The Upstream: November 2024
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
So, what’s everyone thinking about today?
But if you’re looking for a distraction or just need to pull yourself away from cable news, one of these ten movies might be a good option for you. Here are some new streaming arrivals well worth your time this month if it’s an escape from reality you seek.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Criterion Channel
The less I say about French director Jacques Audiard’s new film Emilia Pérez, the better. (Meet your new awards season villain!) But don’t let that discourage you from checking out his extensive back catalog now that much of it has been added to the Criterion Channel. Take it from me: a lot of these films are hard to stream under any circumstances, and I got very lucky that MoMA programmed a big retrospective ahead of my interview with Audiard in 2018. (Lucky me, I spoke with him a second time in 2022.) The Beat That My Heart Skipped was probably my favorite of those earlier Audiard films — it’s got his signature hard-edged grit as the story tracks a piano player trying to outrun his criminal past and parentage.
Chappaquiddick, Peacock
Remember when the Kennedys were only dangerous to your livelihood if you just happened to get in a car with them? Now they’re out here trying to … you know what, just watch this fictionalization biodrama about an infamous political scandal if you want an interesting watch about the exact moment when Taylor Swift could pronounce them the last great American dynasty. It’s a capper on a tragic decade for a political family that, I didn’t realize, occurred on the exact night of the moon landing. How’s that for karmic timing? “By divorcing Ted Kennedy from his accomplishments,” I wrote for /Film back at TIFF 2017, “Chappaquiddick forces a reckoning over the divide between his rhetoric and his actions.” Cast Jason Clarke as the lead more, you cowards.
Christmas with the Kranks, Hulu
Look, I’m not going to sit here and argue that Christmas with the Kranks is any kind of holiday classic worthy of going in the rotation with Elf or A Charlie Brown Christmas. But I will give the film that it has several incredibly solid comedic bits, including the Tim Allen Botox gag that I routinely search for on YouTube, and an ending that does legitimately make me cry every time I happen to catch it on TV over the holidays. (And my family does chant “FREE FROSTY!” a lot because of this movie, so maybe it deserved some kind of honorable mention in my recent ranking of best line readings.)
The Holiday, Amazon Prime Video
This is mostly just so the Nancy Meyers heads know where to locate The Holiday for any annual rewatching … and to once again re-up a piece I wrote for subscribers over the summer doing a deep dive into the film. I firmly believe her work is worthy of serious analysis, not just admiration as a Pinterest board with scripted dialogue. And if you crave such thoughtful analysis of a movie you might have watched countless times on cable, I hope you give it a read.
Janet Planet, Max
If you want an antidote to election madness, I don’t think you could get a better contrast than the serene stillness of Annie Baker’s Janet Planet. This tender coming-of-age tale captures the wondering and wandering of being eleven — just on the verge of your teenage years and feeling as if your life is about to start. “It’s a magic portal back into your own childhood,” I wrote over the summer for Decider, “both to reinhabit the mindset of those days and reflect upon them with some distance.”
Maid in Manhattan, Netflix
Before they were frenemies in this year’s Oscar-contending Conclave, Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci had met once prior on screen in a film of a quite different variety. That, of course, would be Maid in Manhattan, a 2002 J.Lo-starring rom-com about a political candidate who begins an unexpected love affair with a hotel cleaner. It’s a perfectly pleasant early-aughts relic featuring a winning performance by Lopez doing what she does best: refusing to be underestimated. Let’s get loud!
The Penguins of Madagascar, Peacock
Though it might seem like a kids’ movie, I humbly suggest that DreamWorks Animation designed The Penguins of Madagascar feature film to appeal primarily to older audiences. DreamWorks Animation always had more of an adult angle to their releases, but this pushes the envelope about as far as you can go while maintaining the imprimatur of a family movie. Sure, the film has a fair share of child-appealing antics like slapstick comedy and general silliness, but the vast majority of the humor comes from genuinely well-crafted jokes worth appreciating in their sophistication. The repertoire of Penguins of Madagascar goes even further than the Shrek franchise’s reliance on pop culture references, branching out into ingenious wordplay and uproarious non-sequiturs.
A Real Young Girl, Criterion Channel
“I don’t make scandal. I’m not scandalous,” the legendary subversive French director Catherine Breillat told me last year. “I am scandal, if anything.” Breillat has been decades ahead of most of the cinema in her depictions of female desire on screen, and that’s evident from as early as her 1976 debut A Real Young Girl. You should expect to be startled by frank depictions of sexuality in this film about a 14-year-old girl’s carnal awakening, though the graphic content pales in comparison to the starkness of her piercing psychological insights into libidinous lust. This film is also quite difficult to stream — there’s not even a real trailer for me to link to below — so take your chance to watch this on the Criterion Channel while you have it.
Unforgiven, Max
“I wonder if Clint Eastwood sensed he still had at least three decades of moviemaking left in him when he made Unforgiven,” I wrote last year when I ranked the film #31 in my Best Picture power rankings. His revisionist Western has all the hallmarks of a director's parting shot, though we’re not even sure if his just-released Juror #2 is even the end for the 94-year-old Eastwood. This is a film unafraid to speak the subtext undergirding an entire genre and its philosophy around violence and the value of human life. As a cast full of aging gunslingers approach their various moral redlines, Eastwood finds riveting tension by simply exploring the ones they will and won't cross. He looks under the hood of machismo and masculinity, creating the backdrop against which his grizzled outlaw can simply utter the phrase "I'm afraid of dying" and make it feel freighted with meaning. He's the poet laureate of the plainspoken.
Waitress, Hulu
I think the sweetness of Sara Bareilles’ musical adaptation of Waitress now probably has more fans than the original 2007 film. I think the stage show is fine, but this film by the late Adrienne Shelley (murdered tragically before the film’s release) captures a much fuller range of emotions. Notably, there’s a bittersweetness as Kerri Russell’s titular server Jenna Hunterson navigates an abusive marriage, an unwanted pregnancy, and a dead-end job … all with the possibility of new connection and opportunity seeming to linger just outside her grasp. It’s a more sophisticated flavor palette than the saccharine musical, in other words.
I haven’t published anything new since the previous newsletter on Sunday night, but here’s an old read on Dr. Strangelove and Stanley Kubrick’s eerily prescient prediction of America’s machismo-fueled descent into fascism. (It’s a repurposed paper from my Cold War Literature class in college, and it got an A.)
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
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.
My good vibes playlist, should you need it in the coming days.
also put together quite a range of playlists on , too, for whatever the upcoming week holds.
Never let it be said that I shy away from dissenting voices — here’s a New Yorker essay on the banality of online recommendation culture.
This is certainly a different way to look at one of my favorite movies: Letterboxd unpacks a subtextual queer reading of The Social Network.
I wish I were a bigger fan of my queen Andrea Arnold’s latest movie Bird (out in select theaters starting Friday courtesy of MUBI), but I’m glad it at least gave its two enigmatic stars a chance to do some great profiles. I’m talking, of course, about Franz Rogowski for Another Mag and Barry Keoghan for Port (written by friend of the newsletter Hannah Strong).
Paid subscribers will get something about a memorable moviegoing experience later this week!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall