🍿 A thriller to stream this weekend
Happy Thursday and welcome back to Smash Cut, the internet’s most consistently inconsistent movie newsletter. If you’re new here I’m your host Karl. Every Thursday I recommend my favorite movies available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, or HBO Max. Think of me of that friend you text on a weeknight when you just poured yourself a bottle of wine and want a movie to cry to. Love, Karl.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by our gorgeous friends at Paramount+. Try Paramount+ free for one week and stream some of my faves like Babylon, Black Bear, Top Gun: Maverick, Scream VI, and much more.
Today’s movie: Fair Play 💼
▶︎ Streaming on Netflix (Oct 6)
What it’s about: Emily (Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are a crazy, sexy, cool couple drunk (and horny) on their recent engagement that they have to keep secret since they work together at a highly competitive hedge fund firm. But when Emily is promoted over Luke, insecurity, competition and jealousy threaten to destroy their relationship. Here’s the trailer.
Why you should watch it: Fair Play plays like a ticking time bomb as the couple’s relationship is put under the strain of Luke’s arrogance and Emily’s ambition.
It’s the balancing of those two threads that make the movie — particularly writer director Chloe Domont’s sharp screenplay — so impressive. At times, the movie is a corporate barnburner about Emily navigating her newfound success as a woman in an industry that is decidedly a boy’s club. In others, it’s a darkly funny psychosexual relationship drama about how deviations from the traditional gender dynamics can send men into a tailspin — let’s just say Luke probably loved Joker. And at its most satisfying, both worlds come careening together as the pair navigate the minefield of their relationship in the workplace.
Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich give powerhouse performances that give the melodrama some much needed gravitas. Cutthroat, sharp and entertaining as hell, Chloe Domont didn't come to play.
🎬 Chloe Domont // 🖊 Chloe Domont // 🎭 Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, and Rich Sommer
More movies, less problems
Here are a few more movies that I loved recently, in theaters or streaming:
🥊 Bottoms
Emma Seligman’s vision of high school in Bottoms is equal parts satiric and surreal. Like if Luis Buñel directed The Breakfast Club or Andrei Tarkovsky directed Clueless. The pure absurdity of Bottoms is something to marvel at. Like the movie’s tagline suggests — “a movie about empowering women (the hot ones)” — it’s completely aware of the near-parody that it is. And thanks to Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott’s performances that cement them even further as our brightest rising stars, Bottoms rides on top for most of its runtime.
Read my full review →💔 Passages
Passages follows a narcissistic director who can’t stand when people in his real life don’t follow the script he’s written in his head (i.e. every sad Brooklyn boy who’s “working on a script”). With darkly funny humor and painfully relatable characters, writer-director Ira Sachs crafts a sharp and incisive movie about gay men, relationships and the entanglements we find ourselves in.
Read my full review →🇺🇸🇬🇧 Red, White & Royal Blue
Red, White & Royal Blue is every bit as corny and sappy as you’d expect for a romantic comedy with a premise as improbable as the First Son of the United States and the Prince of Great Britain falling in love — but it’ll have you grinning from ear to ear. With a clear queer perspective and strong chemistry between Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, it’s almost impossible to resits.
Read my full review →
📽 P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here.
🍅 I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes! You can find new movie reviews here and here.