An Essential Documentary, Weird Sci-Fi and Dirty Dancing, Now Available to Stream

We’re casting the net wide this week, because it’s just too much of a discordant sea of everything no matter where you look. As always, what follows is a list of recommended titles now available to stream. Look back at past issues of the Scene for more recommendations: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9.

Welcome to Chechnya via HBO

An immersive document of a loosely structured group specializing in helping Chechen and Russian gays and lesbians escape to other parts of the world, Welcome to Chechnya is an intense experience that left me shaken at just how high the stakes are. Chechnya, a breakaway Russian republic now run by wannabe strongman/caricature Ramzan Kadyrov, has been undergoing a purge of its LGBTQ population since 2016. Kidnapping, torture, betrayal, “honor killings” and internet snuff video are the weapons that are deployed on a daily basis, and the Russian government on the whole seems fine with letting it happen. So we meet refugees (their identities obscured through cutting-edge technology that I don’t quite understand but some of the animators I know vouch for, impressed), unofficial social workers and lawyers all working to help better the situation for the besieged community. This documentary puts you right in the middle of it. Essential viewing.

Day of the Triffids on Tubi

There are a lot of killer-plant movies. The 1986 musical of Little Shop of Horrors is rightfully a classic; 2008’s The Ruins, currently streaming on HBO Max and a film I watched twice consecutively in the theater following an emergency root canal, will fuck with your sense of security in the best possible way. But they both stretch a leafy frond in tribute to 1962’s Day of the Triffids, wherein a brilliant meteor shower both blinds the majority of Earth’s population and brings to the planet the titular shambling horror: man-eating plants with serrated tendrils and a tendency toward murder. It’s a good siege narrative, with uneven but sometimes very effective effects. And it features a moment involving an airplane so unbelievably ghoulish that it boggles my mind that it was ever allowed to be screened to the public.

Dirty Dancing via Amazon Prime and Hulu

Say what you will about its rough-around-the-edges qualities — this movie is a classic that endures because it addresses a lot of important issues. Because of Dirty Dancing, I knew growing up that abortion was a necessary option for women. Because of Dirty Dancing, I knew that agency and personal liberation are a necessary part of evolution and achievement. Most importantly, because of Dirty Dancing, I knew from age 12 that anytime someone tried to get you to read or study the philosophy of Ayn Rand, they were trouble and it was time to run. The soundtrack still rules too, and Tennessee’s own Cynthia Rhodes (also a part of synth-pop band Animotion in the late ’80s) remains the emotional heart of the piece.

Serenity on Amazon Prime

As a society, we have The Room. We have Baaghi 3. We have Ben and Arthur. It seems like there’s always some film so utterly batshit-crazy (or inept) in its devotion to a narrative through line that average human beings just can’t key into it, and it thereby develops a cult following. So what to do with 2019’s Serenity? It’s a sexed-up thriller in the style of ’90s Cinemax After Dark (Matthew McConaughey serves more cake than the most relentless of bakers), but it’s also an elliptical meander like ’70s art cinema from the most obtuse of auteurs (specificity in this script is treated like flypaper). There’s domestic violence as a plot point (gross), repeated video game interludes (which I think writer-director Steven Knight is using like Assayas did in Demonlover), and a quest for a prized fish named Justice. Maybe you’ve encountered this film in the digital ether, and if so, you already know. But there’s nothing else out there like this. Have a mental margarita and strap in, because there hasn’t been anything in the intervening 17 months that compares — not even Cats.

Black Book on Amazon Prime

After leaving Hollywood following the fizzle of 2000’s interesting and provocative solid double Hollow Man, Paul Verhoeven regrouped to his home in the Netherlands and came up with this staggering World War II epic of deceit, survival and uncertain loyalties. It’s a masterpiece, and it will mess with you. Rachel (Carice van Houten, or Melisandre for you Game of Thrones fans) is a Jewish woman who infiltrates the Nazi power structure by any means necessary. When an errant bomber destroys the home she had been hiding in, she finds a new life as entertainer, resistance operative and bleach-blond badass Ellis de Vries. Verhoeven as a director has always blended arthouse and grindhouse aesthetics perfectly, and Black Book is a singular epic. You can see this film’s masterful blend of maximalist brushstrokes and pointillist emotional details resonating in Petzoldt’s exquisite Phoenix, but that film is ultimately aiming for a different emotional space; a requiem. Black Book is a movie about the tenacity and patient endurance of a woman who refuses to fade into anyone’s memory. Van Houten is great, and her scenes with best friend/party girl Ronnie (Halina Reijn, whose directorial debut Instinct is among the more anticipated foreign-language films of the year) are superb, leaving the viewer wanting more.

Splice on Netflix

There’s something about Canadian sci-fi. Perhaps it’s the nondescript, desolate winters. Maybe the extensive government funding that leads to all sorts of interesting facilities and institutes. It’s just more plausible that neutral architecture can yield something unspeakable within, and this 2009 effort from Vincenzo Natali (the Cube trilogy, TV’s Hannibal) gives great monster, and grounds things in relatable and effective central performances. Sarah Polley (she directed the best film of 2012, Stories We Tell, currently streaming on Tubi) and Adrien Brody are the scientists looking to root around in the plasma pool and make something magical. Or monstrous. As it turns out, the scientists’ creation Dren (played by Abigail Chu and Delphine Chanéac) is a bit of both, like a butterfly that eats eyelids, or a wendigo with ballet instincts. This film is gross, imaginative and utterly captivating. It takes the goalposts of a made-for-SyFy movie and goes so far with them that we as viewers are left in awe.