Links to the streaming services in which these films are offered as part of their subscription package is included, however some of these films may also be available on other services, whether free or for a small fee. As always, all opinions guaranteed or your monies back.
Death of Stalin (2017)
https://www.netflix.com/title/80208631
With a name like Death of Stalin it’s got to be funny, right? Well, Death of Stalin is a comedy and it is. It is the second film directed by Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci, who is probably most known here for being the creator of the recently ended HBO show Veep. If you have seen Veep, then you get the gist of Iannucci’s humor. Satirizing the petty obsessions of politicians (in the UK, here in the US and now, with this, Stalin era Soviet Union) Iannucci, much like the father from A Christmas Story, is an artist whose work in blue language and insults shows a similar mastery as that of Renoir in oils.
Focusing on the day that Stalin was found felled by a stroke, and later passed away, the film follows small group around Stalin in their struggle to determine a successor. What emerges is almost a keystone cops caper with many serious totalitarian and deadly implications. Of course many folks might find interesting parallels in how this cabal of clowns tries to contain the situation how our own
Bernie (2011)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07KFQ7BK4
Another dark comedy about murder? Just what in blazes is going on here, some apocalypse like global pandemic?
Based on a true story, Bernie is actually a fairly light hearted comedy about an assistant mortician and kind hearted closeted gay man In Carthage Texas. Eternal bachelor Bernie Tiede was a beloved member of his community. In his late 30s, he was particularly thoughtful when dealing with the elderly widows left behind after the funerals he helped arrange and run. One of these widows, the wealthy Marjorie Nugent, was known as the nasty and mean scourge of the Carthage. She made Miss Gulch, who wanted to take and put down Toto (the dog, not the band), seem like a nice lady.
Bernie befriended her with his philosophy of killing them with kindness. Soon the two became inseparable. But eventually her emotional cruelty managed to drive gentle, soft spoken Bernie to kill her in an impulsive moment. Jack Black, as Bernie, delivers a sympathetic portrayal of Bernie, leaving out any of his usual wacky over energetic bluster. We see Bernie's kind hearted thoughtfulness through Jack. Shirley McClain is, of course, outstanding as the nasty widow Nugent.
Interspersed throughout the film or testimonials from the real residence of the town of Carthage. A rather wide cast of characters themselves, in these entertaining vignettes they largely show themselves to remain firmly in Bernie's corner throughout the proceedings of his trial.
Richard Linklater‘s film is about as light hearted and funny as a film about murdering an elderly wodpw can be. And it is a reaffirming, reassuring even, those small town American values we often take for granted as just being a thing. Reassuring even as reality often shows us that small towns can be as harsh or harsher than the coldest cold hearted city.
Love & Friendship (2016)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B01K38HP6A
Based on Jane Austen’s novel Lady Susan, this 2016 comedy of manners was written and directed by Whit Stillman. Stillman, known primarily for a trio of comedies in the late 80s and early 90s about modern upper crust American society, mostly in Manhattan, would then appear to be someone perfect to direct such a story. And if he wasn't perfect he was still pretty damned good at it.
The Lady Susan of the story, played by Kate Beckinsale, is it recently widowed yet relatively young woman of status, if no longer of means. So this means, the time being late 1700s, and the setting being England, she must find herself a new wealthy suitor. On her own she can no longer afford the wealthy lifestyle she was used to or the private boarding school her daughter Federica attends.
Known as an incorrigible flirt, and more than a bit of a schemer, this proves challenging for even Lady Susan. It becomes even moreso when Frederica runs away from - and then is expelled from - her expensive boarding school. So of course now Lady Susan must find a properly wealthy suitor for not only herself but one for her daughter as well.
This droll film is great for folks who are maybe sick of rewatching Pride & Prejudice and Emma over and over again. It may be even better for those *not* sick of watching those films over and over again. Though it was critically acclaimed and relatively successful, it was never really widely released in theaters when it came out. And with Olivia Colman winning an oscar for 2019's The Favorite, this film may have been pushed even further out of mind. But for those who enjoy costume drama and a bit of wit, this has one something to it.
