The Upstream: January 2024
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
Happy New Year, friends! I hope the first workday treats everyone alright.
If, like me, you’re trying to keep those pesky resolutions of losing weight or getting fit … might I recommend the last two years’ newsletters on the benefits of the workout movie?
But if you’re just looking to watch sedentarily from the comfort of your couch, no judgment whatsoever! Here are ten great picks that are new to their streaming homes in January 2024.
Cruel Intentions, Amazon Prime Video
Anyone But You wants what Cruel Intentions and its ilk have. Playing on the ‘90s emerging trend of restaging classic literature among contemporary youth (Clueless, Romeo+Juliet, 10 Things I Hate About You), this campy teen flick sets Dangerous Liaisons among the posh Northeastern boarding school set. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe’s scheming stepsiblings are such wickedly burlesque caricatures of rotten rich kids that they cannot help but stand in such stark contrast to earnest characters like those played by Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair. It’s absolutely delightful to watch the friction.
Hail Satan?, Max
This documentary is newly relevant thanks to the recent destruction of a Satanic Temple display inside the Iowa State House! You may ask why such a thing was allowed there in the first place, and Penny Lane’s Hail Satan? will help provide the answers to your questions. It’s a fun watch to see how these crusaders for the cause of making America live up to the Establishment Clause of the Constitution hold elected officials’ feet to the fire.
The Immigrant, Criterion Channel
Spoiler alert for next year’s re-ranking of the best films of 2014: it’s this one. James Gray’s sumptuous, spiritual drama of finding America a century ago is an absolute masterpiece of melodrama. If I haven’t yelled your ear off to watch The Immigrant, here’s me telling you again.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Max
“All I want is for friendships like ours to be able to exist, and that doesn’t exist in the new San Francisco,” The Last Black Man in San Francisco star Jimmie Fails told me of the interracial bond with director Joe Talbot. “That’s really what it’s about, getting back to that point where artists and outsiders can live there.” I have to imagine the film feels even more elegiac just 5 years later. Meanwhile, still awaiting what Talbot has in store for us next because this is one of those directorial debuts that just lands like a bolt of lightning. (I pretend I do not see J*nathan M*jors.)
The Long Goodbye, Amazon Prime Video
It took me a while to warm up to Robert Altman’s shaggy detective tale The Long Goodbye, in part because I watched it without much context. Some elements of this noir-like mystery might seem nondescript or frustratingly underplayed if you aren’t clued into the mission of the film. This quiet gem of the New Hollywood era reimagines a classic Raymond Chandler mystery as a subtle social satire of a post-Manson Hollywood. It dares to envision gumshoe detective Philip Marlowe not as a dashing and mysterious figure like his previous cinematic incarnation by Humphrey Bogart. Instead, as embodied by Elliott Gould, he’s just … kind of a guy. That small shift makes a big difference in how things unfold.
Metropolitan, Criterion Channel
This was a recent first watch that knocked my socks off! The incomparably witty Whit Stillman packs great line after great line in Metropolitan, a comedy of manners set among the dying embers of the Upper East Side debutante class. At a post-screening Q&A, Stillman observed that the micro-budget indie shoot didn’t have the money to recreate 1970, the time he sees the film as set in. It will be interesting to rewatch the film knowing it’s designed to take place during the Woodstock cultural hangover, but frankly, it feels unmoored from time altogether. Any time there’s a genteel class fretting over an existential threat to their position, Metropolitan will feel apropos.
One Fine Morning, Amazon Prime Video
If you read my newsletter on French director Mia Hansen-Løve last year and thought, “Well this is nice, Marshall, but when and where will I ever see this new movie One Fine Morning?!” You’re in luck, it’s now available on Amazon Prime Video to stream! I’m linking to that post below and offering a small refresher on the film here:
“It’s about learning to find equilibrium amidst the chaos of what life throws at us. Her latest film One Fine Morning is like a thesis statement for the filmmaker’s entire career as Léa Seydoux’s widowed single mother Sandra Kinzler tries to make sense of how she can experience a rush of passionate romantic love at the same time her ailing father’s health takes a turn for the worse.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Netflix
As time goes by, I only grow further convinced that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest will one day be seen as such a quintessentially American tale that it will take on the quality of myth. As I wrote when I ranked it #3 among Best Picture winners last year, “An epochal struggle that plays out on the most intimate and personal of terms, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest charts nothing less than the battle between freedom and control.” Watch it, or rewatch it. You’ll find something compelling.
Shithouse, MUBI
“Shithouse requires you to meet it where it is. It’s a movie that you have to really go there for it in a way,” filmmaker Cooper Raiff told me during a long Zoom chat in 2020. “Most great movies are just there, like you don’t have to work hard to immerse yourself in it. And Shithouse is very comfortable with not being seen by a lot of people, it just comes across that way.” I’m here to tell you that you should meet this unique college-set coming-of-age comedy where it is. And if you want to see why, read my conversation with Raiff where I get far more personal than I usually do with my interview subjects.
22 Jump Street, Hulu
The superior installment in the Jump Street series is clearly the first, but 22 Jump Street is not too shabby! Sure, some elements of its extreme self-awareness in running the same playbook a second time can wear thin quickly. But even among that familiar framework, some excellent observations and jokes break through. I wish everyone were familiar enough with this movie so I could say “I thought we had Cate Blanchett with the budget” and not have to explain myself.
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.
Cackled to this all morning long as I woke up on New Year’s Day:
RIP Tom Wilkinson, one of those actors who made everything better. Two great reads: the first is a career appraisal by Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times (gift article), while the second is a personal lens on his performance in Michael Clayton by friend of the newsletter
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Also, in case you aren’t burnt out on 2023 retrospectives, Slate’s annual Movie Club remains an essential read.
No new freelance work was published this week! Though if you missed any of these in the holiday rush (or the holiday disconnect), they’re great to catch up on:
Some 2024 preview content coming for subscribers this weekend!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall