I Wake Up Streaming | September 2023
Movies
In this edition of “I Wake Up Streaming,” novelist William Boyle rounds up his top streaming picks for the month of September. 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.
Watching movies is often a game of kicks, of chasing obsessions, of pulling a thread and seeing where it takes you. I’ve done things a little differently this month, with shorter, more capsule-like reviews, spurred on by various deep dives and discoveries but also mentioning one killer retrospective.
Boulevard (Vudu)
After rewatching A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, I was looking through Dito Montiel’s filmography and I realized I’d never seen this, even though it features Robin Williams’s last live-action performance. And, goddamn, what a beautiful and heartbreaking performance it is. One of his best and most restrained. Williams plays Nolan, a banker who must confront the version of himself he’s kept buried his whole life after meeting a young hustler named Leo. Kathy Baker is also phenomenal as Nolan’s wife, Joy—I’ve loved her since I was a kid when Picket Fences was my favorite show. I kept thinking the guy who played Leo was John Magaro, but he wasn’t, and I sure wish it was Magaro in the role. Bob Odenkirk is great too, doing a test run for Lucky Hank as Nolan’s longtime professor pal. Sorry it took me so long to see this—I really loved it. I was worried it was going to go in a few different bad directions, and I was relieved it never did. As a side note, it’s free on Vudu, which is absolutely the worst, with horrendously placed, ridiculously long ads (and don’t try to rewind past a previous ad or you’ll be subjected to duplicate ads all over again).
The Hal Hartley Collection (Criterion Channel)
Coming of age as a film lover in the nineties and early aughts meant loving Hal Hartley. He had a run of films—The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Surviving Desire, Simple Men, Amateur, Flirt, Henry Fool, The Book of Life, No Such Thing, The Girl from Monday, and Fay Grim—that meant and mean the world to me, shaping my taste and my own sense of storytelling. All of them—and more—are featured in this incredible career retrospective on the Criterion Channel.
Crazy Joe (Tubi)
God bless Tubi. I’m ashamed to say I had no idea this existed until recently. Directed by Carlo Lizzani, written by Lewis John Carlino (based on a series of articles by Nicholas Gage), and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. Peter Boyle’s perfect as the notorious Crazy Joe Gallo. Killer supporting performances by Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Fred Williamson, Paula Prentiss, young Henry Winkler, Sam Coppola, Charles Cioffi, Luther Adler, Carmine Caridi, Louis Guss, Fausto Tozzi, Guido Leontini, Michael V. Gazzo, Cornelia Sharpe, Hervé Villechaize, and more. What an epic cast. Plays like seventies exploitation mixed with a thirties pre-Code gangster picture. Man, I dug this. Some truly unforgettable sequences.
Turn the River (Tubi, Freevee, the Roku Channel)
Written and directed by Chris Eigeman from Whit Stillman’s movies. I’ve always loved Famke Janssen. As I was looking through her filmography, I noticed I’d missed this somehow. She’s great—playing pool, smoking cigarettes, looking pensive, picking stuff out of her soup. Rip Torn’s the goddamn best, of course, stealing every scene he’s in. Beautiful score by Clogs. Feels pretty indicative of the kind of small, solid, character-driven indie that folks would’ve embraced in the nineties but that got chewed up and spit out in the aughts.
Wedlock (YouTube)
What a goddamn joy. I love Mimi Rogers and Rutger Hauer, so I’m not sure how I ever missed this as a kid. Directed by Lewis Teague, to boot. Great supporting cast, including Joan Chen and James Remar giving delicious turns as the villains, Stephen Tobolowsky, Basil Wallace, Glenn Plummer, Grand L. Bush, O-Lan Jones, Denis Forest, and Danny Trejo. The story is set in an early-nineties vision of the near future, and it begins with Hauer’s Frank Warren, his girlfriend Noelle (Chen), and his good pal Sam (Remar) pulling off a daring diamond heist. After things go wonky on the way out, they get separated but are soon reunited. Noelle and Sam double-cross Frank, gunning him down. Next thing we know, some time has passed and Frank is on his way to Camp Holliday, a state-of-the-art penal institution where there are few guards, no cages, no fences, and prisoners are equipped with devices to make them paranoid and keep them in line. The devices are electronic collars that will explode if they or their unidentified partner prisoner—the experimental method is called “Wedlock”—stray more than one hundred yards from the facility. Hauer, it turns out, managed to hide the diamonds before getting shot and arrested, screwing over the partners who screwed him, so everyone, including the icky warden (Tobolowsky), wants him to reveal his stash spot. He won’t break. Rogers is Tracy Riggs, a fellow newbie prisoner. Turns out she’s the one “wedlocked” to Frank. They eventually bust out and the movie becomes something of a screwball romp with the warden, Noelle, and Sam in pursuit of Frank and Tracy. It reminded me, weirdly, of Ishtar. With a different, more typical action movie cast, this might not have been much, but Hauer and Rogers have terrific chemistry, and everyone seems to be having so much fun. It’s wonderful watching Hauer and Rogers just running around. The whole thing is especially elevated by a ramshackle all-timer of a performance by Hauer. At some point, he gets equipped with a goddamn incredible jacket and shirt, and his big, blond mullet is gorgeous to behold. He’s got a line delivery late in the movie that’s gotta be up there as one of my favorites ever. This really needs a good Blu-ray release.