Drive (2011)
https://www.netflix.com/title/70189289
Known perhaps best as a director who makes artsy violent and generally slow action films, Drive is perhaps the greatest success so far for Nicolas Winding Renf, both critically praised and financially successful.
Drive is a brooding crime drama clearly heavily inspired by Walter Hills 1978 film The Driver, starring Ryan O’Neal, and Michael Mann's first film, Thief, starring James Caan. All three films feature cinematography that paints with shadows, steam and neon lights. And like Tangerine Dream did for Mann's Thief, Cliff Martinez composed a great synthnoir score for this film.
Drive stars Ryan Gosling as the unnamed Hollywood stunt driver whose side hustle is driving folks to and from whatever criminal activities they have planned. Of course you must follow his rules, most important of which is you better be on time because he will not wait past the agreed-upon deadline.
Like a modern day version of Clint Eastwood in his famous Man With No Name triology of Spaghetti Westerns, Gosling's driver is a man of few words. He develops a fondness for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son. This fondness is tested when Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isacc) is released from prison.
Standard, in debt to an Albanian gangster, plans to commit a robbery to pay off his debt. Concerned for Irene and her sons safety Gosling's driver offers to drive the getaway car.
Predictably things go horribly wrong and lots of violence occurs, which of course creates even more complications for our brooding hero. All of this is of course shot very stylishly, with cool lighting and those washy synths. The stellar cast includes Bryan Cranston as the mechanic who is the driver’s main contact to his criminal clientele, and a very out of character turn by Albert Brooks as a terrifying gangster himself. In the 1980s Michael Mann introduced a new stylish version of both crime films (like Thief) and crime TV (like Miami Vice) by adding fashion, pop music and innovative film techniques like the sort of cutting seen in music videos. Drive is a pretty entertaining next step in this progression of the stylish, cool crime film.
I, Tonya (2017)
https://www.hulu.com/movie/i-tonya-f5636efa-9f93-453c-b3a7-e7b377c004b9
Even though it was nominated for 3 Oscars, earned 1, and is a biopic about one of the main players in one of the most ridiculous stories of the 90s, I, Tonya has already been a bit forgotten.
For those who have somehow forgotten, or may not have been alive or aware in 1994, the figure skating rivalry between Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding went from zero to 120 when Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted by a pipe to the leg by some thugs and suddenly unable to compete in the national figure skating competition.
The path of the bungling crooks who committed the attack lead back to the ex-husband of Tonya Harding, which of course implicated Harding in the whole mess. Reportedly when Margot Robbie, who plays Tonya Harding in this film, read the script she had no idea it was based on a true story.
Presented as a drama comedy with the actors giving “interviews” as to how they remembered the events of 1994 throughout the film screen writer Steven Rogers Decided he would frame it around the various different remembrances that people like Tonya, her ex-husband Geoff Gallery, and others had of the events. In interviews Director Craig Gillespie has said he decided to add a critique of how the media portrays people, given that Tonya Harding was viewed as “white trash”.
Aussie Margot Robbie, who shot to fame in 2013 as Leonardo DiCaprio's temptress wife in The Wolf of Wallstreet, plays Tonya with a combination of sympathetic breakdowns and unapologetically self confident outbursts. Allison Janney won as Oscar for her portrayal of the emotionally abusive chain-smoking Lavona, Tonya's mom. With it's so sad it’s funny portrayal of Tonya’s life and the people in it (Mel Brooks once said “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die” ), we become sympathetic to Tonya. But all the while we still marvel at the delusions held by almost everybody involved. With it's good to great performances and it’s very 90s soundtrack, I, Tonya makes for a very offbeat trip back into a far more innocent time that somehow didn't seem quite so innocent then.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80171023
Written for the screen and directed by Jeff Baena and based loosely on stories from The Decameron (a series of Novellas by Giovanni Boccaccio written in the 1300s), The Little Hours essentially a story of medieval nuns. With a cast that includes Allison Bree, Dave Franco, John C Reilly, Molly Shannon, Nick Offerman, Fred Armissen and Baena’s long term girlfriend, Aubrey Plaza, you might think this is going to be a funny picture, and you'd be right to think that. This one is also fairly atypical of the medieval period piece. With its cast using their regular American accents and a script that both has no hint of "ye olde" this or "fare thee well" and also has a generous amount of modern four letter words, it is a *very* funny movie.
The nuns are not nuns because they want to be, but because they are kept at the convent until such a day that their fathers may present a dowery to encourage a man to marry them. At least that is the case of the Sister Alessandra (Brie). The others (Plaza and Kate Miccuci are the only others we really meet) may just be stuck there as reluctant nuns because their families did not know what else to do with them.
After the foul mouthed nuns chase off the former handyman from the convent with verbal and physical abuse (particularly Plaza, who plays a darker version here of her April from Parks & Rec), Father Tommasso (Riley) finds a new handyman when he is helped by a young servant named Massetto (Franco). Massetto is, in turn, fleeing the wrath of his employer (Offerman) for sleeping with the employer's wife. But, keenly aware of the abusive nuns in his monestary, Tommasso tells Massetto to pretend to be a deaf-mute in an attempt to protect Massetto from the abusive nuns (though he does not explain to Massetto why he is to pretend to be a deaf mute).
What emerges as a comedy of errors as Massetto tries to keep up his charade of being a deaf mute while the horny nuns steal the sacramental wine, experiment with him, each other and even other temptations. When Armissen's Bishop shows up to visit Father Tommasso and Sister Maria (Shannon) and check in on the Monastery, things couldn't possibly go worse, which is all the better for us.
The Little Hours is the sort of raunchy religious comedy more common in Europe than in the States these days. But it is also the sort of film that makes evident raunchy comedies taking the piss out of religion ought to be more common here. After all it's not like there are no sex scandals in ultra conservative religious circles. And when those scandals come out most of them make what happens in The Little Hours seem like the light comedy fare it is.
Snowpiercer (2013)
https://www.netflix.com/title/70270364
While South Korean director of the moment Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 film Parasite just made history as the first foreign language film to win the Oscar (and it is now available on Hulu and you should watch it - it's really good!) here we will take a gander at an earlier film of his, the English language dystopian Sci-Fi Snowpiercer.
The film's main conceit is more than a little off-the-wall, and for the film to work for you as a viewer, you need to be able to just surrender yourself to this idea. Essentially, due to man-made climate errors the entire world has hit another Ice Age. It is one that has killed all human and animal life with a small exception: There is a small group of human survivors riding on a train that travels non-stop around the globe. This train is constantly in motion (and generates the energy used by its passengers) via a perpetual motion engine machine created by a tech genius known as Wilford (Ed Harris). Wilford, of course, runs both the train itself and the mini-society that has formed on it that is now the last bastion of humanity.
As one of Joon Ho's main themes consistent through his filmography is that of class inequality, Snowpiercer is one giant metaphor about that class inequality in the modern industrialized world. The wealthy live in luxury in the cars near the front of the train. And the poor that managed to be "saved" (as we've seen in so many end of the world stories, the wealthy paid to save themselves, screw everyone else) live in filth and squalor in the rear of the train. While the wealthy have school cars and a night club car, an aquarium(!) car, a greenhouse car and a bar car and get to consume delicacies such as sushi, the poor live in a dirty shanty "town"car with barely beds and personal space let alone such luxuries, and even have only mysterious black gelatineous protein squares to eat. Naturally they are treated as zoo animals by those in the wealthy front and restained in their meager space by soldiers with guns. Mirroring our own time, the tech "genius" Wilford rules over all and is worshiped as the savior of humanity.
