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Every week we watch all the crap that is out there so you don’t have to, and we send you two top picks, a look at what’s expiring and new and a newsflash.
Friends,
This week I finally saw the new Ken Loach movie, Sorry We Missed You. It was great, but it was also a difficult and sad film. My brother, who saw it with me, said that he wants whatever we watch next not to be sad.
The next day I suggested we watch a documentary I heard about that had an intriguing premise. Great movie, bad idea - Tell Me Who I Am wasn’t only sad; it was also deeply disturbing. Still, just like the Ken Loach movie, it was a great watch. I might have bought myself a year’s worth of happy-go-lucky movies every time I see my brother, but it was worth it.
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Tell Me Who I Am
New on Netflix this month.
This documentary starts with Alex Lewis, who gets into a motorcycle accident and wakes up in the hospital not knowing who he is. He doesn’t remember anything (not even what a bicycle or a TV is, or who his mother or father are), but he remembers his twin brother, Marcus.
When Alex gets back into his childhood home, he’s full of questions, and Marcus is full of answers. However, slowly, Marcus realizes his power to reshape Alex’s version of their past.
Marcus leaves one important detail from Alex’s life that makes this documentary (as if it wasn’t already) such an insane story. I know I said it’s a sad movie, but it’s also fascinating and, ultimately, humanizing of the brothers’ experience.
📰 Indiewire: “A documentary so harrowing and horrific that it can only bear to scratch at the surface of its remarkable story.”
📺 on Netflix everywhere; 🍅 rating: 95%
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
Atypical
Season 3 is new today on Netflix.
Keir Gilchrist who you may know from the movie It’s Kind of a Funny Story plays Sam, an 18-year-old on the autistic spectrum trying to navigate the “typical” aspects of a teenager’s life: dating, independence, and friendships.
Perhaps people living with autism can better attest to this, but the show feels genuine and realistic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a comedy, but it’s a really heartfelt approach to the funny sitcom format. In a lot of ways, Atypical is the perfect Netflix-age coming-of-age sitcom: it’s funny and smart, but also keen to be realistic.
📰 Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times “Atypical doesn't attempt to show how Sam is "just like us," mostly because he's not. And that's what makes him a complex and unique television character worth watching.”
📺 On Netflix everywhere; 🍅 rating: 80%
Readers’ top picks
We The Animals on Netflix, a mid-week recommendation, is our readers’ top pick this week. It’s a drama that follows three boys who grow up in the backdrop of their parents’ tumulous relationship. Shot on stunning 16mm film, one reader recently called it a “dreamlike” movie.
Flowers with Olivia Colman dethrones Ricky Gervais’ Extras and becomes our readers’ favorite TV show. It’s a dark comedy about a peculiar British family, available on Netflix.
New titles worth your time
Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Raging Bull is was added to Netflix yesterday. It’s a 1980 movie starring Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, the famous Italian-American boxer.
Our top TV show pick, Atypical, comes back for season 3 today as well.
And lastly, The King with Timothée Chalamet is also new on Netflix today.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan comes back for season two today! It stars Jim Halpert AKA John Krasinski in a tense spy action-thriller.
Almost all the old Bond movies (like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me) Are added to Amazon Prime today as well.
Lastly, Training Day is new on Prime today.
Great titles that will soon expire
The very little-known 2018 documentary Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story, leaves Netflix this Wednesday, November 6th. It’s about two teenage boys who, in the height of racial segregation in the south, stepped into a baseball field. In this movie, they recount their experiences that became a cultural shift for baseball and beyond.
District 9, the excellent science-fiction blockbuster, leaves Amazon Prime tomorrow, November 2nd.
The Newsflash: Netflix & Venture Capital
Yesterday The Washington Post published an article titled “Enjoy Netflix while it lasts. It can’t keep going like this forever.”
It’s a summary of two other great pieces that came out earlier this week, an article by The Atlantic titled “The Millennial Urban Lifestyle Is About to Get More Expensive” and a newsletter issue from fellow Substack publication The Ankler. The Atlantic reads:
“If you wake up on a Casper mattress, work out with a Peloton before breakfast, Uber to your desk at a WeWork, order DoorDash for lunch, take a Lyft home, and get dinner through Postmates, you’ve interacted with seven companies that will collectively lose nearly $14 billion this year.”
The Washington Post and The Ankler note that Netflix is no different.
“The vast majority of Netflix’s viewers (upwards of 80 percent) watch licensed content (“Friends” and the like) and in order to create a library of programming audiences will pay for, they’ve gone massively in debt: Netflix is currently in the hole for about $20 billion in debt and obligations and still operating at a loss.”
These companies, which are funded by debt from venture capital and from being overvalued on the stock market, are able to offer prices today that don’t reflect their costs.
However, as The Washington Post article points out, the worst they can do is go under or increase their prices. In the case of Netflix, it means that fewer quality movies will get made:
All of which leads me to wonder if we’re going to one day miss this strange moment where Netflix is subsidizing interesting work by interesting directors. Names such as Scorsese and Cuaron and Coen making movies that are simply too expensive to release in theaters but nevertheless have a home on a streaming service flailing about for a sense of purpose. Enjoy it while it lasts.
That’s it for this week, I hope there is something in there for you.
The next edition will go out on Friday, November 8th.
Until then,
Bilal Zou, founder [bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com]