Imaginative Sci-Fi, an Altman Classic and More, Now Available to Stream

When I have to go out into public spaces and I see folks without masks, there are two distinct explanations: Not everyone has a mask due to economic imbalance/opportunity; and some people are determined not to wear them because they are obstinate assholes who think they know better. I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s because they haven’t been able to get masks rather than assuming they’re awful and just don’t care.

Anyway, here’s the eighth installment of my ongoing series of things to watch, complete with links to trailers. Check out my past streaming recommendations here: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7.

Jupiter Ascending on Netflix

Jupiter Ascending is a dizzying marvel of imaginative space opera from Chicago’s reigning visionaries. What Lana and Lilly Wachowski do with this glitzy, bonkers, shimmering fantasy is blend together a secret princess fairy tale (this actually makes for a great double feature with The Princess and the Frog, now on Disney+ and Netflix), a family-succession soap opera, a political drama about an intergalactic empire built on human life, and all manner of alien creatures having laser fights — and it all fits together perfectly. Jupiter Ascending is a buffet of cinematic pleasure, like all of the Wachowskis’ efforts. In a just world, this is the film that Eddie Redmayne won his Oscar for. As it is, you get Channing Tatum as a genetically modified angel-werewolf warrior, Mila Kunis as a maid-turned-queen, so many amazing costume and spacecraft designs, and hench-dragons battling across the sky with supersoldiers on rocket skates. Did you know that bees don’t lie?

The Telephone on Tubi and Amazon Prime

The Telephone is one of those films maudits that was spoken of in joking terms for a year or so and then was lost to the sands of time, even omitted from would-be think pieces about late-’80s/early-’90s Hollywood having no idea what to do with Whoopi Goldberg. The 1988 film was directed by volatile treasure Rip Torn, written by Harry Nilsson (!) and Terry Southern (!!), and features Whoopi in close to a one-woman show (there are a few one-scene cameos throughout, including Elliott Gould and Hervé Villechaize, because why not) as an out-of-work actress slipping into madness, clinging to her phone as her only link to the outside world. So let’s just call it relatable. If you’ve grown to love films like O.C. and Stiggs (a near-masterpiece) or The Whoopee Boys (hell on earth for many), this is for you.

Aliens (the extended version) on HBO Now and Hulu

Aliens is a beloved classic, and anyone who still believes in physical media can tell you about its longer special-edition version, in print in some capacity since 1992 but not available in any legal virtual spaces for many years. That changes now. Those additional 17 minutes do some emotional labor on the backstories of icon Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for this performance), the ultratragic Jorden family, the Hadley’s Hope colony on Acheron/LV-426, and some Colonial Marine technology. And while the extra material blunts the laser-sharp focus of the film’s theatrical cut, it gives so much more texture and theme to what all unfolds. Sadly, every HD version of this film has been scrubbed of all film grain, leaving waxy abstractions of the camera negative; if there’s any justice, someone can do a restoration of that first 1992 CAV LaserDisc release of this cut, which was of such pronounced grain structure that it buffeted the emotions like a sandstorm. And if Disney is going to start letting alternate cuts breathe in digital spaces, let’s have that vastly superior Alien³ Assembly Cut work its way out into the streaming world — the physical releases have done reputation rehab on that troubled film since 2003.

Curse of the Blair Witch on Tubi and Vudu

This 45-minute “documentary” aired initially in 1999 on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) to promote the then-imminent theatrical release of The Blair Witch Project. Thanks to the film’s (at that point in time) unprecedented and innovative internet marketing, audiences opened up their unquestioning hearts to found-footage cinema in a way that every studio and a significant percentage of filmmakers have been trying to duplicate for the intervening couple of decades. This is the wind-up for the feature’s pitch, and they work masterfully together, building on the plausible threads of folk horror that entwine all American tragedies.

The Long Goodbye on Hoopla and Amazon Prime

Coming from right smack-dab in the middle of Robert Altman’s unequaled early-’70s streak of masterworks (M.A.S.H., Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, California Split, Thieves Like Us and Nashville) is his modern-day Phillip Marlowe film, putting Elliott Gould in the central role as a private detective trying to solve a vicious murder. A perfect pairing with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, this is a shambling mystery that never lets go of the viewer. It’s one of the most essential portraits of Los Angeles ever put on film, and it detonates the form of the detective story even as it never escapes the unspoken moral boundaries that uphold the traditions of the genre. This is mordantly funny and deeply upsetting, and if you’re looking for a way into the expansive oeuvre of Robert Altman, this is a great place to start.

Southland Tales on Mubi and Pluto

Sprawling, chaotic, stuffed to the gills with unexpected character actors and filled with apocalyptic mayhem, 2006’s Southland Tales had a vision of where America was headed. Whatever you’ve heard about it, or even if you were one of the few folks who watched this epic the first time around, this labyrinthine dive into a proto-fascist sci-fi hellscape — in which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson represents the hopes of industry for a New World Order — hits way too close to real life to be dismissed without some thought. Bereft of the Nikos Kazantzakis-meets-John Hughes majesty of Donnie Darko, this is a singular object that will get taught in history classes about just what the hell happened to the United States in the first quarter of the 21st century (assuming society hangs around long enough for the luxury of retrospective). This is a must for anyone who’s been grooving on The Midnight Gospel on Netflix as of late. Teen horniness is not a crime.