weekend watchlist: sweet, funny, frank pillow talk
plus apocalyptic adolescence, exasperating planetary levels of bureaucracy, and more...
Don’t spend hours scrolling the menus at Netflix, Prime Video, and other movie services. I point you to the best new films and hidden gems to stream.
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published September 10th, 2022
both sides of the pond
One of the best films of the year is the intimate and gently funny Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Emma Thompson gives us one of her most touching performances ever as a widowed retired schoolteacher who has decided to explore her sexuality, which hasn’t gotten much of a workout her entire life, by hiring a sex worker, played by the delightfully charming Daryl McCormack. This is not a sexually graphic film (in case you were wondering), but there is plenty of frank conversation bursting with rare honesty, humanity, and an utter uselessness for shame or embarrassment over a basic human need, the female experience of which is almost universally ignored in our culture. We don’t see “older” women onscreen quite like this. As vulnerable. As searching. As confused. As sexual. As people. (Read my review.)
US: streaming on Hulu
UK: streaming on Virgin Media; buy on Prime Video or Apple TV
US
leaving Prime soon
Adolescence is always apocalyptic, but that’s literally the case for Saoirse Ronan’s American teen in 2013’s romantic disaster drama How I Live Now. I’m not sure why this smart, sharp little film failed to find an audience, particularly with its appealing young stars: the cast also includes a pre–Spider-Man Tom Holland, and 1917’s George MacKay as the cousins Ronan comes to visit in the English countryside for the summer. What is meant to be a restorative sojourn for Ronan’s bitter, confused kid takes a dark turn when a terrorist nuking of distant London leads to a breakdown of, well, everything. I’m still haunted by this film almost a decade later for its realistic depiction of a society derailed by national trauma.
streaming free on Prime Video through September 19; also streaming on Hulu; rent or buy on Prime Video or Apple TV
leaving Netflix soon
I’ve rewatched the 2011 thriller Contagion more than once in the past two and a half years — that is, since the coronavirus pandemic hit us. In my review when the film was new, I said, “It’s probably rather optimistic… about the near collapse of civilization,” but in my recent rewatches, I am ever so slightly heartened, because what we’ve gone through in the past couple of years hasn’t been quite as horrifying — or as fast-moving — as what we get here. Then again, we’re not out of our real-life pandemic yet, and it could still morph into something as even more deadly. The film’s conspiracy-minded blogger, played by Jude Law, is perhaps Contagion’s most prescient aspect: the character’s impact on public perception, imagined in the days before social media, is spot on. (Read my review.)
streaming on Netflix through September 30; also streaming on HBO Max; rent or buy on Prime Video or Apple TV
UK
streaming free for Prime members
It’s one of the buzziest movies of the year, and it’s been a modest box-office success, so surely it says something about how dramatically the film environment has changed that the spectacularly entertaining Everything Everywhere All at Once is already available to stream for free for subscribers of a certain digital service. Michelle Yeoh is beyond wonderful as an ordinary wife, mom, and business owner who gets sucked into an adventure that crosses multiple universes as she battles to save, literally, everything everywhere. The movie-movie anarchy includes Jamie Lee Curtis, in a brilliant comedic turn, as an IRS auditor. The Matrix on transdimensional steroids, this is ridiculous, hilarious, bursting with burlesque violence, and unexpectedly deeply moving.
streaming free for Prime Video members; rent or buy on Prime Video or Apple TV
new to streaming
The 2016 film A Perfect Day, a bleakly bitter black comedy set in the Balkans in 1995, never got a theatrical release in the UK, but now it’s come to VOD, and it is not to be missed. Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins, and Olga Kurylenko are three veteran humanitarian-aid workers attempting to navigating exasperating planetary levels of bureaucracy in order to complete a relatively simple chore to help the people of a small, war-ravaged village with an extremely basic need (no spoiler: it involves access to clean water). This is simultaneously a day-in-the-life workplace satire and a small, personal story about unfairnesses and injustices that play out on a global scale. The terrific cast does a remarkable job of making their work look, somehow, both essential and tedious. (Read my review.)
rent or buy on Prime Video or Apple TV
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