This year’s Netflix movie lineup also includes one of the indisputably greatest films of all time, and one that is sure to rank among them in the decades to come.
7. “Girl, Interrupted” (Now Streaming)
1999 is historically recognized as one of the great years for American cinema, “American Beauty” notwithstanding: “Magnolia,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Matrix,” “The Virgin Suicides.” Often left out of the mix is “Girl, Interrupted,” James Mangold’s wistful and haunted adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir about her stay in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s American Northeast. It’s stacked with a cast of ’90s icons, many of whom give their best performances, from Winona Ryder and Clea DuVall, to Brittany Murphy and Elisabeth Moss, to, of course, Angelina Jolie, who won her Oscar for playing the sociopathic Lisa Rowe, who riles up the institution into rebellion and panic.
6. “Stand by Me” (Now Streaming)
Rob Reiner’s 1986 film “Stand by Me” remains a touchstone coming-of-age classic 35 years later, and certainly one of the best Stephen King adaptations, here from his 1982 novella “The Body.” It’s a film that, for many of us, exists in the memory and is easily accessed without having to rewatch it — as key moments in our coming-of-age often are. The film most importantly served as a breakout vehicle for actors like Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, and River Phoenix. They play four friends who, in 1959, embark on a hike to find the dead body of a missing boy — and confront a bully played by Kiefer Sutherland.
5. “The Lost Boys” (Now Streaming)
Speaking of the 1980s, Joel Schumacher’s “The Lost Boys” served up a bloody delicious buffet of now-iconic actors in 1987: Corey Haim, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, and Corey Feldman, to name a few, but we’d be remiss not to mention Jami Gertz and Dianne Wiest as well. The film delivers a vampiric spin on J.M. Barrie’s tales of Peter Pan and Neverland, but what makes “The Lost Boys” endure is its ensemble of mostly unknown young actors, as director Joel Schumacher was best known for his canny eye for spotting fresh talent. A reimagined take on the teen vampire classic is reportedly in the works with Noah Jupe (“A Quiet Place”) and Jaden Martell (“It”) starring, but it’s hard to imagine anybody topping the original.
4. “Interview with the Vampire” (Now Streaming)
And speaking of vampires… 1994’s “Interview with the Vampire” is also hitting the platform, rightly timed in honor of author Anne Rice’s death on December 11. While not quite introducing heartthrob Brad Pitt to the world after supporting but searingly impressive turns in “Thelma and Louise” and “True Romance,” Neil Jordan’s cemented his position on the marquees with the best of them. Here, he plays centuries-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, reincarnated as a New Orleans vampire by Tom Cruise’s Lestat de Lioncourt after a bloody attack. Few vampire epics hold a candle to the film’s scrumptious period details, but “Interview” is best remembered for the star-making turn of a then-10-year-old Kirsten Dunst as a child vampire who suffers tragically for her transformation.
3. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (Now Streaming)
David Fincher’s sleek adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s smash Swedish novel announced the steely, off-kilter talents of Rooney Mara to the world: Her antisocial hacker Lisbeth Salander earned Mara a Best Actress Oscar nomination in a movie undoubtedly too cool for the Academy, but one that’s now certainly the best of all the Larsson cinematic envisionings. Mara’s performance is a feat of muscular, balletic cunning, making her more than a match for Daniel Craig’s maverick journalist Mikael Blomkvist, with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ unnerving electronic score pumping through one masterfully, icily chiseled Finch set piece after another. It’s a hopeless movie, as indicated by the film’s deflating final shot where love, most certainly, doesn’t win, and the kind only Fincher could make.
2. “Taxi Driver” (Now Streaming)
It’s frustratingly ironic that Scorsese was accused of siding with “The Wolf of Wall Street” subject Jordan Belfort, as the filmmaker has always stood out for his steadfast refusal to pass judgement upon his characters, many (if not most) of whom have been difficult men under the thrall of their own moral turpitude. Writing about “Taxi Driver” in 1976, Pauline Kael observed that, “This film doesn’t operate on the level of moral judgment of what Travis Bickle does. Rather, by drawing us into his vortex it makes us understand the psychic discharge of the quiet boys who go berserk. And it’s a real slap in the face for us when we see Travis at the end looking pacified. He’s got the rage out of his system—for the moment, at least—and he’s back at work, picking up passengers in front of the St. Regis. It’s not that he’s cured but that the city is crazier than he is.” The crazier things get, the easier it is to see Travis clearly. Revisiting the film now, you might be surprised to find that he hasn’t changed, even as the world has continued to decay around him. —David Ehrlich
1. “Phantom Thread” (Streaming January 16)
“Kiss me, my girl, before I’m sick.”
“All your rules and your clothes and your money, everything is a game!”
“Were you sent here to ruin my evening, or possibly my entire life?”
“Don’t pick a fight with me. You certainly won’t come out alive. I’ll go right through you, and it’ll be you who ends up on the floor.”
I’m quoting these straight from my memory, and because no words do better justice to one of the most swooningly romantic and twisted love stories ever than those of the writer and director himself, Paul Thomas Anderson. I often think of “Phantom Thread” as a go-to cozy Christmas for the sick in the heart and head, but repeated viewings reveal the truly gushing heart at its center — and PTA’s almost pathological reverence to details, the music, the cutting, the inseams, and every stitch of fabric.
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