Streaming Weekly December 2016 1.0

December 2, 2016Joshua Crabb Action, Animation, Comic Book, Documentary, Drama, Mystery, Streaming Weekly, TV0

It might be cold outside, but our contributors are stoking the fires of your streaming queues with three recommendations to kick off December. If you already saw all the new movies in theaters or just need a night in, check out the best of what the streaming services have to offer. So grab some eggnog, yuletide–whatever that is–and the popcorn and have a happy movie watching weekend as the holiday movie season continues!

via Blaine Grimes

The Night Manager (Amazon Prime) – We’ve been fortunate to see several adaptations of literary spymaster John le Carré hit the big screen over the past few years. There was Thomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy in 2011, A Most Wanted Man in 2014, and Our Kind of Traitor earlier this year. And now, based on the novel of the same name, The Night Manager has completed its run on AMC and made its way to Amazon’s streaming service. This six-episode miniseries—directed by Danish filmmaker extraordinaire, Susanne Bier—follows Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a nighttime manager at the hotel who is recruited by British secret service and tasked with infiltrating the inner circle of notorious arms deal Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). The show is packed with all the international intrigue and twist and turns we expect from a le Carré adaptation, and the narrative is packed full of so much information and so many characters that it benefits greatly from a binge-viewing. And the beautiful Mallorca set pieces are sure to bring you some warmth this winter season. If you’re a fan of more measured approaches to spy stories, you will not want to miss The Night Manager.

via The Film Avenger

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Parts One and Two (HBO Now) – This year’s animated adaptation of Batman: The Killing Joke was less than stellar because it did not stick to the already-brilliant story of the source material. It’s ironic that the same team who botched a classic tale like The Killing Joke hit a home run with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns four years ago. Based on Frank Miller’s seminal graphic novel from 1986, this adaptation is straight as an arrow – and just as cutting as the original comic. Batman, now in his fifties, comes out of retirement to battle a new enemy, turns a friend into an enemy, and closes the book on an old enemy. It’s an introspective story with a lot of ideas – mostly the question of what drives Bruce Wayne to be Batman. It also reinvented the Dark Knight, breaking him free of the self-mockery of the 1960s TV show and the lackluster comics of the time, paving the way for his big comeback in Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989.

via josh Crabb

The Witness (Netflix) – No, not that Witness starring Harrison Ford–which is a great movie–but the new documentary from first-time director James Solomon. Investigating the murder of Kitty Genovese, a famous New York murder made notorious for the 33 alleged people who witnesses the murder but did nothing, Solomon follows Kitty’s younger brother Bill Genovese on his quest to find some measure of peace with Kitty’s senseless murder. Bill returns to Kitty’s Kew Gardens neighborhood to interview some of the original witnesses cited in the New York Times report of the murder, and is shocked by some of the details he begins to uncover.

There have been many comparisons to the Serial podcast and I would say it fits the bill aside from the massively interesting person of Bill Genovese. He has a unique, dogged quality in his search to uncover more, but the movie slowly reveals a much more profound, powerful narrative to Bill’s quest. The final two sequences of the film where Bill talks to the son of Kitty’s murderer and he has the murder reenacted are some of the most impactful and emotional cinema veritae I have seen since Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. If this is not at least in the running for the Oscar I will be massively disappointed in the Academy. Go see this now!