C&C 18: Keeping Current at Home

When new movies bypass theaters, and a few I’ve watched recently

Like many people during the pandemic, Rosemarie and I turned to comfort viewing, films we knew and loved. But we also committed to watching at least one current release a week. With theaters shuttered, it was a way to feel like there was still a film culture, one in which we were active.

I’m working to get back into the habit of physically going to the movies. This summer we Barbenheimered along with everyone else. I made the pilgrimage to say farewell to Indiana Jones, and maintained my streak of seeing the Mission: Impossible films on the big screen. That said, we’re still watching most new movies at home, a practice made easier by shrinking release windows and streaming services regularly serving up fresh material.

Although it’s hardly the same experience, and I’m far from the first person to point it out. Former New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott returned to the beat last week for a story called “Is It Still Worth Going to the Movies?” He wrote that the shift to streaming has brought about:

… not the death of movies so much as the eclipse of their shared meaning. Just as streaming isolates and aggregates its users, so it dissolves movies into content. They don’t appear on the platforms so much as disappear into them, flickering in a silent space beyond the reach of conversation. We can watch them whenever we want. We can watch something else. It doesn’t matter.

That sentiment was echoed by Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark, who realized with dismay that his reaction to a bounty of new short films on Netflix by Wes Anderson based on the work of Roald Dahl—an occasion that “should feel like an event and be treated as such”—instead provoked “apathy,” because “convenience breeds complacency.”

So let me work against that complacency and talk about a pair of recent indie films picked up by streamers that are worthy of your time.

Fair Play (2023, on Netflix). Sometimes critics don’t do a movie they like any favors. Multiple raves out of Sundance hailed Chloe Domont’s debut feature as the return of the “sexy thriller.” Only Fair Play is not a sexy thriller. It’s a psychologically acute, highly suspenseful film that has some sex in it.

Emily and Luke (Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich) work at a Manhattan hedge fund. They’re also a couple, clandestinely cohabitating, and it’s instantly apparent how much they get off on keeping this relationship hidden from their colleagues. Rumor has Luke in line for a promotion—so when Emily gets the nod instead, their entire dynamic shifts.

Domont has said that the film was inspired by how her success as a TV director threatened the men she had been dating, “that me being big made them feel small.” Her unflinching look at this power shift brings out the best in her lead actors. Dynevor gets to play a host of colors as her Emily, initially thrilled for Luke’s good fortune, does all she can—including making some believably bad decisions—to right the ship. But then she’s capable of compartmentalizing, treating her home life separate from work, while Luke’s sense of self is bound up in how he’s perceived by others. Ehrenreich’s turn is riskier because he’s playing a character unaware of the depths of his weakness; Luke can’t even figure out how to undermine Emily effectively. Ehrenreich gave one of my favorite performances of this century as lovable cowboy star Hobie Doyle in the Coen Brothers’s Hail, Caesar! (2016). After a few years in the wilderness, it’s great to see him return to form in this film and his scenes opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer. Also making a vivid impression is Eddie Marsan as the hedge fund kingpin, who like all powerful people knows how to wield silence like a cudgel.

Flora and Son (2023, on Apple TV+). In a film by John Carney (Once), music will be essential. A Dublin single mother (Eve Hewson) tries connecting with her teenage son by giving him a guitar. When he rejects the gift, she picks it up, taking online lessons from an L.A.-based teacher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). It’s a heartwarming family drama crossed with a romantic comedy that manages to sidestep the obvious beats while still delivering the goods. It’s also a showcase for Hewson’s tremendous charisma in a star-making turn.

Or what should be one, at any rate. Both movies were snapped up by streaming services in separate deals for around $20 million. A decade ago on the indie circuit, they would prompt op-eds and factor into the year-end awards conversation, at the very least for Domont’s screenplay and Hewson’s performance. Now they’re fighting for attention, reduced to content. Vulture film critic Alison Wilmore’s article “I Am Filled with Dread Whenever Netflix Buys a Movie I Love” is about another festival fave, Richard Linklater’s true-crime tale Hit Man. She notes that “putting something in theaters” is “a sign to people that something is worth paying attention to.” I hope Hit Man gets a big screen run. I’ll still probably watch it at home.

What (Else) I’m Watching

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / The Swan / The Rat Catcher / Poison (2023, on Netflix). Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl are simpatico artists, and this quartet of jewel-box films truly should be treated like an event. Anderson adapts Dahl’s short stories using as much of the author’s voice as possible. Narrators fly through the text, tossing asides and dialogue tags directly into the camera. That spirit infuses the entire enterprise; props are handled by suitably stylized crew members in the cases where they exist, while others are rendered via stop-motion or simply pantomimed by the cast. I’d recommend starting with Henry Sugar, the longest (39 minutes) and best, because it also establishes Ralph Fiennes’s Dahl, who pops up in the other films. The Swan is Rupert Friend’s show, the actor switching effortlessly between voices and allowing the quiet horror of this tale of childhood bullying to mount slowly.

A pair of short films by Pedro Almodóvar got us back into the theater. Strange Way of Life (2023) was produced by the St. Laurent fashion house and looks it; not many westerns end with me thinking, “I want that jacket,” designed by Anthony Vaccarello. Two men who once shared an intimate relationship reunite decades later on opposite sides of the law. The story is thin, saddled with a dramatically needless flashback that puts two male models in the unenviable position of physicalizing the passion that Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal have already communicated in haunted, furtive looks. It’s worth seeing for their scenes together. The Human Voice (2020), based on the Jean Cocteau play, embraces its artifice even more than the Wes Anderson films. The action unfolds almost entirely on a luxe apartment set, which Tilda Swinton regularly wanders away from to prowl the surrounding soundstage. Again, there’s gorgeous wardrobe, courtesy of costume designer Sonia Grande. Swinton, as usual, is utterly riveting. Watching her threaten and cajole her now-ex-lover on a cellphone, I was reminded of Tony Gilroy explaining that he cast her in her Oscar-winning role in Michael Clayton (2007) because he knew the part required a performer who could captivate while on screen entirely alone.

What I’m Reading

Mentioned over and over in Clay Risen’s New York Times obituary for my friend Murray Stenson: his boundless hospitality.

The Hollywood Reporter empanels a jury of experts to name the 100 best movie books of all time.

Via Sunday Long Read, a terrifically funny, warts-and-all story by Devin Friedman about fraud on Zelle, prompted by Friedman making a $31,500 mistake.