The Streamer’s Guide To February 2020: What To Watch At Home To Prepare For This Month’s Theatrical Releases
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(Welcome toThe Streamer’s Guide, a new monthly feature recommending at-home viewing options from filmmakers with new movies arriving in theaters this month.)
If you’ve seen all the/Film coverage from Sundanceand gotten eager to sample the year’s first crop of new movies, you’re in luck! A number of them are hitting theaters almost immediately following their Park City debuts (plus a few on Netflix, including Dee Rees' supposed bustThe Last Thing He Wanted), and that’s on top of what looks like a promising crop of new releases on the studio side of things. If you’re looking to prepare for February’s openings, or perhaps just preparing a double feature with one half at home, here are some viewing options for you.
(Of note: I was not able to include a film for February’s biggest release,Birds ofPrey, because director Cathy Yan’s debut feature still does not have U.S. distribution.Dead Pigssomehow got enough attention to get her a gig directing a giant movie for DC Comics, yet no distributor wants to put her prior film out there over two years after it premiered at Sundance. Justice forDead Pigs, Cathy Yan and female filmmakers of color!)
Downhill (February 14, limited)
Nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” quite like a couple pushed to the brink by a traumatic incident, am I right? At least if you’re going to watch potentially unpleasant material, you can do so in the company of comedic luminaries like Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This English-language remake of 2014 Swedish arthouse hitForce Majeurehas drawn skepticism since Fox Searchlight announced it. But our own Chris Evangelista was pleasantly (if modestly) surprised by the film at Sundance, remarking “it is fun to see Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell go head-to-head.” And at a slim 85 minutes, maybe this night at the movies will actually give you time to talk to your valentine!
Want to prep for release? Watch this at home:I know it’s the kind of movie that is shorthand for a particular kind of young teenage white male coming-of-age story that dominated Sundance in the early 2010s. But, in all fairness, co-writers and director Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s 2013 outingThe Way Way Backis a truly exemplary version of what’s now a cliché. The film fully understands the frustrations of being an introverted kid, but it’s the adults played by Sam Rockwell and Toni Collette who are the real standouts. As guiding lights for a flailing kid, the movie is clear-eyed about the mistakes they’ve made in the name of self-preservation and fear.(Available to rent onAmazonandiTunes)
Ordinary Love (February 14, limited)
What, a story about an aging couple dealing with cancer doesn’t sound like an appetizing moviegoing experience? It’s hard to gin up enthusiasm for a movie that deals with such heavy subject matter, sure. But if you’re going to engage with the full spectrum of human emotion on screen, might as well do it in the company of acting giants Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville. As a couple grappling with the wife’s breast cancer diagnosis, the film looks both affectionate and devastating. I also cannot help but read into the film’s metatext and wonder whether Neeson brought some of the grief to the performance he felt over the sudden death of his wife Natasha Richardson all those years ago.
Want to prep for release? Watch this at home:I know the obvious choice for a Lesley Manville performance to spotlight is her tremendous (and memeable) work inPhantom Thread. But she’s been such an integral part of Mike Leigh’s stable of actors for many decades that I feel compelled to throw some shine on her tour de force work in 2010’sAnother Year. Had Sony Classics known whether to campaign her fully in leading or supporting actress, perhaps she would have scored a deserving Oscar nomination for her riveting turn as a hapless middle-aged woman enduring some punishing tribulations in her personal life. The film ends with a long close-up on Manville, and you feel the weight of the entire film come crushing down on you in just her face. It’s worth watching the movie just to get the cumulative effect of this shot.(Available to rent onAmazonandiTunes)
The Photograph (February 14, wide)
After all those years of theFifty Shadesmovies dominating the Valentine’s Day weekend, it’s nice to have a real, unabashed romance in theaters. There’s so much to love aboutThe Photographfrom the start because it’s a film by and about black people that’s about something beyond just struggle. Universal, thankfully, has resisted marketing this as an “urban” film and treating it as something all audiences should see. And judging from the trailer, it’s not going to be a hard sell. Whether it’s the sparks flying between stars Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield or the mystery at the heart of the story, this looks like a potential early-year studio breakout.
