The Streaming Zeitgeist

Latest Must-See Streaming Blockbusters

And Some Movies You May Want to Avoid

Although many movie theaters reopened and while there is a palpable yearning for that greasy popcorn, nachos and supersized diet coke experience, most of us are still catching our first run flicks at home. Streaming services dominate and even when fully vaccinated, many of us are not entirely comfortable venturing forth to the multiplex just yet.

There are some great movies that have been released online in the past few months with mega stars like Tom Hanks, Glenn Close, Gary Oldman and Eddie Murphy to name a few. Here is a quick guide to some of the new offerings and whether they’re worth your time, and in some cases, the extra money.

News of The World (★★★★★)

Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in “News of The World.”

In “News of The World” Tom Hanks delivers the kind of star performance you’d expect from one of America’s most versatile and beloved actors. Have you ever seen a bad Tom Hanks movie?

Westerns are not the most popular genre of film these days. Making them so they’re not cartoonish, patronizing or condescending is no small feat. Director Paul Greengrass delivers a period piece that is true to its time and place while also packed with pathos, action and wit. “News” is probably one of the five best Westerns of all time. It’s in the same league as Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven (★★★★★, 1992) and the power couple of John Ford directing John Wayne in The Searchers (★★★★½, 1956). “News” shares some themes with “The Searchers,” most notably the kidnapping of a white girl by Native Americans along with the deep darkness imbuing the souls of both Wayne and Hanks’ characters as a consequence of the Civil War.     

“News” is set in 1870s Texas where Hanks ekes out a living as an itinerant news reader – he buys newspapers along his travels – expensive and scarce items in the Old West – and he curates and delivers the news in public readings to paying audiences in towns small and large across the prairie. Hanks is running away from heartache, his past and battle-related PTSD. Redemption comes in the character of Johanna Leonberger who was kidnapped by Kiowa Indians as a young child and needs to be returned to her next of kin clear across Texas. Hanks’ character, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, is reluctantly impressed into the service of escorting Johanna to her family and therein lies the drama and adventure of the film as they traverse the Wild West. Johanna is played by 12-year-old Helena Zengel in a tour de force performance where she holds her weight alongside Hanks in most of the movie.

If you can see this in a theater by all means do – but – it’s equally worth watching on your home 42, 55 or 60-inch TV as well. Streaming on Prime.

Hillbilly Elegy (★★★★)

Glenn Close and Amy Adams in Hillbilly Elegy.

Many Americans comfortably ensconced in their affluent bubbles have no idea of the struggles, poverty, desperation and addiction which besets many to this day in “Flyover Country” and most particularly in Appalachia. This region stretching from Pennsylvania to Georgia has borne the brunt of the Opioid Crisis but even before that alcoholism and other substance abuse was rife.

“Elegy” is the autobiographical drama about a young J.D. Vance, growing up with a seriously defective mother in a death spiral of privation and addiction. Our hero manages to overcome extreme poverty and a plethora of disadvantages to become a Yale-trained lawyer who wrote a bestselling book from which this movie is based. Vance’s salvation was made possible through the intervention of his maternal grandmother, played powerfully by Glenn Close in the role of “Mamaw,” who rescues him from the depredations of his addict mother (played very unglamorously and convincingly by Amy Adams).

Most of the action takes place in Rust Belt Ohio and Kentucky with lots of flashbacks to our hero’s childhood and adolescence. To say that Glenn Close embodies the role of a grizzled character is an understatement. This is not the beautiful Glenn Close we saw in Fatal Attraction (★★★★, 1987) or The Natural (★★★★★, 1984). You totally believe in her as a struggling grandmother.  No end of common-sense grit and self-sacrifice. This is no light movie but it is highly inspiring and there is also a happy ending. This film may also remind you of the Tobias Wolff biopic This Boy’s Life (★★★★, 1993) starring Robert DeNiro, Ellen Barkin and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Streaming on Netflix.

Coming 2 America (★★)

Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes in “Coming 2 America.”

They say some wines get better with age and some after too many years become vinegar and undrinkable. So is the case with the 33-year delay from Eddie Murphy’s hysterical Coming to America (★★★★, 1988) and this cringe-worthy sequel. No matter the return of the original cast plus great additional cameos. No matter Murphy and his sidekick Arsenio Hall playing a dozen different characters. No matter the lavish sets and costumes. The story is flimsy and completely non-credible even for a comedy farce. The writing is dismal, so much so that you’d be hard pressed to find more than two really good jokes in the whole film. A comedy that’s not very funny. Really? Really. How a comedic talent like Murphy didn’t see the lack of humor in this film is astonishing.

