Streaming Roulette May: Burning, Mermaids, Hairspray, and more...
Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 12:30PM As is our practice we've selected several random titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!) for this quick preview. At the bottom of the page, check out full listings for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO for the first half of May 2019. Please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films. Okay, let's go...
Was there a well here a long time ago? A well deep enough to fall into?
Burning (2018) on Netflix
So good. Still bummed it didn't make it to the Oscar nomination in best foreign language fi-- excuse me "best international film"
Please God, don't make me fall in love and want to do disgusting things.
Mermaids (1990) on Hulu
Winona Ryder is perfect in this movie. At the time I wanted her to be Oscar-nominated so badly in Supporting Actress (before I understood the oncoming ubiquitous dangers of category fraud). My favourite Mermaids related showbiz anecdote is that when Christina Ricci (who made her film debut as Winona's little sis) was going into her audition for Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family the next year her mom or manager (?) told her to channel Winona in Beetlejuice. She got the part.
I'm worn out. Is there anymore chocolate in that pot?
Gosford Park (2001) on Netflix
How convenient. No sooner did we announce 2001 as our 'year of the month' for the next Smackdown (Sunday, June 2nd) than two of the movies show up on streaming (this on Netflix and In the Bedroom on HBONow).
Show them mercy when they extend none. Forgiveness when they deserve none. And when they strike us down, we must reach up to them.
Humans (Season 3) on Amazon Prime
This show is undervalued. The actors playing the synthetic humans are all quite memorable. Bonus points: This is where we first met and fell for Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians) who is crazy good on this show as one of the kindest androids.
[a rare moment of silence]
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) on Netflix
It's very unusual for Netflix to offer a stone cold classic made before the 1980s so take advantage while they do! If you haven't seen it in years this is a perfect chance to watch and read our longform tag team retrospective which we had an amazing time doing.
She's crazy!
The Darkest Minds (2018) on HBOGo
This movie is terrible but in an interesting 'YA Dystopias are so messy conceptually and also all-the-same' kind of way. The young runaways with superpowers have just been rear-ended by Gwendolyn Christie (it happens) who seems to be the only actor therein who understands this movie's camp value. Alas she's only in it for like 5 minutes.
- That's our baby
- She's prettier than Elizabeth Taylor!
Hairspray (1988) on Netflix
John Waters Classic! I had totally forgotten about this moment when Edna Turnblad (the late great Divine) takes a flashbulb picture of her daughter Tracey (Ricki Lake) on the TV. Hee. (Netflix also has the 2007 musical version of Hairspray.)
[Crowd roaring.]
Rollerball (1975) on Hulu
Hulu also has the not well-loved remake of this dystopic sci-fi picture from 2002. It's so crazy how roller derbies have never quite been in fashion but have never disappeared from movies either. Remember Whip It (2009) and that roller derby sequence in Alita: Battle Angel (2019)?
[No dialogue]
Away From Her (2007) on HBOGo
Relive the Great Best Actress Debate of 2007. Yup, I still think Julie Christie should've won for her incandescendent work as "Fiona" in this Alzheimer's drama. If not her than The Lovely Laura Linney in The Savages.
