Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher, Jr., and Kaitlyn Dever.

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Thirteen years before he was helming what seems poised to become one of the biggest box office hits of all-time with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton hit an absolute home run in his directorial debut, Short Term 12. The film depicts life in a group home for teenagers with difficult backgrounds and their supervisors. The cast is stacked with actors who went on to become way more famous than they were in 2013, and rightly so, based on how excellent they were here. Romantic and work partners Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) are joined by new volunteer Nate (Rami Malek) as supervisors for a variety of teens including Marcus (LaKeith Stanfield) and Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever). Short Term 12 is ambitious in the emotional heights it seeks to land. In the wrong hands this story could’ve ended up as a cliched, over-sentimental mess, but with Cretton’s boldness and Brie Larson’s powerhouse performance leading the way, it delivers one of the most emotionally/spiritually satisfying, life-affirming stories I’ve ever seen.

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Welcome back to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your streaming subscriptions! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (Paramount+) - July 25

Is it possible to make a good Avatar: The Last Airbender movie?

That’s what original series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino hope to do with this new film that was originally supposed to come out in theaters last year.

The film actually leaked in its entirety earlier this year, either by hackers or people who worked on the film who were frustrated by its mangled release. However, I may or may not have seen a clip that leaked and I will say…it looks pretty true to the spirit of the original animated series.

I can’t say for sure, but I’m excited to check this one out (legally) when it drops.

Next up, one of the big theatrical surprises of this year that we wrote about, coming this Wednesday to Prime Video…

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Welcome back to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your streaming subscriptions! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

Obsession (Peacock) - July 17

The movie that if you haven’t yet seen, you’ve definitely had a friend or two rave about (or at least talk about how disturbed they were). It’s Bishop Barron-recommended, and my friend Eddie wrote a great review of it for this site that you should check out. Just please go in with the expectations that, yes, this is a horror movie! I pre-ordered the 4K disc and am excited to finally check it out.

And next up, one of the sleeper hits of 2023 that’s getting a highly-anticipated sequel later this year, which just dropped on Netflix today…

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Directed by Béla Tarr. Starring Mihály Víg, Putyi Horváth and Miklós B. Székely.

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Bella Tarr’s Satantango has been on my watchlist since college. It stands as one of the final bosses of international cinema, thanks to its limited availability and, most of all, its titanic seven-and-a-half-hour runtime. It is universally lauded as one of the greatest achievements in world cinema. It took me almost ten years to work up the courage, and find the time, to watch it in one sitting, but I am so grateful I waited this long to see it.

The story follows a collective farm deep in the Hungarian countryside after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people left behind to pick up the pieces. They are broken, lying, cheating, neglecting, and attempting to steal from one another. A former villager, long believed to be dead, suddenly returns and tries to gather them into a new commune, but there is little trust to be found and even more confusion.

Satantango is one of the most challenging but also one of the most rewarding films I have ever seen. It requires patience, life experience, familiarity with slow cinema (you should be comfortable with the pace of a Tarkovsky film), and, above all, endurance. Satantango is perhaps the slowest film I have ever seen. It is one of the few films in which time does not feel as though it was ever considered. Rather, Tarr submerges us in a world so bleak that it can be overwhelming at times. A feeling of hopelessness and loss permeates the film like a dead animal trapped in an air vent. The masterful long takes, averaging about 145 seconds per shot (the Hollywood average is between 2.5 and 3 seconds), practically hypnotize the audience into this bleak, muddy world, allowing time to pass much more quickly than one might expect. There are only about 150 cuts over the film’s seven-and-a-half-hour runtime, and each one genuinely feels like it matters.

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Welcome to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ subscriptions and more! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

Project Hail Mary (Prime Video)

We’ve written a few articles on the film already, but if you missed this one in theaters it is now free to stream exclusively on Prime Video.

It’s one of the year’s most fun films (and possibly the best so far). I just rewatched it with a large group on a movie set I’m working on (more on that soon) and the whole room was enraptured.

Highly recommend.

Next up we have one of last year’s best films…

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Directed by Nora Ephron. Starring Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Adams.

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“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients.”

I think this famous quote from Julia Child is equally applicable to good films. You don’t need fancy CGI or complicated sets or tech, just a good story and good talent. This movie is a lovely example of that. I recently had an evening to myself, and as I am finishing reading Julia Child’s autobiography, My Life in France, I thought I’d give the 2009 film Julie and Julia a taste. The movie is based on both Child’s book, as well as writer Julie Powell’s experience of making every recipe in Child’s cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” over the course of a year.

