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 for Unstreamable? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
United States, 1988, 126 min, Dir. Alan Rudolph
God, there’s just something so erotically charged about the Lost Generation. Perhaps it’s the fact that Americans were wandering about in Paris, making art and riffing to each other about the meaning of life. Or maybe it’s simply that rent was cheap and a community of artists had nothing better to do than have multiple affairs with one another. In any case, Robert Altman acolyte Alan Rudolph’s debut feature The Moderns situates itself in the horny period of the 1920s in Paris, following a down-on-his-luck artist named Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) as he starts forging paintings to get a quick buck, trying to win back his estranged and remarried ex-wife, Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) in the process. Seeing as it’s based partially off of The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (Kevin J. O’Connor) lurks around the edges of this picture, making snide comments and slurping down drinks like they’re water. The always sublime Geraldine Chaplin plays Nathalie de Ville, a beguiling woman who commissions Nick to forge the paintings for her own gain. The Moderns actually sorta reminded me of another unstreamable classic, Henry & June, in its yearning, modernist sensibility and romantic, sultry schmooze. There’s something so wondrously and creatively fertile about that moment in time! JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Directors section under Rudolph, Alan or rent it by mail.
United States, 1995, 98 min, Dir. Craig Singer
I dug around Scarecrow's BANG!! section this week and came out with Animal Room, an indie written and directed by Craig Singer. It pitches itself as a modernized version of Clockwork Orange, set in a dystopian New Jersey high school in the '90s where most students look like they're in a Temple of the Dog music video. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as Arnold Mosk, a smart but "troubled" teen with a drug problem, and Matthew Lillard as Doug Van Housen, a homicidal bully who moonlights as a gay hustler. Doug and Arnold's school hates them, and unfortunately for them, the school’s administrators just created an experimental program that sends all its bad kids into an underground lair, depriving them of resources and confining them together, away from the good students. Turns out throwing all the troubled kids into an unsupervised bunker is a bad idea, and blood and bangs ensue. Given the movie’s setup (and one of its taglines being "some spaces were never meant to be safe"), I expected more blood and banging. But Lillard and Harris have good chemistry (it often borders on homoerotic), and Lillard dresses like a Shakespearean goth, which is fun. So, all in all, it’s got enough going for me! Also, The Misfits make an appearance! CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Bang! section or rent it by mail.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*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
