2023 movie madness
a guest post from someone who watches the most movies
Hi!
Thanks for opening this email / reading this post.
It’s a special Mondays, amirite? this week, with my sister, Marissa, taking the wheel. She is not a writer (thank GOD, could you imagine?), but she has seen pretty much every movie ever made, and is kind of enough to share some of this years’ best viewing with us.
2023 Streaming Recommendations
I’m still working through plenty of 2023 releases, but I wanted to share a list of some streaming gems that I came across this year. Some of these had a brief run in theaters, but deserve a little more love now that they’re on streaming.
Rye Lane (Hulu) - As Mark Twain once said, “The rumors of [the rom-com’s] death are greatly exaggerated.” In less than 90 minutes we follow Dom and Yas, both reeling from separate breakups, fall in love as they make their way home through South London. If that doesn’t sound charming enough, it features the ideal heterosexual dynamic of a sad boy and a pathologically confident girl, in a part of London that Yanks rarely get to see on film.
Wham! (Netflix) - Chris Smith created a new kind of documentary with American Movie in 1999, a movie about two friends just trying to make their own mark in the film world. This year we got another documentary from him, about two more friends making art toghether. I went in expecting a “Behind the Music'' style breakdown about the death of Wham and the start of George Michael’s solo career. Instead we see a story about Andrew Ridgley’s realizing his best friend is about to become one of the biggest pop stars of his generation and then doing everything he could to get him there.
Afire (Criterion) - This movie may be my favorite one of the year and is worth a trial of the Criterion Channel if you don’t have it. Christian Petzold makes movies that feel like they are created in a lab specifically for my enjoyment. Quiet, sweet, and painful, all at the same time, the German director crafts beautiful love stories, giving the same weight to friendships as he does romantic connections. It includes a rather devastating gut punch but finishes off with hope and kindness, a tone that’s very hard to hit!
Polite Society (Prime) - I was lucky to see this in a theater with people who were quite literally in the aisles laughing. It’s not a perfect movie structurally, but it’s the first film for director Ninda Manzoor, and it’s so fun that I can’t be bothered to care about its shortcomings. It’s not often that we get to see a supernatural action-comedy about sisters, and is that not enough of a delight in itself? It also has another thing we don’t see enough of these days in big, commercial films - well-choreographed action sequences!
Free streaming services for your post-holiday budget
One bizarre skill I have is being able to find even the most obscure movie on a streaming service, even better if it is free. Since it is a time of giving, I wanted to recommend two less-talked about free streaming services that are much less harrowing to operate than Tubi or Pluto (which I also love.)
Le Cinéma Club - This is the streaming service for the most insufferable movie kids. Each week features a new film that is free for a week from the most obscure corners of the arthouse. You don’t have a choice in what to watch here, but maybe you are like me and often find yourself in the mood of wanting to watch something very cool without having to figure out what that means.
Kanopy - This one does require a card from a participating library, but I’ve found it’s pretty popular among major metro systems. This has a little bit of everything, including, oddly enough, most pre-2023 A24 releases. This year it was my go-to place for the entire Buster Keaton filmography and gritty Hong Kong cop movies.
Tunes to start the week with:
Laurie Anderson’s 1981 song, O Superman, has been trending on Tik Tok lately! I’ve been delighted to hear the song, and also by the promise of another generation discovering artists like Laurie, Wendy Carlos and Daphne Oram, all who helped shape electronic music into its current incarnation. It seems that Gen Z already has a taste for the more avant garde end of electronic music, just by looking at their contemporary listening tastes, like 100 Gecs and SOPHIE (specifically her PRODUCT project). I’m excited for the potential of a new generation of experimental artists, providing me with fresh beeps and boops to enjoy well into old age.
xx
Great guest post!