Leading the oppression on the front lines is a delightful Tilda Swinton, who bites off huge chunks of scenery while channeling Margaret Thatcher and some very nasty prosthetic teeth. But of course she has opposition that champions those destitute in the rear of th train, led by John Hurt and Captain America himself, Chris Evans.
What follows is a very thinly veiled allegory in a bonkers struggle to get to the front of the train. Beautiful set design (check out the aquarium car), savage action and delightful performances by the cast (who are all very game for this project) make this a wonderfully ridiculous sci fi epic with an underlying message. Maybe a sort of They Live with a bigger budget. Bong Joon Ho regular Kang-ho Song shows up as the tech genius who built the train's security system now called upon to help our heroes thwart it. As he is addicted to some sort of hallucinatory meth like substance called kronole, the ragtag band bribes him with more kronole for each door he opens.
While this is a film that requires a commitment to the concept of suspension of disbelief, if you can do that Snowpiercer is that rare bonkers but fun Sci-Fi movie with an important and very relevant to current events allegory at it's heart.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
https://www.netflix.com/title/80187360
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a film by Greek absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite), takes place in the world that looks and feels almost exactly like our own, but there's something a bit off.
Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a heart surgeon with a classic American family: a wife (Nicole Kidman) a son and a daughter.
Early on we see Steven with a teenage boy named Martin (Barry Keoghan - Dunkirk and Chernobyl), and, not being privy to their conversations at first, we wonder if there is a nefarious reason for his meetings with the boy. Eventually Martin comes to the Murphy household for dinner and meets the whole family.
Without giving away too much we find that there is a particular connection between Steven and tMartin. As this is revealed, certain things come to light and Martin becomes upset. Martin wants what he calls "justice" to rectify the situation, and Steven refuses to agree to Martin's initial attempts a that justice.
Then things being to happen for which there really is no explanation. Dr. Murphy and his family do not believe these things can be happening either, but happen they do. And they put both Dr. Martin and his family into a serious moral quandry.
In recent years you may have heard about scenarios used in ethics classes and studies about morality - scenarios like this, presented to students and study subjects: There is a subway train veering out of control down the tracks, and it is going to crash into a crowd of people and kill many of them. There is no way to warn these people to move. However, for whatever reason, you are at a station the train will pass through before it hits the crowd and, for whatever reason, you know that if you push this extremely large person near you at the station onto the tracks, right in front of the speeding train, that person's girth will slow and eventually stop the train in enough time save the crowd of people. So to save the many you must kill the one. To do nothing means many people will die. To try to save the many you must kill one. Is it partially your fault the many die when you could have saved them, even though it would have required you to kill someone else? What would you choose to do?
This sort of question is at the heart of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. And you see how it plays out for the folks in the film. Now this is not a cold, boring, clinical or even scolding film - it is a black comedy after all. I mean a spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down, no?
But Hollywood films have traditionally avoided tackling these sorts of moral quandaries over the years. The excuse often is "People just want to be entertained." Of course the best art can entertain but can also teach us about ourselves, or others, or the world we live in. And with a cast as good as this, The Killing of a Sacred Deer can both entertain you and make you think. It may keep you pondering it for days, weeks, months, maybe even years after you've seen it.
The Endless (2017)
https://www.netflix.com/title/80190449
Brothers Justin and Aaron grew up in - and then successfully escaped from - a “UFO death cult.” When we meet them they've been out of the cult for about 10 years. The Endless begins with Aaron opening a mail package that contains an old mangled looking video cassette tape. Next we see Aaron at a yard sale buying a used video tape player, while he ignores texts on his flip phone from someone reminding him to go buy a car battery. After having successfully scored his video player (and presumably not buying the car battery) Aaron puts the tape in to watch it and realizes the video is features members of his old cult and may be some kind of message.
