What to Watch: 6 for the Weekend

Lots of good l'il films hitting On Demand this week and last, including a number I've reviewed in recent months for the WaPo. (This week's review of "The Instigators" and an essay on the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation," can be read following the paywall below.) Most of the new movies are renting at the affordable $4.99 price point, but a few are coming in at the "premium" level of $19.99, which I have yet to be convinced is enticing to consumers unless it's a movie they've really been jonesing to see and that isn't available at a nearby theater. But tell me I'm wrong – do any of you rent a streaming film at the premium price, or do you wait for the cost to come down in a month or so?

"The Bikeriders" (⭐ ⭐ ⭐, streaming on Peacock, for premium $19.99 rental on Apple TV and Microsoft) – There's nothing you could really call a story in Jeff Nichols's ode to hog-riding gangs of 1960s California, but when you've got Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer, and Austin Butler in the cast, do you care? I didn't. From my Post review:

Hardy has drawn Brando comparisons from the beginning — the heft, the charisma, the mumbles — but this performance is a particular piece of genius, since he’s not consciously imitating Brando but rather playing a man who unconsciously imitates him, so the Brando comes out squished and sideways but also some kind of magnanimous. It’s one of the darnedest things you’ll see — a noble parody.

What Comer is up to is related but different. The actress arrived on the half-shell of TV’s “Killing Eve” as the brilliant psychopath Villanelle, and she has a spooky, wide-eyed presence that hides a mind like a box of knives. ... [Her character] Kathy is the domesticity that pulls the bikers back to the hearth, their wives, their children. And she’ll tell you as much in a deep-dish Chicaga accent that is either a prizewinning work of civic imposture or the height of actorly fraudulence. Either way, she’s incredibly fun to listen to. ...

Against Hardy and Comer acting their blessed hearts out, Butler (“Elvis”) maintains a pure and magical presence, and while the movie never sugarcoats Benny’s dimness, it finds a kind of Zen grandeur in the character’s unwilled perfection. (Washington Post, 6/20/24)

"Dandelion" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2, for $6.99 rental on Apple TV and Microsoft) – KiKi Layne is the whole show in this sweet, slight tale of a struggling indie musician who's this close to throwing in the towel. The second film from writer-director Nicole Riegel ("Holler"),

it’s as handmade as the personal signatures in the end credits and as beautifully brooding as a movie can be with a score and songs by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the indie rock stalwarts The National. Does it add up to less than the sum of its parts? Certainly. But the parts are charming enough to sustain the indulgent viewer. (Washington Post, 7/12/24)

"Daddio" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2, for premium $19.99 rental on Amazon, Apple TV, and Microsoft) – An overwritten if nicely played exercise about a pair of strangers in a car.

Roughly 100 real-time minutes in a New York taxi from John F. Kennedy Airport to midtown Manhattan, with Sean Penn behind the wheel and Dakota Johnson in the back seat. ... this is the kind of dramatic two-hander that gets an actor’s creative juices flowing, and for Penn, it’s the meatiest film role he’s had in some time. (Washington Post, 6/28/24)

Writer-director Christy Hall needs to learn to kill a few darlings, dialogue-wise, but she maintains interest and even suspense in this cramped setting. If you're not a fan of Dakota Johnson's non-acting acting (caveat: I am), feel free to dock the rating a star or skip it all together.

"Ghostlight" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2, for $5.99 rental on Apple TV, and $6.99 rental on Amazon and Microsoft) – I may have graded this one a little harshly, given the pasting my review took in the comments. It is a humane, moving indie treat about a grieving family and the healing that the theater can bring, and if I felt the filmmaker's over-heavy hand in the set-up and development of the story, there's no denying the gracefulness of Keith Kupferer's lead performance as a Chicago construction worker who gets dragged into a community performance of "Romeo & Juliet."

“Ghostlight” is a nice film and sometimes a lovely one about the therapy that can come with art and pretending, and its message is soothing enough to make one wish things always worked this way. As a reminder that sometimes they do, it’ll do. (Washington Post, 6/21/24)

"Janet Planet" (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, for $19.99 purchase on Amazon, Apple TV and Microsoft) – I normally don't advise buying On Demand movies unless you already know it's a favorite, but the directorial debut of playwright Annie Baker is such a gossamer piece of work that it repays repeated visits, to pick up on its nuances and to cool in the shade of its nostalgia for a slightly awry counterculture childhood in the summer of 1991. I wrote about the movie at length when it came to theaters in June, but for now I'll just say that Zoe Ziegler is an old soul in a 10-year-old body as the daughter (she really does seem like she escaped from a Roz Chast cartoon), and Julianne Nicholson gets a rare and worthy lead role as a single mom who leans on partners, friends, and companions until she suddenly realizes she's standing on her own. If you don't feel like buying the movie, wait a few weeks and rent it on the cheap. (Note: The Roches's eternal "Hammond Song" is used in the trailer but not in the movie; it nevertheless captures the generosity of this quiet, observant first film.)

"Tuesday" (⭐ ⭐ 1/2, for $5.99 rental on Amazon, Apple TV and Microsoft) – If you're a fan of Julia Louis-Dreyfus (and who isn't?), you are allowed to chalk this metaphysical curio up to the star's desire to try something different: A very serious drama about a terminally ill teenage girl (the serene Lola Petticrew in the title role), her panicky mother (Louis-Dreyfus), and Death, who comes in the form of a shape- and size-shifting Macaw.

“Tuesday” is a parable about grieving, and accepting the inevitability of death, that keeps getting sidetracked by the startling literalness of its conceit. The visual effects teams headed by Mike Stillwell and Andrew Simmonds renders Death as a bewitching feathered creation, mysterious and powerful yet oddly sympathetic — half animal consciousness, half angel. (Washington Post, 6/13/24)

Like I said, if you're feeling like indulging one of the most gifted comic actors of her generation in a well-deserved change-up, it's worth a look.

"Leave Her to Heaven" (1945, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2, streaming on The Criterion Channel) – Hot damn, this classic thriller has only been available for streaming in a low-rez dub on the bargain basement Flix platform, but now it's on the Criterion Channel in all its batshit Technicolor glory. I advise to you wallow in the pleasures of its dream homes, sparkling getaway resorts – and Ellen (Gene Tierney), a sweet-faced new bride who's actually a psycho-killer who won't share her husband Cornel Wilde with anybody. I mean anybody. An acknowledged influence on "Gone Girl" and other modern tales of homicidal prom queens, and once you've seen the boating scene, it's in your mental file drawer – under "C" for Completely Creeped Out – for life.

This week's Washington Post pieces follow. Have a good weekend and thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment or add to someone else's.

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