- American Honey
- Angels & Demons
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
- Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
- Casper
- Chasing Liberty
- Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion Part 1 & 2
- Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat
- The Da Vinci Code
- The Dark Crystal
- Dumb and Dumber
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Gremlins
- Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
- Her Only Choice
- Hoosiers
- The Imitation Game
- Insides the Mind of a Serial Killer: Season 2
- John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky
- Knock Down the House
- Just Friends
- The Matrix (all three movies)
- Munafik 2
- Revolutionary Road
- Roswell, New Mexico (Season 1)
- Scarface
- Scream
- Snowpiercer
- Taking Lives
- To Rome With Love
- Wedding Crashers
- Zombieland
May 2nd
- Colony (Season 3)
- Olympus Has Fallen
May 3rd
- All in the Family
- Alles Ist Gut
- Dead to Me
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
- Flinch
- Jo Pil-ho: The Dawning Rage
- The Last Summer
- Mr Mom
- Supernatural (Season 14)
- Tuca & Bertie
- Undercover
May 4th
- Like Arrows
May 6th
- Abyss
May 7th
- Queen of the South (Season 3)
May 8th
- Lucifer (Season 4)
May 9th
- Bathtubs Over Broadway
- Insidious
May 10th
- Dry Martini
- Easy (Season 3)
- Gente que viene y bah
- Jailbirds
- Pose (Season 1)
- Shéhérazade
- The Society
- Wine Country
Also streaming right now
- Anger Management
- Bait Shop
- Billboard Dad
- The Big Kahuna
- The Birdcage
- Black Rain
- Borat: Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation Kazakhstan
- Border
- Breakdown
- Bully
- The Burrowers
- Catacombs
- Cecil B. Demented
- Center Stage
- Chocolat
- Chuck & Buck
- Clerks
- Dazed and Confused
- Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
- El Pantra
- The English Patient
- Fair Game
- Fatal Attraction
- Flashdance
- The Green Mile
- Ground Control
- Happy Endings
- Happy-Go-Lucky
- Hardware
- Harsh Times
- Hoodlum
- Hunt for the Skinwalker
- Hunting Evil
- Imagine Me and You
- Julie & Julia
- Kazaam
- The Krays
- Kygo: Stole the Show
- Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies
- Larger than Life
- The Landing
- The Last Animals
- Le Divorce
- The Lucky Ones
- Made
- Major League
- Man of the House
- My Five Wives
- New Guy
- Nick of Time
- The Night We Never Met
- Passport to Paris
- Possums
- The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper
- Repo! The Genetic Opera
- Shaolin Soccer
- Show of Force
- The Sicilian
- Slow Burn
- Spirit
- Star Kid
- Steak this Movie
- Switching Goals
- The Time Machine
- The Toybox
- Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her
- Thirteen
- Twelve Monkeys
- Twice Upon a Yesterday
- Under Siege
- Waiting for Superman
- Wargames
- Welcome to Mercy
- Welcome to the Rileys
- Zombieland
May 2nd
- Dies Irae (Season 1)
May 3rd
- The Yellow Handkerchief
May 4th
- Drunk History (season 6)
- Painkillers
- The Clovehitch Killer
May 6th
- Crash
- Unicorn
May 7th
- My Hero Academia (Season 3)
May 8th
- Hillbill
May 9th
- Action Point
May 10th
- Dinosaur 13
May 11th
- Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (Season 6)
- Above Majestic
- Driver X
- Funny Cow
- One Million American Dreams
- Swimming with Men
Also streaming right now
- Shanghai
- Waiting for Superman
- Welcome to the Rileys
- Vikings (Season 5)
May 2nd
- The Yellow Handkerchief
May 3rd
- Suspiria (2018)
May 5th
- Crash
May 8th
- Action Point
May 9th
- Dinosaur 13
May 10th
- Sneaky Pete (Season 3)
- Wishenpoof (Season 2c)
Also streaming right now...
- The Adventures of the Panda Warrior
- Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina
- Alpha and Omega: Dino Digs
- Amelie
- Arachnophobia
- BlacKkKlansman
- Bruno
- Captivity
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- Conan the Barbarian
- The Danish Girl
- Deadpool 2 (Once Upon a Deadpool Extended Version)
- Honey
- In the Bedroom
- Insidious: The Last Key
- The Jackal
- The Little Penguin Pororo’s Racing Adventure
- Meet the Fockers
- My Dog Skip
- Phantoms
- Predators
- Puss in Boots
- The Shipping News
- Skinwalkers
- Spymate
- The Stepford Wives
- Tupac: Resurrection
May 3rd
- At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnasticas Scandal
May 4th
- Predator
- The Shop
May 6th
- Halwa
- Moonwalk with Me
- Signs
- Zoetic
May 7th
- Foster
May 11th
- My Dad Wrote a Porno
- Night School
Amazon, Away From Her, Gemma Chan, Gosford Park, HBO, Hairspray, Hulu, Humans, Netflix, Rollerball, mermaids, streaming
Reader Comments (19)
Julie Christie was amazing in Away From Her - far better than her winning turn in Darling.
But Marion Cotillard's performance is just an ineffable beauty.
Wow, 2007 was a great lineup. (But I haven't seen Linney's performance from that year yet, eep!)
Nathaniel, Julie's loss in 2007 still stings. I don't think I'll ever recover from it. Damn, she was brilliant.
Wow, 2007 was a great lineup.
Not with Blanchett hurricaning away better competition Jolie and Knightley
Julie Christie's performance was so subtle and nuanced, something the AMPAS has a really hard time responding to.
I hated La Vie en Rose which to me looked like an expensive TV movie that was just as disastrous as Dahan's Grace of Monaco. Sure, Cotillard was good at mimicking Piaf but that's surely not what acting is about, right? I remember being appalled by her win at the time, and the fact that Malek's victory over Cooper had the same effect on me more than ten years of Oscar ceremonies later shows that I still haven't learned how this whole circus works...
