Hello and welcome to Thelma & Alice #18. The other day I asked my four-year-old daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her answer: “I will make television shows.” When I asked her what kind of shows, she said they would be “magical” and that they would ONLY BE ON NETFLIX. Yes, she is still mad at us for canceling her favorite streamer.
I’m heading off for vacation for a few weeks. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our rental house will have a Netflix subscription. In the meantime, here are some movies you might enjoy checking out . . .
1980s Time Capsule
Smithereens (1982)
Directed by Susan Seidelman
Written by Susan Seidelman, Ron Nyswaner, and Peter Askin
Streaming on HBO, Kanopy, and The Criterion Collection
Bad boyfriends, pointless jobs, mean landlords, and one aimless, effortlessly stylish young woman named Wren who does not, under any circumstances, want to move back to New Jersey. This is a sharp and unsentimental portrait of early 1980s NYC in the waning days of punk rock, with a young Richard Hell as the world’s worst catch. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
A Debut You May Have Missed
Master (2022)
Written & Directed by Mariama Diallo
Streaming on Amazon Prime
Mariama Diallo’s debut feature has gotten both raves and pans, which is usually the sign of an interesting movie. Although the ending left me feeling a bit unsatisfied, I think it’s worth checking out for its distinctive mix of realism, horror, and satire, as well as Regina Hall’s lead performance. Set in a fictional elite college called Ancaster, the story follows Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) a tenured professor who is the first Black faculty member to be named Master, a prestigious honorary position that involves living with students in a historic house on campus. When Gail begins to feel haunted by her new residence, she wonders if it is actually the racism of the institution that is unsettling her; meanwhile, a new student, Jasmine, also feels unsettled by her surroundings, especially when she learns that her dorm room is the site of a student suicide. The trailer for this film is a bit misleading, as it’s more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie, with both women navigating microaggressions and condescending peers as they uncover the truth about Ancaster’s troubled history. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Melancholy Weeknight Watch
Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016)
Directed by Maria Schrader
Written by Maria Schrader and Jan Schomberg
Streaming on Kanopy
This biopic about the Austrian-Jewish novelist Stefan Zweig has a very unusual structure, consisting of several long episodes from the end of Zweig’s life, when he lived in exile during World War II. He left Austria for England in 1934 and eventually relocated to Brazil, where this film picks up his story. Although much of Zweig’s time is devoted to getting his friends and family out of Europe, Zweig refuses to take a public stand against Germany, believing there should be a line between politics and art. This is a film that looks closely at that line, as well as the physical and mental toll of living in exile. It’s melancholy but not depressing, with many moments of humor and life; you get a sense of all the lives happening around Zweig, and the way that people’s daily routines continue in ordinary ways, even during wartime. (For literary biopic superfans: You may recognize Barbara Sukowa in the role of Mrs. Zweig; she starred as Hannah Arendt, a film I recommended a few months ago.) IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Chamber Drama
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)
Directed by Sophie Hyde
Written by Katy Brand
Streaming on Amazon Prime
This movie feels like it’s in conversation with Language Lessons, which I recommended last month. Both were filmed with pandemic restrictions and focus on the interpersonal dynamics between two strangers whose relationship is transactional but also intimate. In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an older woman, Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) hires a younger sex worker, Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) to help her to get in touch with her sexuality. It’s a potentially comic set-up–and it is funny, at times–but the exchange between Leo and Nancy is handled with such grace and respect that the story transcends farce. It’s a very talky screenplay and there were times when it felt more like a play than a film, but the performances are wonderful. In an interview on Seth Meyers, Thompson said the screenwriter, Katy Brand, wrote it for her, and it feels like no other actor would have handled the role of Nancy Stokes with quite the same wit and vulnerability. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Comfort Watch
Julia (2021)
Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West
Streaming on HBO
There’s something so comforting and inspiring about Julia Child’s life story: her late-blooming career, her happy marriage, and her quiet but steady self-creation, which involved rejecting almost everyone’s expectations for the kind of person she should be. She was a low-key rebel who kept evolving. This documentary, from the team that made RBG, is conventional, straightforward, and admiring, but it doesn’t paper over some of the more difficult parts of her life. She had her sorrows, and they are included, as well as the triumphs we are already familiar with. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER