Dear friends,
The Cuties debate is still heating up. Yesterday, UniFrance, the French government’s film promotion body, issued a statement calling the event “a battle to defend freedom and diversity”.
THE TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
Keeping Faith
📺 New on Amazon Prime U.S. this month; 🍅 rating: 100%
When it first premiered in 2018, this amazing mystery series in English and Welsh (!) became the most popular show on BBC Wales in over 25 years.
Faith runs a law firm in a small-town with her reliable and seemingly loving husband. One day, while she is on maternity leave with their second baby, he vanishes.
THE TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Raising Victor Vargas
📺 New on Netflix U.S. today (also on Amazon Prime); 🍅 rating: 96%
This small-scale but incredibly fun 88-minute drama from 2003 is about a group of Latino teenagers who grow up in New York’s Lower East Side.
Victor lives with his eccentric grandmother, which sometimes gets in the way of him pursuing Judy, his dream girl.
The actor who plays Victor is called Victor Rasuk, the one who plays Judy is called Judy Marte. This is a film so personal that both main characters needed to be named after the actors who play them.
Readers’ top picks
Other Music on Amazon Prime is our readers’ favorite movie. It’s about the sad demise of a beloved Manhattan record store.
River also on Amazon Prime is still our readers’ favorite show. It starz Stellan Skarsgård as an erratic London police detective.
New titles worth your time
Ratched, a new One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest adaptation with Sarah Paulson, premiered today to a mixed reception. Liz Baessler of Film School Rejects dissed it very eloquently by saying “the show is so riddled with contradictions as to almost feel deliberate, and yet it doesn't seem capable of that kind of depth.”
Nothing good to report on Amazon Prime this week either (although not to worry, they finally got rights for Gemini Man.)
Great titles that will soon expire
The Oscar-documentary 20 Feet From Stardom leaves Netflix this Tuesday, September 22nd. It’s about some of the world’s most successful back-up singers and their forgotten contributions.
The horror-thriller A Quiet Place leaves Amazon Prime next Friday, September 25th.
The Newsflash: the small American towns suing Netflix and Hulu
There has been a trend of small towns on the verge of bankruptcy suing streaming giants. Some in Indiana (Evansville, Valparaiso, and Fishers), some in Texas, and others in Missouri already have ongoing lawsuits against the likes of Netflix and Hulu.
This might seem weird at first, but it actually makes sense.
What the towns are saying is that Netflix is a cable provider who should pay “utility fees.” Towns used to collect a percentage of cable bills that constituted a non-negligible part of their budgets. With everyone switching from cable to streaming, this revenue has been shrinking.
And now, with the impact of the pandemic, these towns are in desperate need of revenue. So they’re saying in class-action lawsuits that Netflix should pay back a percentage of fees, between 5% and 10% depending on the lawsuit.
Chicago
If you live in Chicago, this conversation probably rings a bell.
Back in 2015, the city of Chicago successfully imposed a 9% “amusement tax” on all entertainment purchases - including Netflix and Hulu but also music streaming (like Spotify, gaming (Playstation), and even concerts when that used to be a thing (like on Eventbrite).
How much money are we talking
For the duration of approximately a year and a half, Sony recently wrote the city of Chicago a check for Playstation fees for $1.2 million. That’s just for one city and from one company.
If the lawsuits are successful, they will provide ground for more cities and towns to claim this revenue, maybe even countries.
That’s it for today, I hope there is something in there for you.
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The next edition will be in your inbox on Friday, September 25th.
Until then,
Bilal Zou, founder [bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com]
Carried with the support of the Creative Europe Program – MEDIA.