Streaming Roulette, Nov: The King Lives by Night

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!). What should you queue up for NOVEMBER 2019 ? (★ means we definitely recommend catching) 

Let's get started...

-Meet me in the garden tomorrow

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) on Criterion Channel
This fantasy adventure based on The Arabian Knights won 3 Oscars in its year (Special Effects, Cinematography Color and Art Direction Color). Fill in those Oscar gaps! Weird trivia note: NONE of those categories it won had the standard 5 nominees. It took the Academy awhile to settle on the "five per category" rule that dominated the Oscars for decades. There were 14 films nominated for Special Effects that year -- the visual effects category in particular has had multiple strange incarnations and volatility. 

I'm going to ask you to deliver this message to France given your... familiarity with its recipient.

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Streaming Roulette, July: Reese doesn't live under the silver lake anymore

As is our practice we've selected 8-10 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 in the first half of JULY 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 them.  

Ready? Let's go...

Why did I get stuck with the janky old broke hobo Spider-Man? 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) on Netflix ★
Watched this again on a whim with a friend who was curious because it won the Oscar. He's not into animated movies or superhero movies and he totally enjoyed it. Thus are its many inventive delights. It really holds up to viewing number two. Jam-packed with details you can easily miss on the first round.

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Streaming Roulette, June: Always Be My Gentleman Jack, Maybe?

As is our practice we've selected several random titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!) for this quick preview for titles streaming in the first half of June 2019. Please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films.  Okay, let's go...

-Not in your traditional heteronormative sense. We're married spiritually... and sexually
-But not literally [awkward laugh] ! 

Always Be My Maybe (2019) on Netflix
Netflix is all about the romcoms though the quality tends to vary. We're so glad Crazy Rich Asians held out for a theatrical release last year since it was so deserving of being a big hit. We will definitely check this one out.

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Fleabag: Season 2

By Spencer Coile

Rather than beat around the bush, let me just come right out and say: Fleabag is a miraculous piece of television. Its first season, an adaptation of the stage production by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, debuted on Amazon Prime back in 2016. It followed the titular Fleabag (played by Waller-Bridge), a foul-mouthed, lying, sexually insatiable cafe owner in London coming to terms with her best friend’s death. With few friends, she’s prone to stealing, sleeping with assorted men, and antagonizing her family, including her godmother-turned-stepmother (Olivia Colman) - all the while breaking the fourth wall and speaking to us, her audience. It was an uncomfortable yet poignant six episode run, but Fleabag’s story wasn’t quite over.

Waller-Bridge, notable for her recent involvement with Killing Eve, is back for one final season with her plucky anti-hero. And rather than just be a continuation of the first season, Fleabag returns to Prime with a second season so stunning and so deeply personal, you may have no choice but to see it to believe it. So, rather than a review, let’s consider this a celebration of Fleabag...

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Streaming Roulette April: The Dirt, Monster House, and Now Apocalypse

As is our practice we've selected a couple handful of titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!) for this quick preview. At the bottom of the page, check out full listings for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO for April 2019. And please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films. Maybe we'll select one to write up? Okay, let's go...

Holy shit. Barnabas!

Now Apocalypse, Season 1 (2019) on Hulu (with Starz add-on)
Pictured there are the four leads of Now Apocalypse all of them gorgeous / funny / frequently naked in the first TV series from Gregg Araki of 1990s new queer cinema fame. Araki's preoccupations haven't changed much (or at all!)  since the 1990s. A twinkish lead with floppy dark hair? Check. Constant drug use? Sex. Filthy language and explicitly sexual humor? Check. A preoccupation with supernatural kinds of rape? Check. A dumb but impossibly sweet and sincere straight hunk? Check. Impossibly hip but somewhat chilly woman with black hair? Check. Sexual fluidity for every character even those with a pronounced label or gay or straight? Check. Slutty female best friend with most of the best lines? Check. End of the world fantasies and paranoia? Check. Older predatory queers in abundance? Check. Aliens or supernatural occurences? Of course! The show is way too repetitive in the early episodes (lots of flashbacks to previous episodes which is weird for streaming shows since you've literally usually just been watching what you're now flashing back to) but about halfway into the season the short episodes start  to come together in fun ways, including a hilarious and much smarter way of folding back in on itself with an in-series webseries, wherein the characters are reenacting the early episodes and playing themselves badly or being played unflatteringly by actors hired to play them. 

She never blinked during the interview.

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