Now Streaming (Netflix): A Slim Selection But Jude (!) and Gillian (!!)

Netflix, which initially looked like the 21st Century Blockbuster is well on its way to being the new HBO, so they're cutting back severely on movies now. But there's still a few titles of interest each month. Here are streaming options as of November. We'll randomly freeze frame a handful of titles and share the results. Okay? Okay!

Shop till you drop, girls

Alfie (2004)
The Year Jude Law Was in Every Movie. Also, arguably, the peak of his gorgeousity.

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YNMS: The Young Pope

by Laurence Barber

In the wake of House of Cards' success, it seems networks have all been clamouring to make shows about other worlds that are full of their own political intrigue. Netflix itself has the Gerard Depardieu-starring Marseille, which French critics savaged and everyone else mostly ignored, and the upcoming The Crown. In other ways, shows like Mr. Robot and UnReal seem partially derivative of this trend despite updating and resituating it. Now, in a joint production, Sky, Canal+ and HBO have teamed up to produce the latest project from Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino: The Young Pope...

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Reader's Choice: a look back at Gattaca (1997)

Welcome to the new bi-weekly series "Reader's Choice." For the first episode I gave you a choice of several films currently streaming and you picked Gattaca (on Amazon Prime). I hope you enjoy and comment since we haven't talked about this movie ever, that I can recall. - Nathaniel

Memories of Gattaca are fuzzy at best. I saw it only once in theaters 19 years ago. I remember: Jude Law in a wheelchair; sterile, sleek, and awesome production design; Uma Thurman being an icy receptionist?; Ethan Hawke being less of a perfect specimen than Jude Law in the context of the movie (this remains true out of context); a hard to buy premise about violence being bred out of the human race?; something about brothers swimming? That's it. 

Join me in this revisit...

A fascinating juxtaposition: When the costume design credit arrives we're looking at a naked body

Gattaca begins with a beautiful blue credits sequence which becomes eerier as it goes along once you realize what its macro imagery is telling you. Ethan Hawke is ridding himself of all human detritus: dead flesh, body hair, cuticles, until he's smooth as a statue. He repeats this in several ways though sometimes (at work) the detritus isn't his. All the workers at his job get their fingers pricked upon entering like its a diabetic research center. There are even daily urine tests... which seems extreme for a world that's so into cleanliness. What if someone misses the specimen cup? 

At the pee test the doctor (Xander Berkeley) looks right at his penis and says the following. [more...]

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Berlin: 'Genius' starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth

 Amir Soltani is covering the Berlin International Film Festival, TFE's first time at Berlinale! Here is his take on Michael Grandage's Genius.

Berlinale is known for inviting one or two Hollywood pictures to the festival every year to add glamour to the sprawling selection of mostly arthouse curios. One of those films in this year’s edition was Michael Grandage’s first feature as a director, Genius. A period piece based on a true story, the film came to the festival with high expectations, given the distribution deal with Lionsgate already in place, and the pedigree of everyone involved, including thrice Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan, and Oscar winners Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman in the cast. But this was all before the film was screened and faced walkouts and unintentional laughs.

Maxwell Perkins (Firth) was the editor and invisible hand behind some of the biggest American masterpieces of literature in the 1920s, including novels by Ernest Hemingway (Dominic West) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pierece). Perkins is a family man, living in an expansive estate with his wife Louise (Laura Linney) and five daughters. As one would expect of the editor responsible for taming wild characters such as Hemingway and, eventually, Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law), Perkins is a gentleman of the highest order, calm and gentle, but serious all the same. [More...]

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Say What? Law & Keaton in "The Young Pope"

Manuel here, sharing a hilarious set of pics from historic Villa Pamphili in Rome.

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Add dialogue or caption: What do you think is happening in these behind-the-scenes pics of Paolo Sorrentino’s Jude Law-led HBO show, The Young Pope? Is Diane Keaton auditioning for a Sister Act spinoff?

Is Law just as amused as we are by his casting as a celibate pope?