THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 N C3As the season begins to tilt toward cold
weather, it looks like you’ll be spending a bit
more time at home — kidding, of course,
we’ll all just continueto not go anywhere
and search our streaming services, which
sure seemedto have an unlimited supply of
things to watch, for anything new. So, again,
we’re here to help: These suggestions in-
clude sex comedies, character-driven dra-
mas, crime thrillers and even (if you can
imagine such a thing) an earnest documen-
tary.
‘John Lewis: Good Trouble’ (2020)
Stream it on HBO Max.
Released on demand earlier this year, Dawn
Porter’s combination bio-doc and observa-
tional portrait of the civil rights leader John
Lewis lands on HBO Max, as voting rights
and opportunities for representation, par-
ticularly in the South, are again a hot topic.
Porter’s film tells a quintessentially
American story with structural ingenuity
and stylistic flair, interweaving past and
present to both summarize Lewis’s remark-
able history and capture how he spent his
final years, traveling the country to cru-
sade, campaign and inspire.
The film is aware, as its subject was, that
history is never in our past, and Porter
wisely uses the 2018 battle for the Georgia
governor’s seat as a contemporary ana-
logue, underlining the continuing stakes of
voting rights. But most of all, she captures
Lewis’s warmth and personal charm; it’s a
pleasure merely to spend 96 more minutes
in his company.
‘Yes, God, Yes’ (2020)
Stream it on Netflix.
Anyone whose nostalgia is stirred by the
sound of a screeching modem and an AOL
“welcome” greeting will likely grin from the
beginning to the end of this turn-of-the-mil-
lennium coming-of-age dramedy from the
writer and director Karen Maine. Natalia
Dyer (“Stranger Things”) stars as a Catho-
lic high school student whose trip to a
peppy, abstinence-preaching church re-
treat rather unfortunately coincides with
her sexual awakening.
Maine mines laughs from the expected
incongruities and hypocrisies, but she skill-
fully avoids cheap shots. She doesn’t sneer
at her characters, and grants humanity to
even those that seem, at first glance, to be
teen-movie stereotypes. And she’s blessed
with the gift of Dyer’s performance, which
manages to capture simultaneously the
thrill and the fear of this delicate moment.
‘Fort Bliss’ (2014)
Stream it on Amazon Prime.
A soldier and mother returns from an ex-
tended tour in Afghanistan — and finds re-
building her bond with her young son to be
as stressful as combat — in this modest, pa-
tient and sensitive familial drama from the
writer and director Claudia Myers. Mi-
chelle Monaghan (best known to main-
stream audiences as Tom Cruise’s wife in
the “Mission: Impossible” films) is aston-
ishingly good as the Army medic MaggieSwann, who has been gone for so much of
her son’s life that she doesn’t even know
how to connect, and Myers has a keen ear
for the specific ways kids can push their
parents’ buttons and escalate conflicts.
It makes for difficult viewing, but Myers’s
intelligent script is attuned to the difficul-
ties of re-establishing trust and love within
these precarious relationships. She feels for
her protagonist without apologizing for her
flaws, granting the complexity of this wom-
an and her situation — a refreshing counter
to the sinner/saint split of too many cine-
matic mothers. And the pointed, poignant
ending will absolutely rip you to shreds.‘The Overnight’ (2015)
Stream it on Hulu.
Kids love to have sleepovers — so why can’t
their parents have a little fun themselves?
That’s the premise of this freewheeling, en-
tertaining sex comedy from Patrick Brice
(who also wrote and directed the markedly
different “Creep” movies), in which the Los
Angeles newbies Alex (Adam Scott) and
Emily (Taylor Schilling) make friends with
fellow parents Kurt (Jason Schwartzman)
and Charlotte (Judith Godrèche), and find
the kids’ chaperoned overnight becoming a
journey of tentative sexual discovery for
the grown-ups. Slight (a mere 79 minutes)
but light, Brice’s film displays a winking
sense of ribald humor and a sense of sexual
fluidity that’s a welcome counterpoint to the
casual homophobia of too many contempo-
rary comedies.‘Sleight’ (2016)
Stream it on HBO Max.
You might think it impossible to make a
movie in which magic conveys a sense of
cool — but you’d think again after taking in
this dramatic thriller from the writer and di-
rector J. D. Dillard (“Sweetheart”). Jacob
Latimore is charismatic as a scholarship
student who takes a desperate turn to drug
dealing after a family tragedy, and realizes
his gift for magic may be his only escape
from the clutches of a kingpin (Dulé Hill,
from “Psych” and “The West Wing,” playing
nicely against type). Dillard proves a
stylish storyteller, and his film is fast-paced
and lived-in, building with force to an emi-
nently satisfying climax.‘Wild Horses’ (2015)
Stream it on Amazon Prime.
Robert Duvall’s fourth film as writer and di-
rector isn’t quite as confident or successful
as his earlier “The Apostle” and “Assassina-
tion Tango.” But it’s well worth seeing, a
mixture of crime thriller and familial drama
in which the sins of the past come around to
the present, ready to collect.
Its main draw is, of course, a fully realized
and beautifully textured Duvall perform-
ance, as he fleshes out the contradictions ofhis Texas ranch owner, who, nearing the
end of his life, is trying to mend old fences.
