weekend watchlist: hidden mushrooms, lost civilizations, and true love
one hidden gem here features two It Boys of the moment in earlier roles
Don’t spend hours scrolling the menus at Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other movie services. I point you to the best new films and hidden gems to stream.
Movies included here may be available on services other than those mentioned, and in other regions, too. JustWatch and Reelgood are great for finding which films are on what streamers; you can customize each site so that it shows you only those services you have access to.
When you rent or purchase a film through the Amazon and Apple links here, I get a small affiliate fee that helps support my work. Please use them if you can! (Affiliate fees do not increase your cost.)
both sides of the pond
Does cold winter weather put you in the mood for good hearty food, like it does me? Get a cinematic taste of that — if not, alas, an actual culinary taste — with the delightfully simple yet profoundly wise documentary The Truffle Hunters. A portrait of the strange and lovely souls who wander the forests of northern Italy’s Piedmont mountains in search of incredibly valuable white Alba truffle mushrooms, the film paints an empathetic portrait of its charming subjects. Its story is specific yet universal, and also, unexpectedly, really funny. This is one of the best films of 2021… and one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. (Read my review.)
US: available for purchase on Amazon Prime and for rent or purchase on Apple TV
UK: available for purchase on Amazon Prime and for rent or purchase on Apple TV
US
Prime hidden gem
It Boy of the moment Tom Holland is newly off on daring quests in the just-released Uncharted, but a few years ago he headed into the 1920s Amazonian jungle in The Lost City of Z. An adventure of the intellect and of the heart about Percy Fawcett, the real-life British explorer who inspired Indiana Jones, this is an understated story more about the journey than the destination, one less about the science of mapmaking and the unraveling of forgotten history than it is about what drove the mapmaker and historian. Holland plays Fawcett’s son, who joined him — and disappeared with him — on his last expedition. The cast also features Robert Pattinson, soon to be the big screen’s latest Batman, as Fawcett’s aide-de-camp. (Read my review.)
streaming on Amazon Prime, free for members only; also available for rent or purchase on Apple TV
leaving Netflix soon
Get past the cultural narcissism that downplays Western corporate colonialism, and 2015’s action drama No Escape is an enjoyably intense experience. Owen Wilson is an engineer who’s just arrived on a long-term work assignment in a fictional Southeast Asian country when revolution explodes, and now he has to get his wife, played by Lake Bell, and their small kids out of harm’s way. This is edge-of-your-seat stuff, and not the stuff of popcorn violence. Wilson is unexpectedly fierce; it’s startling how easy it is to accept him in a dramatic performance when he drops his seriocomic trademark drawl, which is nowhere in earshot here. (Read my review.)
streaming on Netflix through February 26th; also available for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime and Apple TV
UK
leaving Prime soon
It’s one of my very favorite movies — I even wrote a book about it — but I know it’s also one of those movies people either absolutely love or absolutely hate. The Princess Bride, Rob Reiner’s 1987 cult-classic action-adventure comedy romance, is free on UK Prime for one more week. If you’ve never seen it, your moment has arrived. If you are not a fan, maybe it’s time to give it another chance. But if you know the secrets of the Fire Swamp, are aware of the classic blunders, and definitely would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley, you know what to do. (Read my, er, review.)
streaming on Amazon Prime, free for members only, for seven more days; also available for rent or purchase on Prime and Apple TV
iPlayer hidden gem
An unusual combination of clever and touching, Chilean documentary The Mole Agent is shaped as a spy story in which 83-year-old Sergio goes “undercover” to investigate suspected neglect at a Santiago retirement home. Filmmaker Maite Alberdi looks at modern elders with tender eye, and at how modern elderhood is treated with a more caustic one. Loneliness and listlessness howl at the center of her portrait, with one potential balm lurking in plain sight: her mole agent has purpose, however small and perhaps even ultimately superfluous, but it gives his life a shape and his days a motivation that his new nursing-home friends lack. Perceptive and poignant
streaming on BBC iPlayer for one month; also available for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime and Apple TV
find lots more movies to stream at Flick Filosopher
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