Streaming Roulette, June: Nezha, Lucy in the Sky, West Side Story

If you're new to the site this is how we share new streaming offerings for the month. We select a handful or two of titles and just randomly hit a place on the scroll bar to see what the film looks like - no cheating.  Ready? Let's play...

-Maid of Honor?
-Oh, that color is bad for Anita!

West Side Story (1961) on Netflix
Silly, Maria. Anita doesn't have bad colors --she's Rita Moreno!  ICYMI I hope you'll read our huge three part retrospective of West Side Story. It was a joy to write. Netflix so rarely has 20th century movies  that you should always stream them (even if you own the picture, just leave it running in the background) to remind them that first century of the artform they make their billions off of is kind of important. Just saying...

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Almost There: Taron Egerton in "Rocketman"

by Cláudio Alves

Because it's Pride Month and Rocketman is new to streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime, this week's Almost There subject is Taron Egerton in Dexter Fletcher's Elton John biopic. In the most recent awards season, this Welsh actor probably came quite close to an Oscar nomination, both thanks to his performance as well as his aggressive campaigning. The nature of his role helped too, of course. Biopic roles are, literally, the Academy's favorite flavor of Oscar bait. Still, in the year after Bohemian Rhapsody's controversial victories, Rocketman had to content itself with a Best Original Song win. As for Egerton, he got Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG nods, but failed to secure the Oscar nomination, ending up just outside the Best Actor lineup…

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Mizoguchi's women

by Cláudio Alves

Last time we talked about Japanese cinema, we were looking at the history of the Best Costume Design Oscar. Among the five pictures from Japan nominated for that awards, we find Ugetsu, the only Kenji Mizoguchi film to ever receive any sort of recognition by the Academy. Considering some of the director's best films are currently available online thanks to platforms like the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and HBO Max, it seems like a good time to highlight more of his cinematic mastery. After all, there's much greatness in Mizoguchi's exquisite cinema beyond the sartorial splendor of Ugetsu…

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Review: "The Great" on Hulu

by Cláudio Alves

Most dramatizations of history have a difficult, often unbalanced, relationship with facts. Reality is notoriously devoid of narrative structure, which makes taking departures and creative license into an essential crime. The troubles arise when the parameters of adaptation aren't clear, when fiction dresses itself as truth, and confusion blooms from pretension. Hulu's biographical series about the early years of Catherine the Great in Russia is unencumbered by such issues, sidestepping them with irreverence. At the start of each episode, a title card points out that this miniseries is only occasionally based on things that really happened.

The rest of it is hilarious fantasy, a play on history that turns the rise of Russia's empress and reformer into the stuff of romantic comedy. It's a black-hearted farce that's unafraid and unashamed of being silly…

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Early Dolan: Cinema of Restless Youth

by Cláudio Alves

Like many others, I've been missing the experience of going to the movies quite terribly. Lately, I find myself thinking about films I had planned on watching before the COVID-19 pandemic annihilated any sense of normalcy. There was a picture scheduled to open in Portuguese theaters in the middle of March that I was particularly sad to see affected by this crisis. Matthias et Maxime is Xavier Dolan's latest film and, according to many critics, represents a return to form by the Canadian director after some less than ideal productions. As someone who once called himself a fan of Xavier Dolan, I'm eager to see him return to the glory of his earlier work…

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