Streaming Release

Society of the Snow: The Hunger Shames

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Society of the Snow

The movies love an impossibly true story—and if you aren’t familiar with the ultimate fate of the passengers of Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, you should probably stop reading now. If you are acquainted with this chilling saga of disaster, despair, and endurance—in which the survivors of a plane crash spent 72 days marooned in the Andes before being rescued—it might be because you’ve seen Alive, the 1993 feature directed by Frank Marshall. That decidedly American production, which was distributed by Disney, starred Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton as two of many white dudes cast as Uruguayan rugby players. Now, in a reclamation of sorts, comes Society of the Snow, a more culturally accurate recreation of the 1972 ordeal suffered by the Old Christians rugby team and other unfortunate travelers.

In a way, this operates as an inversion for J.A. Bayona, the Spanish filmmaker whose diverse credits include Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Orphanage (his first and best), and who previously revisited real-world tragedy and triumph with The Impossible. That movie, inspired by the plight of a Spanish woman during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, made the controversial decision to tell its story primarily through the lens of three white UK actors. Here, Bayona seems to have inoculated himself against any accusations regarding representation; the men who play the ill-fated athletes all hail from Uruguay or Argentina, and none of them possesses a recognizable name that could be leveraged for marketing purposes. Their relative anonymity is in keeping with the picture overall—both for the heartfelt homage it pays to its real-life counterparts, and for the struggle it exhibits when attempting to turn torchbearers of agony into distinct characters. Read More

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May December: It’s a Generational Fling

Jeremy BeckReviews
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in May December

When we first meet Gracie and Joe, the married couple who constitute two-thirds of the unstable triangle that makes up Todd Haynes’ May December, they seem to be living an enviable fantasy of domestic bliss. Hosting that most idyllic of pastimes, the backyard barbecue, they share a passing kiss before busying themselves with their duties; Joe (Charles Melton) gets to work on the grill, while Gracie (Julianne Moore) bustles in the kitchen. The weather is sunny, the guests are smiling, and the mood is relaxed. But then Gracie opens the refrigerator door, and the music swells ominously as she makes a cataclysmic discovery: “We don’t have enough hot dogs.”

This is a very funny scene, even as it telegraphs Haynes’ bold, borderline-perverse intentions. With this movie, he is taking the meager lives of three pitiful people and imbuing them with the sweep of classic melodrama. Yet he is also doing the opposite: tackling subject matter that is fundamentally vulgar and investing it with extraordinary grace and sensitivity. May December traffics in illicit affairs and tawdry desires, which it heightens with extravagant skill and unapologetic grandeur. But where its bones are theatrical, its heart is achingly sincere. Read More

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The Killer: Shoot to Thrill

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael Fassbender in The Killer

Critics are invariably tempted to draw parallels between artists and their subjects, but with The Killer, David Fincher almost makes it too easy. Here is a movie about a man who practices his craft with fanatical exactitude, who exhibits unwavering patience, who abides by a ruthless set of codes and rituals. Remind you of anyone? The only apparent difference between Fincher and his titular character, an assassin for hire played with sleek magnetism by Michael Fassbender, is that the latter aims a gun instead of a camera.

OK, maybe not the only difference. To begin with, for all of his apparent experience and expertise, it’s unclear whether The Killer—who’s unnamed, so let’s call him TK—is especially good at his job. When we first meet him in Paris (after a brisk and absorbing title sequence, a Fincher specialty), he’s sitting in a vacant WeWork loft (WetWork?), calmly educating us—in the nonstop, blackly comic voiceover that will accompany the entire film—on the physical challenges of doing nothing. Even ignoring the picture’s title, TK’s accoutrements—a high-powered arsenal (including a sniper rifle), a spiffy set of binoculars, a wristwatch tracking his biometrics (pro tip: never pull the trigger unless your pulse is under 60)—convey that his vocation is murder. Yet despite his thorough surveillance and his ascetic mantras (e.g., forbid empathy), he botches the hit. It will not be the last mistake he makes, though it is the catalyzing one; the remainder of this fleet, exhilarating movie chronicles the fallout of TK’s error and the pileup of bodies it produces. Read More

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Seeing Red Envelopes: An Elegy for Netflix’s DVD-by-Mail Service

Jeremy BeckFeatures
DVD Netflix

It was a new iteration of a familiar conversation. Speaking with a coworker about my prior evening, I explained that I’d watched a movie (shocker), and that I’d procured it in the form of a Blu-ray disc from Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service. He gawped in amazement: “Netflix still sends DVDs??”

Sadly, not for much longer. At the end of this month, after 21 years of glorious pony-express shipping, Netflix will finally close its brick-and-mortar (disc-and-mailer?) operation and focus exclusively on online streaming. In a way, it’s hard to believe it lasted this long. The company foresaw our digital-dominant present as early as 2007, when it introduced a novel plan to “deliver movies and TV shows directly to users’ PCs” (imagine that!). But it really ushered in the demise of its postal venture in February 2013, when it entered the original-programming space and introduced a little series called House of Cards, which was immediately available to binge in its entirety. (Who wants to watch TV this way, I scoffed.) In retrospect, it’s something of a miracle that Netflix’s DVD arm survived for a full decade from that point, even if the breadth of its selection continually shrank as the corporation poured money and sweat into the streaming wars. Read More

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Glass Onion: The Sleuth Shall Set You Free

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in Glass Onion

The real mystery of Glass Onion, Rian Johnson’s breezy and punchy sequel to Knives Out, is how Netflix so badly bungled its distribution. After bidding the GDP of a small country to secure its production rights, the streaming giant broke with its own foolish tradition and granted the movie a semi-wide theatrical release… for seven measly days. It made a healthy chunk of change during that span (over $13 million despite a general lack of marketing), but if you missed it, you’ll need to wait for its small-screen premiere later this month. This is frustrating, not least because Glass Onion is exactly the type of picture whose experience is vastly improved in a crowded theater—not because of its crisp visuals or its gleaming sets, but because of the murmurs of pleasure it inspires from its audience. That ineffable kinship—the ripples of laughter, the squirms of tension, the collective hum of anticipation and enjoyment—is unique to theaters. Netflix’s half-measure—offering a modest release but severely restricting its scope (not to mention its opportunities to make money)—is a puzzle so bizarre, even Benoit Blanc couldn’t solve it.

Blanc is back in Glass Onion, again played by Daniel Craig with a winning combination of Southern-fried decency and innate perspicacity. His return is the lone nominal carryover from Knives Out, though Johnson also retains the broader architectural blueprint of the whodunit. As a result, there is a bit less suspense this time around, and a bit more familiarity. You know the formula: A dead body will turn up, a cluster of suspicious malcontents will be implicated and suspected, and in the end Blanc will pierce the elaborately constructed veil and elucidate the plot’s relentless machinations. The build-up will be artificially loaded with crucial clues and red herrings, while the climax will be breathlessly satisfying and also beside the point. Read More

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