Cut the Cord: Double Features
September 2024. Volume 3, Issue 5.
Welcome back to Cut the Cord, our newsletter all about great movies on free streaming services.
This month, instead of presenting ten options, I'm programming five double features for your viewing pleasure. We've got political documentaries and space sexploitation and powerful musicals and Midwestern comedies and trashy thrillers - something for everybody!
Pop your popcorn, turn down the lights, and let me know how these doubles went. Have fun!
Barbarella (1968) and Molli and Max in the Future (2023)
In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.
A sci-fi romantic comedy about a man and woman whose orbits repeatedly collide over the course of 12 years, 4 planets, 3 dimensions and one space-cult.
I saw Barbarella on the big screen recently and was totally blown away by how intergalactically sexy it was. Was Jane Fonda a dorm room poster staple? Because she should have been. And I'm down for the Sydney Sweeney/Edgar Wright remake that's in the works. It's not like this movie is a masterpiece and if there are two people who make perfect sense for it, it's them.
Molli and Max has been called "When Harry Met Sally... in space" and although it's not nearly as good as that movie, I think it's a fun comparison - two on-again-off-again friends/lovers/aliens meet up again and again throughout space and time in a pretty clever twist on both the romance and sci-fi genres.
Hair (1979) and The Sixth (2024)
Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.
The Sixth is a visceral intersection of six extraordinary Americans whose lives will be forever changed by the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Hair is one of the rare cases where I like the movie version more than the stage show. I think it takes a lot of what makes the show great while improving on its ideas, themes, and, most of all, its final moments. It's a shocking and heartfelt war protest that holds up a mirror to our country in a way that's often difficult to watch. Plus, the movie has Treat Williams and Beverly D'Angelo...
The Sixth is a documentary about the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021. I believe that it also shows this country at its absolute worst, while also presenting the glimmer of hope and sanity that could help us find a way forward. Watching these two movies, 45 years apart, shows that the more things change...
The Heineken Kidnapping (2011) and Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015)
On a cold November day in 1983, beer magnate Alfred Heineken and his chauffeur Ab Doderer are abducted. What follows is the most infamous kidnapping case the Netherlands have ever known.
The true story of the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, the grandson of the founder of the Heineken brewery, and his driver.
This is less a double feature per se (I'm not sure how many people want to sit down and watch the same exact story play out back-to-back - unless it's all of us watching those dueling Fyre Festival docs from a few years ago), but instead a homework assignment for you. Watch both of these movies about the Heineken hostage situation and tell me which one is better. I watched the one with Anthony Hopkins (I got the Blu-ray from a Dollar Tree) and thought it was fine, but the Rutger Hauer one is calling my name because it has Rutger Hauer. Let me know if I should watch it, please!
Hundreds of Beavers (2022) and Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001)
In the 19th century, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.
A macho man in a family on the eve of deer-hunting season must deal with the eldest son’s curse of never having bagged a buck.
In a movie year full of them, Hundreds of Beavers might be the biggest indie breakout of the year. And that's because it's fantastic. It's so strong, in fact, that word of mouth about the largely silent, black-and-white live-action Looney Tune has been so strong that it's gotten people to seek out the movie despite the fact that largely silent, black-and-white live-action Looney Tunes aren't exactly box-office slam dunks.
Double it with Escanaba in da Moonlight, a movie that absolutely no one knows about. I think even fewer people know that Jeff Daniels runs a small theatre company in Chelsea, Michigan, where he produces and writes plays about people and situations found in the states and places that don't often have plays written about them. Escanaba in da Moonlight started as a play at Purple Rose Theatre Company before he adapted for the screen and cast himself in the lead. They're two silly comedies, in two very different ways, about Michigan hunting trips gone wrong.
Derailed (2005) and American Dreamer (2018)
When two married business executives having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, they are forced to turn the tables on him to save their families.
A down on his luck driver making extra cash chauffeuring a low level drug dealer around town, finds himself in a serious financial bind and decides to kidnap the dealer’s child.
We're going to end our list with two high-stakes, high-drama thrillers starring folks best known for their comedy chops.
Just one year separated from Friends, Jennifer Aniston was trying to see if she could do something totally different. As much as I love her, I think The Break-Up and Marley & Me are more in her wheelhouse, but this harsh and hardcore mystery is still strong enough and she's always excellent. Plus, there's Clive Owen and Vincent Cassel, for those who feel they need that sort of thing in their thrillers.
Meanwhile, Jim Gaffigan stars in a Redbox-adjacent low-budget actioner about a dude who makes bad decision after bad decision. To be completely honest, it's not a great movie, but instead one of those "let's see how crazy this shit is gonna get!" rollercoasters that I get a kick out of. And it's the perfect B-movie to the star-studded A-picture at the top of this double bill.
Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.