The Upstream: October 2022
10 great movies new to streaming this month.
Happy October to all! There will be more specifically spooky streaming picks coming later this month given where viewing preferences gravitate ahead of Halloween. But, for now, these 10 films are new on their respective streaming services and well worth your time and attention.
About Time, Hulu
I can already feel one reader of this newsletter’s eyes rolling all the way back into their head and I don’t care! As filmmaker Chad Hartigan wrote about another rom-com by director Richard Curtis, “we need films like this and we need filmmakers like Richard Curtis who are shamelessly sincere and corny enough to make them.” If you want to find About Time as just a skeevy male fantasy about time travel, that’s totally your right. But there’s a sequence in this film that I dare not spoil which possesses such profundity about how to order our days that it makes me well up with emotion just thinking about it. Make some time for this sweet movie.
Broken Embraces, Hulu
Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, there’s a whole bunch of films by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar washing up on Hulu! (If you don’t recognize this name, be better than Tom Holland.) You can watch a classic like All About My Mother, but I find some of his B-sides just as revealing and fascinating. 2009’s Broken Embraces is a really stellar melodrama filtered through the lens of cinema itself featuring a knockout performance by Penélope Cruz. I haven’t seen this one in many years but will be making a point to try and catch it on the platform.
The Color Purple, Netflix
Friendly reminder: with the upcoming release of The Fablemans, a new Steven Spielberg take cycle is about to begin. Don’t be like Elizabeth Banks and blabber about how he’s never centered women in his work, thus erasing the majesty of The Color Purple. Plenty has changed from this film’s release in 1985, making it far less likely that a story about a Black woman’s journey toward discovering self-worth would be directed by someone like Spielberg to begin with. But put aside whether he should make the movie because, well, he did. I caught this on the big screen last year, and it really knocked me out with its interiority and intimacy (two things we don’t normally associate with the director).
Down Terrace, HBO Max
There are too many UK-based readers of this newsletter to make a “this film is as British as…” quip and emerge unscathed. But complete that simile as you will for Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace, which combines the black comedy, the kitchen sink melodrama, and the suburban crime saga. This is one ambitious debut that bites off a whole lot of meat … and proves capable of chewing it.
Fair Game, HBO Max
It’s time for the talented Naomi Watts to get a new agent and get back to making meaty dramas like Fair Game. I was a big fan of this dramatization of the Valerie Plame affair, a sordid episode where the Bush admin leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent in retaliation for her family’s criticism of the Iraq War. While I have to assume it will be a great This Had Oscar Buzz episode one of these days, this compelling modern morality play stands as something more entertaining and enraging than just a failed awards vehicle for Watts.
Heaven Can Wait, Amazon Prime Video
As I was watching the Oscar-winning Pixar film Soul a few years ago, I couldn’t get Heaven Can Wait out of my mind. Both are tales of a recently deceased soul fighting against being taken to their permanent place in the afterlife so that they can settle some unfinished business on earth. But in Warren Beatty and Elaine May’s incisive, hilarious script, the quest gets complicated by droll humor and brutal irony before it can end up in a movingly sincere place. This is the film that really allowed me to “get” the whole Warren Beatty megastar thing, for what it’s worth.
Like Mike, Hulu
PSA for younger millennials: this unforgettable relic of our childhood is now available to stream. Like Mike will make you feel the passage of time quite acutely when you see how long it’s been since many of the NBA players faced by Bow Wow’s teenage orphan Calvin Cambridge have laced up in the league. Also, an early standout role by young Jesse Plemons as the bully Ox here! I led off our conversation with that in 2020, and he was greatly amused.
Nightcrawler, HBO Max
Now that we’re in spooky season, what’s scarier than someone who’s internalized all the most sociopathic contradictions of contemporary capitalism? Nightcrawler sends chills up the spine as it charts Jake Gyllenhaal’s desperate clout chaser Lou Bloom spiral further into depravity as he captures images of bloodshed for the local news. I shudder thinking about how the film only gets more relevant with each passing year.
Ocean’s Eleven, Netflix
No one’s got that movie star charm quite like George and Julia:
And that’s only one of the many attractions in Ocean’s Eleven, a pitch-perfect heist thriller by the maestro Steven Soderbergh! It’s an amusing ensemble movie where a full cast gets their opportunity to shine in the quest to rob a Las Vegas casino. No matter how many times you’ve seen the film and know the conclusion, it’s still enveloping to get wrapped up in their shenanigans once more.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, HBO Max
If you for some reason skipped the Lonely Island’s 2016 mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, it’s time to get on board with one of the 21st century’s best comedies. Some of us saw the brilliance from the beginning and will try not to gloat about it. But now with a few years of distance from the Bieber bad boy era, the ways in which the comedic trio skewered the world of pop music are even clearer and funnier. The parodic “Equal Rights” song pops into my head every time we get a cringe-worthy moment of performative allyship, as do any number of lines and scenes from the film at any given time. Let’s band together and make this movie the cultural touchstone it deserves to be!
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.
If you want a great, no-BS look at where the industry is today, these recent episodes of IndieWire’s Screen Talk have really hit the spot for me.
My friend Douglas Greenwood wrote an outstanding profile of Barry Keoghan for GQ, which really captures what I think makes him such a uniquely captivating actor and presence.
I forgot to include in last week’s newsletter that I put together a list of 10 movies to watch if you liked (or, perhaps more likely, loathed) Blonde for /Film. It’s probably not the syllabus you’re expecting.
For Decider, I said stream it to The Descent (now on Paramount+) and skip it to A Chiara (Hulu).
Out of NYFF for Slant Magazine, I filed a review for the new documentary Descendant that will be coming to Netflix on October 21. Remember the title; it’s worth your time.
Digging into the vault for this weekend’s subscriber post — back in your inboxes soon!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall