The Upstream: May 2024
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
It’s gonna be May! Elaine? (If you get this joke, you’re awesome.)
Even if you don’t, this is still a newsletter for you! Let’s kick off summer in streaming style because you can’t spend all your time outdoors. Here are ten movies new to their streaming platforms worth your attention.
The Breaking Ice, Criterion Channel
The 2024 indies and international releases are starting to hit streaming! I’d make a point to check out Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice, one of two movies he’s made that hit theaters this year. This has what I can only call “sad Challengers energy” as a very repressed love triangle emerges between a quiet young man from Shanghai who loses his phone at a wedding, a female tour guide in the area who helps him out, and her friend. Don’t expect outright eroticism, but look for meaningful reflections on what it means to connect in a world full of connected devices.
The Bridge on the River Kwai, Criterion Channel
I was not playing around when I put The Bridge on the River Kwai in my top 10 Best Picture winners of all time! This war epic from David Lean is a masterfully controlled burn that leads to one of the great explosive climaxes of all time. If you’re intimidated by the age or the runtime, don’t be. As the great Roger Ebert said, “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.”
Everybody Wants Some!!, Amazon Prime Video
I wrote an entire tribute to Everybody Wants Some!! last year to kick off baseball season, and it was largely only available for paid rentals at the time. Now that the boys have taken to the field again and the film is readily streamable, I have to sound the alarm. These are two hours of guaranteed bliss that will transport you back to college.
The Holdovers, Amazon Prime Video
Hopefully the weather near you is moving away from that of the dreary New England winter depicted in The Holdovers. But there’s never a bad time for a movie as warm-hearted as this newly Oscar-minted triumph for Alexander Payne. Whether you missed it in the rush of awards season or just want to put a pin in this movie so you can return to it at Christmastime, know that it’s waiting to embrace you here.
Liar Liar, Netflix
Few pleasures compare to Jim Carrey making his body as flexible as Gumby and fully committing to a bit. We need to get back to a world where people just trust a comedian so innately that they’ll show up in droves for something like Liar Liar, which has no other hook beyond “what if Jim Carrey couldn’t tell a lie?” (Similarly, Bruce Almighty was a massive hit with the idea “what if Jim Carrey had all the powers of God?”) High concept, high risk, high reward.
Mr. Turner, Hulu
Mr. Turner is a biopic in the sense that it covers the life of British painter J.M.W. Turner, but Mike Leigh resists all the clichés and conventions we are normally conditioned to expect from a movie about a true-life creative mind. Turner has no flashes of mad inspiration, nor does every word he utters ring with capital-I “importance.” In fact, we rarely get to see his creative process at all. Mr. Turner is a biopic hiding inside an ensemble drama where Turner happens to have the most screen time, as if to underscore the ordinariness of the extraordinary artist. Leigh avoids the trappings of stodgy, stuffy costume dramas by injecting wit — most of which is used poke fun at the pretentiousness of the art community and the short-sightedness of its patrons, who sneered at Turner’s late masterpieces by saying that he “takes leave of form altogether” — at the perfect time.
The Nutty Professor, Netflix
We’re getting a new Beverly Hills Cop movie this summer, which hopefully will be better than his revival of Coming to America. (I’m just taking this on reputation because I didn’t actually watch.) I don’t know whether his return to Axel Foley being calamitous or being successful would make him likelier to revisit Sherman Klump from The Nutty Professor, but I hope he just leaves this great alter ego comedy be. It’s a great tribute to just how many comedic tools Murphy has available in his shed. For anything that might have aged poorly in this mid-’90s romp, allow me to remind you something that has become unexpectedly relevant: the film features a centerpiece comedic sequence of humiliating Dave Chapelle.
Panic Room, Amazon Prime Video
Did I rank this in the bottom third of David Fincher’s work last year? Sure. Even still, Panic Room is great at-home entertainment (so long as you lock all your doors and batten down the hatches). He knows how to make a tight single-location home invasion thriller feel expansive and exciting. I could do with a few less of the early CGI baubles, but I’m more than willing to look past them in a movie that so skillfully taps into the less visual — but still felt — reservoir of maternal protective instinct.
Shrek Forever After, Netflix
There are people who will try to tell you that the first two Shrek movies are the only ones that count as canon. Those people are wrong. We simply do not acknowledge Shrek the Third existing, but Shrek Forever After is a wonderful coda to the defining millennial animated series. The final installment puts a great capper on the franchise by revisiting the greatest hits through the lens of an It’s a Wonderful Life-esque journey with a devious Rumpelstiltskin. Also, you don’t really want to deny yourself the joy of “DO THE ROAR,” do you?
Two Days, One Night, MUBI
The Dardennes’ masterful moral drama Two Days, One Night is a movie that literally changed my life — both in terms of the content itself and the effect it had on my understanding of film and the world around me. A video essay I made about the film is directly responsible for jolting two careers after college. The way the Belgian social realist masters distill the competing ideas of self-sacrificial and self-serving impulses is something that I carry deep within my soul.
Anyways, it’s now streaming again — it’s worth getting MUBI to watch. (Surely they have some kind of promo for new users, a free trial, etc.)
It brings me no joy to be the fly in the ointment on a movie that’s otherwise drawing wide acclaim — though I make no apologies for it, as lazy consensus is ultimately bad for criticism — but I was not impressed by Sundance breakout I Saw the TV Glow.
I reviewed it for Slant Magazine earlier this year, but I’ll reshare it here now because the film hits theaters on Friday.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
Also, I watched the Harkonnen fight from Dune: Part Two set to the Challengers score too many times to count.
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.
This ranking is worth having a debate over:
The cure for the common Hathahater. Listen all the way to the end for her quoting Adam Sandler movies!
Inspired by her recent run of badass dance-floor appearances, I curated this vibe:
Your suggested additions are welcome!
Let Willow Catelyn Maclay’s Polygon essay walk you through a new era of trans-authored cinema.
Issuing a hearty hear hear to Rachel Handler’s article in Vulture: “Let Josh O’Connor Be Extremely Filthy in Everything.”
As someone who’s a bit less versed in the music side of culture (I know my swim lane), I learned a whole lot from Sam Adams’ Slate breakdown of Fleetwood Mac’s resurgence in television, on Broadway, and in the popular imagination at large.
This Film Comment essay about movie access within prisons, “Streaming Behind Bars,” is eye-opening.
Read this tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Paris Review from his sister … but only if you have tissues nearby.
Back with some fun stories about going to the movies this weekend!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall