By Jason Bailey
Two releases from last year — one an inventive literary adaptation, the other a wild, gross-out comedy — are among this month’s streaming recommendations.
‘Pedro Páramo’ (2024)
This adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s 1955 novel is the feature directorial debut of Rodrigo Prieto, who, via his collaborations with Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Greta Gerwig and (frequently) Martin Scorsese, has become one of the best cinematographers of our time. It is, unsurprisingly, a beautifully photographed movie (Prieto and Nico Aguilar share cinematography credit), filled with astonishing compositions and a surplus of mood. The narrative is haunted by ghosts, dreams and memories. The dialogue is alternately wry and poetic, trafficking in a deadpan magical realism, involving its bustling cast of colorful characters in a circular story, with events revisited via shifting perspectives and time frames. It doesn’t all land, as the picture’s loose ends and shaggy running time occasionally get away from the filmmaker. But if it’s messy, it’s also mesmerizing, and marks Prieto as a talent to keep watching, wherever he may go. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘Fall’ (2022)
So many of today’s thrillers are convoluted, franchise-servicing affairs that this one is worth praising for its simplicity and efficiency: There is a narrative, yes, but it boils down to tracking two young women as they climb to the top of a 2,000-foot TV tower, and are then stranded there, with no obvious way down. The screenplay (by the director, Scott Mann, and Jonathan Frank) works through every possible situation and variation, mining the loaded scenario for maximum scares, thrills and pathos. But the performances ultimately have to carry the show, and newcomers Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner are charismatic and sympathetic — even when doing the dumbest things — while Jeffrey Dean Morgan lends gravitas as Currey’s concerned dad. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘Joe’ (2014)
Nicolas Cage was in the career doldrums when he teamed up with director David Gordon Green for this lived-in, small-town indie, and crafted one of his best performances of the era. Cage plays the title character, a working-class guy with a dark past who supervises a crew of roughneck woodsmen. A 15-year-old kid (Tye Sheridan) comes to him looking for work; their relationship, which quickly moves from collegial to paternal, gives the film its strong spine. Green is a bit of a wild card, careening from goofy comedies (“Pineapple Express”) to genre movies (the rebooted “Halloween” trilogy) to earnest indies like this and his debut “George Washington,” but he knows how to capture the pulse of small towns, and the people who fill them. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.)
‘Life Partners’ (2014)
Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs) are best friends since forever, but on the verge of turning 30, they’re starting to feel like their love lives are in a holding pattern; Sasha, who is gay, refuses to date anyone remotely challenging, and Paige, who is straight, keeps striking out. But when she meets the nice guy Tim (Adam Brody), it feels like something serious — to the chagrin of Sasha, who is less willing to cede her best friend than expected. The broad strokes of the story recall the previous year’s “Frances Ha,” but director Susanna Fogel, who wrote the screenplay with Joni Lefkowitz, fleshes out the tale with keenly observed details, while her cast of television veterans create cozy, lived-in relationships that are immediately convincing. (Stream it on Max.)
‘Let’s Start a Cult’ (2024)
You wouldn’t think that the ritual suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult could inspire a laugh-out-loud indie comedy, but that’s one of the many surprises of this wild, eccentric effort from the director Ben Kitnick. He wrote the script with the film’s stars, Wes Haney and Stavros Halkias; Haney stars as William, the leader of a commune that plans to “transcend” together, while Halkias is Skip, the group’s most irritating member, a selfish pain in the neck who is stunned to learn that the group has offed themselves without him. When he later discovers that William chickened out of the mass death, Skip is joyful: “We get another crack at this, dude!” The humor is broad and frequently bawdy (it’s an adults-only affair), the supporting cast is solid (Katy Fullan is especially funny as a fully insane recruit) and the year 2000 setting, initially mere window dressing, pays off with a huge laugh in the concluding scenes. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘Morris From America’ (2016)
Chad Hartigan (“This Is Martin Bonner”) writes and directs this modest charmer about Morris (Markees Christmas), a 13-year-old Black kid who has just moved to the German town of Heidelberg, and is feeling decidedly out of place. The middle-school woes of a fish out of water are not exactly virgin soil, but Hartigan mines the specifics of the situation with grace and intelligence, and finds a fine protagonist not only in his young lead, but also in the local girl who catches his eye. But the film’s best scenes are the ones Christmas shares with Craig Robinson, the valuable comic supporting player of films like “This Is the End” and TV’s “The Office,” who finds not only the character’s humor, but his warm and empathetic heart. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.)
‘Crazy, Not Insane’ (2020)
Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) directs this compelling portrait of Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a forensic psychologist who’s spent the past several decades studying violent criminals. Gibney explores her long career, her occasional errors and her innovative work in diagnosing and understanding multiple personality disorder. The director doesn’t entirely buy in — at the very least, he lets skeptics of her work have their say — but he’s clearly fascinated by her, particularly the contrast between her gentle personality and her grim work. And in its closing passages, “Crazy, Not Insane” ingeniously uses Lewis’ story to document and grapple with our society’s changing (and not always evolving) views on mental illness and the death penalty. (Stream it on Max.)
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