April 1st, 2024

TALK TO ME - Paramount+ w/Showtime

A24’s low-budget smash became the distributor’s highest grossing horror film (besting Hereditary) and their fourth highest grossing film overall. And now it will be their last film to go to Paramount+ w/Showtime. The company’s new SVOD deal with Max is already well underway, with titles such as Priscilla, Dream Scenario, and Dicks: The Musical (which all arrived in theaters after Talk to Me) already available on the Max platform. It’s clear the new deal includes dramatically shorter windows between digital release and SVOD launch. The A24/P+ w/Showtime window was typically 8 months between theatrical premiere and SVOD launch. The Max window looks to be about half that time.

April 2nd, 2024

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

We’re getting a little worried about our beloved Focus Features. This poorly reviewed satire is their third big flop of 2024, with Lisa Frankenstein and Drive-Away Dolls also whiffing in theaters. The rest of their 2024 slate has some genuinely promising titles (The Bikeriders, Dìdi, Conclave, Nosferatu) and some real question marks (Back to Black, Piece by Piece). We love that Focus is consistently putting interesting movies in theaters, even if something like The American Society of Magical Negroes doesn’t quite click. And we hope their aggressive PVOD and SVOD strategies will allow them to continue to thrive.

SNACK SHACK - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

Director Adam Carter Rehmeier based the premise of Snack Shack on his boyhood experience of operating the Steinhart Park Pool snack shack in his hometown of Nebraska City, Nebraska. The film was supported by a $200,000 grant from the Nebraska state government and filming occurred entirely within the state, which is likely why it feels more authentic and less generic than most films filmed in the usual Hollywood locations (LA, Georgia, Vancouver, etc.). Reviews have been solid, and while its theatrical run was nothing special, it should find its audience when it hits streaming.

April 3rd, 2024

WISH - Disney+

There’s no way to sugarcoat it, Disney had a rough 2023 at the box office. Title after title underperformed, all culminating in the shrug Wish received from audiences when it premiered in November. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Disney did to its brand by sending their titles directly to Disney+ during the pandemic. They’ve since righted the ship, giving each film a proper theatrical and PVOD window. But the toothpaste is out of the tube, and you can’t put it back in. Five years ago, it would be inconceivable for an animated Disney film not to reach $100M at the US box office. Wish struggled to reach $70M.

April 4th, 2024

LORD OF MISRULE - Hulu

The latest from schlock (not derogatory) auteur William Brent Bell, who’s last film Orphan: First Kill was a huge step up in quality from some of his previous efforts. To us, he’ll always be the filmmaker who dared to end a film (2012’s The Devil Inside) with a prompt to go to a website ‘for more information.’ You know what that gets you? An ‘F’ Cinemascore! Lord of Misrule looks interesting. We’ll definitely be checking it out now that it’s coming to Hulu.

MUSICA - Prime Video

Characterized as an “anti-musical musical,” Música tells an autobiographically inspired coming-of-age story about a young man named Rudy (YouTube star Rudy Mancuso) who, while searching for his identity, tries to balance college classes, career ambitions, cultural obligations, and the women in his life, all while dealing with the sounds both inside and outside his head. Mancuso tackled virtually all of the key creative aspects of the film, serving as its director, co-writer, composer, choreographer and lead actor. AND! He ended up winning the heart of his leading lady: Mancuso and Camila Mendes are currently a real-life couple.

April 5th, 2024

GIRLS STATE - Apple TV+

A companion film to their 2020 documentary Boys State, Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s film follows teenage girls from Missouri navigating a week-long immersive democratic experiment Girls State, learning how to build a government from the ground up. While the previous film’s depiction of young men navigating a mock-political environment was fascinating, upsetting, and sometimes nauseating, this film looks to be a bit more inspiring. Reviews out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival were stellar, so we’re really looking forward to this one.

HOW TO HAVE S*X - MUBI US, $14.99 Sale Only

Sorry for the coy asterisks, but every time we feature the title on our site, Google flags it as porn! Molly Manning Walker’s feature directorial debut is, of course, not porn. It is a sensitive coming-of-age drama that won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. In the film, sixteen-year-old best friends Tara, Em, and Skye head to the party resort of Malia on the Greek island of Crete for a rites-of-passage holiday. While Em will be off to college in the autumn, Tara and Skye are less certain of their futures. The girls all look forward to drinking, clubbing, and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. Tara, the only virgin in the trio, feels pressure to match the sexual experiences of her friends. Not to be missed.

KNOX GOES AWAY - $24.99 Sale / $19.99 Rental

Michael Keaton’s second feature as a director (after 2008’s The Merry Gentleman) landed with mixed reviews at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, with critics hailing Keaton’s strong lead performance, but feeling the actor was let down by the lackluster screenplay. Keaton plays a contract killer, who after being diagnosed with a fast-moving form of dementia, is presented with the opportunity to redeem himself by saving the life of his estranged adult son. But to do so, he must race against the police closing in on him, as well as the ticking clock of his own rapidly deteriorating mind. Sounds like an interesting premise! Maybe our low expectations will leave us pleasantly surprised.

NIGHT SWIM - Peacock

Lightning did not strike twice for Universal and Blumhouse in early January. Last year, murderous robot M3GAN danced her way in to our hearts and became a big hit for the studio. It proved audiences were hungry for some quality trash after the onslaught of end-of-year prestige offerings. So Night Swim seemed well-positioned to repeat that success. But ‘haunted, murderous pool’ is much harder to sell than ‘murderous robot doll.’ You can have 8 dancing M3GANs at an NFL game. You can’t have 8 dancing haunted pools. Still, we appreciate Blumhouse cranking out these high-concept thrillers. Night Swim might not be among their best, but it’ll definitely be something we check out on Peacock.

SCOOP - Netflix

Netflix is all-in on the royals. Scoop is the behind-the-scenes story of the women who negotiated with the Buckingham Palace establishment to secure the "scoop of the decade" that was the public catalyst for the downfall of Prince Andrew, in a televised interview which focused on Andrew's relationship with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of Andrew's sexual assault of a minor which Andrew denies and in early 2022 settled out of court for a £12 million settlement. The interview was later described as less a car crash than "a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion." To that, we say:

THE ZONE OF INTEREST - Max

Loosely adapted from the 2014 Martin Amis novel of the same name, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest was one of the most highly anticipated films of last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When it premiered, many predicted it would win the Palme d’Or. It lost to Anatomy of a Fall. Both films were nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, though only Zone was nominated for Best International Feature (Anatomy was not submitted by France, who chose The Taste of Things instead). Both films went on to Oscar success, with Anatomy winning Best Original Screenplay, and Zone winning Best International Feature and Best Sound. The latter award is one of the Academy’s most inspired choices in quite some time.

Happy Streaming Everyone!

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