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 😊
THIS WEEK!!!!! We’re screening The Linguini Incident at Northwest Film Forum next week from Wednesday to Sunday. Come hang! RESERVE A SEAT!
Got a recommendation for Unstreamable? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER
UK, 1989, 124 min, Dir. Peter Greenaway
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is set mostly in a restaurant, Le Hollandais, that’s been mostly taken over by gangster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) and his cadre of violent goons. Every night they come into the joint, terrorizing customers, talking loudly, and causing a ruckus. One evening, a quiet solo diner (Alan Howard) catches the eye of Albert’s wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) and they engage in a passionate, doomed love affair. They fuck in different corners of the Le Hollandais right under Albert’s nose, aided by restaurant workers who despise their unwanted patron. Soon, their tryst becomes uncovered and puts both of their lives in danger.
Man — what a picture! The film is an absolute feast for the senses in all its ecstatic highs and lows. Deeply inspired by the Jacobean play ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Frans Hals’ 1616 painting “The Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia of Haarlem" (which appears in the background of the set), director Peter Greenaway staged the film like a play-painting, with every corner of the frame attended with fastidious devotion. The costuming — done by Jean Paul Gaultier — is sumptuous and changes color depending on what room the characters are in: red in the dining room, white in the bathroom, green in the kitchen, and blue if outside. But in all this beauty is a grotesque violence wrought by Albert — dumping salt on food, abusing Georgina, stuffing papers down a victims gullet, etc. The divine and the disgusting are intertwined, after all. JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Directors section under Greenaway, Peter or rent it by mail.
THE TWILIGHT
Iran, 2002, 83 min, Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof made headlines a few weeks ago when his new film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. After a record 12-minute standing ovation, his film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, went on to win the festival’s Fipresci Award. Set around a family’s paranoia during political unrest in Tehran, Cannes jurors applauded its “courageous story set in modern-day Iran that deals with the conflict between tradition and progress.” He’s known for making films like this—most notably There Is No Evil, which screened at SIFF 2021—but The Seed of the Sacred Fig stands out, especially since it could be the last film he shoots in Iran. After production ended, Iranian authorities sentenced Rasoulof to eight years in jail (something that’s happened to him before), and he indefinitely fled to Europe, where he’s now living.
While we wait to see The Seed of the Sacred Fig in the States, Scarecrow has some Rasoulof films to catch us up. The first I’d recommend is the other film of his I mentioned, the heavy but excellent There Is No Evil. The movie, told across four separate episodes, looks at Iran’s prison and execution system with shocking access—though it was the small moments of errands and family life that stayed with me. 5/5. Required viewing. Less required viewing is the unstreamable 2002 film The Twilight, about a husband and wife who meet and start a family inside an Iranian prison. It’s low-fi and less sharp than There Is No Evil, but if you become a Rasoulof fan, it’s the debut entry into his filmography. So, watch and share! CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Iran section or rent it by mail.
P.S. A trailer for The Twilight is hard to find, so here’s one for There Is No Evil.
*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.
