The Watch List Top Ten

The Watch List has picked up a lot of new subscribers this week – my Tuesday “Here & Now” appearance talking about best streaming movies seems to be a factor – and it’s well past time that I pinned to the home page a Top 10 of this newsletter’s greatest hits: The little-known movies on demand I’ve recommended over the years that have had the biggest impact on readers. These are the films for which I literally get thank-you e-mails from you guys – under-the-radar surprises that make your subscribing to all those on-demand services (and hopefully the Watch List) worthwhile. None of these titles will be new to regular readers, but if you’ve just arrived here, this is a good place to start.

 In addition, there’s a very special bonus for paid subscribers at the bottom of this post, partly to entice you to sign up and partly – well, you’ll understand when you get there.

In alphabetical order, here’s the Watch List Top 10:

 “Border” (2018, streaming on Kanopy, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – From my February 12, 2024 post: A Swedish film that starts out as a character study about a most unusual character and then, over the course of its running time, sends out tendrils into several different genres: Romance, fantasy, police procedural, a folk-tale sort of horror. Throughout all this, director Ali Abbasi maintains a scrupulous and tenderhearted empathy for the movie’s central figure: Tina (Eva Melander), a customs inspector at a passenger ship terminal in a busy Swedish port city. A few things immediately mark Tina as different. First, she’s uniquely ugly, almost grotesque, with a feral aspect that makes her seem like she’s not quite swimming in the same genetic pool as we are. Second, she’s able to smell fear or guilt on other people, which makes her remarkably suited to the job of customs inspector… “Border” is a psychodrama that moves closer and closer to the edge as Tina gets in touch with her inner outlander. The crucial scenes come just as the penny drops and we understand why Tina is who she is and why she has the job she does. Everything that ensues — and you may not be able to shake the images and events in this movie for quite some time — is just water under that bridge.

“Diane” (2019, streaming on Kanopy and elsewhere, for rent on Apple TV) – From August 21, 2023: Writer-director Kent Jones’ lovely, minor-key drama about a small-town Good Samaritan who helps her community without ever quite being part of it represents Mary Kay Place’s first lead film role after a lifetime of supporting performances… The movie has commonalities with “Manchester by the Sea” — like that film, “Diane” unfolds in a wintry Massachusetts (although it was shot near Kingston, N.Y.), and like that film it centers on a character who seems to have been forgiven by everybody but herself. … It is, among other things, a film about women — older women, especially — getting through the daily wreckage of life with weariness and grace. … Without making a big deal about it, ‘Diane’ explores questions of faith, but it ultimately finds greater spiritual meaning among the living. I found myself wishing I could show it to Dianes I have known; you may, too. It’s less a movie than a familiar home on a country road at dusk, its windows lit up in welcome.

“Dick” (1999, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and elsewhere) – From January 12, 2022: This enjoyably silly alterna-history satire is too young to be considered a classic and too old to have lingered in the pop-culture memory banks. It came, it got good reviews, and it disappeared over two decades ago, but every time I suggest it to someone, they come back glowing. Plus, it’s a kick to see the young Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams flex their comedic muscles. They play Betsy and Arlene, two 15-year-old besties in Washington, D.C., in 1972. Betsy lives with her family in Georgetown and Arlene with her widowed mother in an apartment in the Watergate complex. You can see where this is going: The two sneak out on the night of June 17 to mail a fan letter to Bobby Sherman and tape the door to the parking garage open, in so doing causing the Watergate burglars to be discovered by police. So, yeah, that was them. The comedy of “Dick” lies in watching almost every familiar Watergate twist and trope tied back to two teenage girls with the common sense of a pair of yams (H.R. Haldeman's opinion, not mine). It is weightless, dumb, very clever, and quite sweet – and former White House counsel John Dean served as script advisor! 

“It’s Always Fair Weather” (1955, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – From September 16, 2021:  Is “Singin’ in the Rain” the best musical to ever come out of Hollywood? Sure, and it’s a great gateway drug for turning kids on to old movies. But favorite musicals are another matter, and mine has always been “It’s Always Fair Weather,” from 1955. … Starring Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd, it features four of the most delightful song and dance numbers you’ll ever see: The three stars dancing with trash can lids on their feet (the movie was shot in Cinemascope for a reason), Cyd Charisse charming the pugs in a boxing gym (“Baby, You Knock Me Out”), Dolores Gray gunning down her suitors in a diva fit (“Thanks a Lot But No Thanks”), and Kelly doing a tap dance on roller skates that on a technical level is simply astounding and on the entertainment level is simply a joy.

“Lucky” (2017, streaming on Kanopy and Hoopla, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and elsewhere) – From August 9, 2021: The great, gaunt actor Harry Dean Stanton (“Alien,” “Paris, Texas,” “Repo Man,” a zillion others) left us at the age of 91 in September of 2017. Less than a month later, like an unexpected bequest, “Lucky” was released to theaters – a fond final starring role for a performer who too often made his mark from the sidelines. It’s a shaggy dog of a movie but a lovely and profound one, and it’s built around the actor the way you might build a church around a tree. … Stanton’s the Lucky of the title, an old coot in a dusty desert town where everyone knows everyone and everyone gets along; the movie’s as casual as an old sock, but every moment in it is freighted with an awareness of life’s fragility, the luck we have to be here, and the difficulty in accepting the notion that someday we won’t.

“On the Seventh Day” ("En El Septima Dia") (2018, for rent on Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – From the Boston Globe, July 16, 2020: This never made it to Boston theaters and I only caught up with it later – but what a find! Observant, full of heart, and at times unbearably suspenseful, it’s about a Mexican immigrant delivery man (Fernando Cardona) in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the weekend soccer games in which he’s the team star, and the conflict that arises between his job and the league finals. Writer-director Jim McKay and his marvelous cast give faces and souls to people many of us look through each day. A wonderful movie.

“Riders of Justice” (2020, streaming on Prime Video, Kanopy and Hoopla, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – Yes, yes, I’ve written about this one a lot, but there’s a reason: When any of you folks actually see it, you come back to tell me how much you love it. Rather than excerpt from my post of August 21, 2021, I’ll just send newcomers to read the whole thing. Thank me later.

“Rye Lane” (2023, streaming on Hulu) – From March 23, 2023: It looks like it was made out of shoestrings and love and it doubles as a vacation in London just as the magnolias in the parks start to bloom. The feature debut of director Raine Allen Miller, with a script that fizzes and grins, it’s the story of a daylong meet-cute between Dom (David Jonsson), first seen sobbing in a bathroom stall over a recent breakup, and Yas (Vivian Oparah), a human tornado with a fuzzy pink purse. There’s not a lot more to it than the two leads walking and talking and bantering through the neighborhoods of Peckham, Brixton, and other South London locales – all right, there is a bit of breaking and entering, plus a backyard barbecue with some suspicious Aunties that’s a comic high point – but the vibe is so infectious, the colors so happily overripe, and the soundtrack so blissful that it’s hard not to fall for the damn thing.

“Short Term 12” (2013, streaming on Prime Video, Peacock, Kanopy, Hoopla, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – From October 16, 2023: Writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s second feature film is a successful expansion of a nearly perfect 2008 short that fictionalized his own experiences as a counselor at a county-run residential treatment facility for troubled teens. One enjoyable aspect of watching this ten years after it was released is seeing so many young actors who have gone on to bigger things: Brie Larson, two years ahead of her Oscar win for “Room,” in the lead part of the facility’s general manager with skeletons of her own in the closet; a boyish LaKeith Stanfield (“Sorry To Bother You,” “Knives Out,” TV’s “Atlanta”) reprising his role from the short as a frightened kid about to age out of the system; Kaitlyn Dever (“The Last of Us”) as a snotty, wounded new arrival; Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) and Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) in smaller roles as fellow staff members. 

“What Maisie Knew” (201, streaming on Prime Video, Kanopy, and Hoopla, for rent on Apple TV and Fandango at Home) – From May 22, 2023: A modern-dress adaptation of a 1897 Henry James novel, told entirely from the point of view of a 6-year-old girl (the remarkable Onata Aprile) as she watches her parents’ relationship come apart. The setting is New York’s SoHo, which the gifted directing team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel paint as an enchanted forest of sunlight and sidewalks. Here be monsters: Maisie’s mother, Susanna (Julianne Moore) is a neurotic rock star past her prime, and her father, Beale (Steve Coogan), is a well-spoken British art dealer with the gift of shirking responsibility. After the two split and pair up with others, we come to see that the newcomers have the innate gift of kindness the girl’s mother and father lack, and you wonder, as the filmmakers do, why terrible parents can't simply be fired. “What Maisie Knew” is about the erosion of innocence in the midst of plenty, and if it doesn’t follow the title character into adolescence, as James did, it catalogues the many insults, small and large, against Maisie’s faith in the adult world. Yet the film rarely feels heavy-handed, so serene is its own faith in its dreamy young heroine’s strength. 

Here's the bonus...