Instant Picks of the Week 6/17/16
Gone are the days of scrolling mindlessly through your queue! No longer will you have to sift through the vastness of what’s coming to the instant viewing wastelands this month! Whether you’re looking for a stellar film or an exciting new show to binge, Instant Picks of the Week brings you the hottest releases in film and television on instant viewing platforms that we know you’ll love, or at the very least not despise.
CREATIVE CONTROL (Amazon Prime)
It’s like a Kubrick fan had a field day toying around with every facet he liked about Spike Jonze’s HER. Clever, sexy, sleek and visually streamlined, CREATIVE CONTROL boasts some brilliant orchestral tributes to the late master of cinema, and marvelous visual prowess thanks to its sharp digital imagery and CG renders. Embedded with an augmented reality that never feels impractical, but dangerously dissociative, CREATIVE CONTROL is a shockingly potent portrayal of our near-future. Capturing these tech-bros in an urban environment cleverly asserts the claim that Silicon Valley has expanded into a massive corporate industry, and the Madison avenue men of yesteryear pale in comparison to the pill-popping hipsters that make up this desaturated universe. It’s charming, it’s funny, but perhaps its greatest achievement is that I can never shake the nausea it instills when watching a self-destructive workaholic lose himself to the machine he’s trying to market. CREATIVE CONTROL pulls some serious clout in an indie-film landscape that is filled to the brim with Best Coast-featuring, handheld-camera dramas. [Sergio Zaciu]
FINDERS KEEPERS (Netflix)
I have personally experienced a plethora of strange tales put to film, and I have to say that the documentary FINDERS KEEPERS is of the strangest. A highlight of last year’s Sundance NEXT Fest, this documentary tells the story of Grade-A White Trash John Wood and Eventual John Goodman Biopic Role Shannon Whisnant’s custody battle over an amputated leg that is way more charming and heartfelt than it has any right to be. After John Wood lost his leg in a tragic plane crash, he requested to keep the leg for reasons more well-meaning than could ever be guessed. The leg sat mummified and nearly forgotten inside a smoker in a storage unit before being inherited Storage Wars-style by fast-talking Whisnant. When Wood requests his leg back, Whisnant insists that it belongs to him since he paid for it — and so the battle ensues. The resulting adventure takes the viewer from family tragedy to Southern hijinks with plenty of hilarious stops and bombastic personalities along the way. Check out FINDERS KEEPERS this week for some feel-good craziness — but maybe wait until after dinner. [Kate Brogden]
