It’s August! After Barbenheimer, there is … checks notes … basically nothing in terms of big new releases in theaters. (I’ll do my best to highlight some independent cinema worth suporting in theaters, though.) So beat the heat at home with some of these new arrivals on streaming!
Amadeus, Amazon Prime Video
I made an off-handed remark in my Oppenheimer review that the rivalry between Oppenheimer and Strauss recalls the rivalry between Amadeus and Salieri in Amadeus. If you didn’t quite feel like the RDJ storyline in the film made sense, might I suggest watching this Best Picture-winning classic to get a better sense of how it is meant to work? Christopher Nolan did cite this as a reference point for their dynamic!
Diabolique, Criterion Channel
This is the good stuff right here. I’m always saying this, but get over what Bong Joon-ho dubbed the “one-inch barrier of subtitles” and treat yourself to one of the most sizzling and surprising revenge thrillers ever made in Diabolique. You’ll have to read some translated French, but you’ll soon forget about that as you get involved in the plot of intrigue around two women plotting to murder a cruel boarding school headmaster. This is the blueprint for so much of what was to follow in terms of genre filmmaking. Watch Henri-Georges Clouzot’s banger and see its fingerprints all over culture!
Friends with Benefits, Netflix
The cultural consensus seems to have settled on No Strings Attached being the better of the two sex friends comedies that came out in 2011. As much as it pains me to disparage anything with Greta Gerwig … actually, no that’s not the truth, Ellen. Friends with Benefits was directed by the same person who made Easy A, which helps paper over some of the script clichés and occasionally wooden chemistry between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Anyways, both movies weirdly dropped on Netflix this month. Choose this one.
(Also, I can’t believe I didn’t put this together until now.)
I’m Still Here, Amazon Prime Video
If you still think that the infamous Joaquin Phoenix appearance on David Letterman was just a manic episode, you should probably understand the moment in its full context. I’m Still Here has an incredibly checkered history, but it’s a valuable tool for understanding the increasingly gonzo attitude Phoenix takes toward his public figure. Forget Joker, he’s never been more committed to any role than this piece of performance art satirizing the effects of fame.
Inside Job, Max
The 2008 financial crisis documentary to end them all. We’ve been living the after-effects of this moment in history for the last 15 years, but it’s worth engaging with Inside Job to learn just how calamitous this market collapse was — and the dangerous conditions that fostered it (and are slowly being rebuilt). Let Charles Ferguson make you angry all over again at how few consequences were dealt out here.
In Time, Hulu
If you want to just enjoy a dystopian flick where time on someone’s biological clocks can be bought and sold like a commodity, In Time will give you a decent action-thriller ride. However, let me enter into the record the beginning of a paragraph that was *literally the introduction to a midterm exam* for my sociological theory class in college:
“Dystopian futures are hardly uncommon in cinema, and ones like the setting of the 2011 film In Time require little suspension of disbelief because they follow our current dysfunctions logically into chaos. As such, the theories that have been used to explain bygone realities can be reapplied to make sense of a fictional future. Though Karl Marx and Max Weber wrote about an industrial West, their theories can still be used to explain the world of In Time; they would, however, raise radically different issues.”
Love is Strange, Max
This would make for quite the double feature with director Ira Sachs’ newest film, Passages (more below). Both films are about long-term partnerships between two men in big urban centers, but 2014’s Love Is Strange is notably sweet in parts where Passages is sensual. John Lithgow and Alfred Molina are heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure as they experience a disruption to their living arrangements.
The Naked Gun, Max
If you are the kind of person who likes to watch movies with your phone out paying half attention to what’s on TV, don’t watch The Naked Gun. Seriously. The humor in this spoof of cop procedurals comes from having your eyes peeled for all the zany action going on in the background. This isn’t like today’s comedies where the cameras roll on an improv session that an editor then culls down to the best lines. This is a comedy with real composition and thoughtfulness — a sign of great respect for your ability to perceive the depth of its jokes.
If you somehow don’t know about the wild phenomenon of the artist Rodríguez and his unexpected late-life resurgence, go in blind to the Oscar-winning music documentary Searching for Sugar Man and prepare to have your mind blown. (To my South African friends who subscribe to this newsletter — please send me a Teams message if you have a personal/cultural connection to Rodríguez’s music given how central your country is to this comeback narrative!)
The Watermelon Woman, Criterion Channel
I’m going to use The Watermelon Woman dropping on Criterion Channel (in the full edition format in which it was just issued in physical media!) as another excuse to plug my recent interview with its director Cheryl Dunye. Her mockumentary investigation into the lack of a Black queer legacy in film from 1996 feels fresh and contemporary. “I feel like people caught up to me and this moment,” she told me last month. “I do hate [being told] ‘you’re groundbreaking, you are ahead of your time!’ I feel like I was there!”
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.
Two great listens from key WGA members on the ongoing strike.
Thought this New Yorker essay “Hollywood’s Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage” did a great job explaining the stakes of the strikes and why it does feel like the last stand for filmed entertainment.
Here’s a wild look at “Hollywood accounting” by CNN explaining how so many movies can rake in huge grosses and, legally, not turn a profit.
I had a matter of hours ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike to pull together the preparation for this interview with Ben Whishaw, who you might know as either the voice of Paddington or as Q in the new James Bond series. I’ve always found him such a compelling screen presence and was deeply glad to dig into the process and the passion behind his steamy new romance Passages. This got slapped with an NC-17 rating for the explicitness of its sexual content, but far more startling is the emotional rawness of the love triangle contained within.
The film opens Friday in NY/LA and will eventualy hit the streaming service MUBI. You can read our candid chat over on Slant Magazine.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Here’s to a great new month!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall