One of our favorite recent documentaries came to Netflix over the weekend, while one of the best narrative images of the year went free for Prime subscribers, so you're ready for streaming. And on the album, we have the strangest movie of the summer, as well as a couple of selections from the 80s, a darling, one that hopes to be discovered.
ON NETFLIX
Shirkers : On his face Sandi Tan's documentary sounds beyond a niche: a documentary about the making of a movie you've never heard of, a thriller Low budget that Tan and her friends made in their native Singapore when they were teenagers. But it begins as something more than that (capturing, with heartbreaking familiarity, the feeling of being a teenager who discovers "unusual movies and unpopular music", devouring "what people around us ignore") and expands as he finds his true theme: "George", The old mentor and ostensible director of the project, whose peculiar behavior during filming and the absolute betrayal of his collaborators becomes a lifelong obsession for Tan. And so, this fascinating story becomes a mystery, in which our protagonist tries to unravel not a crime, but the psyche of an enigma. " Shirkers became a secret story, shared by a small group of us," he says in the opening narrative, and it's not a hyperbole; At the end of the image, that group has become much larger.
ON AMAZON PRIME
You were never really here : The last thing by Lynne Ramsay ( We need to talk about Kevin ) opens with a series of annoying sounds and images, but in an audio so confusing and in narrow approaches, it can not be completely determined what happened (except that it was not good). She puts the viewer off balance immediately, a mode that is maintained throughout this adaptation of Jonathan Ames's novel, which presents Joaquin Phoenix as a hitman with a cap, hooded sweatshirt and beard Mel Gibson , that takes a job that goes, to put Gently, out of the rails. There is a desperation and despair without thinking about this death parade, the filmmaker refuses to put a brilliant shine on his considerable desolation, but he is also elegant and strangely funny (in the darkest possible way), full of twists of history that land as instinct. Blows and scenes that you can not bear to see simultaneously, and you can not stop looking. It has the ability of a gender exercise, but the soul of a chamber piece.
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD
Sorry to Bother You : : The Coup frontman Boots Riley makes his feature debut as a director with this broad social satire, and firmly establishes himself as a comedic voice singular: rare, wild and provocative. He takes pleasure in everything from independent background jokes to Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker-style background jokes (there is even a cry of explicit Monty Python), all infused with a healthy dose of his Marxist sensibility. He runs out of gas a little in the back third, but even at that moment, his plaster of law goes through it; Lakeith Stanfield's flamboyant style and off-center readings are an ideal delivery system for the verbal wit of the script, the role of Armie Hammer is brief but (to say the least) surprising, and although Tessa Thompson does not have enough to do it, her Individual moments (Particularly the glimpse of his performance) are inspired. It's kind of a disaster, I suppose, but again, so was it Putney Swope . (Includes audio commentary and featurette.)
ON BLU-RAY
The Princess Bride : The exquisite adaptation of the William Goldman novel by Rob Reiner joins the Criterion collection, and although has been on Blu-ray before, double immersion seems somehow acceptable; This is an image that can be heard again, the cinematic equivalent of an old record that you never tire of playing. And it has an undeniably timeless quality: anyway, our basic precepts of love and romance are rooted in fairy tale books, which is part of why The Princess Bride remains so close to our hearts. There is a purity, a simplicity for the (literally) imperishable love of Westley and Buttercup that underlies the rest of the film's cunning genre releases and self-conscious gags. It's, as advertised, True Love, and it's so kind and charming that at the end of the story, even little Fred Savage does not care about the kissing parts. (Includes audio commentary, audiobook excerpts, videos, new and archived interviews, daily video and trailer).
DOA : This 1988 remake of the 1949 classic noir classic (new in Blu by KL Studio Classics) is found mainly in the title and in the still juicy premise: He opens with a sick man who is in a police station to report a murder, and when asked who was killed, he replies: "The story is told in flashback, since our protagonist received a slow-action poison and tries to use The few hours left to find out who killed him and why: The directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton were well known for creating Max Headroom, and their execution is very elegant: many wild angles, large shadows, beams of light and changes of They can not match the original (obviously), but their shot has its virtues: a sweaty atmosphere (they wisely return the star Dennis Quaid to the environs of Louisiana from his previous success The Big Ea sy ), extensive chemistry (he co-stars with off-screen partner Meg Ryan), impeccable turns and elegant pieces. (Includes audio and trailer comments.)