I Wake Up Streaming | January 2026
In this edition of “I Wake Up Streaming,” novelist William Boyle rounds up his top streaming picks for the month of January. The column’s name is a play on the 1941 film I Wake Up Screaming, starring Betty Grable, Victor Mature, and Carole Landis. While the film’s title hits a pleasing note of terror and despair, changing that one letter speaks to the joy of discovering new films and rediscovering old favorites, as well as the panic that comes with being overwhelmed by options.
How to Beat the High Cost of Living (Tubi)
Back in the 2000s, a lot of the music I listened to was labeled as alt-country. It was a tag I hated at the time, something meant to identify artists that toed the country line but didn’t abide by any mainstream formula and were, generally, strange or different in major or minor ways. Anyhow, after a first-time watch of this so close on the heels of Kelly Reichardt’s brilliant The Mastermind, I had the thought that I should compile a list of alt-heist movies. I probably won’t do it, but Robert Scheerer’s How to Beat the High Cost of Living from 1980 would fit neatly on a list like that. It’s a screwball heist picture that’s genuinely offbeat and funny. It’s hard to believe I’d never seen it before a few weeks ago, and harder still to believe that it seems like it’s not very well regarded. After a truly atrocious credits sequence, it’s a ton of fun. Set in Eugene, Oregon, the movie centers around three women, in various stages of financial desperation, who plot to steal a fortune from a local mall. Jessica Lange, in only her third film role (following King Kong and All That Jazz) is perfect, as always—it’s easy to forget she’s such an underrated comic actress. Jane Curtin has the best moments, and Susan Saint James is solid—teaming them makes it a fun precursor to Kate & Allie (a show I loved as a kid—my wannabe actor stepdad had a bit part in one episode). Richard Benjamin and Eddie Albert are hilarious in their supporting roles, and Fred Willard and Dabney Coleman have some nice moments, too. And there’s a memorable cameo from Garrett Morris. I watched this for Jessica Lange and was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing.
Miracle on Main Street (TCM, YouTube)
I’m grateful I saw Larry Karaszewski’s review of this one and gave it a shot on the TCM app. A little low-budget Christmas Eve noir miracle. Margo is enthralling as Maria Porter, a striptease dancer at a carnival sideshow run by her crook husband, Dick (Lyle Talbot). After some trouble with the law, they part ways and she hides out in a church where she finds an abandoned flesh-and-blood baby nestled in the nativity scene. She brings the baby home to her rooming house, and her life winds up changing for the better in every way. Eventually, she meets Jim (Walter Abel), a rich guy with a good heart who wants to marry her. The rub: she hasn’t told him the truth about Dick or the baby. When her grifter husband comes back with his hand out, things come to a head. William Collier, Sr., is terrific as Doc Miles—he gets all the best lines. Seventy-six pretty perfect minutes. A fairytale from the gutter.
Signpost to Murder (YouTube)
Alex (Stuart Whitman), a patient from a home for the criminally insane, cracks his doc over the head and escapes after getting shafted on his upcoming release. He holes up in an isolated house he could see from his window at the asylum. The lone occupant of the house is Molly (Joanne Woodward), a woman waiting for her husband to return from a business trip. The house has a beautiful, creaky waterwheel, which adds an incredible amount of tension to the proceedings. This one’s only seventy-six minutes! It’s tight, claustrophobic, and twisty (I probably should’ve seen the main twist coming at the end, but it surprised me nonetheless). I have a confession to make: When I was younger, I just didn’t really get Joanne Woodward. I’m not sure why. I thought she was bland or something. Insane. I was a moron! Now I find her beyond captivating. Anyhow, her performance elevates this big-time.
Renata and Bad Timing (Criterion Channel)
Even though I got the Blu-ray of Household Saints the minute it came out, I hadn’t watched the two short films of Nancy Savoca’s included as extras on the disc until they showed up on the Criterion Channel. I’m not sure why exactly, but I’m glad I got around to them now. Savoca’s 1989–1993 back-to-back-to-back of True Love, Dogfight, and Household Saints is one of my favorite three-movie runs by any director. Renata is, astonishingly, her first short, made while she was a student at NYU. It’s incredible—I know the world of this film, and Savoca nails it. The look, the feel, the voices, everything. It’s claustrophobic, raw, haunting, and full of incredible details. It truly makes me sad that Savoca wasn’t given the keys to the kingdom. She’s directed for TV (including two segments of If These Walls Could Talk and episodes of Murder One and Third Watch) and had one last semimajor movie in the ’90s (The 24 Hour Woman with Rosie Perez—I remember liking it), but the few things she’s done since are little seen or hard to find. I imagine it comes down to the sexism of the film industry. What a shame. I wonder what other movies she wanted to make, what other stories she had to tell. Anyhow, Renata is a knockout. Marianne Leone Cooper is terrific (what a great—if too brief—filmography she has). I was less enamored initially by Bad Timing, Savoca’s second student film, but it won me over by the end. It should’ve been developed into a feature. Though it’s from 1982, you can really feel the spirit of the ’70s in it. I would’ve followed Denise and Bobby anywhere for ninety minutes. It has an almost Over the Edge or Out of the Blue feel to it. Very cool to see a young Chris Cooper. Again, I’m thankful we have what we have from Savoca, but I wish there was so much more. These are two early treasures.
The Neon People (Tubi)
My pal Jeanne told me about this Jean-Baptiste Thoret documentary in 2024 when I was in France—it had just played at a festival she’d attended. I put it on my watchlist, thinking I wouldn’t get to see it for a while. If I’m understanding correctly, it was just officially released in theaters in France this past October, so I didn’t anticipate it being available in America any time soon, but then it popped up on Tubi out of nowhere recently (listed as Las Vegas: The Neon People). It’s a shattering, haunting portrait of people experiencing homelessness and carving out places for themselves in the tunnels under Las Vegas. They’re fighting against their addictions, fighting to survive, and holding on to the hope of one day making it out. Thoret is restrained, simply documenting the lives of a handful of folks, following them in their daily routines, letting them talk about how they got where they are and what it’s like in the tunnels. It’s full of heartbreaking images and stories. Also, it’s never didactic and never out to diagnose the rot at the heart of this country but manages to say everything without saying anything at all.
William Boyle is the author of the novels Gravesend, The Lonely Witness, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, City of Margins, Shoot the Moonlight Out, and Saint of the Narrows Street. His novella Everything Is Broken was published in Southwest Review Volume 104, numbers 1–4, and he co-edited (with Claudia Piñeiro and Frances Riddle) the noir issue (Volume 108, number 3).
Illustration: Jess Rotter