Time showed us that Cotillard not only deserved to win, but also she's an actress of the same caliber or even better than Christie. Nine, Public Enemies, Rust and Bone, Two Days One Night and above all The Immigrant prove my point.
@Cal, has it? Cotillard is a *great* actress, no question, but La Vie En Rose is not even near the top of her best performances (The Immigrant, Rust and Bone, Two Days One Night, etc.). That's my read, anyway. (I'm not one to get bewitched by mimicry.)
Julie Christie was indeed amazing in Away From Her, definitely my Best Actress pick of 2007, but her Oscar-winning performance in Darling is stupendous — one of the best, most daring wins in this category, during the '60s. In an era when British "kitchen sink" dramas were blowing the doors of screen acting and story telling for a new generation, Darling was even more progressive. Seriously, go back and (re)watch where it goes with abortion, homosexuality, etc. Those were total taboos back then, but Schlesinger and team didn't flinch and Christie played a complicated, sometime reprehensible anti-heroine without fail.
Mareko--I'm in the middle of rewatching Darling and I cosign everything you typed. The performance is beautiful and uncompromising and haunting. Diana Scott is at times just a terrible, loathsome human being, but she remains fascinating thanks to Christie's incredible skill and control.
Cotillard has immense talent, but better than Christie? No way.
I'm with James from Ames on Christie in Away From Her & Darling, and on the fact that Cotillard deserved that win (and she should've been nominated for her work in The Immigrant too).
Cotillard's performance is one of the best of all time, IMO, so obviously her win here thrills me. Amazing lineup though, agreed.
Julie Christie’s win for DARLING is one of my favourites in the category. I am so happy she won her Oscar for it. Also, that film is underrated in general.
I was rooting for (and predicting) Cotillard at the time. Still happy she won and happier she’s since gone on to do superior work.
I love that year for actresses... (I love every year for actresses lol)
Anna Faris, SMILEY FACE
Jeon Do-yeon, SECRET SUNSHINE
Tang Wei, LUST, CAUTION
Nicole Kidman, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
Keri Russell, WAITRESS
Anamaria Marinca, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
Marion Cotillard, LA VIE EN ROSE
Julie Christie, AWAY FROM HER
Laura Linney, THE SAVAGES
Catherine Deneuve, APRÈS LUI
Noni is everything in Mermaids. Had I been older/wiser back then, I would've tattooed "Winona Forever" on *my* arm.
Away From Her is indeed amazing.. was my favorite film of the year til There Will Be Blood/No Country came out. And Julie should definitely have won the Oscar. Still don't get the Ma Vie en Rose love. It was just.. alright.
Unpopular opinion: Cotillard was awful in La Vien en Rose, but her win lead to an amazing career and couple sublime performances, so in that aspect I'm ok with her Oscar.
Agree that Ryder was everything in Mermaids though. What a career she had back then. Pity it ended almost as abruptly as Zellweger's decade later.
I love Julie Christie in Away From Her. So great. And whoever mentioned Keri Russell in Waitress is right; she's pitch perfect in it.
2007 was an amazing year for actresses, but Cotillard's performance wasn't even a performance: it was a hurricane.
She had me in the palm of her hand from beginning to end, and that's just how it is sometimes.
One of the all-time greats.
Mermaids has never gotten its proper due. As a boy with a crush on Winona, Cher, and Christina, the movie was an actual gift from baby Jesus.
It took me a little longer to realize it was because I wanted to BE them and not be WITH them... Haha!
Cash - Keri Russell is incredible in WAITRESS, a thing of painful beauty: devastatingly understated, briefly (and brilliantly) stylized, and smart enough to know that it’s often best to play comedy and drama the same. Wonderful film, too.
Can we talk about Anjelica Huston's magnificent interview at Vulture?
I loved Away From Her but that's Pinsent's movie all the way. Cotillard gave my favorite female performance of this century in La Vie en Rose so I was ecstatic when she won.
Me too ... I loved Cotilards win - historic for all these gorgeous french actresses - and she proved herself to be a major movie star. I was routing for Ellen Page on silver (she was such a new strange wonderful force) and Christy bronze that year (couldn't warm up to much with the movie itself). AND I looooove Kidman in Margot at the Wedding (not always a fan - but when she's grinding it she is pure gold)