I Wake Up Streaming | November 2022
Movies
In this edition of “I Wake Up Streaming,” novelist William Boyle rounds up his top streaming picks for the month of November. 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.
Stars at Noon (Hulu)
Call it Denis does Denis. Denis Johnson’s one of my favorite writers, and this is a terrific adaptation of his underrated 1986 novel from Claire Denis. Margaret Qualley plays Trish Johnson, an American journalist in present-day Nicaragua (the novel is set during the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1984). The somewhat elliptical story centers around Trish’s involvement with a mysterious English businessman named Daniel DeHaven, played by Joe Alwyn with a mannequin-like tenderness. They navigate COVID-era Nicaragua as forces press in on Daniel, sucking Trish further into his troubled orbit. Walter Chaw said it’s like In the Cut meets Graham Greene, which feels spot on to me. Woozy and druggy and melancholy and romantic as hell. Sirens. Scuzzy motels. Sweat. Wind. Rain. Rum. Cigarettes. Bodies tangled up. Took me fifteen minutes or so to fall into rhythm with it but then I never wanted it to end. Qualley is a goddamn force. Benny Safdie enters the proceedings three-quarters of the way through and gives it a good jolt. There’s a wild John C. Reilly cameo. Love the Tindersticks soundtrack. Teared up at the smiling portrait of Johnson at the end of the credits. One of my favorite films of 2022 so far.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (The Roku Channel)
First, I had a crush on Julianne Nicholson as Marilyn Monroe’s mom in Blonde and now I have a crush on her as Weird Al’s mom in Weird. Anyhow, I loved this. A little bit of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a little bit of The Naked Gun, and a million times better than Elvis. I laughed a ton. Just so much joy here. Like Walk Hard, it should put a knife forever through the heart of most biopic conventions, but no one will learn any lessons. It plays like one of Weird Al’s parody songs: sincere, full of heart, playful. There’s a world where a film like this tries to give us a truthful take on Weird Al’s life, and I want no part of it. I remember being a kid in the backseat of the car while my mom and stepdad took us on long road trips, finding refuge in my Weird Al tapes. They always lifted my heart, no matter how lost or sad or lonely I felt, and this movie functions in much the same way. There’s nothing self-serious here. Daniel Radcliffe nails it as Weird Al, and Evan Rachel Wood hams it up as Madonna. Rainn Wilson is terrific as Dr. Demento, and Toby Huss about steals the picture as Al’s old man. Too many great cameos to name. A definite highlight is a Boogie Nights–esque poolside scene where Al plays “Another One Rides the Bus” for John Deacon, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Wolfman Jack, Tiny Tim, and Pee-Wee Herman, all played by familiar faces.
Limbo (Tubi)
I recently appeared on my friend Jen Johans’s podcast Watch with Jen to talk about one of my heroes, John Sayles. I could go on and on about many of his films—a bunch just got added to Tubi—but I’m going to focus a bit on one of his most undervalued, 1999’s Limbo. Set in Alaska, the first half of the film unfolds in typical Sayles fashion. A sprawling cast of characters circle around each other in a town called Port Henry. Among them are Sayles regular David Strathairn as Joe Gastineau, a jack-of-all-trades haunted by a tragic accident in his past, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (giving perhaps her finest performance) as Donna De Angelo, a lounge singer who has sort of crash-landed in town. Vanessa Martinez plays Noelle, Donna’s daughter, who works for Frankie and Lou (Kathryn Grody and Rita Taggart), a lesbian couple who also employ Joe as a handyman. When Joe’s half-brother, Bobby (Casey Siemaszko), shows up back in town with trouble nipping at his heels, he asks Joe for help with a work-related boat mission. Joe naïvely brings Donna and Noelle on the trip with him, unaware of Bobby’s trouble. The second half of the film closes in tight on these characters, playing out as a survival thriller enhanced by the themes established in the first half. 1999 is a stacked year for greatness—Eyes Wide Shut, Bringing Out the Dead, Ghost Dog, The Virgin Suicides, Beau Travail, The Straight Story, The Limey, Ratcatcher, The Insider, Magnolia, Summer of Sam, Ravenous, Being John Malkovich—and Limbo deserves to be mentioned alongside those films. Stay for Bruce Springsteen’s most underrated and beautiful soundtrack song of the ’90s, “Lift Me Up,” which plays over the closing credits. Also notable: understanding the end of Limbo is the key to understanding the end of David Chase’s The Sopranos.
Petite Maman (Hulu)
Do you ever hold off watching a movie because you know it’s going to be so perfect it hurts and then, when you finally do watch, it turns out to be even more perfect than you could’ve possibly imagined? That’s exactly what happened to me with Petit Maman, Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to her masterful Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) is mourning the loss of her beloved grandmother. She returns with her parents to her mother’s childhood home to help them clean it out. One day, her mother leaves. Nelly explores the woods around the house, looking for the treehouse her mother built when she was a girl. She meets a girl her age named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who’s working on a treehouse. To say more would be to spoil Sciamma’s heartfelt and heartrending achievement. A small-scale picture. An examination of grief and wonder and time and love. Seventy-two flawless minutes. I cried my eyes out. Beautiful. I believe the film was officially released this year (if that’s the case, it’s my favorite film of the year and I don’t anticipate that changing), though it made the festival rounds in ’21 and showed up on a lot of critic lists last year. Either way, it’s now readily accessible on Hulu. I watched it once and then watched it again immediately.
Torn Hearts (Prime Video)
I enjoyed the hell out of Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift with Angela Bettis a couple of years back, and I enjoyed this one just as much. It’s a great concept: An upcoming Nashville duo named Torn Hearts—Abby Quinn is Jordan, the serious songwriter and artist of the pair, and Alexxis Lemire is Leigh, whose main interest seems to be success and fame—seek out the help of their idol, Harper Dutch (Katey Sagal). Dutch was once part of a legendary Nashville duo with her sister Hope, but Hope died under mysterious circumstances and Harper has descended into a reclusive life in her cotton candy mansion full of ephemera from their career. Jordan and Leigh are relieved to find Harper approachable and interested in them when they arrive unannounced. At first. Soon, her true colors become apparent. She’s violent and deranged and full of dark secrets. What follows plays out like a campy mashup of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Sunset Boulevard set amidst the misogynistic churnings of the Nashville machine. There’s some memorable scenery-chewing by Sagal throughout. So many killer details in the mansion: a bowling ball with a rose encased in it, pink guns, many notebooks and pictures and dresses—the detritus of a sparkly and sinister life. Torn Hearts made me laugh a lot, especially that ending. Damn good fun.
William Boyle is the author of the novels Gravesend, The Lonely Witness, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, City of Margins, and Shoot the Moonlight Out, all available from Pegasus Crime. His novella Everything Is Broken was published in Southwest Review Volume 104, numbers 1–4. His website is williammichaelboyle.com.
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