We soon learn that adjusting to life outside the cult has been hard for the brothers. They clean houses for a living and are barely able to make their rent or car payments. They’ve been unable to make friends or girlfriends. Justin, the one who'd been texting Aaron to remind him to get the battery, is clearly the leader of their little 2 person family and, we discover, the one who managed to get them out of the cult and continues to try and keep them going.
But Aaron hates their current lives and wants to go back to the cult. Justin thinks this is a terrible idea. But eventually Justin gives in to Aaron just a little when Aaron says he wants to go back just for a visit. On their road trip, in the car that still needs a new battery, through the middle of nowhere in Southern California to the cult's camp, Justin reminds Aaron of the many horribly experiences they had growing up there. Aaron claims to not remember many of those experiences at all.
The Endless is that rare low budget, sort of science fiction, sort of horror film that almost plays out like a long form twilight zone episode. Everything unfolds in a very recognizable world - even more recognizable than the one in The Killing of A Sacred Deer. The brothers seem like 20 something dudes just trying to adjust to our world - one they didn't grow up in.
Directed, produced, and written by and starring Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, who play Justin and Aaron respectively, The Endless also avoids what stymies so many small budget indie sci fi films - poor acting. Justin, Aaron and the rest of the cast, consisting mostly of the members of the cult, once they arrive at the camp, are all solid enough to not remind you this is a low budget film, and a few are pretty good.
While I will not describe what they encounter on their visit, I will say this is one of the more inventive films I’ve seen in a bit. What Aaron and Justin encounter, and what they find in themselves, is the stuff of the best science fiction, the stuff of Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick.
Melancholia (2011)
https://www.hulu.com/movie/melancholia-271959fb-260a-46ae-9cb7-e319ee1f99d7
Danish director Lars von Trier is notorious for both controversies on film and off film. His films Antichrist and Nymphomaniac both feature explicit hard-core sex and extreme graphic violence. Both films also happen to feature great cinematography, top notch acting (with actors like Willem Dafoe, Stellan Skarsgard, Uma Thurman and Charlotte Gainsbourg) and intriguing story lines.
Along with those films, von Trier has called Melancholia part of his Depression Trilogy. But unlike those cinematic assaults, Melancholia is relatively sedate and calm, with neither hard-core sex nor graphic violence figuring into it. Maybe this is why von Trier still managed to cause an uproar at the Cannes film festival premiere of Melancholia large enough to get him banned from Cannes for several years.
It's been a while since I have seen this film, so some details may escape me. But it focuses on sisters Justine (Kristen Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). We open, naturally, with Part One: Justine. It is the day of Justine's wedding and she is clearly suffering from depression. Both her life and family are severely dysfunctional. For example, her father is a hedonistic narcissist, her mother is makes jaded sarcastic quips constantly and Justine's greedy boss is trying to get her to meet a work deadline (she writes copy) at her own damn wedding . Many other calamities befall this wedding.
In Part Two: Claire Justine's depression has become so severe she is now in Claire's (and Claire's husband's) care. And then the existence of a rogue planet that will either pass very close to the Earth or crash into the Earth is revealed. Will this be the end of times or not? The sisters, one thinking the end is nigh the other thinking positive thoughts, try to work out/work through their messy lives with this sword of Damocles hanging over all known existence. Light stuff.
Despite the reputation of von Trier's films as deliberately and overtly provocative, and his co-founding in the 90s of the Dogme 95 movement (a movement looking for "pure cinema" - no special effects, lighting, or sets, no score unless it is music the characters are experiencing, etc, that gave us some pretty raw looking films), Melancholia is a very accessible and very beautiful film. I have read that many folks experiencing, or experienced with, severe depression find this, well, melancholy film very identifiable. Von Trier himself says he wrote it during one of his severest depressions. And while I cannot claim to have any real experience with depression, I did find Melancholia a very meditative and overall lovely film.
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