Happy 21st night (er, morning) of September! While there’s no Demi Adejuyigbe video to watch this year…
…here are 10 other good things you should watch before the 30th night of September, at which point they will no longer be on their respective streaming services.
Corpus Christi, Criterion Channel
This was one of the four movies that had the great misfortune of being Oscar-nominated for Best International Feature in the same year as Parasite. But don’t let Poland’s Corpus Christi just fade into the background as it did at the ceremony! This is a complex, mature drama about personal and institutional faith. Jan Komasa’s modern morality play details the ripple effects of an ex-con, who’s barred from the priesthood despite experiencing a religious conversion in prison, pretending to be a town’s new priest. It’s an entirely unexpected look at who gets to channel heavenly light.
Frozen River, HBO Max
Before “CONSIDER … Melissa Leo,” the Academy Award-winning performer had to elevate her profile above a face without a name. The longtime workhorse character actress got her first major breakthrough with 2008’s Frozen River, a tense crime drama about the turn of Leo’s working-class Ray Eddy to trafficking migrants across the Canadian border. This compact indie packs a mighty punch as it further unravels the hard choices made by women who hit hard times.
Gone Girl, Peacock (free with ads)
The clip of Anne Hathaway saying one of her favorite rom-coms is Gone Girl just made the rounds virally again, so it’s good a time as any to re-up the recommendation that this is simply god-tier David Fincher work. It’s a zippy deconstruction of true-crime tropes, an autopsy on gender politics in modern relationships — and not to mention just wicked funny when it comes to the games couples play. If you haven’t seen the movie since it became a surprise theatrical smash in 2014, give it another watch. You’ll be surprised at how well it holds up.
127 Hours, Hulu
Given that it features a brutal depiction of arm amputation to remove oneself from under a boulder, 127 Hours has the reputation for being one of those movies you might only need to watch once. But I’m the sicko who’s seen this movie at least 3 times and is here to tell you: it’s worth seeing and re-seeing. Director Danny Boyle brings such kineticism and humanism to a tale that should end in death but becomes a hymn to life. The climax is tough to sit through, sure, but the coda more than redeems any pain.
Punch-Drunk Love, HBO Max
Paul Thomas Anderson’s bittersweet rom-com Punch-Drunk Love had really not worked for me over the ten years since I first watched it. I gave it several chances over the years to win me over, thinking that all the people who cried “masterpiece!” could not all be crazy. Then, finally, last year … I think I decided upon rewatching that I liked it? I’m still a far cry from thinking this is a PTA classic on the level of Boogie Nights or There Will Be Blood, yet the oddly rhythmic heart beatings of the film finally registered a pulse for me. This is just to say if at first you don’t succeed liking this movie (or any movie that a critical mass of people rave about), try, try again.
Rachel Getting Married, Hulu
Mostly a warning for subscribers who received an essay on Rachel Getting Married last month: if you want to be able to (re)watch the film to appreciate or understand, your time is running out! To quote that piece and make a further recommendation for your time:
“Rachel Getting Married dispels the convenient fantasy that the only way is up from rock bottom, instead showing us how the only way through pain is through it. Demme, Lumet, Hathaway, DeWitt, and everyone who opened their hearts vulnerably to make this project extend an invitation to dwell in the discomfort of our dissatisfaction. This is a far more preferable alternative to doomed attempts of willing away the pain through neglect or feigned ignorance.”
The Sweetest Thing, Netflix
Like many, I had not thought much about critical and commercial flop The Sweetest Thing much since its release 20 years ago. But I finally decided to give it a go after reading a Refinery29 article claiming the raunchy comedy is an undersung trailblazer for female-fronted films in the genre. My appreciation remains mostly intellectual as if looking at a stepping-stone that enabled Bridesmaids and the like. This is mostly a dumb, inane comedy that doesn’t entirely hold up. Yet it’s worth watching for scenes like the 3-minute musical answer to Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally…, “You’re Too Big to Fit in Here,” to watch it push up against stodgy gendered norms in surrealistic fashion.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Amazon Prime
If you're looking for a postcard of New York’s grimy ‘70s hellhole … you should of course watch Taxi Driver. But if you want something a little bit more zippy and entertaining that won’t force you to brood on the nature of masculinity and violence, then take a ride on the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. This train-heist thriller might as well be titled “the 100 people you meet in New York” because every single archetype and caricature of the city is captured somewhere in this panoramic urban portrait. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, and you’ll have a great time watching bureaucratic civil servants who keep a city running in spite of the blowhard politicians only interested in optics.
The Way Way Back, HBO Max
This ought to please at least one subscribing couple, who recently surprised me with their professed love of 2013 Sundance smash The Way Way Back. Then again, when I think about the movie, I shouldn’t be shocked that it retains some ardent admirers nearly a decade later. This is a coming-of-age story that is not afraid of tackling the pain and confusion of plunging into the adult world. The film’s most memorable scene is not Duncan coming to some moment of adolescent enlightenment while finding his people “working” at a waterpark. It’s when he listens to his mother (Toni Collette) try to justify her inexplicable choice to stay with her boorish boyfriend (Steve Carell) and comes to appreciate the messy matrix of mature decision-making.
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, HBO Max
Documentaries about this current moment of increased visibility around police killings of unarmed black civilians have (and will) no doubt cluster around flashpoints like the 2014 death of Michael Brown and the 2020 death of George Floyd. But I think in the long run, the more instructive work to the historical record will be one set smack-dab in the middle: Roberto Minervini’s What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? This 2017-set documentary about Black activists and community groups in the South captures the intimacy of portraiture and the institutional rot of sociological imagination. It’s an extraordinary document precisely because it keeps its lens so focused on the people at the center of the fight for civil rights.
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.
If you want a good recap of what went down at TIFF (Toronto International Film Feal), the good folks at This Had Oscar Buzz broke it down very well:
Thanks to the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream, my current earworm is his cover of “All the Young Dudes” (which might be enough to dislodge my main cinematic association with the song being Juno).
Perhaps a bit too niche to NYC, but I loved reading about how the Céline Dion parody musical Titanique came together in Vulture. If you are in the city before November 6, make time for these two hours of pure campy joy.
I’m on the Decider “stream it or skip it” beat a good bit these days, so I’ll let you know that the Netflix mountain climbing movie Broad Peak is an easy “skip it.”
Subscribers also got a little post-Venice list of 8 (1/2) Italian movies to know:
Back later this week, likely with a little something for everyone (and the rollout of a new recurring feature).
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall