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'Salt of the Earth' – fighting the power in 1954 on Prime Video and MGM+

The only American film ever to be blacklisted in the U.S., Salt of the Earth (1954) is an independently produced drama inspired by a real-life strike in New Mexico by Mexican-American mineworkers. The cast is comprised largely of non-professionals (many of them participants in the real strike) and the film was financed by the mineworker’s union and produced by socially-motivated artists that had…

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'Event Horizon' – a haunted space ship on Paramount+ and MGM+

A team of astronauts investigates an experimental American space ship that, after disappearing year before, suddenly reappears in the orbit of Neptune in Event Horizon (1997). Laurence Fishburne stars as mission commander Captain Miller and Sam Neill is Dr. Weir, the scientist who designed the mystery ship. Dressed in T-shirts and army green fatigues, Miller’s crew of smart talking pros finds a…

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The first big screen 'Fantastic Four' on Disney+

The original superhero family team first hit the big screen in Fantastic Four (2005), a busy, colorful, paper-thin comic book movie produced after Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men set a high bar and before the birth of the MCU. Given how well those movies reimagined the comics for live action cinema, Fantastic Four was something of a disappointment. Earnest Ioan Gruffudd was…

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Coming Attractions: Streaming in August 2025

Notable shows Jason Momoa cocreates and stars in “Chief of War” (Apple TV+, 8/1) as a Hawaiian warrior who attempts to unify the islands of Hawai’i before Western colonization at the turn of the 18th century. “The Paper” (Peacock, 8/4), from the creators of the American “The Office,” is a sitcom that sends the documentary crew to Toledo to chronicle the efforts of a publisher (Domhnall Gleeson)…

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'I, Robot' – the robotics (r)evolution on Disney+, Hulu and AMC+

Will Smith is Det. Del Spooner, a two-fisted, fast-talking, streetwise cop in near future Chicago, where robots are woven through the fabric of society, in I, Robot (2004). Suspicious of technology in general and robots in particular, he’s probably the last guy who should be investigating the death of Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the robotic pioneer who founded U.S. Robotics and created the…

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James Cagney is a 'Lady Killer' on HBO Max

James Cagney is the Lady Killer (1933) in this a spunky, snappy collision of gangster drama and show-biz comedy. Dan Quigley (James Cagney) is a two-bit hustler who muscles his way from back-alley crap games and crooked poker games to the top of the New York underworld. He’s top of the world until a murder sends him on the lam. He lands in Los Angeles, where he hustles his way to success a…

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'Brief Encounter' – the end of the affair on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Brief Encounter (1945), the last of four collaborations between director David Lean and playwright/screenwriter Noël Coward, isn’t just the pinnacle of their work together. Decades after its debut, it remains one of the most romantic films ever made. The bittersweet drama of an affair of the heart stars Celia Johnson as Laura, a suburban housewife who takes weekly trips to the city and falls in…

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Werner Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo' – bringing opera to the jungle on Prime Video, Peacock, and Metrograph

Fitzcarraldo (Germany, 1982) remains the most ambitious physical undertaking in German filmmaker Werner Herzog‘s five-decade-plus career. Klaus Kinski stars as the opera loving Brian Fitzgerald Sweeny (nicknamed Fitzcarraldo by the locals), a European would-be entrepreneur in South America who dreams of bringing the great Enrico Caruso to the jungle. To lure the famous tenor to the Amazon he…

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'The Bridge' – Two seasons of cultures in collision on Prime Video and Hulu

The U.S. has a long and complicated history of remaking foreign shows. There are a lot of failures, to be sure, but also a lot of success stories. The Bridge (2013-2014) is one of the more natural imports. The original show, a dark murder mystery procedural from Denmark, throws a cross-border complication into a case where the victim is found lying across the borderline on a bridge between…

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'Go' – one crazy night with Sarah Polley and Katie Holmes on Paramount+

Doug Liman stitches together a hip jigsaw puzzle of a film with sharp dialogue, cinematic pinnace, and interwoven storylines with Go (1999), his second feature. Think of it as a Pulp Fiction for the twentysomething LA underground scene. Borrowing a time-rewind trick that’s become popular in the wake of Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch, Go follows three narrative threads that all begin with the same…

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Peter Falk and John Cassavetes are 'Mikey and Nicky' on Prime Video, HBO Max and Criterion Channel

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk are best buddies together for a long, dark night of the soul in Mikey and Nicky (1976), Elaine May’s eclectic portrait of two petty, middle-aged goodfellas on the streets of Philadelphia Nicky (John Cassavetes), a trembling wreck convinced there’s a contract out on his life, calls his boyhood buddy Mikey (Peter Falk), who comes to his aid in the middle of the…

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'The Gleaners and I' – Agnes Varda celebrates the modern scavengers on Criterion Channel

In Jean-Francois Millet’s painting “Les Glaneuses” (Women Gleaning), three women comb a wheat field for grain missed by the reapers. That famous work of art captures a once-traditional activity made archaic with modern farming machinery. Archaic, perhaps, but not extinct. As filmmaker Agnes Varda observes in The Gleaners and I (France, 2000), “In the towns today as on the fields yesterday, the…

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'Robocop' – the future of law enforcement on Prime Video

A mix of science fiction, heavy metal action, and darkly, savagely satirical humor, Robocop (1987) is set in a near-future Detroit. Street crime overwhelms the city and the under-resourced police department has been privatized by Omni Consumer production, a soulless megacorporation that runs city services like a factory, complete with downsizing and cost cutting. Their plan is to replace the…

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'28 Weeks Later' – how not to stop a contagion on Disney+ and Hulu

28 Weeks Later (2007), the first sequel to Danny Boyle‘s ferocious zombie thriller 28 Days Later, takes us back to London six weeks after the virus has decimated the British Isles and ostensibly burned itself out. The American military (led by Jeremy Renner) patrols a Green Zone in London’s East End. The plan is to slowly clean up and repopulate the city with those lucky few Brits who escaped…

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'Antz' – a neurotic bug's life on Netflix

After Pixar turned the shiny new realm of computer animation into next frontier of blockbuster movie storytelling with Toy Story, it seems that every studio rushed to get in on the animation gold rush. DreamWorks launched its animation division with Antz (1998), a PG-rated comedy that turns the animation playground into theme park full of in-jokes for the grown-ups in the audience. Case in…

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'Summer Stock' – Judy Garland and Gene Kelly put on a show on HBO Max

Judy Garland teams with Gene Kelly for the third and last time in Summer Stock (1950), an original show-biz musical comedy about city performers on a rural farm. Jane (Judy Garland) is a young woman running the family farm basically alone since the death of her parents. Her sardonic housekeeper Esme (Marjorie Main) pitches in but, after three bad crops in a row and mounting debt, their long-time…

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'The Navigator' – Buster Keaton at sea on Criterion Channel and free on Kanopy

Buster Keaton revisits his familiar persona of a spoiled society dandy thrown into a surreal world in The Navigator (1924). Young millionaire Rollo Treadway (the sap in the family tree, according to a title card) embarks on a long voyage to nurse his broken heart when his lady love (Kathryn McGuire) turns down his proposal of marriage. Of course he winds up on the wrong dock and boards a…