The only saving grace and bright spot here is Wesley Snipes as General Izzi, warlord of neighboring African nation Nexdoria (as in “next door”).  As Izzi, Snipes dominates the screen and brings 90 percent of the charisma. Izzi is an exaggerated hip-hopped-up Idi Amin-like tinhorn dictator full of outrageous bellicosity accompanied by a praetorian guard of exceptional street dancers who intimidate merely by virtue of their excellent choreography. The movie gets two stars thanks in great measure to Snipes.

The black stereotypes in “Coming 2 America” if they’d been produced by and starring whites would be viewed as highly offensive. In fact, if I were black, I would be very put-off by some of the visuals which in many cases cross a line to tastelessness. Streaming on Prime.

Mank ★★★★

Gary Oldman as “Mank.”

Herman J. Mankiewicz (or as his friends called him, “Mank”) was a brilliant Hollywood screenwriter during the studio heyday of the 1930s. He was also intemperate, constantly inebriated and often impertinent. A real character. So why a movie about him? Because he was the unsung and real literary genius behind one of the best movies ever made, Citizen Kane (★★★★★, 1941) directed by and starring the then 24-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles.

Welles hired the fading Mankiewicz (portrayed masterfully by Gary Oldman, who is 62 and playing someone three decades younger) to ghost-write the screenplay for his first big Hollywood outing. The drama here is the torturous road from concept to actual script; the efforts made by William Randolph Hearst and his media empire to have the film shelved or not made at all and the tension between Mank and Welles when Mankiewicz realizes it’s the best thing he’s ever written and wants screen credit for it. In between are flashbacks to Mank’s life in New York and California and his relationships with Hearst, his then wife Marion Davies (played by an increasingly impressive Amanda Seyfried), studio honcho L.B. Mayer (MGM) and other Hollywood swells. In the middle of the bio sandwich is the relationship with his own long-suffering wife.

Laid-up in bed due to a car accident, an ailing Mank is shuttled to the California desert with a nurse, secretary and prodding producer and told to write the script via dictation which we saw Oldman do frequently while playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (★★★★½, 2017). With the help of this entourage and an unhealthy supply of smuggled booze, Mank turns out one of the best screenplays of all time. In the process he makes enemies of and alienates almost everyone in his life. This is a very grown-up movie that will leave you contemplating the nature and scope of power, ambition, talent and waste (as in much of Mank’s life). Streaming on Netflix.

Wonder Woman 1984 ★★★

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

In 2017 director Patty Jenkins surprised us all with a superhero movie that was original, fantastic yet believable, well-acted, well-cast, well-written and that had heart and humor. That movie is Wonder Woman (★★★★, 2017). Gal Gadot was a delight as the fierce but incredibly naïve Amazon warrior and Chris Pine was adorable as Steve Trevor. The supporting cast was endlessly interesting and funny and the setting, World War I, was rendered with verisimilitude so that you bought into that reality.

For a second act, instead of perhaps setting the film during World War II, Jenkins opted to make a giant leap forward in years to 1984 (a big jump from 1918) where we’re supposed to believe that Diana a/k/a Wonder Woman has for decades been living a life of quiet desperation and solitude pining away for the late Steve Trevor while occasionally doing some rote super hero stuff like rounding up criminals. In “WW84,” the fate of the world hinges on defeating a deranged megalomanic businessman who steals an ancient artifact with magic powers to grant wishes (I’m over simplifying) which ultimately creates world wide chaos. Somehow Steve Trevor is brought back from the dead because Diana wished for him (as did the producers so the two can recreate their prior on-screen chemistry).

The world of 1984 is not reproduced as convincingly as was 1918 or as well as the 1950s were in Back to The Future (★★★★½, 1985) and the premise or nemeses of loneliness, unrequited love and success don’t carry as much weight as defeating the Germans and the god Aries on the Western Front. “WW84” is so much of a sequel that one really must watch the 2017 original in order to know much of the back story which limits the audience. Another drawback is the length of the film which at two hours and 30 minutes really is a half hour to 40 minutes too long. Many of the scenes of Diana as a child on Paradise Island could have been edited out to make the movie tauter. The film is worth seeing and you will be entertained, but better to see it with your own pause button at home than to invest 150 minutes in a theater. Streaming on Prime and other services.

The Zeitgeist

Will the real Judy please sit down? That's Zellweger on the right.

Movies for Solitary Confinement

This appeared in print and online around April 1, 2020 during the Corona Virus Lockdown.

Since most of us have been forced into “solitary confinement” due to the onset of the viral apocalypse there are a lot of hours to fill when not trying to work or trying not to overeat (good luck with that!). Because most every professional and amateur sport has been cancelled, this leaves movies and TV to fill much of the gap.

The profusion of choices is practically paralyzing. When I was young (in the 60s and 70s when dinosaurs roamed the earth) we had just a handful of TV channels and networks and there always seemed to be something to watch, often as a communal experience with the whole family encircling a 19-inch black and white Zenith tube TV. Now we have a bazillion channels and web streaming services available on our big screens, desktops, laptops and phones and sometimes it can seem like less is worth watching. Where are the equivalent of Samantha and Jeanie?

To kill tons of time while staving off The Plague, I’ve compiled a list of on-demand and streaming movies that can soak up a whole lot of hours – So here we go. Rankings are between one and five stars.

MOVIES:

Judy (2019) ★★★★★

Renée Zellweger quite literally becomes Judy Garland, albeit Garland towards the end of her sadly too-short short life. Set in 1968 the film mostly focuses on her highly successful last series of concerts in London and all the accumulated challenges, setbacks, depressions, anxieties and neuroses that have all piled up to produce an artist at her breaking point.

Zellweger embodies Garland as did Gary Oldman in his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017, also ★★★★★) to such an extent that she won the Academy Award for Best Actress along with the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild trophies for the same category. She swept all major and minor awards across the spectrum and when you see this movie, you’ll know why.

Zellweger’s portrayal of Garland encompasses not just drama but also song – she treats us to a bravura array of Garland hits (Zellweger proved she could sing back when she starred in Chicago (2002 ★★★★) but this level of song mastery goes straight to the ethereal. Her Judy Garland is affecting, touching and haunting and you will be left profoundly moved. There are flashbacks to Judy as a girl and adolescent (played competently by Darci Shaw) but the real action takes place in the late 60s present. The British supporting cast lends gravity and verisimilitude.

This is a must see if you like rock bio heartbreak and redemption stories like Ray (★★★★★), Bohemian Rhapsody (★★★★), Walk The Line (★★★★) and What’s Love Got To Do With It (★★★★★) all of which are highly worthwhile seeing as well.

One Upon A Time in Hollywood ★★★★

Staying in the world of the late 60s, Director Quentin Tarantino brilliantly recreates 1969 LA and Hollywood right down to the smallest paper clip. I’m in love equally with the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie as with DiCaprio’s cream-colored 1966 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. How do I know every detail of Tarantino’s 1969 is correct? Because I was alive and 11 years old at the time.

Brad Pitt, although not having top billing, really anchors the film. Pitt won Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild. The film itself won Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Pitt made this movie as a 55-year-old and to say on him 55 looks 42 is an understatement. We should all look so good.

This is a bromance between a fast-fading TV star (DiCaprio) and his faithful sidekick and stunt double (Pitt) that echoes the relationship between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994 ★★★★★) although with the violence spaced out and themed differently. In the Uma Thurman role is Margot Robbie (Wolf of Wall Street, 2013, also with DiCaprio, ★★★★) playing the late Sharon Tate. “Once Upon A Time” takes the Charles Manson-Sharon Tate Murders in a different direction and with an alternate story line full of twists, turns and surprises.

There are two versions of this film, the full-on version is 2 hours and 41 minutes – (that will chew-up time!) but there is an airplane cut that’s about a half hour shorter which benefits from tighter editing and a quicker pace. Try to rent that one if you can. The only reason this film gets four instead of five stars is because it’s about 20 minutes too long, but I sympathize with the director, what with all these great performances, where can you cut? Any Tarantino film is worth seeing and this latest one is no exception.

Ad Astra ★★★★

Perfect for the “end times” we’re living in, “Ad Astra,” (2019) has the fate of the whole universe in play – all life as we know it is in the balance. Brad Pitt (he had a busy 2019) rockets from 1969 to an unspecified future, perhaps 50 years from now, so about 2069. Pitt plays a heroic astronaut who is tasked with traveling out to Neptune to possibly confront his maybe alive or dead father (played with stoic derangement by Tommy Lee Jones) who headed a space station out at the edge of the solar system where Space Command thinks the cosmic threat is coming from.

The movie also retreads Donald Sutherland as a former friend and colleague of Jones in the quest to stop the threat. “Ad Astra,” Latin for “to the stars,” is evocative of Stanley Kubric’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 ★★★★★) probably one of the most creative, original and innovative science fiction movies of all time. In “Ad Astra” as with “2001” we are presented with existential ponderings on the of meaning of life and of the nature of life itself. There are plenty of parallels including commercial flights to the moon (on Virgin Atlantic in “Astra” versus the defunct Pan Am in “2001”), vast stretches of uncooperative space and a lot to go over again and again in your mind after viewing the film. Pitt plays a retrained, sardonic space hero in a tight, mature performance. Excellent special effects and cinematography.

Another two lonely astronaut in crisis movies worth seeing are Gravity (2013 ★★★★) starring Sandra Bullock, George Clooney and Ed Harris which won seven Oscars including Best Director for Alfonso Cuarón and The Martian (2015 ★★★★) directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, also a seven Academy Award-winner which is essentially “Castaway” in space with Damon and Tom Hanks tied for best latter day Robinson Crusoe.

Ford vs. Ferrari ★★★★★

Matt Damon and Christian Bale star as famed performance car guru Carroll Shelby and legendary race car driver Ken Miles respectively in this seemingly “gearhead” movie that women will actually like, believe it or not. As much a car movie as an “accomplish the impossible story against crazy odds and establishment guys in suits” who are always getting in the way of real vision and innovation. As the title suggests this is about Ford Motor Company taking on Ferrari at the Grand Prix of Le Mans back in the mid to late 60s and doing what no one thought was remotely possible, especially in the time they had to do it. The movie keeps you on the edge of your seat and you also feel like you’re a part of the action.

There’s great chemistry between Damon and Bale, two of the best actors of our time, giving highly charismatic performances. The race scenes are probably the best since the original Ben Hur back in the late 50s. “Ford/Ferrari” garnered two Academy Awards along with a bazillion nominations for best everything. 2019 was a highly competitive year and in another time this film would have seen more awards.

If you’d like to see Christian Bale in his first starring role (as good as anything since) rent Empire of The Sun (1987 ★★★★★) Steven Spielberg’s WWII coming-of-age epic set in Japanese-occupied China. John Malkovich and Joe Pantoliano are also great in the film.

Motherless Brooklyn ★★★★

Edward Norton directs, stars and co-wrote the screenplay for this modern Film Noir set in 1950s New York City. Norton plays a private detective with a highly visible case of Tourette's Syndrome, so to say he’s viewed as quirky and totally underestimated by all and sundry persons around him is an understatement. Norton’s character has Tourette’s, but he plays it with tremendous heart and pathos so that you never really feel sorry for him (and certainly don’t laugh at him) but on the contrary with each passing scene come to admire him more and more.

Norton gets all the visuals right about 50s New York, the clothes, cars, streets, dialog. He’s got a great cast backing him up featuring Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale and the always terrific Willem Dafoe. It’s a real old-time gumshoe whodunnit and you’ll never guess the end until the end. While “Motherless” wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards, this was a major omission as it deserves far more recognition.

For a “Bizarro World” Film Noir also featuring Bruce Willis, check out Sin City (2005 ★★★★) directed by Quentin Tarantino along with Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. The film is based on a graphic novel by Miller and it actually looks like a charcoal or pencil drawing with amplified black and white cinematography with a 50s riff. “Sin” features Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba at her peak (MTV Movie Award Winner), Rosario Dawson, the late Powers Boothe (“Deadwood”), Michael Clarke Duncan and even Rutger Hauer. Winner at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Visuals. Not for the squeamish. Guys and teens will love it.

Finally, for those of you singles cooped-up solo, or those in need of a semi chick-flick, a real apocalyptic romcom would be Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012 ★★★ ½) where Steve Carell and Keira Knightley stumble into one another’s arms as an asteroid heads towards Earth. There’s no real sci-fi in here, but a lot of tenderness, empathy and heart. Carell often plays the emotionally down on his luck dude and this film is no different. Even though oblivion is neigh we’re not afraid because love burns eternal.