On paper, it sounds like it could be a very messy production, if executed poorly. I was delighted to discover however, that the film was positively delightful, and wove the stories of both women together in a very fluid, believable way– particularly considering that their stories operate on two separate timelines (though their lives did overlap). Further, I was pleased that the film did an excellent job of telescoping the “main events” of Child’s book into her portions of the film. I found the book to be a bit all over the place, with significant portions feeling a bit pointless to recount– like a dish with too many competing ingredients. The movie however, “trimmed the fat” to what I felt like was the perfect amount, while still feeling very much like Julia Child’s story.

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Directed by Armando Iannucci. Starring Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale.

By AnnaGrace Machado

The Death of Stalin has been on my watch list for some time after having it recommended. What pushed me to actually watch was hearing that the director, Armando Iannucci, would be writing the next Paddington film. How could a man whose career was mostly built on political satire write a film for children about the beloved character? I have no idea, but it was an excuse like any to watch the movie. The Death of Stalin is a political satire that follows the days before Stalin’s death and the subsequent mess that takes place after. The cast is stacked with Steve Buschmi, Jeffery Tambor, Michael Palin, and a host of other great performers. My husband and I were dying laughing at the comedic wit of this film. The jokes kept coming as the absurd situations kept heightening.

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Directed by Carl Reiner. Starring Steve Martin and Rachel Ward.

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Steve Martin is one of our greatest living comedians, and has been for some time. Not only is he a great standup comedian, but he’s a great actor, banjo player, and even magician. He’s also an underrated writer, having written the brilliant screenplay for this film with fellow comedy legend Carl Reiner (RIP). Martin plays a detective, Rigby Reardon, who has to solve a mystery for a beautiful, mysterious woman, Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward). If that sounds cliched, it’s intentional!

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Directed by Matt Johnson. Starring Matt Johnson and Owen Williams.

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“Wait! Have you ever heard of a conspiracy theory?”

“Matt, I think we’re in one.”

Matt Johnson (one of the brilliant minds behind Nirvanna The Band The Show the Movie) dares to ask the simple question of “ If the government faked the moon landing, what all would it have had to have gone through to do it?” While many have proposed answers to this, Johnson does it out of jest to Conspiracy Inc and subverts it with comedy that flawlessly transitions to drama and tragedy.

Operation Avalanche follows two CIA agents who are sent to find a Soviet spy within NASA in 1967. Upon discovering that they cannot land on the Moon, the two conspire to fake it. As they get deeper into the conspiracy, they begin to notice things get stranger and people begin to appear or go missing.

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Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway.

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I’ve recently been on a spree of diving headfirst into random movies I’m seeing for the first time. A small foible of mine that I’ve been trying to break is checking out the general critical reception of a film beforehand, so being able to experience this one without any expectations was a decision I’m glad I made.

Without giving too much away, Network explores, in a cynical manner, the exploitative and faux nature of media ecosystems that thrive on outrage culture.

While experiencing a late-life crisis in the twilight of his career, news anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) conducts a series of alarming, impromptu outbursts on live television. When Max Schumacher (played by William Holden), both a longtime friend of Howard’s and the head of the network’s news division, attempts to convince the clearly troubled man to resign with what dignity he has left, the network intervenes. Howard’s general message of discontent with the world and the powers that be gives the network a spike in viewership. Seeing the competitive edge this provides, programming chief Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway) convinces Max to turn Howard’s mental ravings into their own program.

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Directed by Marc Daniels. Starring Laurence Olivier and George C. Scott.

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I recently read the Graham Greene novel The Power and the Glory with my book club and it has been one of those books that has stuck with me in the subsequent weeks. Greene might be best known to readers of this blog as the screenwriter for the classic film The Third Man (#25 on “The List”); however, many consider The Power and the Glory to be his masterpiece. I discovered that there was indeed a 1961 film adaptation starring legendary actors Laurence Olivier and George C. Scott. Olivier plays a “whiskey priest” (one of the last left in Mexico during the persecutions of the Church in the 1920s) opposite Scott, the police lieutenant trying to hunt him down. I quickly discovered that this was a “made for TV” movie and the easy ways to stream it for free on Youtube or Tubi were pretty low quality. With caveats related to those issues aside, I still found this adaptation of the novel worth watching.

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Directed by Aleksander Ford. Starring Urszula Modrzyńska and Mieczysław Kalenik.

