Monday, August 26th, 2024

SASQUATCH SUNSET - Paramount+ w/Showtime

What we like:

• The directing team of Nathan and David Zellner deliver another offbeat, original film. We loved their 2014 drama Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter.

• Ari Aster is a producer. The man is doing his best to help make indie films interesting.

• Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are completely unrecognizable in Sasquatch make-up and costumes, and yet give distinctive performances that somehow seem completely in step with their acting styles. Impressive!

What we don’t like:

• The film eked-out a mere $1M at the box-office. The arthouse theater business is still in big trouble.

Tuesday, August 27th, 2024

KINDS OF KINDNESS - TBD Sale Only

What we like:

• A complex and ambitious film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, known for his unique and often unsettling cinematic style. The film is structured as a triptych, consisting of three interconnected stories that explore themes of control, kindness, and cruelty.

• The stories feature recurring characters, played by Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and others, who navigate situations where kindness is often entangled with manipulation and power.

• Plemons picked up the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, 13 years after his wife, Kirsten Dunst, won the Best Actress prize for Lars von Trier’s Melancholia.

What we don’t like:

• The reception to Kinds of Kindness was mixed, with some critics praising its boldness and the performances, particularly by Plemons, and others finding it challenging and less cohesive than Lanthimos’s previous works.

Friday, August 30th, 2024

BORDERLANDS - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

What we like:

• An adaptation of the popular video game series of the same name, Eli Roth’s Borderlands boasts a star-studded cast, including Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black as Claptrap, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Tannis.

• Visually, the film manages to capture the gritty, wild-west aesthetic of Pandora with its detailed landscapes and chaotic energy.

What we don’t like:

• Hoo boy, this one looked like a stinker from the get-go, and audiences stayed away in droves. It feels both rushed and overstuffed, with none of the characters fully fleshed out. What a waste of talent.

CROSSING - MUBI US, $14.99 Sale

What we like:

• Director Levan Akin’s follow-up to his acclaimed 2019 film And Then We Danced, Crossing tells the story of Lia, a retired teacher from Georgia, who learns from her young neighbor, Achi, that her long-lost transgender niece, Tekla, has crossed the border into Turkey. In search of Tekla, Lia travels to Istanbul with the unpredictable Achi, where they explore the hidden depths of the city.

• The film world-premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it received the Jury Prize from the Teddy Award jury for LGBTQ-themed films.

What we don’t like:

• We wish MUBI’s profile in the US was larger. The indie streamer (and distributor) is doing its best to increase its profile, with some big titles coming this fall (The Substance, Bird). Their curation is terrific, and if you love high-quality foreign and independent films, it’s well-worth the price of a subscription.

THE DELIVERANCE - Netflix

What we like:

• Based on a reportedly true story involving demonic possession, The Deliverance centers on a mother and her children who move into a new home, only to discover that it is haunted by a malevolent force. As they experience increasingly terrifying paranormal events, the family turns to the church and faith to combat the evil presence.

• It’s a Lee Daniels film, so it’s unlikely to be boring. The man who brought us Precious, The Paperboy, and (of course) Lee Daniels’ The Butler is not afraid to lean in to melodrama. And we’re here for it.

• The cast is stacked: Audra Day, Glenn Close, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Mo’Nique, Omar Epps, Colleen Camp. We can wait to see who gets possessed (and Delivered, of course).

What we don’t like:

• The original title was Demon House, which again, is a much better title. We get that these acclaimed, serious actresses might not want to attach their names to a title that schlocky. But it grabs you! The Deliverance does not.

• Some people have said the poster puts Glenn Close in blackface?

THE FALL GUY - Peacock

What we like:

• Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in full movie star-mode. Coming off Barbenheimer, these two actors have natural chemistry both on-screen and off.

• Stunt performance as an art form. It’s ridiculous that the Academy has not yet created a category to honor the countless men and women who contribute so much to moviemaking.

What we don’t like:

• The Fall Guy was supposed to kick-off the summer box-office, and it massively underperformed. A real bummer of a start to the season.

• Is it time for Universal to start re-thinking short theatrical windows for their bigger titles? Are audiences now conditioned to wait for PVOD? It’s probably not that simple. A significant portion of the audience prefers home viewing to theater-going, and they’re willing to pay a premium for early access to theatrical titles. But…18 days? At least they gave it some time to breath on VOD. The film had an unusually long gap between PVOD and SVOD releases (3 months).

