CriterionCast

Armchair Vacation: Five Films To Watch At Home This Weekend (December 13-15)

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Every day, more and more films are added to the various streaming services out there, ranging from Netflix to YouTube, and are hitting the airwaves via movie-centric networks like TCM. Therefore, sifting through all of these pictures can be a tedious and often times confounding or difficult ordeal. But, that’s why we’re here. Every week, Joshua brings you five films to put at the top of your queue, add to your playlist, or grab off of VOD to make your weekend a little more eventful. Here is this week’s top five, in this week’s Armchair Vacation.

5. Some Girl(s) (VOD)

With everyone and their mother working their way through some of the major pictures they may have skipped from earlier this year, a few smaller pictures deserve to be ranked up there as amongst the most interesting and most worthy of catching up with. One of them includes the latest film from director Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and is entitled Some Girl(s). Based on a play and subsequent script from writer Neil LaBute, the film stars Adam Brody as a man with a wedding on the horizon and some much needed closure apparently directly in front of him. Attempting to reconcile problems with a handful of his more disastrous relationships, the film is an interesting, if not all that groundbreaking, look at modern relationships, and the ability for humans to inflict emotional damage almost as easy as anything physical. With some wonderful performances and a brisk 90 minute runtime this is absolutely worthy of checking up with, particularly now since it is available to stream on VOD.

4. Sightseers (Netflix)

The latest film from the ever evolving genre master Ben Wheatley, this pitch black comedy is as engrossing a genre bender as we’ve seen this year. Ostensibly a horror/comedy/road trip picture, this film follows a burgeoning couple on a road trip that takes as series of turns so bleak and darkly hilarious that it is arguably one of the year’s best comedies. Proof that Wheatley has as deft a hand with mood, atmosphere and genre, this is a wondrously paced feature film and is a completely beautiful aesthetic piece with stunning photography from Laurie Rose (who also shot one of last year’s best films, Kill List, also from Wheatley) that is an evocative comedy from one of today’s most original voices. Now available on Netflix.

3. Tell Them Anything You Want (Fandor)

With his death still very much on the minds of many people despite nearly 18 months since his passing, those looking to once again delve into the work, the life and most importantly the mind of legendary author Maurice Sendak can now do so via Fandor. Coming opposite his adaptation of Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze directed this short documentary/interview with Sendak entitled Tell Them Anything You Want, and it’s an absolute must watch. An exciting and often times troublingly melancholic look at the work and life of this iconic writer, the film allows Sendak to step into the spotlight one final time, talking about everything from his books to his sexuality and everything in between. It’s a moving portrait of an artist near the end of his life and unwilling to let it take him down without speaking his mind one final time, and is one of the more affecting documentaries about a creative mind we’ve seen in years. A must-watch.

2. The Hunt (VOD)

Not at all an upbeat watch or an exciting picture to take hold of, this breathtaking drama from legendary director Tomas Vinterberg is arguably the most intriguing dramatic picture you’ll watch all weekend. With a truly powerful performance from lead Mads Mikkelsen, the film tells the tale of a man accused of assaulting a young child, and the mob think that takes hold of the small, intimate village it takes place in. A deeply affecting meditation on truth, belief and the aforementioned mob-think that is so common place in today’s world, the film is spearheaded by the tour de force lead performance and brought to bewildering dramatic heights by Vinterberg, a director so at the very top of his directorial powers with this film that it becomes a starkly intimate and oppressively claustrophobic look into some of the darkest parts of the human psyche. Simply put, it’s one of the year’s best films.

1. An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty (VOD)

And this one may very well be the top of that year’s best list. From first time feature director Terrence Nance, this indescribable creative endeavor is quite possibly one of the most inventive films we’ve seen in ages. Taking a look at a single moment in a man’s life (a woman cancels a date with him) by looking not only at every relationship the man has ever had but ultimately looking at how we human beings express love and feel the emotion, Nance’s picture blends various types of animation and live action filmmaking into what is not only a deeply powerful creative venture, but very likely as introspective and powerfully reflexive a film as this year has given us. Bold, bombastic, histrionic and arguably pretentious, the film is all of those things rolled up into a ball so engrossing and intellectually and emotionally rewarding that it simply becomes what I think it sets out to be: the human experience of love told through art.

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.