If you go to the movie theaters this weekend, you’ll either be scared out of your wits or swept off your feet by a retro love story. The horror film Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage and the 1960s-set rom-com Fly Me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are the primary new releases, with the hit animated films Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 also still going strong.
If none of those movies appeal to you, have no fear. If you have Netflix, and we’re pretty sure you do, you have thousands of options to choose from each month. But with so many options comes a dilemma: Which movies are worth your time? The following three movies are guaranteed to engage both your mind and your spirit, and may just leave you a different person than the one you were before the weekend even started.
Freud’s Last Session (2023)
Sigmund Freud loomed large in the 20th century as a figure largely credited with revealing the hidden workings of the human mind. The famous founder of psychoanalysis lived a fascinating life that’s ripe for examination, and in Freud’s Last Session, his often-antagonistic relationship with author C.S. Lewis is explored with intelligence and compassion.
Freud, an atheist, clashes with the devoutly Christian Lewis, who would pen the allegorical fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. The two men discover they have more in common than they first thought as they discuss professional rivalries (Freud versus Carl Jung, Lewis versus JRR Tolkien) and past traumas (specifically Lewis’ time as a soldier during World War I). This is heady stuff, but the film never feels stuffy, and Hopkins breathes warm, humorous life into a figure not known to be that accessible or charming.
Freud’s Last Session is streaming on Netflix.
Miami Vice (2006)
Bad movie adaptations of old TV shows are a dime a dozen. Remember Car 54, Where Are You? or Dennis the Menace or Starsky & Hutch? Better yet, don’t; they’re all horrible. But one of the best ones ever is 2006’s Miami Vice, which somehow managed to give depth and nuance to a property more known for its slick style and ’80s fashion sense than for its complex characterization. It helps that the series’ creator, Michael Mann, directed the movie, which is more in line with the filmmaker’s other works like Heat and Collateral than anything else.
The movie Miami Vice still has Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) as its two brooding leads, but instead of battling cheesy, villain-of-the-week foes and engaging in sanitized, broadcast network-friendly violence, the two detectives must solve a complex mystery involving FBI informants, drug smugglers, and the Aryan Brotherhood.
Along the way, both men fall for people they shouldn’t. That’s especially true of Crockett’s dangerous infatuation with Isabella (Gong Li), a drug kingpin’s girlfriend. Long on plot and style, Miami Vice is for anyone who loves action films with explosive nighttime gunfights and a synth-heavy score to groove to in-between the bloodshed.
Miami Vice is streaming on Netflix.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Sometimes, a director’s biggest bomb could be his or hers most charming movie, and that’s certainly true for The Hudsucker Proxy. The Coen Brothers film about an idealistic young man whose dreams are crushed by a big corporation, was one of 1994’s biggest duds, with critics and audiences alike rejecting the movie’s unique blend of highly stylized fantasy and cynical worldview. But it’s one of the decade’s most original movies, and one that deserves reconsideration.
Tim Robbins stars as Norville Barnes, a wide-eyed country boy new to New York City who gets roped into a a nefarious corporate overthrow plot orchestrated by Sidney (Paul Newman). It seems Sidney wants to take over Hudsucker Industries after the founder and CEO kills himself, an act that threatens to turn the company over to the public. Sidney’s solution? Tank the company’s stock by appointing an innocent doofus to run the company into the ground. That’s where Norville comes in. A dreamer, Norville is willing to do anything so that he can have enough time and funding to create his best invention: the Hula Hoop. You know, for kids.
It sounds dry, but The Hudsucker Proxy is as much a fantasy as Brazil or Harry Potter. Set in an alternate reality 1958, the film boasts truly striking Art Deco-inspired sets and a wonderful score by Carter Burwell, who would later compose for movies like Being John Malkovich. Newman makes for a fine, dastardly villain, and Robbins and co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a tough-talking reporter who speaks like Katharine Hepburn, have great chemistry together.
The Hudsucker Proxy is streaming on Netflix.
