Streaming Roulette, Oct: High Life/Noon and Handfuls of Dust.
Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 3:30PM
NATHANIEL R in A Handful of Dust, Furie, High Life, Jodie Foster, Oscars (50s), Oscars (80s), Rebel Wilson, Sean Keenan, Supergirl, TV, The Accused, streaming

As is our practice we've selected a handful plus of new-to-streaming titles and frozen them at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!). After those selections we've listed all the movies from each of the streaming channels. What should you queue up for OCTOBER 2019 ? (★ means we definitely recommend catching them and bold titles are buzzy things we haven't yet seen) 

Let's get started...

[mood music]

HIGH LIFE (2019) on Amazon Prime
Funnily enough this empty shot is exactly as I recall High Life, so much atmosphere and isolation. Humanity is over. (Except for Juliette Binoche who is just living for her disturbing role.) We expect this will end up on some top ten lists at year's end...

Where did you get the wallet?!?

FURIE (2019) on Netflix
Making my way through the Oscar submissions in the International Feature Film category. I've caught 11 of them so far. Perhaps I'll get to this one from Vietnam soon? 

Let's get down to business. You want me to stick, you put the word in for me like I said."

HIGH NOON (1952) on Hulu ★
Oh look it's daddy Bridges (pops to Jeff & Beau). I forgot he was in this because I haven't seen it in a million years and I mostly remember that real time ticking clock, the somber beauty of Gary Cooper, and the fact that robbing Katy Jurado of her Best Supporting Actress nomination caused an inferior nomination for her later on (that's how it often works). High Noon won four Oscars in one of the strangest Oscar vintages of all time... The Bad and the Beautiful won the most Oscars (5) but wasn't even nominatd for Best Picture, High Noon and Quiet Man split the type of prizes that usually go with Best Pictures  (like cinematography, direction, best actor, editing) but The Greatest show on Earth which no one respects and had only five nominations took Best Picture. So apparently that year had several passionate camps and split votting. Weird results! 

[No dialogue]

THE ACCUSED (1988) on Hulu
Wondering how this plays now, after years of vocal activism against rape culture and (one assumes) a broader understanding of the issues among the general populace. At the time the central performance was all the rage but people didn't really take to the movie itself. Of course the culture it which it arrived was much different. But half the way off-topic. Is there any other major star in the history of movies who a great number of people think deserved back-to-back Oscars and won neither of them despite nominations besides Glenn Close? The indignity of Close losing that year after two straight years of iconic star turns in hit films! Competitive Oscar lineup that year but we'd rank it like so Close (Dangerous Liaisons) > Streep (A Cry in the Dark... one of her few underrated performances) > Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist) > Griffith (Working Girl) > Foster (The Accused). But my winner that year (Susan Sarandon, Bull Durham) was not nominated. *sniffle*

I'm not going to miss the freaks in Yoorana

GLITCH SEASON 3 (2019) on Netflix
Have any of you seen this Australian series? The premise is supernatural on in which people come back to life after their deaths. They aren't zombies but fully alive again. Except they are somehow spiritually bound to the town they emerge in and die if they exit its borders. And then it turns into a soap opera of sorts with lots of romantic entanglements and personal secrets. It's actually pretty good if ridiculous. These two above were two of the better characters and that's the very beautiful Sean Keenan as "Charlie," who is the only gay character (whoops. spoiler). He's also in the upcoming True History of the Kelly Gang and he was in that very little seen Nicole Kidman movie Strangerland as well. Perhaps Hollywood will catch on to him since they love to poach Australian talent?

But she's a total zero. You don't even know her name!

SUPERGIRL (1984) on Netflix
OMG-THE-80S-FASHION! Look at Brenda Vaccaro. That outfit is almost as toomuch as Faye Dunaway's gestures. Maybe this would be a fun groupwatch? Whatcha think?

It isn't anything serious.

A HANDFUL OF DUST (1988) on HBO
oh look baby Kristin Scott Thomas. I remember seeing this when I was discovering Merchant/Ivory only it's not a Merchant/Ivory movie (in the late 80s early 90s Merchant/Ivory became shorthand for the whole costume drama wing of film... which wasn't fair to them and diminished their reputation because they're the very best at it) so I was disappointed. That said the cast is very starry: Kristin Scott Thomas, Rupert Graves, Anjelica Huston, Dame Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, Sir Alec Guiness . Perhaps I was probably too young for it at the time? Perhaps a rewatch? (in a related note, Why are there not 100 hours in each day?) FUN FACTS: This film was nominated for Costume Design only and Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTAs for it.

ISN'T IT ROMANTIC (2019) on HBOGO
First time seeing this the other night when my best friend and I were both exhausted and wanting something light and silly to watch. Twas definitely light and silly. And yet... why wasn't it funnier. The concept was there -- Rebel wakes up inside her own romantic comedy and recognizes the tropes and tries to escape it. The cast is decent. The costumes alternately between totally expected (way too many Pretty Woman references -- there are other romcoms! -- and wonderfully too much... but it was kind of dull and the jokes dont always land and it probably could have been even shorter than its smartly brief runtime (89 minutes). Nevertheless we do not cheat here at streaming roulette and this is literally what we landed on after goofing with the scroll bar. It looks like shade thrown, but it's not!

Have you seen any of these pictures? What'cha think of them?

ALSO STREAMING IN OCTOBER...

 

Oct 6

Oct 7

Oct 8

Oct 9

Oct 10

Oct 11

Oct 14

Oct 15

Oct 16

Oct 17

Oct 18 

Oct 19

Oct 20

Oct 21

Oct 22

Oct 23

Oct 24

Oct 25 

Oct 26

Oct 27

Oct 29

 

 

Oct 30

 

 

 

Oct 6-9

Oct 10-12

Oct 15-17

Oct 18

Oct 19-22

Oct 23-24

Oct 25

Oct 28-31

 

with Hulu we can't list TV because there's just too much of it

 

Oct 7-9

Oct 11-17

Oct 18-23

Oct 26

 

 

Oct 18

Oct 26

Oct 28

Oct 30

not a complete listing. just the movies and series premieres

 

Oct 8-12

Oct 20

Oct 26-27

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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