Friends,
Happy Friday! Last week’s newsflash was about one journalist’s decision to use DVDs instead of streaming for an entire year. A reader, Valerie, answered that e-mail by upping the ecological dimension of this plan. Instead of ordering DVDs online, Valerie exclusively uses her local library as a DVD source: “our library can access DVDs from several nearby counties; I browse online and place holds as well as look through the stacks in person.”
She invited me to share this habit with you and I do think there are many ways to get and enjoy film that our culture has dismissed too quickly. But for now, here is a terrifying movie and beautiful new show set 19th century Paris!
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Midsommar
New on Amazon Prime today.
You may have heard about this 2019 critic-favorite from clips like this one of a kid running to flee the movie theater during a screening. “little billy ran the f**k out the door”, the caption reads.
You will want to do the same. Recovering from losing her sister and her parents in a single incident, a young girl goes on a trip to Sweden to observe a ritual within a bizarre commune that occurs every 90 years. This cult’s idea of death and their traditions intersect with the girl’s grief to create unthinkable monstrosities.
Note: while some readers praise the movie for its depiction of anxiety, I highly recommend against watching Midsommar if you suffer from panic attacks.
📰 Lindsey Bahr of Associated Press: “Midsommar is a waking nightmare and I mean that in the best possible way.”
📺 on Amazon Prime U.S. and select other geographies; 🍅 rating: 83%
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
The Bonfire of Destiny
Added to Netflix this week.
A French series set around three women in 1890s Paris and inspired by one of the most famous incidents in Parisian history, The Bazar de la Charité fire.
There are gorgeous shots of Paris as you’d expect, an impressive depiction of the fire itself, but in reality, this show serves first and foremost as a period soap opera.
Deceit and betrayal are rampant but so is romance and ambition (not the least of which to make the voyage to America). All of this revolves around the elite of the time, as the survivors and victims of the Bazar fire were mostly Bourgeois women.
📰 No major publication has reviewed this show yet.
📺 on Netflix everywhere; 🍅 rating: - not yet available
Readers’ top picks
The South Korean movie Burning is back as our readers’ favorite movie. On Netflix, it’s a saga that’s one third a romance, one third a character-study, and one third a revenge thriller.
For yet another week, the murder mystery Trapped or Ófærð on Amazon Prime is our readers’ favorite show. It’s the most expensive series ever made in Iceland, with a cost estimated of up to $1.7 million.
New titles worth your time
Many classics were added to Netflix on January 1st. Now available are: American Beauty, Catch Me If You Can, the Brazilian Oscar-winner City of God, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ghost Rider, Inception, both volumes of Kill Bill, Pan’s Labyrinth, True Grit, and the excellent 1992 Baz Luhrmann romance Strictly Ballroom.
The same day, Netflix also premiered a new chapter in its collaboration with Vox with Explained: Sex. It’s as much about childbirth, birth control, and fertility as it is about … you know … actual intercourse (I feel like a child).
Out top movie pick, Midsommar, is the only noteworthy new title on Amazon Prime this week.
Great titles that will soon expire
The Norwegian movie In Order of Disappearance leaves Netflix tomorrow, Saturday, January 4th. It was recently made into a movie with Liam Neeson, and it’s a dark comedy about a father who seeks revenge for his son (the original version is much better).
For lovers of Italian cinema, Sicilian Ghost Story leaves Netflix Saturday, January 5th. It’s a Cannes favorite based on a true story of a child who was abducted by the mafia, and one little girl’s attempt to find him by going into an enchanted forest.
Many ghosts leave us on January 5th: A Ghost Story also expires on the same day from Amazon Prime. It’s a bizarre but ultimately deep drama starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck.
Bryan Cranston and Diane Kruger’s 2016 movie The Infiltrator leaves Amazon Prime this Wednesday, January 8th. It’s a solid biographical crime drama about an agent who goes infiltrates Pablo Escobar’s money-laundering operations in the 1980s.
The Newsflash: agoodmovietowatch news
I keep raving about the virtue of rotating subscriptions: how it makes sense for your finances, exposure to quality titles, and frustration for finding what to watch, to always cancel Netflix, Amazon, whatever you have, and get other services with the money you spend on them (until those services bore you and you can come back to Netflix and so on).
This week, we’ve finally been able to do something I’ve been dying to do for a long time, and which I hope will help you with finding quality titles on other platforms: we’ve included more streaming services to the website.
Now available are HBO and STARZ (Lionsgate), on top of Netflix (over 30 countries), Hulu, and Amazon Prime. We have the data for Showtime, IFC Films and Cinemax, but are holding them off until we have enough suggestions for each platform. You can select the platforms available now from the left panel on desktop (or at the top on mobile) on agoodmovietowatch.com:
Apple TV+ and Disney+ don’t make sense at the moment because of their limited catalogs of new releases (that are not Cartoons). And I’ve also messaged services like Kanopy, which offer ad-supported streaming, to see how to best integrate them with the website.
This is one more thing that would have never been possible without your support - thank you all so much.
Lastly, this service is for you, so if you have any difficulty using the website, have any feedback or ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach me directly on bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com.
So darn exciting. Next week we’ll be back with non-agoodmovietowatch-related news!
That’s it for this week, I hope there is something in there for you.
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The next edition will be in your inbox on Friday, January 10th.
Until then,
Bilal Zou, founder [bilal@agoodmovietowatch.com]
Carried with the support of the Creative Europe Program – MEDIA.