Armchair Vacation: Five Films To Watch At Home This Weekend (June 7-9)

Just over a week ago, Criterion launched what is one of the most interesting streaming series we’ve seen in some time. Entitled the “101 Days of Summer,” the company is spending the season shining a light on their Hulu Plus page, including adding new pictures and highlighting those that are already on the website. And this is just one example of how streaming services are still coming up with ways to make it impossible to find a will to leave one’s house. Arrested Development is back via Netflix, and every day The Warner Archive seems to add new pictures to their recently launched service. Here are just a few stars from this week in streaming:

5. Jean Paul Belmondo Spotlight (TCM; Saturday)

Starting at 8pm sharp, TCM will be turning over their network to a new spotlight looking at the career of one legendary thespian named Jean-Paul Belmondo. As part of The Essentials series, the network is airing three of the actor’s films, including the greatest film ever made, Breathless, a superb Louis Malle comedy that should be on its way to Criterion one day, The Thief Of Paris and a war film from Vittorio De Sica, Two Women. I myself am most interested in the Malle film, as he and Belmondo are two of my favorite cinematic entities. The De Sica film is of note as well, as it stars Sophia Loren in one of her most iconic performances. All three films are absolutely superb and should make for a good night’s worth of must-see television.

4. Kafka (YouTube)

One of the most talked about pictures in recent memory, given its director’s retirement and pending re-cutting of the picture, Steven Soderbergh’s hard to hunt down drama, Kafka, is in fact available to stream on YouTube in its entirety. It’s not the best quality stream on the planet, but for a film as hard to watch Soderbergh’s great picture, you’ll take what you can get. The film itself is actually quite great. Starring Jeremy Irons, the experimental art-thriller follows the story of Franz Kafka who, while in Prague, is thrust into a world of murder, intrigue and secret societies. With a startling script from Lem Dobbs, the film is a thrilling bit of proto-noir, that gets great performances out of its top notch cast, and an even better turn from a Soderbergh at the very height of his experimentation. Hopefully a contender for The Criterion Collection in its upcoming new cut, the picture is an absolutely great picture that is as gorgeous as it is absolutely confounding.

3. Elephant

With his legendary Scum now available on Blu-ray via Kino, the spotlight has rightly been put back on late director Alan Clarke. Be it this iconic, if all but unwatchably brutal Scum or the various other films in his canon, one short stands out. Entitled Elephant, Clarke’s short film is relatively hard to fine, and it may be his most vicious picture of all. His final film, the director’s picture is set in Ireland during the time known as “The Troubles,” and is a devastating drama that portrays a series of killings with little to no context. Best known as the inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s film of the same name, Elephant is a brooding depiction of violence that is as beautiful in its use of a fluid camera as it is terrifying in its portrayal of context-free violence. Hopefully one day the box set of Clarke’s films released by Blue Underground will be able to find its way onto Blu-ray, because this is one that people should not avoid.

2. Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (Hulu Plus)

Besides having the greatest name of any film ever put to screen, Les Blank’s fantastic documentary short is something of a masterwork. Looking at the appreciation for the vegetable known as garlic and those who believe it to be something more than just an additive to your favorite food, the documentary looks at the history of garlic through the eyes of historians, cooks and just regular people. Clocking in at just over 50 minutes, the film is a breezy watch, but may be the most exciting entrant so far in Criterion’s 101 Days of Summer. It’s engaging, enlightening, and is as much a meditation on human unity as it is a look at the actual thing known as garlic. Every culture, race, creed, sex, etc. has a great appreciation for garlic, and through Blank’s eyes, we see garlic as something that unites us at the most base level.

1. Speedy (Hulu Plus)

With his first entry into The Criterion Collection coming in the form of Safety Last in just a handful of days (possibly 2013’s best Criterion release, but more on that the day of release), the company launched their 101 Days Of Summer with a Harold Lloyd classic. Entitled Speedy, this film finds him as a man named Speedy, a fired soda shop worker who goes from spending a day impressing a girl to trying to make it as a cab driver in New York. Toss in an actual appearance from legendary baseball player Babe Ruth, and you have one of Lloyd’s most thrilling and heartfelt pictures. Featuring as many memorable and creative gags as Lloyd would ever put into his pictures, there is a sequence set at Coney Island that is as heartfelt as anything Lloyd was ever connected with, and the final few setpieces are absolutely raucous. Directed by Ted Wilde, the film feels like it will likely be Criterion’s next Lloyd release, and for just reason. It’s an awe-inspiring comedy that is just another example of how brilliant Lloyd truly was. Hopefully this and the pending Criterion release of Safety Last will once again have his name firmly among the ranks of the Chaplins and the Keatons of cinema history.