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The national epic is nothing new, but in film it has realized its full potential, reaching the widest possible audiences. These large-scale productions seek to define the mythos of a particular country, often focusing on origin narratives or great heroes. Russia’s War and Peace famously saw the nation commit 500,000 extras, along with a significant portion of the national budget, to bring Tolstoy’s seminal novel to life. What many don’t know is that Poland attempted something similar, and to great acclaim within its own country, with the 1960 superprodukcja (a Polish term for a large-scale epic based on a national literary classic), Knights of the Teutonic Order. Widely popular, it remains one of the most viewed native productions to this day, with an impact similar to what large blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars had in the West.1 Sadly, this remarkable cinematic endeavor continues to languish in relative obscurity. However, Martin Scorsese, through his World Cinema Project, has named it as one of his favorite Polish films.2

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Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris.

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I like to think that the general critical consensus of a film is wrong from time to time. I’m a stalwart defender of Robin Hood (Ridley Scott), The Covenant (Guy Ritchie), and more recently The Return (Pasolini). So with Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, I was determined that this would be another such case as I settled in to watch it. The premise was so fascinating that I threw it on at the first opportunity, and I was immediately swept along as it launched into its thrilling scenario. The start of a nuclear war is something that haunts our collective consciousness, something Kubrick tackled so deftly in Dr. Strangelove (and something Villeneuve is reportedly set to explore in his upcoming adaptation of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War). I was genuinely excited to see another filmmaker of such acclaim take on the idea.

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Directed by John Huston. Starring Audie Murphy, Andy Devine, and Bill Maudlin.

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“With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they point. He had been touched to the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.”

At the end of Stephen Crane’s slim, yet profoundly moving, novel The Red Badge of Courage, the hero Henry Fleming overcomes the recurring pangs of fear and shame after he bravely participates in a fateful battle during the American Civil War. As a young volunteer fighting alongside his compatriots from the state of Ohio, Henry was dazzled by the romantic idea of valor, only to receive a rude awakening when he runs away from an encroaching platoon of Confederate soldiers, leaving his regiment to fend for themselves. Nonetheless, his mistake leads to a twofold blessing. On one hand, he fosters a social consciousness towards the bloody reality of war and how it can emotionally cripple and physically dehumanize the gallant young men who partake in it. On the other hand, he undergoes a moral transformation that not only accepts the responsibilities associated with a soldier’s life but also understands the true meaning of sacrifice and community, which can only be earned through a “red badge of courage” - a medal earned through virtue, rather than physical injury.

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Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai and Mieko Harada.

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Ran is a masterpiece in the truest sense of the word, sprawling, searing, and executed with the painterly precision of an experienced master. With its Shakespearean foundation (King Lear), Ran presents a convincing argument that film can indeed be considered “high art.” I can’t help but note the autobiographical undertones. Where earlier Kurosawa is zesty, humorous, and often focused on the goodness of mankind, Ran feels ephemeral and perhaps more despondent, a weary twilight and a sad sigh. Gone are the rousing charges of Seven Samurai; in their place are eerie, soundless battle scenes drenched in blood and despair. That isn’t to say it’s completely without hope, but it comes very close.

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Directed by Directed by Bart Layton. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Halle Berry.

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Re-Heat is Still Tasty When it Looks This Good.

Let’s get this out of the way, right off the bat. You’re thinking it. I’m thinking it. Crime 101 is a terrible title for a film. You wouldn’t be remiss to think it was a collegiate seminar instead of a movie about thieves, cops, and the women that love them. The fact that the title is, in fact, intended to be a clever reference to a series of crimes happening along the California 101 highway doesn’t help matters — it’s a title thinking it’s much cleverer than it actually is.

Thankfully, the movie itself doesn’t hold such allusions. Crime 101 (I hope to only have to write this title a few more times, ugh) is a slick, straightforward, successful crime drama, made for the big screen during a time where we just don’t get movies like this on the big screen as much anymore. Like The Rip just a few weeks ago, it’s another film content with being merely good, merely solid — a double instead of a home run, as it were — which can sometimes be enough. It’s stylish, it’s got star power…but there’s also that sneaking feeling that something is missing.

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Directed by Danny Boyle. Starring Cillian Murphy and Chris Evans.

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Sometimes a movie just catches you off guard. Honestly, I feel like there are only so many directions you can take a psychological thriller that’s set in space. Alien set a pretty concrete tone, and subsequent space thrillers dance to that tune. And that’s all good stuff, but it’s not a genre I would pursue on my own. Which is why I was shocked to my core at Sunshine.

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With today’s revolution of AI taking over nearly every aspect of daily life, we are left with a moral dilemma: how can we be on AI’s side when it is taking over jobs and creativity? Mercy flirts with this question in an interesting fashion: an action movie where family and humanity take the forefront.

With its fast-paced nature, a 90-minute timer constantly running, and the underlying anticipation of inevitable death, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. Set in the near future (2029) it can be seen as a realistic possibility of what the world could become if we allow AI (and the government) to see everything we do.

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