Want to prep for release? Watch this at home:It’s great that writer/director Stella Meghie is getting a crack at studio filmmaking less than two years after her festival breakoutThe Weekend. I won’t pretend the film is stellar, but at a short 86 minutes, what does it really cost you to see the flashes of promise from a rising star? The weekend getaway of several friends, couples, enemies and exes in the film leads to many memorable moments of both levity (mostly from formerSNLcast member Sasheer Zamata) and gravity. Meghie proves herself adept at balancing comedy and drama from a very early stage in her career, which portends good things to come.(Available to rent onAmazonandiTunes)
Emma. (February 21, limited)
Was the lesson ofThe Favouritebeing a box office and awards success that studios should produce more irreverent period movies? If so, I’m very much down!Emma.(stylized with a period, as publicists have told me many times) takes a much cheekier approach than the usual Jane Austen adaptation if the trailer is any indication. I’m all for directors finding ways to liberate these classic texts from the stodgy Masterpiece Theater-style adaptations they received the last time around. And if it brings a different crowd of people to discover 19thcentury British literature, I deem that a success.
The Last Thing He Wanted (February 21, Netflix)
As I type this out, Dee Rees’The Last Thing He Wantedsits at a whopping 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not the kind of thing you want to see for a film that many assumed might factor into the Oscar conversation had Netflix released in 2019! A part of me thinks I must be including it here as an act of willful denial to accept the inevitable. Especially given how little effort I have to exert to watch the film, I’ll probably end up watching it, negative reviews be damned. Rees adapted a less-trumpeted Didion text here – at least one that’s not going to show up in many coffee shop or beachside Instagram posts – about political intrigue and romance against the background of the Iran-Contra affair. And if it gives star Anne Hathaway another reason to remind a skeptical audience that she’s a great actress, then the entire effort cannot be for naught.
Saint Frances (February 28, limited)
I didn’t even need to make it to the quote from /Film’s review ofSaint Francesto be sold on the trailer for the film. “It deserves all the attention in the world,” wrote our own Amelia Emberwing, and honestly, this movie had mine for two minutes. This film looks genuinely disarming and sincere, a rarity among our irony-addled indie scene of late. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that the film’s star, Kelly O’Sullivan, also wrote the script. All the festival laurels the film boasts can’t be lying. We deserve a real scrappy indie breakout, and one that tells a deeply human story of a young woman’s accidental pregnancy, abortion and life-affirming relationship with the child she nannies fits the bill.
Wendy (February 28, limited)
Benh is back! (I’ll show myself out for that pun.) Eight long years after his debut filmBeasts of the Southern Wildcharmed Sundance and rolled all the way to surprising Best Picture and Director nominations at the Oscars, Benh Zeitlin returns with another earthy magical realist tale. This time, it’s a take on J.M. Barrie’sPeter Pan. Honestly, glad Zeitlin gets a crack at it before the inevitable Disney animated remake. Our own Chris Evangelista caughtWendyat Sundance and was admittedlya little mixed, although he did reserve some praise for the film’s technical elements.
Want to prep for release? Watch this at home:I hadn’t seen Zeitlin’s breakout debutBeasts of the Southern Wildsince its release in 2012, not because I didn’t like it – it’s just not the kind of project that screams “rewatchable.” While I’ll admit that the filmmaking bravura has lost a little bit of its luster without the novelty factor, this is still an incredibly impressive film. How Zeitlin made something simultaneously so “out there” and so grounded still stuns me. And the assured, confident performance he got out of young Quvenzhané Wallis is still nothing short of miraculous. The film’s depiction of climate’s dangers, too, feels eerily prescient and ahead of its time.(Available to rent onAmazonandiTunes)
