Streaming Roulette, July 2022

We never know which films to cover since there are so many channels so please note that we welcome comments and requests for more in-depth coverage of new-to-streaming titles. 

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming movies and an occasional TV series by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

Okay, we're going to have a nice CALM talk like we discussed, right?

LOVE, VICTOR (SEASON 3) on Hulu
Sad this show is ending but also relieved since so few high school shows wrap up at their natural ending point (senior year) before they've overstayed their welcome. Have you started watching the final season yet? Ana Ortiz (who is completely Emmy worthy for season 2) and James Martinez as Victor's parents are both so terrific and not at all the afterthoughts parents so often are in teen soaps...

Click to read more ...

"Make Way for Tomorrow" across film history

by Cláudio Alves

"Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture." 

Those were Leo McCarey's words upon winning the Best Director Oscar of 1937. His victory was for the screwball classic The Awful Truth, though the filmmaker would have preferred if the honor had been bestowed upon another of his films. In 1937, McCarey not only directed one of Old Hollywood's most beloved comedies, but he also helmed one of its most devastating tearjerkers. According to Orson Welles, Make Way for Tomorrow could make a stone cry…

Click to read more ...

Hara by Ozu

by Cláudio Alves

100 years ago in 1920, Setsuko Hara was born in the city of Yokohama, Japan. Thanks to the powers of nepotism and the influence of her brother-in-law, she got a job at the Nikkatsu Studios at the age of 15. In the next few years, she rose to prominence. By the 1940s, Hara became somewhat of a symbol of new Japanese womanhood. Curiously enough, that's not how she's best remembered today, in part thanks to her most famous directors being ones that cast her in roles typifying the conservative values of a traditional Japan. Despite multiple collaborations with such legendary filmmakers as the master of melodrama Mikio Naruse and Japan's superstar director Akira Kurosawa, it's her work in the films of Yasujiro Ozu that now most define her legacy… 

Click to read more ...