Virtual Obsession (Tubi, Freevee, the Roku Channel)
My love for Mimi Rogers made me watch this 135-minute 1998 TV movie directed by Mick Garris and written by Preston Sturges, Jr. (?!). I’m not gonna rehash most of the plot, but Peter Gallagher is a scientist who has created some big AI computer system thingie and Mimi is his wife and the lady from Billy Madison is his new research assistant who is dying, so they have an affair, and she reveals that she wants to live inside his computer thingie. Worth it for the scene where (bit of a spoiler, sorry) Mimi throws the lady’s cryogenically frozen head up in the air and it shatters into a million pieces on the blacktop. Final verdict: Unacceptably long, not enough Mimi, and it’s got sort of a sad Sunday feeling, but I still enjoyed it.
The Hunted (Max)
R.I.P. William Friedkin, who made some of my favorite films of all time—The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, and To Live and Die in L.A., none of which are streaming. His late-career high points, Bug and Killer Joe, are both currently on Prime, and I highly recommend those, but I recently watched The Hunted for the first time and was pretty blown away, so I’m going with that as my Friedkin streaming pick. I’m not sure how it slipped by me for so long. A little bit of First Blood, a little bit of The Fugitive, a lot of Tommy Lee Jones acting like Bob Odenkirk doing Manson on The Ben Stiller Show as he hunts Benicio del Toro’s soldier turned rogue killer. Pretty goddamn great.
Charms for the Easy Life (Tubi, Freevee, the Roku Channel)
I didn’t even know this existed until recently and was glad to find it streaming. A made-for-Showtime movie based on a novel by Kaye Gibbons, directed by Joan Micklin Silver (!), and starring Gena Rowlands (!!) in one of her most substantial late roles, alongside Mimi Rogers (you’ll notice a real Mimi Rogers theme this month) and Susan May Pratt. Silver has made some movies I truly love (Hester Street, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Between the Lines, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Crossing Delancey, and A Fish in the Bathtub), and this was her second-to-last project. Rowlands is my favorite actor ever, so I was thrilled to discover this—above all—as such a meaningful vehicle for her. Rogers is one of my all-time crushes, and she’s terrific here. Pratt, who I was unfamiliar with, is luminous, too. This moves so smooth and easy. It’s just goddamn delightful, and it has the qualities of a classic from the forties or fifties. A true gem.
Lux Æterna (Shudder)
Holy shit, if you like screaming in movies, chaotic movies about making chaotic movies, movies that are under an hour, and a shit ton of sacred and profane imagery as much as I do, this might be the goddamn mountaintop. I thought I didn’t dig Gaspar Noé, but—after Vortex and this—I guess I do. Both Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle are transcendent.
Heat (Tubi, Hoopla)
Nope, not that one. Though, of course, I’m a big fan of Michael Mann’s Heat, I’m here to preach today about Burt Reynolds’s Heat. There’s definitely some stuff that’s not great in this Vegas-set neo-noir directed by Dick Richards, but I had so much goddamn fun with it. Plays like something Shane Black might’ve written, which makes sense because screenwriter William Goldman (who also wrote the novel this is based on) must’ve been a big influence on Black. It’d make a good double with the Mimi Rogers and Tyne Daly made-for-TV movie Tricks—feels like they’re part of the same universe—and I recommend the hell out of it for fans of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. Takes some nice, unexpected turns, and Burt’s terrific. Commencing a Burt kick now—I’ve seen a lot of the obvious big stuff, but there’s plenty (like this) that I missed or avoided over the years.
Keane (Criterion Channel)
Man. Hadn’t seen this since it came out. Harrowing and heartbreaking and claustrophobic. So much under the surface. A movie that truly feels like New York City. Incredible performances by Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin, and Amy Ryan.
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. His novella Everything Is Broken was published in Southwest Review Volume 104, numbers 1–4. His website is williammichaelboyle.com.
Illustration: Jess Rotter
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