I’ve lapsed on updating Strohltopia this year, because I’ve had too much on my plate and I haven’t had much spare time that I felt like spending in front of a computer. A request came in for streaming recommendations, however, and of course I am at your service. As usual, I’ll try to highlight some better known options that I think are due another look alongside more obscure titles.
Amazon Prime
Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer, 1987)
For me this is one of the greatest neo-noirs, an extravagantly lurid, riotously funny hothouse fable of fallen machismo that Mailer shot in and around his own beach house in Provincetown. It’s best known for an unfortunate meme that takes an exaggerated bit of dialogue out of context (“oh god oh man oh god oh man….), but reducing the movie to an object of mockery in this way is sheer philistinism. The meme bit doesn’t even rank as one of the top 10 most remarkable scenes. NB, this features an all-timer Wings Hauser performance (the featured image for this post). Tough Guys Don’t Dance is one of my favorite American films of the 80’s.
Avanti! (Billy Wilder, 1972)
Underseen late Billy Wilder. Nice and long, packed with incredible location work, alternately brash and romantic, full of life but never sentimental: it’s something you should absolutely see if you have a liking for Wilder or late style in general. It has screwball energy that reminds me of Chaplin’s A Countess from Hong Kong (high praise). Jack Lemmon is at his best as he walks the tightrope of playing a very unlikable character who one is happy to see find love.
Runaway Train ( Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985)
The most undeniable Cannon group action film, featuring peak performances from John Voight and Eric Roberts and based on an unproduced Akira Kurosawa screenplay. It cooks, and I recommend it without qualification to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Even if you don’t think of yourself as someone who likes 80’s action movies, this one deserves a chance.
The Covenant (Guy Ritchie, 2023)
It’s been a minute since we’ve gotten a movie this good about courage and honor and men who live by a code. Guy Ritchie has gone drone happy, and it really makes the terrain come alive. Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim both give performances I can feel in my bones. One of my favorite movies of the current year.
Eye of the Beholder (Steven Elliot, 1999)
A maligned and neglected thriller that deserves to be rediscovered and cherished. It’s one of a kind: a nearly pure psychoanalytic abstraction, where we learn almost nothing about the main characters for the first hour. They are like embodied drives, ricocheting around every corner of the US through insane snow globe transitions. Nothing ever seems quite real, as though we are trapped in McGregor’s liminal consciousness and Eros and Thanatos have control of the wheel.
Netflix
How Do You Know (James L. Brooks, 2010)
An underappreciated masterpiece about the joy of shedding an old identity to make way for a new one. It includes Jack Nicholson’s final screen performance, which goes out on the absolutely perfect note.
Dil Se.. (Mani Ratnam, 1998)
The best thing about Netflix is that it has a large and well-curated selection of Indian films, which until the recent wave of interest provoked by RRR were among the most consistently neglected by American cinephiles. I include myself in that statement. Indian cinema is such a massive constellation that I’ve found it intimidating to approach. This last year I’ve tried to just dive in and explore a good mix of received classics and more outré selections. This is a well-regarded 90’s classic, and it’s something that people without much context in Indian cinema should have an easy time getting into. It’s a big, bold movie with delirious style, romance, mystery, and violence seeping out of every pore.
Eega (S.S. Rajamouli, 2012)
Speaking of RRR, this is one of Rajamouli’s earlier films and an easy slam dunk recommendation. Basically everyone would like this. You might think that a 2 hour 15 minute movie about a guy getting reincarnated as a fly and then seeking revenge would wear out its welcome, but you’d be wrong. Rarely has a movie been so committed to a bonkers high concept premise.
Bulbbul (Anvita Dutt, 2020)
Another title from India, but this time a smaller art horror film. West Bengal Gothic. A rape revenge movie that harkens back to Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion in that it treats the genre as an origin story for the spirit of feminine revenge. Gorgeous, haunted images throughout.
Hulu
Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman, 2011)
One of the funniest movies of the last 15 years and my favorite Greta Gerwig performance by a country mile. It has been absent from streaming for a long time, so get it while the getting’s good.
Punisher: War Zone (Lexi Alexander, 2008)
My favorite 21st century superhero movie. It’s the anti-Disney Marvel movie, and it shows us what the genre can do when someone steps in and makes an action movie for adults that shirks the excruciating imperative to do preliminary marketing for 20 forthcoming franchise movies. Lexi Alexander’s direction is exuberantly brutal.
Sister of the Groom (Amy Miller Gross, 2020)
Latter day Alicia Silverstone is a new frontier for me, but so far it’s been highly rewarding to explore. This is not for everyone! It’s baggy and abrasive, and doesn’t even try to reign in its narrative chaos. But it’s also the kind of fully sincere low budget production that viewers with a taste for unconventional genre fare need to see. Someone really cared about this, you can tell, and Silverstone lays it all out there. Her performance is over the top, but also vulnerable. I’m hooked, and I’ll watch anything she does in this zone.
Sex Appeal (Talia Osteen, 2022)
DTV romcom/sex movie about a neurotic, over-achieving STEM student who discovers sexual pleasure and falls in love, but not with the guy she expected. Lots of imagination: female pleaure is repeatedly rendered through Esther Williams homage, which is a fun surprise in a 2022 DTV romcom. This is also not for everyone, but I consider it ideal late night viewing.
MAX
Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954)
Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse: you can’t go wrong. A very beautiful picture about wanting to stay and live in the world of the movies. One of my favorite Minnellis.
The Rage: Carrie 2 (Katt Shea, 1999)
I neglected this for a long time because I assumed it would be infuriating. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s about as good as a Carrie sequel could possibly be, and I regret that I haven’t been watching it every couple of years this whole time. It is very much a highschool movie of its own era, just as Carrie was, and it even makes contact with the 90’s slasher revival cycle. It’s also recognizably a Carrie movie, but the key is that it’s not simply another movie about a girl with telekinesis who gets bullied. It does have plenty of mean kid venom, and it’s wicked and lurid in a De Palma-esque way, but it’s doing its own thing. This is one of the few legacy sequels to go out of its way not to rehash the original beyond some judicious callbacks and a broader thematic relationship. It really feels more like Carrie in its formal dimension than anywhere else. Shea’s use of rack focus is particularly fitting, and very impressive.
Species 2 (Peter Medak, 1998)
Much, much sleazier than the very sleazy original. If you want kinky alien stuff, this is your movie.
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