GHOSTLIGHT - AMC+

What we like:

• This family drama premiered at Sundance this year to great acclaim. It tells the story of melancholic construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer), who finds himself drifting from his wife and daughter, but discovers community and purpose in a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. As the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life, he and his family are forced to confront a personal loss.

• The actors who portray the family in the film are in fact a family in real life.

• Dolly de Leon, so memorable in Triangle of Sadness, has a supporting role in the film.

What we don’t like:

• We complain about it every week, but the arthouse market is still in crisis. Granted, this film has no stars to drive the marketing, but its universal raves should have helped it make a bigger splash in theaters. It failed to reach $1M.

KINDS OF KINDNESS - Hulu

What we like:

• We love that Disney, who now owns Searchlight Pictures, is still allowing the ‘studio’ to produce challenging arthouse films. And we’re happy this idiosyncratic Yorgos Lanthimos triptych received a significant theatrical release.

• We’re also grateful the film is reaching SVOD not long after its digital release (3 days later). Saves us money!

What we don’t like:

• This was Searchlight Pictures first theatrical release since 2023’s All of Us Strangers, and it’s the only one until the upcoming A Real Pain, which hits theaters on October 18th. We really hope they’re able to increase their output to theaters.

OUT COME THE WOLVES - TBD Rental / TBD Sale

What we like:

• Director Adam MacDonald’s thriller centers around a man, his female best friend, and her fiancé who embark on a weekend trip to a remote cabin in the wilderness. What begins as a simple vacation quickly turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival when the group is attacked by a pack of wolves.

• MacDonald and lead Missy Peregrym previously collaborated on the 2014 film Backcountry, which was an effective nature-survival thriller. That one featured a hungry, man-eating black bear. We’re excited to see what they can do with wolves!

What we don’t like:

• We’ve talked about how our dogs at When to Stream headquarters bark and growl at movies that heavily feature any kind of animals, so we imagine this one will irritate them. Might have to be a laptop watch.

TOUCH - Peacock

What we like:

• Icelandic action filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur (Everest, 2 Guns, Contraband) takes on a more romantic and wistful story, where a man tries to find out what really happened when his Japanese girlfriend mysteriously vanished without a trace from London fifty years earlier.

• Our beloved Focus Features deserves so much credit for providing theaters with a steady stream of quality films. If you can’t make it to theaters to catch these films, throw them a few bucks on PVOD.

What we don’t like:

• The film’s Icelandic title, Snerting, should have been kept! Touch is too generic! We want to roll up to the box-office and demand: ‘Two for Snerting!’

TRAP - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

What we like:

• The latest from M. Night Shayamalan revolves around a serial killer named Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, who attends a pop concert with his teenage daughter, Riley. The concert, however, is a setup by law enforcement to trap Cooper and bring him to justice.

• Shyamalan collaborated with his daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, who stars as the pop singer Lady Raven and composed several songs specifically for the film. 

What we don’t like:

• Nepo Baby Discourse alert! You have to hand it to M. Night Shayamalan…the man has no qualms about giving his kids a leg-up. First he negotiates a feature for his younger daughter (see below) in to his Warner Bros deal. Then he seemingly reverse-engineers a movie plot that gives his other daughter a showcase for her music. Lean in to it, Shayamalans!

THE WATCHERS - Max

What we like:

• Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, makes her directorial debut with this supernatural horror film, which is based on the 2022 novel of the same name by A. M. Shine.

• The film was self-financed by Ishana's father and sold to Warner Bros for $30 million. The deal helped the studio lure the elder Shyamalan away from Universal, bringing him to make his next film, Trap, which coincidentally comes out on PVOD today. Shyamalan double feature night?

• The younger Shyamalan has been candid and honest about the inevitable ‘nepo baby’ charges, saying the conversation about ‘privilege’ is ‘totally valid’ and that it’s the ‘reaction to the privilege that matters’ and what standard people hold themselves to.

What we don’t like:

• The film has been a critical and box-office disappointment. Still, Warner Bros likely made a smart business decision, as M. Night Shyamalan is a good auteur to have at the studio (even if Trap wasn’t exactly a blockbuster).

Happy Streaming Everyone!

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