It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy.
Got a recommendation? Tell us at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
Canada, 1996, 100 min, Dir. David Cronenberg
My life has been cleaved in two: Before I Watched Crash and After I Watched Crash. It's hard to believe that we as a society were able to make more films after its release. This horny Cronenberg movie about cars says it all. Weirdly hot, but also cold as ice.
Based on a J.G. Ballard novel of the same name, Crash follows James Ballard (James Spader!), a film producer in a sexually unfulfilling and open relationship with his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger). When Ballard gets into a gruesome car crash, he and Catherine slowly become involved with a group of car crash survivors who have eroticized their accidents and the injuries sustained during them. They get wet over car crashes.
Together they grab each other's genitals and watch car crash simulations. Take pictures of bodies in twisted metal along the highway. Fuck each other's leg wounds. Their desire seems to be as mechanical as the vehicles they get hard for, but instead of thinking of their crashes as traumatic events, the group sees them as the pinnacle of eroticism. Slamming into another vehicle is one of the most intense feelings one can experience and survive, after all. "The car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event," says Vaughan (Elias Koteas), the pack's de facto ringleader. And you know what, I almost believe him. JAS KEIMIG
Find it on DVD in the Directors section under Cronenberg, David. Or rent it by mail.
UK | Italy | USA, 1999, 162 minutes, Dir. Julie Taymor
I'm not canceling Shakespeare. BUT. I do believe that devoting any part of your life to producing his play Titus Andronicus is psychotic. Primarily because the main plot centers around a character named Lavinia who is raped by two semi-queer incestuous brothers who cut off her hands and tongue. Shakespeare forces her to walk around the rest of the play moaning and signaling with her arms, which he refers to as stumps. It's vile. I studied classical acting for four years and can verify that the only guys who are really into Titus—and they're almost always guys—are the guys who should be thoroughly vetted by an HR department.
THAT SAID. There are two versions of Titus Andronicus that are outstanding. The fact that they exist means we can stop revisiting this play. The first version is the renowned Japanese Shakespearean director Yukio Ninagawa's 2006 production of Titus Andronicus, which is undeniably one of the best productions of Shakespeare in history. The staging, costuming, it's flawless. And the other one is director Julie Taymor's Titus, which stars Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, and other basically famous people. Taymor understands how to direct an epic opera, and the large scale sensuality she embeds into the film tempers the play's worst impulses. I watched it a decade ago and found it horrifying. But now, in a post Game of Thrones "Red Wedding" world, I actually think it's a little tame. Hm. CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Playwrights section under Shakespeare, William. Or rent it by mail.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
