The Downstream: October 2023
10 great movies to watch before they leave streaming this month.
How useful are recommendations that are only actionable for roughly 48 hours? You’ll find out in this incredibly delayed edition of The Downstream!
It’s been a challenging, busy fall for me — and I know this has been the first thing to hit the back burner. Thank you for sticking with me, and I hope to begin upping the frequency and regularity in November once again.
Batman Begins, Netflix
I can’t subscribe entirely to the contrarian school of thought insisting that Batman Begins is the best of Nolan’s superhero trilogy, but I can certainly respect the argument. What a discovery in Cillian Murphy’s talents as the Scarecrow, the first of many proofs of Nolan’s tremendous casting abilities. The size of the star doesn’t matter so much as the fit for the role.
Calvary, Max
There’s just something about Brendan Gleeson in movies written and directed by the McDonagh brothers! In Calvary, he’s the soulful lead of an Irish story penned by John Michael. The film opens with quite a bang as a man entering the confessional booth of Gleeson’s Father James announces his intent to kill the priest. James becomes a sacrificial lamb for the man’s experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of other clergy members, and he has a week to prepare for his announced execution. The spiritual journey that follows is challenging, complex, and compelling.
Denial, Amazon Prime Video
How do you prove the Holocaust happened? Such is the task given to Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian who’s sued for libel by a prominent denier. Denial follows the trial that ensues, and it’s a barn burner of a legal thriller. The stakes are higher than innocence or guilt. Here, it’s the entire historical memory of a people targeted for extermination on the line.
Hale County This Morning This Evening, Criterion Channel
If you have the appetite for documentaries that show rather than tell, then cue up the poetically rapturous Hale County This Morning This Evening. Don’t expect director RaMell Ross to instruct you about what to make of the images you’re seeing of Black people living in contemporary Alabama. The lyrically-linked scenes ask you to create your own meaning between the lines of his probing intertitles. For those willing to lean in, it’s a moving and potentially monumental experience.
Meet the Fockers, Hulu
The comedy smash hit of the early 2000s actually still holds up pretty well! Meet the Fockers is crude and crass, sure, but it’s also a family movie at heart. Hopefully, none of us have ever experienced hijinks to quite this absurd level. But I can imagine most of us can see some element of our own lives in this story of in-laws meeting and families trying to combine.
Notting Hill, Hulu
This movie features prominently in a scene in the upcoming film Fingernails, and I’ll actually have some writing on it coming in the next few days. So without spoiling that piece, let me just say that ONLY Julia Roberts could make a movie like Notting Hill work. The premise of this modern fairy tale rests entirely on her ability to make the improbable feel entirely plausible and natural with her larger-than-life persona. Watching Roberts in this movie is a reminder that few have ever had it like her.
October Sky, Amazon Prime Video
It feels like we’re imminently due for a movie where Jake Gyllenhaal and Laura Dern play love interests (admit it, you can see it) even though she plays his teacher in October Sky. This story of a young West Virginia boy whose dreams of rocketry outstrip his destiny of coal mining makes for one of those up-the-middle feel-good movies. And guess what? The schmaltz mostly works. A little bit of orange photography of the skyline does the soul good.
Pride & Prejudice, Netflix
Featuring not only Tom Wamsbgans but also Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike, there’s so much more to the casting of 2005 Pride & Prejudice than you might remember. And that’s on top of the classic Jane Austen text, too! I’m neither much of an Austenphile nor the Regency period at large, but this has enough scope and sweeping emotion to enchant me.
Pulse, Amazon Prime Video
If you’re looking for an unconventional spooky season watch, go vintage with early Internet horror Pulse. As several friends reel from a recent death by suicide within their group, they find themselves haunted by a ghost in cyberspace. There’s so much anxiety about the impermanence of the digital world and the permanence of the physical world that’s become commonplace now as his legacy haunts them online. But because they don’t have the language for it (and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is still finding a primitive aesthetic for it as well), it feels revelatory in its rawness.
The Secret in Their Eyes, Amazon Prime Video
The 2015 English-language remake Secret in Their Eyes flopped so thoroughly that I don’t even feel I need to write this recommendation through the “original is better” frame! The Oscar-winning Argentine drama The Secret in Their Eyes is so thoroughly interwoven with the native country’s history that it should only be experienced this way. As retired Argentinian judiciary official Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín) reflects back on the one case he never quite cracked by writing a novel, you’ll wonder who thought it could be set anywhere else.
What a year for best original scores!
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.
You’ve probably seen this image too many times to count over the last two years. For Vulture, friend of the newsletter Siddhant Adlakha breaks down why it’s not just a meme — but actually a vital part of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Where to begin?!
I’ll probably parse out some of the pieces over the next few newsletters so I can maximize visibility on the one movie I really want you to know — Anatomy of a Fall. Keep an eye out for the Palme d’Or winner opening near you so you can read my interview with co-writer/director Justine Triet and actress Sandra Hüller for Slant.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Back to you next week!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall