Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  It's been a bit rainy here in Chicago, which I know for our Canadian and Maine and PNW friends is annoying as you deal with massive heat waves.  I hope you all stay safe and maybe this week's column will be a nice distraction.

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The Great Beauty is a 2013 release that my good friend Amy Watts has been after me to watch for 8 years.  Actually finally buying the darn thing means I might actually watch it!  I know it's essentially about a long-time novelist reflecting on his life in Rome as he wanders about it.

Which, of course, makes me think of 8 1/2, in which a film director wanders around Rome as he reflects on his life.  I can only imagine that director Paolo Sorrentino knew exactly what he was thinking about here.  Imagine being an Italian director and knowing you always have Fellini, among many others, as someone looming over you but also someone you can riff off of.  (But not you, Rob Marshall; 9 is freaking terrible.)

The Great Beauty is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel as well as being available for rent/purchase at the usual places.

8 1/2 is streaming on HBO Max, Kanopy and The Criterion Channel.

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I was thinking to myself the otehr day, "When is the last time I watched Fiddler on the Roof"?  It's definitely been a few years, maybe a decade, for a movie I quite like and even acted in a stage production of in high school.  (Sadly, I played the one person in the musical who doesn't have a proper song, The Constable.)  But I have very fond memories of this, one of the better musicals to come out after the Golden Age.  Norman Jewison did great work with this and Jesus Christ Superstar.  Also, I'm always amused that people assumed Norman Jewison is Jewish because of his name and both of those movies, which he is not.  But if you want to check out a very good movie musical adaptation that digs into some dark subjects, Fiddler is very much work checking out.

Fiddler is streaming on Netflix, Prime, Hoopla and Pluto TV.

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Is it weird that I've always been a huge fan of Wynona Ryder and Angelina Jolie and yet somehow have never seen this?  Plus shit, Clea DuVall and Brittany Murphy?  I'm not usually one for psych ward movies (look, I don't like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) but that's a cast that intrigues the hell out of me.

And then, looking at this case and realizing...James Mangold directed this?  Talk about a man with a straight-up weird directing career.  He did Cop Land, which a lot of people regard as the single best Stallone movie.  Walk The Line, the rare musician biopic that is very much worth watching.  And then, of all things, he directs two excellent X-Men movies in The Wolverine and especially Logan.  The man can obviously direct actors, a skill that can get overlooked in an era of arranging spectacle, and that really makes me look forward to watching this.  Also, Logan is freaking great.

Girl, Interrupted is streaming on Starz.

Logan is streaming on Fubo and FXNow.

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Oooooh, this was a happy find.  I've been meaning to do a rewatch of Lost and maybe write something up on it and all of its weird imitators.  Maybe something about Awake or Manifest or Journeyman; so many interesting high-concept series in the wake of Lost, trying to recreate whatever weird magic it was that made Lost such a huge hit for ABC.  Also, it doesn't hurt that I don't remember exactly the weirdness that led to the ending of this; there's some alternate universe stuff, some Purgatory and also Fisher Stevens.

Lost is streaming on Hulu and IMdb TV.  

Manifest is streaming on Netflix.

Journeyman, the worst casualty of the 2007 WGA strike, is not streaming anywhere.

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Ah, Michael Crichton.  Talk about a man who could write schlock and sell it like crazy.  I really wonder what this novel, about a patient who gets a computer hooked up to his damaged brain, would have looked like in 1992 rather than 1972.  Would it have been a Lawnmower Man scenario with the brain taking over the Internet? 

Also, the trailer for the 1974 movie starring George Segal makes no sense at all.

The Terminal Man is not included in any streaming platform but is available for rent and purchase at the usual places.