Streaming: Riz Ahmed's star ascends in "Sound of Metal"

by Christopher James

Since he broke out in Nightcrawler, Riz Ahmed has been looking for his movie star moment. Sound of Metal proves he is the real deal. Director Daris Marder displays quite a bit of flair in his directorial outing. The Place Beyond the Pines screenwriter excels here specifically because of his unique use of sound design to give us greater insight to our lead character. Between Ahmed and the sound design, Sound of Metal is of major interest...

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The day moviegoing died?

by Nathaniel R

What is that old line. 'Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice?' Who would've expected that our particular world (i.e. moviegoing) would end due to an exceptionally incompetent cruel government's mishandling of a worldwide pandemic? There's no poetic ring to that!

Movie theaters have been closed here in NYC since late March. Moviegoing as we knew it might have died months ago while we were busy stupidly thinking of it as an induced coma that we would all purposefully awake from once treatment options improved. We were not expecting the movie studios themselves be the ones urging us to pull the plug and plan a funeral. As you probably heard today, Warner Bros, one of the last standing behemoth movie studios, has announced that they'll be premiering the entirety of their 2021 slate day and date on HBOMax and in movie theaters...

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Streaming Roulette, Dec: Sleepy Debbie, Angry Ang, and Winning Gandhi

After the jump you'll find a listing of everything that's new to streaming this month (December 2020). But first we pick two handfuls of titles and randomly freeze them with the scroll bar. Whatever comes up is what we share. Do these images make you want to see (or rewatch) the movie? (If you want to keep up with what's specifically available to stream from this film year you can read these earlier posts!)

It's me against the world. You're all I got baby.

The People vs Larry Flynt (1996) on Amazon Prime
True confession: I never understand why people thought Courtney Love was great in this (though I like Courtney Love as a musician). She's certainly raw but at least for me I can hear the lines being recited and the lack of training. But this feels due for a rewatch - perhaps for its 25th anniversary next year? How close do you think it came to a Best Picture nomination, given that it received only two nominations but they were biggies (Actor & Director)?

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How Had I Never Seen... "Beau Travail"?

by Cláudio Alves

People cope with stress in different ways. Earlier this month, when the US presidential election was unfolding and the world held its breath, I turned to Twitter to reminisce about 2020 cinematic excellence and try to calm my nerves. I also scoured the internet for good deals on physical media, a bit of retail therapy, adding more DVDs and Blu-Rays to a collection that has long ago surpassed a thousand films. Part of the new additions were my first ever Criterion editions! 

All this to say that the discs arrived this week and, since the Criterion Channel has a new collection of Claire Denis films, I decided to finally watch the much-lauded Beau Travail and write about the experience. And what an experience it was…

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20:20 (Pt 4) Contrarian takes, gay comedies, and a KStew double

Part One | Part Two | Part Three 
We're occassionally surveying the films of 2020 that are already streaming, whether they're great, terrible or anywhere inbetween in case you're looking to get caught up on the film year before December/January's "year in review" style media mania. We're freezing them at the 20th minute and 20th second just for streaming roulette kicks. How many of these twelve 2020 pictures have you seen?

-What are we getting?
-Uh... nothing good.

UNDERWATER (William Eubank, US)
20th Century Fox. Original release date: January 10th. Streaming on HBOMax

KStew's dialogue right there is suddenly how I'm feeling about the cinema of 2020. I know I know we're supposed to be saying it was rich. Well, I was feeling like it was rich until I started drafting up the annual Film Bitch Awards and realized it was a wasteland once I removed all the festival titles that don't have distribution in 2020. Still have to get through another 20 pictures though and if half of them are wonderful the problem will be solved?  I promise that I'm not just in a grumpy mood though the following text might suggest otherwise as I had an entirely lovely Thanksgiving. How about you? 

They were actually hillbilly royalty because my pawpaw was related to the guy who started the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

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