September’s highlights on the major streaming services include a dark Marilyn Monroe fantasia, a Tyler Perry project unlike any other, a Naomi Watts horror remake and the fresh-from-theaters “Elvis.”
ON NETFLIX
Starts Sept. 23:
A Jazzman’s Blues
This Oscar-buzzy prestige film from the often-criticized comedy auteur Tyler Perry marks a major turning point for the director. It’s set during the Jim Crow South of the 1940s and beyond, where talented musician Bayou (Joshua Boone) falls in love with the lighter-skinned Black woman Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer). The affection is mutual, until hostile outside forces—Leanne’s family endeavors to marry their daughter to a white family, and the comforts such a union would afford—intervene. “A Jazzman’s Blues” is a longtime passion project for Perry, who told the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival earlier this month, “I feel like it’s all that I wanted it to be and more, so I’m ready for the world to see it.”
Starts Sept. 28:
Blonde
This year’s answer to “Spencer,” “Blonde” is another psychologically fraught, fictionalized take on a public figure whom the cameras loved. Balancing black-and-white with color for symbolic heft, it centers on the contrast between the public image of Marilyn Monroe as an objectified sexpot and her private life as an actor and model exploited by Hollywood. Cuban-born Ana de Armas crosses ethnic barriers to portray the breathy American actress, and the film also stars Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson. Writer-director Andrew Dominick (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”) adapted “Blonde” from a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is, notably, the first Netflix original movie, and the first release of 2022, to be rated NC-17 for its sexual content.
ON HBO MAX
Starts Sept. 1:
The Eyes of Orson Welles
Anything bearing the imprimatur of the great Irish film historian and video essayist Mark Cousins (“The Story of Film,” “Women Make Film”) piques my interest, and his critically acclaimed re-evaluation of Orson Welles is no exception. After receiving access to a trove of never-before-seen drawings by Welles, Cousins embarks on a journey through Welles’ life and career as filtered through his visual art—a largely unknown avocation for the radio personality, actor and director of projects like “Citizen Kane” and “Touch of Evil.” As often happens with Cousins’ burrowing movies, he plumbs the psyche of Welles from decades of historical hindsight, and finds his own obsession with capturing the artist’s genius all-consuming.
Starts Sept. 2:
Elvis
I’d be remiss if I ignored the hulking elephant in the room of the streaming-verse this month: the home video debut of “Elvis,” arriving a little more than two months after its lucrative box-office run (it has netted $277 million on an $85 million budget). Baz Luhrmann’s splashy and expectedly divisive take on the King (Austin Butler) and his fractious relationship with his nefarious manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks in a fat suit), hits all the signposts of Presley’s monumental career, one that, while not without controversies, can unquestionably be said to have permanently changed rock ‘n’ roll and the culture at large. The large and diverse supporting cast includes Olivia DeJonge, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Gary Clark Jr.
ON HULU
Starts Sept. 6:
Petite Maman
Celine Sciamma’s French import “Petite Maman” is not an original Hulu title; it played, briefly, in theaters early this year. But I’m highlighting it anyway because methinks you may have missed it, and it’s one of the best films of recent years. Following the death of her maternal grandmother, 8-year-old protagonist Nelly has accompanied her mother to grandma’s house to empty it out. Exploring the backwoods behind the home, she happens upon Marion, a girl her age and bearing a striking resemblance to Nelly herself. In an apparent time slip, Marion appears to be Nelly’s mother from her formative childhood years. Treating a science-fiction premise with matter-of-fact naturalism, Sciamma’s exquisitely moving meditation on childhood, mortality and the mother-daughter bond is a film unlike any you’ve seen, and well worth its scant 72-minute time commitment.
ON AMAZON PRIME
Starts Sept. 16:
Goodnight Mommy
This unnerving horror picture arrived with a stellar provenance: It’s a remake of a 2014 foreign-language film of the same name, which garnered widespread critical acclaim and was Austria’s official Academy Awards submission. The American version—the sophomore feature from indie director Matt Sobel—seems to hew closely to the original. It stars Naomi Watts in a virtually unrecognizable role as the mother of twin boys. She spends most of the movie in a haunting face mask, leaving only her eyes and mouth visible, due to an apparent “surgery.” But when she begins to exhibit bizarre and eventually threatening behavior, the boys are forced to reckon with the reality that the creature living with them may not be dear old mom.
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