutes!)
Me and You and Everyone We Know, Criterion Collection
I interviewed multihyphenate artist Miranda July during the pandemic, and she remains the only subject who’s ever given me homework. Her team sent me a monograph chronicling her cross-disciplinary work, and a quote stood out to me that she allegedly repeated on set: “It doesn’t necessarily have to be right, it just has to be alive.” The same feels like it could apply to her singularly off-beat debut feature Me and You and Everyone We Know, an early and prescient portrait of how the Internet would warp our notions of intimacy and romance. If you wanted to watch it through the lens of mid-aughts Sundance kookiness, then your eyes might roll fully back into your head. But July comes to her unique perspectives on relationships sincerely, and that’s enough.
Now You See Me, Max
We know the drill in magic movies by now and have come to expect the unexpected. However, even if you know the rug will get pulled out from underneath you, that’s better than watching a mind-numbing formulaic genre pic. Now You See Me at least engages the audience and tries to get them guessing. Sometimes all I want is a movie to be one step ahead of me at all times, even if I’m underwhelmed by the reveal when I finally catch up by then. (And look, I’ll be there for the third one that just wrapped shooting — no doubt.)
Spaceballs, Amazon Prime Video
A workplace Slack channel lit up with excitement about the revival of the Scary Movie franchise last month, and naturally, I felt the need to pour water on it. In the social media era, full-length movie spoofs don’t play well because Twitter made all the obvious jokes by opening weekend. (And yes, the Wayans’ spoof movies did only the easiest ripoffs of the biggest horror sensations.) Maybe the team will have some time to study Spaceballs, an uproarious lampooning of the Star Wars space operas. Mel Brooks’ parodies stand the test of time because they manage to highlight the genre elements themselves that are worthy of ridicule rather than just doing uninspired set pieces based on the latest hits.
Starlet, MUBI
I can understand if my initial recommendation of Starlet in my pre-Cannes Film Festival newsletter didn’t feel particularly relevant or immediate…
…but maybe now you’re prepared to listen because director Sean Baker’s Anora went onto win the festival’s coveted Palme d’Or and has since become a nice little indie box office sensation? This is where the director’s fascination with sex workers in cinema really began in earnest, and I find its beating heart of an aspiring adult film actress striking up an unlikely friendship with an older woman to be wonderfully disarming.
Theater Camp, Amazon Prime Video
The theater kids are definitely theater kid-ding in the mockumentary Theater Camp, although my favorite scene remains Jimmy Tatro’s hypebeast bro jamming to a teen auditioning with a Post Malone tune. It’s genuinely impressive how many shots on goal that writers Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, and Nick Lieberman manage to get off in just under an hour and a half. A lot of the jokes whiff, sure. But when you’re working with this many attempts, even a lower conversion rate still nets some pretty substantial returns.
Trainwreck, Max
Amy Schumer’s feminist intervention into the romantic comedy genre aims to level the playing field for men and women, not by putting the latter on any pedestal but by suggesting the common humanity that unites them in their quest for love. Trainwreck embodies the spirit of a generation scared to death of commitment, an era when the only thing scarier than the sea of possibilities is the choice to settle on one of them. With guidance from comedy king Judd Apatow as producer/director, this underrated film helped bring the genre into contemporary times with her incisive take on gender, courtship, and relationships. She broadens the dialogue of dating in the genre beyond compartmentalized male or female problems. These are everyone’s problems, and the technology available at our fingertips just exacerbates them far out of proportion.
Witness for the Prosecution, Criterion Channel
If you like courtroom dramas as well as mysteries, strap in for Witness for the Prosecution. This is a classic legal thriller with panache and punchy dialogue by none other than the great Billy Wilder, adapted from a story by none other than Agatha Christie herself. It might seem like a standard case of murder for life insurance money, as these noir-inflected movies often are, but the film quickly engrosses you in its tale of twisted alliances and reversals of fortune. Stay to the very end!
For Slant Magazine, I interviewed Gints Zilbalodis, the multihyphenate director/co-writer/composer behind the adorable and astonishing new animated feature Flow. Sorry to Inside Out 2 — and sorrier to The Wild Robot, which would make a great double feature with this movie — but this is what’s getting my vote for Best Animated Feature. Keep an eye out for when this wordless wonder hits theaters near you!
Or, if you’d rather watch/listen than read, I asked many of these questions in a live Q&A following a screening of Flow back in October! It was captured below.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
The recent Elmo pop culture blitz continues to be better than most movies, if I’m just being honest.
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.
How long before this hits Spotify? Because WOW!
I enjoyed
’s data-driven exploration into whether people actually hate Forrest Gump — longtime Marshall and the Movies may remember that I think everyone, fans and detractors alike, is wrong about this movie.
I’ll be defying something in next week’s newsletter — stay tuned.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall