The Upstream: August 2022
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
It’s peak indoors season as the thermostat keeps rising — here are 10 movies new to their respective streaming services worth staying in for!
Amy, HBO Max
Let it be known that the official Marshall and the Movies party line on the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic is as follows: I OBJECT! That film will be in association with Winehouse’s estate, which is managed by her family. If you watch the riveting documentary Amy, you can immediately see why that’s a terrible idea. Her inner circle, particularly Amy’s father Mitch, acted recklessly in prioritizing their own financial gain over her well-being. What makes Asif Kapadia’s non-fiction chronicle of the singer-songwriter’s all-too-brief life so moving is that it implicates our role as well. We, too, watched Winehouse and fueled the fire by tuning into the spectacle of her demise as it played out in her music and life. It’s a powerful interrogation of what it means to convert pain into art for creators and consumers alike.
Blue Collar, Criterion Channel
“After the '90s, there's just this complete evaporation of movies where it's the workers against the boss,” observed comedian John Early when I talked to him last year about his love of the movie Clockwatchers. “It all becomes about rising up the ladder to become the CEO, and that's the happy ending.” If you want a real throwback to this type of corporate conflict, you’ll get a real kick out of Paul Schrader’s directorial debut Blue Collar. This crime drama following three automotive employees who attempt to rob their corrupt union to stay afloat is remarkably clear-eyed at just how stacked the deck is against the average worker. It’s so different than any kind of movie being made right now (at least at this scale) that it almost feels like a missive from another planet.
Lean on Pete, HBO Max
A24 is moving a bunch of their titles from Showtime to HBO Max, and among the first crop of migrants, I’d really encourage you to seek out Lean on Pete. This story of young Charley (an extraordinary breakout performance by Charlie Plummer) and his deep connection to the titular horse is just a gut punch in the most emotionally powerful way. The light at the end of the tunnel shines brightly because director Andrew Haigh takes you to some dark places. In his own words when I interviewed him for a piece in 2018, “While it may have not helped people in the way it should, the very philosophy of the American Dream is this hopefulness that seems to be inherent in Charley.”
Monster-in-Law, Netflix
In honor of the official union of Bennifer 2.0, treat yourself to J.Lo’s best nuptial-related film! (Yes, better than The Wedding Planner.) While I object in theory to the concept of “guilty pleasures” because we like what we like, I am not going to tell you that Monster-in-Law is a particularly great movie. But I certainly enjoy watching the catfight between J.Lo and her future mother-in-law, played by Jane Fonda, in spite of myself! The real MVP is Wanda Sykes, who provides genuinely hilarious commentary on this movie’s absurdity from within the story itself.
Shame, Hulu
As I wrote last year when I re-ranked my top 10 movies of 2011, Steve McQueen’s NC-17 sex addiction drama Shame is not necessarily the easiest or more pleasant film to revisit. But it’s still a commendable, recommendable work that everyone should see at least once. If not to reckon with our sex-saturated society, at least give it a watch for the tremendously committed performance of Michael Fassbender!
Source Code, HBO Max and Hulu
I wrote an ode to this time-loop thriller for Decider back in 2018 when its director, Duncan Jones, was over a barrel for his latest flop. I still maintain he should try making a movie like this again because it’s the perfect mixture of simplicity and complexity. If you want something that engages with the narrative gambit as emotionally as Groundhog Day or Palm Springs but want something that’s more out-and-out action, this compact movie is a sure-fire movie night winner.
Spider-Man 2, Hulu and Netflix
What a picture! The second entry in the original Spider-Man trilogy still stands as a remarkably watchable and compelling film. Spider-Man 2 dazzles with rich character work and weighty themes that resonate directly, rather than obliquely, with real-life problems. I’m somewhat convinced you don’t get The Dark Knight without Raimi showing how superhero stories can move beyond origin stories and comic book lore here.
Synecdoche, New York, Hulu
I’m somewhat surprised that Synecdoche, New York didn’t really come up in my conversation about its star, Philip Seymour Hoffman, with Jonah Koslofsky last month. His aching, vulnerable performance is central to the success of Charlie Kaufman’s ambitious ouroboros of a film. This caustic cautionary tale about blurring the boundaries of art and life is meant to be difficult to wrap one’s arms around. But if you can see Kaufman’s instincts to repel you instead as invitations to see his pain, you might find the film a uniquely rewarding experience.
The Town, Netflix
Want an example of Olympic-level missing the point? Potential future Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy once played a clip from The Town to hype up his caucus, and the scene in question was the following:
“I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people,” Affleck says, to which Renner replies, “Whose car we takin?”
If you actually pay attention, The Town is a phenomenal look at how geography and ancestry hold an inexorable pull over one’s life choices. Affleck’s character tries to escape, and what ensues from his attempts makes for explosively entertaining cinema.
We Met in Virtual Reality, HBO Max
Struggling to understand the metaverse or what drives someone to invest in those giant interactive headsets? Find an empathetic entryway to the world of VR through Joe Hunting’s We Met in Virtual Reality, a talking-head style ethnography that meets its subjects where they are in a world of pixels. This documentary is a remarkable depiction of early adopters seeking community in a world where their identity can be entirely untethered from their bodily circumstances.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd.
I’ve been repping H-Town Vicious with Queen Bey’s new record (standout tracks are “Cuff It” and “Summer Renaissance”), of course. But the new album I’ve been blasting is Maggie Rogers’ “Surrender” after getting to experience it before release on Tuesday night after a screening of The Virgin Suicides programmed by Rogers herself! In fact, the only way I got to be a part of this intimate event is because I was creeping the theater’s website looking to see what they were showing, stumbled across this listing, and discovered it was associate with the album release. Only in New York!
This is the song from the album I’ve had on repeat, though the one most directly inspired by Sofia Coppola’s movie is “Horses.”
I have yet to watch The Grey Man (it strikes me as an ideal Workout Movie — see ), but this piece from Slate’s Sam Adams about how it represents the terminal stage of Netflix originals is absolute fire. This paragraph 🤌
The Gray Man is far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it might be one of the least. It’s the end-stage result of converting art into “content,” the equivalent of eating Soylent instead of a home-cooked meal. It will provide a comforting background hum as you scroll through your phone, give you some attractive people and dramatic explosions to occasionally glance up at. But it will also dull your senses, teach you to accept fullness in place of satisfaction, and ultimately rob you of a tiny portion of your life. You don’t consume it. It consumes you.
Elsewhere, Vulture has an eye-popping first-person account of what it’s like to be a VFX artist for Marvel — and why their labor practices account for the bland aesthetic of their films.
As mentioned last week, I was BUSY with assignments!
For Slant Magazine, I interviewed British director Clio Barnard about her latest film Ali & Ava. If you like learning about process, we were able to get really into the weeds of her workshopping methodology — including why she includes the real-life analogs of her characters in the development process.
I was on the review beat for The Playlist with a few things that are streaming. The new influencer culture satire Not Okay lives up to its title (read: it is bad), while I really vibed with the new season of HBO’s Industry. If you’re looking for a new show, I’d recommend getting on board now! Especially if you’re a knowledge economy worker, I think you’ll find it especially resonant.
Back to subscribers later this week!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
Do you prefer A Bigger Splash or La Piscine?