Many years ago, during my BFI film journalism course, Nick James, the former editor of Sight & Sound told my class that it was impossible to watch every film released and the sooner we realised that completionism was an impossibility, the happier we would be. Nick’s words always kept me sane when covering a film festival or a flurry of summer releases. I was lucky that writing for Globalcomment.com allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to write about without the fear of having to be the first to deliver a hot take. I always (and still do) had a chance to kick about my real feelings for the film I’d just watched.
That was before the golden age of television really took hold and before the streamers developed their own content. Now, more than ever, Nick’s words ring true. We are overwhelmed by media content, not just by prosumers but by the streaming giants who are locked in a content war in the race to dethrone Netflix, further exacerbated by the pandemic. Who the hell knows what to watch and when to watch it anymore? My advice is to return to genre movies rather than series, they’re faster, leaner and don’t require you to mortgage your precious time for hours on end.
Here are a few worth catching up on.
Copshop (Amazon Prime)
Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo are not going to rip up any trees with their acting chops, but if you want an exploitative b-flick in the vein of Assault on Precinct 13 and The Hitcher then Copshop is for you. Butler is Bob Viddick, a hitman who gets himself thrown in a small-town jail so he can ice Grillo’s, mob-fixer Teddy Murreto before he blabs to the FBI. Movie Police Stations love a massacre and Copshop, like its violent predecessors, The Terminator and No Country for Old Men has blood and guts to spare. A great ensemble cast including the outstanding Alexis Louder as a rookie cop/gunslinger make Copshop an enjoyable throwback, and any movie that unashamedly uses Magnum Force’s theme tune is worth getting down and dirty for.
No Exit (Disney Plus)
In No Exit we get to paraphrase the late, great Amy Winehouse, “They tried to make me stay in rehab, but I said, no, no, no.” Recovering addict Darby Thorne, played by up-and-coming star Havana Rose Liu, bunks rehab, and drives to see her estranged mother in hospital. A blizzard halts her progress, and she holds up with four strangers in a visitor centre. What could possibly go wrong? Taking the classic technique of Hitchcockian suspense by letting the audience know there is a kidnapped girl in a van (rather than a bomb) outside, whilst the characters trivially play cards around the table, No Exit isn’t masterful, but watching Darby trying to figure out who the kidnapper is certainly compelling.
Fresh (Disney Plus)
Sebastian Stan seems to be winning the peace post Avengers with his swinging dick performance as Tommy Lee in Pam & Tommy and his charming, psycho boyfriend Steve in Fresh. Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Noa, a young woman angry with online dating and the scumbag hipsters who make up her bad dates. Just as her disillusionment reaches fever pitch, she has a meet-cute in the grocery store with Stan’s handsome plastic surgeon Steve. “I didn’t think people met people in real life anymore,” she says. Before the alarm bells ring, we’re in (excuse the phrase) elevated horror territory akin to Get Out, The Perfection, and a sister film to Promising Young Woman wondering why rich people are so fucking depraved?
Deep Water (Amazon Prime)
Adrian Lyne’s first erotic thriller for two decades attempts to answer that last question when we meet Vic and Melinda Allen, a wealthy couple bored out of their minds. Vic made his money by inventing guidance chips used in combat drones and has retired early into countless rounds of parties hosted by his friends. His wife is much younger and seemingly torments Vic with her brazen infidelity right under Vic’s nose. There are two pleasures to watching Deep Water but experiencing the lacklustre eroticism isn’t one of them. Rather it is the cruel sniping between a hulking Ben Affleck and the electric Ana de Armas, along with luxuriating in the Southern gothic porn of the gorgeous Louisinana houses that Lyne shoots with his customary attention to detail.