Streaming Roulette, August: Serenity, Red Sea Diving Resort, and two major 1981 classics

As is our practice we've selected a handful of titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!). It's our way of previewing new titles streaming each month. So what should you queue up for AUGUST 2019 ?(★ means we recommend catching them.) Please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films and maybe we'll write about one or two of 'em  You rarely tell us but we'll try if you do.

[COUGHING]

Jackie Brown (1997) ★  on Netflix
Is De Niro coughing to distract you from Once Upon a Time ...  in Hollywood for a minute? He's got a new trailer out and that would like a little attention, too. On the couch is Bridget Fonda giving what is easily one of her top two performances (the other one is in a little seen 80s movie called Scandal). We should probably see this particular Quentin Tarantino flick again. Beyond Fonda's perpetually baked surfer girl I don't personally remember much about it except for that  Rashomon inspired scene in the mall, and Pam Grier and Robert Forster being a fine match in the two central roles.

[HEAVY BREATHING]

Body Heat (1981) ★  on HBO
Nice wedding ring shot. That ain't her husband...

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" and NYFF Trivia

by Nathaniel R

As you've undoubtedly heard, The Irishman will be finished in time for a 2019 rollout after all. (We had previously assumed it might not be ready due to the time-consuming visual effects to de-age DeNiro and Pacino for some sequences). The Martin Scorsese mob epic will have its world premiere as the opening night selection* of the New York Film Festival on September 27th. After that premiere it hits some theaters and Netflix streaming though we don't have dates for either one quite yet. It'd be nice if they didn't save it until Christmas for an actual release but awards contenders gonna awards contend, y'know. That said it does say "this fall" at the end so perhaps they'll be merciful to audiences and release it in October?

The drama is based on Charles Brandt's non-fiction book "I Heard You Paint Houses," a line that's included in the trailer and would have made a much less generic title! But generic film titles gonna generic film title, y' know. After the jump, the trailer and a brief Yes No Maybe So breakdown...

Click to read more ...

July. It's a wrap

The dog days of summer are upon us and the year is just flying by now. As we prepare to ride out the last month of the summer (and thus the summer movie season), here are 14 highlights from the month we now leave behind...

• The Farewell interview  Murtada talks to rising director Lulu Wang about her autobiographical hit
• New Classics: In the Loop Michael discovers that the political satire is eerily even more relevant 10 years on
• Doc Corner Glenn says Maiden is a must-see and an Oscar contender
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Nathaniel sits in the car with Brad and wonders where Tarantino's 9th or 10th movie is going. What an odd film experience
• The Personal and the universal Lynn Lee's take on The Farewell
• Best Actresses Nathaniel's ballot on 2019's first half
• Review: MidSommar Chris on the year's most polarizing movie
• Soundtracking: Nashville Chris listens closely to a non-musical that's also a musical 
• Smackdown 1960 Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) and more special guests discuss Psycho and Elmer Gantry. Have you listened yet? 
• The Lion King Redux Timn's brutal review of Disney's money-devouring remake 

Most Discussed
• Yes No Maybe So: Cats that trailer was the stuff of dream nightmare ballets
• Emmy Snubs who we were mourning on nomination day
• Populist Oscar Nominees which performances wouldn't have been nominated without their outstanding box office receipts? 
• Big Little Lies "I Want to Know" - series or season finale? Either way we all had opinions.  

COMING IN AUGUST
The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1957,  a tribute to the very random and many-act career of producer Dino de Laurentiis for his Centennial, Mindhunter season 2, and new films like Luce, Blinded by the Light, The Kitchen, Where'd You Go Bernadette, Brittany Runs a Marathon, and Vita & Virginia.

Interview: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts on 'For Sama'

by Murtada Elfadl

For Sama, the new documentary in theaters that chronicles the five years of the Syrian uprising in Aleppo, is presented as a document from a mother trying to explain what happened to her newborn daughter. Yet what filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab shows through capturing the minutiae of everyday life in a city under siege and continuous bombardment, is a love letter to people committed to building a better society even as the situation around them becomes dangerous. Al-Kateab, a journalist, and her husband Hamza, a doctor, make the choice several times to stay in Aleppo and continue their work while starting a family, building a life, helping their community, hoping they can sustain despite the circumstances. The film presents a narrative rarely seen on screen, intimately documenting life from inside a city ravaged by war, as its people are just trying to live through the days. We recently spoke to Al-Kateab and her British co-director Edward Watts in New York. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Murtada Elfadl: How did you come to work together?

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: 'Honeyland'

By Glenn Dunks

You know a movie is going to give you something when within the first two minutes, it makes you bolt upright and exclaim “Oh wow!” to an empty room. The eyes pop and the eyebrows raise as you marvel at the sheer unexpectedness of what is on screen. In Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s Honeyland, the image in question is that of an aging beekeeper straddling precariously along a cliff-face to a hive hidden among the rocks. Surrounded by grey and brown, Hatidze Mutatova (who I assume is in her 50s?) reveals a wedge of golden honeycomb. The gold in the rocks.

It’s a startling way to open a film from a purely logistical standpoint. It’s also a visual that really clues the viewer into its subject's tenacity and sheer force of nature abilities as a cultivator and protector of bees – an animal, after all, that is vital to the existence on Earth of everyone from those of us in major metropolises to those, like Hatidze, in isolated, wind-swept, mountainous regions of Macedonia...

Click to read more ...