The Upstream: January 2022

10 great movies new to streaming this month.

Jan 03, 2022

New year, new options on streaming services! A whole lot of titles swap platforms when the calendar switches, so be sure to scour your menus for a plethora of options. Here are 10 that I think are worth queuing up in the month ahead:

All About Eve, Criterion Channel

A camp classic and Best Picture winner all rolled up in one! This is one I’ve been meaning to rewatch for years because I didn’t quite see what everyone loved in it the first time, but a story about performers performing in multiple aspects is normally my jam. Looking forward to digging in on Criterion with all their extas!

Bringing Up Baby, HBO Max

This legendary screwball comedy is quickly moving up my all-time favorites list. I first watched it during the early days of the pandemic, then revisited it in 2021, and now feel like it’s a movie I'm going to be rewatching for eternity. The counterintuitive chemistry between an uptight Cary Grant and a free-wheeling Katharine Hepburn is just dynamite. I just don’t foresee a world where gags this cleverly executed don’t make me howl with laughter.

Death at a Funeral, Amazon Prime Video

Young Tom Wambsgans alert, to all my Succession heads out there! Though this dark comedy may sound bleak by the title, give it another read and let the irony soak over you. Death at a Funeral starts with dry wit as a family prepares to bury their patriarch and then spirals into a full-on farce as they realize the only thing staying buried is a body.

Easy A, HBO Max

As the self-appointed president of the Easy A fan club, it is my sworn duty to keep you apprised of any streaming availabilities. Mostly because it will give you an excuse to read the essay I wrote about the film for Ebert Voices — an example of how great movies can inspire identification and self-reflection.

I Love You, Man, Netflix

This is genuinely one of the most subversive Hollywood comedies of the 21st century, and it gets absolutely no credit for how smart it is. Rewatch (or introduce yourself to) I Love You, Man and catch the ways that Paul Rudd’s Peter Klaven lives out the beats of a rom-com as he tries to establish same-sex friendships. It’s a brilliant deconstruction of the genre by dipping it in bromance … and genuinely hilarious, to boot. (Rudd’s variations of the phrase “slapping the bass” ALONE!)

The Lost Daughter, Netflix

In case you missed the news when I ranked it #3 on my top 10 of 2021, The Lost Daughter is now available to stream on Netflix! If you want something that’s both eminently watchable and also thought-provoking, consider your next viewing plans made.

Love & Basketball, HBO Max

It was really revelatory for me to read in a seminal text on romantic comedies recently that the genre has been so populated by wealthy white people because these movies require characters to have their basic survival needs already met. If they had to worry about those other things, how could they be so singularly focused on psychological needs? I think that’s what makes Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball so revelatory — she does not shy away from how class, race, and gender plays into the on-again, off-again relationship between neighbors Monica and Quincy. As they grapple with their feelings for each other and the game of basketball that they both love so dearly, Prince-Bythewood speaks what remains silent in many movies.

Revolutionary Road, Hulu

Full disclosure: I was in a two-day funk after watching the devastating anti-romance Revolutionary Road. This reteaming of the two Titanic leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, feels like a bit of a calculated meta bird-flip to fans who pined for a passionate reunion. But they’re playing with what viewers project onto their partnership in a fascinating way to really twist the dagger as their relationship falls apart and reveals the fault lines of a post-war suburban America. While not easy to watch, it’s the kind of masterful movie you owe it to yourself to see at least once.

Role Models, Hulu

More Paul Rudd! Again, I don’t know how people have slept on Role Models as much as they have. The jokes and gags are genuinely hysterical in this movie (in one memorable at-home viewing, we had to pause to accommodate the ceaseless laughter of my mom in response to a throwaway line). It’s also just nice to have all the humor working in service of a story that’s quite earnest about self-growth! Maybe that sincerity counts against David Wain’s movie, but it shouldn’t.

12 Angry Men, Amazon Prime Video

One of the all-time greats for a reason. Sidney Lumet ensures that a single-location movie about a jury room slowly shifting its mind in response to a single soft-spoken member never feels stagey in the slightest. 12 Angry Men is cinematic claustrophobia at its finest, and it’s in service of a humanistic story presenting an idyllic case of our better angels winning out in the criminal justice system.

WHAT I WATCHED

Starting to make good on my promise to watch more things that I want to watch in 2022!

WHAT I HEARD

My latest earworm is “Edgar’s Prayer” from Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, a total bop to which Jamie Dornan really gives his all. A damn shame this fell through the cracks between weird Oscar years!

Also, for fans of Normal People, you owe it to yourself to listen to Paul Mescal on the A24 podcast. Listen to the end, I promise it’s worth it — I think you can hear him blushing.

WHAT I READ

This is really worth taking the time to read and digest — for The New Yorker, Parul Seghal makes the case against the trauma plot. I’d also love to read some rebuttals and counterarguments, but he martials a pretty extensive bibliography to make his case about the limitations of the contemporary reliance on trauma to inform character.

I’m sure we’re all ready to leave 2021 behind, but I thought this reflection on watching celebrities inhabit their past selves from New York Times critic-at-large Amanda Hess was really worth pondering over. What strange times we live through.

I can’t say that I was head over heels for Licorice Pizza (you might have surmised as much by it not appearing on my top 10 list), yet this piece by Vikram Murthi in The Nation really did a great job of bottling up what I did find appealing about the film.

If you’re curious about the treatment of Anybodys in West Side Story, here’s a great read from Slate on how Tony Kushner found a trans character hiding in plain sight.

WHAT I WROTE

Nothing new to publication because I tried to set some boundaries during Twixmas, but one thing I’d bump from my archives is this appreciation of the late Jean-Marc Vallée’s editing style for Decider. I’d argue it’s highly influential to the form of “prestige TV” in the post-Big Little Lies era. We lost a giant too soon, and it’s a shame he didn’t really get his due while he was here.