Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This weekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.
Unlike previous weeks, when streaming or buying new films to watch in the comfort of your home is a luxury, the COVID-19 pandemic has made home viewing a necessity. So, with that in mind, the following recommendations couldn’t be coming at a better time.
In addition to a couple of new coming-of-age films on Hulu and Disney+, this week also sees the release of a new Terrence Malick drama on Blu-ray, as well as one of Spike Lee’s more underrated films. So, if you find yourself self-isolating, at least there are some great options available to keep you entertained through this tough time.
ON HULU:
“Big Time Adolescence”: You’ve seen a million teen coming-of-age movies, and it’s not that this Hulu pick-up from writer/director Jason Orley changes up the playbook all that much. But its aims are different: it seems more firmly tethered in the real world than most of its contemporaries (it considers the consequences of teen irresponsibility in a way that something like “Superbad” doesn’t), and it’s less about coming of age than coming to terms with oneself, and with the kind of person you do – and more importantly – don’t want to be. Griffin Gluck is likable and credible as the generally good kid at the picture’s center, while Pete Davidson proves he has real movie-actor chops with his complicated portrayal of a burnout who’s more self-aware than he likes to project.
ON DISNEY+:
“Stargirl”: Julia Hart’s “Fast Color” was one of the best movies of 2019 that you still probably haven’t seen (and seriously, if you’ve got Amazon Prime, get on that), so her singular style is the main reason to stream Disney’s adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s YA novel. She does some lovely work within material that is occasionally a little wheezy, though no fault of anyone in particular; it’s a twenty-year-old book, and some of the story beats and character types have seen better days. But the leads have terrific chemistry, Giancarlo Esposito does an absolutely charming character turn, the photography of the Arizona locations is appropriately sun-kissed, and the staging is terrific – Hart mounts the title character’s football halftime musical performances so adroitly (expertly choreographing the movements of her star, her camera, the marching band, and a cheer squad) that one hopes she’s got a full-on musical pitch ready to go.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
“A Hidden Life”: Terrence Malick’s characters have been whispering to God for a while now, but those dispatches have extra urgency in his latest, which ponders the biggest imaginable questions of morality and free will. In late-‘30s Austria, a husband and wife’s idyllic existence is punctured by his refusal to fight in the Nazi army. “We have to stand up to evil,” he insists, and Malick doesn’t overstate the parallels; he doesn’t have to. And to the filmmaker’s credit, he sees this thing through, both in terms of the logistical outcomes and the narrative conclusions – even when it doesn’t give us the kind of easy outs and feel-good wrap-ups we’re looking for. The story and style don’t always mesh (the camerawork is a bit too loosey-goosey at a few key moments), but the freedom of his filmmaking remains exhilarating, and he doesn’t take his obligations, as either a storyteller or a moralist, lightly. (No bonus features.)
“Richard Jewell”: Let’s get this outta the way: there is a giant, overwhelming flaw in Clint Eastwood’s dramatization of the trials and tribulations of the Olympic Village bombing hero-turned-suspect, and it’s the character of Kathy Scruggs (played, as well as she can, by Olivia Wilde), a slanderous, cackling cartoon villain caricature of The Media, seemingly crafted specifically for people who say “Fake News” several times a day. This miscalculation is rendered all the more shocking by the precision of literally everything else in the movie: Sam Rockwell’s low-key characterization of the righteous lawyer, Kathy Bates’s Oscar-nominated turn as the loving mother, Jon Hamm with yet another button-down portrayal of everyday evil, and especially Paul Walter Hauser in the title role, who gives this man vulnerability and humanity and also isn’t afraid to play him as a bit of a doofus. An utterly riveting drama—through most of its running time. (Includes featurettes.)
ON BLU-RAY:
“Bamboozled”: Spike Lee’s 2000 indictment of mass media (new to the Criterion Collection) has its share of wobbles – starting your satire with a voice-over definition of “satire” is certainly a choice, and its third-act lean into violence still plays like an act of desperation. But its central premise, a sharp-edged mash-up of “Network” and “The Producers,” hasn’t lost any of its potency, nor has the picture’s questions of Black self-identity and complicity (and that goes double for the television writers’ room conversation on diversity – hell, they’re still using some of the same excuses). The power of its commentary has dulled not one bit, from the disturbing images of African-American performers “Blacking up” in the make-up mirror to the harrowing closing montage of racism in American media. It’s not exactly Lee’s most light-handed effort, but it remains riveting, righteous, and bleakly funny. (Includes audio commentary, new interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes, music videos, and trailers.)
