If I may be permitted a crib from Ferris Bueller, streaming culture moves pretty fast, and if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Over the last few weeks alone, a number of movies have become available to stream, most of them after blink-and-miss theater engagements. So, let’s pause to take stock of a handful of the most noteworthy releases.
“A Complete Unknown” (James Mangold)
Playing Bob Dylan as he “goes electric,” Timothée Chalamet suggests an eager student ready to show off his hard work at the recital. There’s no danger to Chalamet’s performance, no suggestion provided of Dylan as a person in the moment—a feat that was achieved in Todd Haynes’ Dylan experiment “I’m Not There.”
“A Complete Unknown” feels retrospective, fossilized, and the script abounds in embarrassments of Wikipedia-style exposition. Yet people love this movie, probably for these limitations. The boring cheesiness is reassuring, allowing you to drift among the platitudes and song covers that have been shrewdly shorn of their cultural context. Never underestimate the power of Boomer nonsense, especially in troubled times. Unsurprisingly, this film is up for many Oscars this weekend, and may snag Chalamet the gold for Best actor.
“Better Man” (Michael Gracy)
Yes, the Robbie Williams bio-musical, in which he’s played by a CGI chimp, is preferable to sanctimonious Bob Dylan karaoke. Do with that information what you may. Several of the dance numbers here are inspired, and there’s an intriguing humility at play in “Better Man,” which palpably suspects that it shouldn’t exist. If only “Better Man” went further afield: the cartoon chimp is a good start, but this film is still ultimately shackled by biopic clichés.
“Presence” (Steven Soderbergh)
A haunted house movie told from the POV of the ghost essentially plays as found-footage horror. There are static rules to the movement of the camera, which limit us to flat characters engaged in listless activities. But Steven Soderbergh’s stunt becomes intriguing. Serving as his own cinematographer under a pseudonym, Soderbergh is essentially playing the ghost, using the movements of the camera to physicalize an unseen being’s turmoil, and the expressiveness that he achieves is, well, haunting.
The ghost’s struggle to assert its presence to a troubled family rhymes with Soderbergh’s ongoing adventure in finding new ways to attack old stories. “Presence” is more for Soderbergh heads than horror film nerds in other words, and those belonging to the filmmaker’s cult may find allusions to other of his movies, particularly “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Unsane.”
“One of Them Days” (Lawrence Lamont)
This unusually funny and resourceful modern comedy follows roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) as they embark on a day from hell when Alyssa loses their rent to her disreputable boyfriend, Keshawn (Joshua David Neal). Lamont and screenwriter Syreeta Singleton fashion a rich network of characters, creating a vibrant neighborhood that’s lived-in and exaggerated, as well as subtly attuned to racial and economic tensions. One bit of physical comedy, involving the destruction of a driver’s-side car door, is among the funniest I’ve seen in any movie. Along the way, Keke Palmer is cemented as a star and the film earns its fealty to F. Gary Gray’s “Friday.”
“Companion” (Drew Hancock)
This movie is a fun twist-a-minute toy; think “Don’t Worry Strange Darling” and you’re in the ballpark. Josh (Jack Quaid) brings his girlfriend, Iris (Sophie Thatcher), to a luxurious cabin for a getaway with friends, and things keep going wrong in accordance with whichever genre writer-director Drew Hancock wishes to mine at any moment. Hancock proves inventive, and “Companion” is refreshingly funny. But he allows plenty of promising thematic meat to go undigested as well, especially in terms of how modern tech might inform romantic relationships. And must every modern horror movie turn into a parable of entitled piggish men? Surely a few guys are worth holding out hope for.
“Grand Theft Hamlet” (Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls)
In the wake of the shutdown from COVID-19, struggling British actors mount a production of “Hamlet” within the videogame “Grand Theft Auto.” Co-director Sam Crane is also the director of “Hamlet”, and so this is a first-person expression of a need to find art and community however one can. Audaciously, Crane and Grylls set almost the entire film inside “Grand Theft Auto.” There are no cutaways to talking heads, no reveals of how players look in real life until the very end.
All we have is the sustained illusion, which puts even video game agonistics (such as I) in the position of empathizing with the emotional pull of this alternate world. There is poignancy here as well as dry comedy, as the ultra-violence of the game comes to symbolize the bureaucratic challenges of mounting a play. The snatches of the “Hamlet” production that we see, and there are too few of them, poetically merge the stark fantasy of the game with the obsessiveness of Shakespeare’s words. “Grand Theft Hamlet” is one of the most unusual films that you are like to see this year.
“Broken Rage” (Takeshi Kitano)
The legendary comedian and crime film auteur Takeshi “Beat” Kitano returns with this slim and intriguing experiment. This 70-minute thriller tells the same story twice, once as a more or less straight-faced crime odyssey, and again as a slapstick comedy. In other words, Kitano, in his twilight, is riffing on two sides of the coin of his career, but carefully delineating them for his amusement. Well, not really. In a telling irony, the straight version of this story is funnier than the funny version.
In each strand, Kitano is an aging hit man who receives assignments at a local coffee house. He is eventually caught for a crime, and recruited by law enforcement to serve as a mole in a gang. All very consciously been-there-done-that tropes of crime movies, and what is so ineffably funny about the serious thread is the casualness with which Kitano’s killer segues from one adventure to the next. Neither Kitano nor his film ever break a sweat, and he offers a free lesson or two to future generations in the staging of jolting set pieces with minimum fuss and surprising impact.
ONE MORE, NOT FROM THE AUTHOR:
[Editor’s two-cents: Also, if you have Hulu, may I highly recommend “Ghostlight,” directed by Kelly O’Sullivan, who penned the excellent script, and Alex Thompson. This beautiful little family drama was one of my favorite movies of 2024; it features great acting from the real-life family of Keith Kupferer (wife Tara Mallen and daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer) who, if the Academy was actually confident in art, would’ve been in the race for Best Actor this weekend. The story can be a tearjerker at times, yet the filmmakers effortlessly weave tragedy and comedy through the realistic setting of a local community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet,” building an uplifting film about the power of art and community to heal a family deeply in the throes of grieving. It’s also a rarity today, a movie for adults that deals with real human emotions. Since it is the Oscars this weekend, I’ll add that “Ghostlight” should’ve had nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress (for Dolly De Leon) and Best Film. Watch it yourself and see what you think. Last I checked, it had 99% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 92% audience rating. You can read our critic’s review of “Ghostlight” here.]