Chief among his obligations is his estranged
son (James Franco), and the picture’s best
scenes are their duets, as these two stub-
born men attempt to work through their
prickliness and age-old resentments, fum-
bling toward some kind of honesty and
truth.‘Person to Person’ (2017)
Stream it on Hulu.
It’s easy to dismiss contemporary, gentri-
fied Brooklyn as bland and boring, a percep-
tion that the writer and director Dustin Guy
Defa does his best to deflate with this gid-
dily dizzy comedy. Assembling an occasion-
ally intersecting ensemble of unapologetic
eccentrics and lovelorn weirdos, it’s the
kind of movie in which an entire plotline can
hinge on the authenticity of a rare Charlie
Parker album, and the wary musings of a
watchmaker can feel like a manifesto. Some
of the faces in Defa’s cast are familiar — Mi-
chael Cera, Abbi Jacobson, Philip Baker
Hall — while the rest (particularly Bene
Coopersmith and George Sample III)
should be.‘Knock Knock’ (2015)
Stream it on Netflix.
Keanu Reeves stars as a family man who in-
dulges his worst instincts — and pays the
price — in this remake of the 1977 exploita-
tion film “Death Game.” Lorenza Izzo and a
pre-“Knives Out” Ana de Armas co-star as
fetching young women who appear at his
door in the middle of a rainstorm, stranded
and wet and asking for help while promis-
ing carnal possibilities; they deliver on that
promise, and much more besides. The di-
rector, Eli Roth (“Cabin Fever”), unapolo-
getically indulges in the sleazy premise,
while remembering that no great grind-
house movie takes itself too seriously, and
the comeuppance of the climax unfolds with
ticktock ingenuity and gleeful garishness.‘Hounds of Love’ (2016)
Stream it on Hulu.
Such winks are nowhere to be found in this
challenging recommendation, the horrify-
ing tale of a young woman who meets a
seemingly benign suburban couple who
kidnap and terrorize her, a harrowing or-
deal that seems unavoidably pointing to-
ward her death. The writer and director,
Ben Young, based his film on several real-
life cases in the Australia of his youth, and
blurs the line between drama and true
crime to great effect, using the stylistic
flourishes of a horror film instead of the flat,
documentary-style aesthetic of “Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer” and its ilk. It is
not, to be clear, a fun watch. But the craft on
display, and the skill of the performances,
make it impossible to shake.Time to Curl Up With a Good Streaming Feature
Suggestions for a sex comedy,
a heart-tugging drama,
thrillers and a documentary.
Top, Representative
John Lewis in the
documentary “Good
Trouble.” Above, Robert
Duvall, left, and Josh
Hartnett in “Wild
Horses.”BEN ARNON/MAGNOLIA PICTURES, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSBEYOND THE ALGORITHMBy JASON BAILEYEONE FILMSPut in a good word.
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division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
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Crossword Edited by Will Shortz
ACROSS
1 Timbuktu’s
country
5 Things baseball
uniforms and toy
pistols have
9 Foe in “Jack and
the Beanstalk”
14 “Sign me up!”
15 Put on the payroll
16 Put a stop to
17 *Many a Silicon
Valley business
20 Televangelist Joel
21 Automotive
brand with an
oval logo
22 Some HDTVs
23 Africa’s most
populous city
(21+ million)
25 Biased against
seniors
27 Doctors making
deliveries, in brief
30 California ___
(state flag words)
32 Sweet’s
counterpart
34 Hatcher of
“Desperate
Housewives”
35 Dandy
39 *Devastating
event in a real
estate bust42 Automotive
brand with an
oval logo
43 South American
palm cultivated
for its fruit
44 Flair
45 Royal spouses
48 Records in
jackets, in brief
49 Actress Anderson
52 Passing
remarks?
54 Tennis score
favoring the
server
55 Toll hwy.
57 Classic 1980s
space warfare
video game
61 *Question
suggesting “That
just about sums
things up”
64 Eminent
65 Sportscaster
Andrews
66 Tony-winning
musical based on
Fellini’s “8^1 / 2 ”
67 Battle reminders
68 “Hey, over here!”
69 Elements in a
comic’s repertoireDOWN
1 Sushi restaurant
soup2 “Famous” cookie
maker
3 Elevator, in
England
4 Info from a spy
5 Replace with
6 Tire need
7 *Highly stressful
situations,
metaphorically
8 Quakers, for one
9 “Columbia, the
___ of the Ocean”
10 *Like a
guesstimate, by
nature
11 Counters with
beads
12 Grannies
13 Meeting at a
no-tell motel, say
18 Potential tire
trouble19 October
birthstone
24 “The Bartered
Bride” and “The
Marriage of
Figaro”
26 Heisman winner
Torretta
27 Workplace-
inspecting org.
28 Bust’s
counterpart
29 Wrestler in a
mawashi
31 Tummy soother
33 Community
sports facility ...
or a hint to the
answers to the
five starred clues
36 Like the Rose
Bowl, with 92,542
spectators
37 Mouth, slangily
38 Desires40 April 1 target
41 Person in a
lawsuit
46 Alliance formed
in April 1949
47 Ollie’s partner in
old comedy
49 Half the pieces in
a chess set
50 Formed for
a particular
purpose
51 Sporty Mazda
model
53 Singapore ___
56 Get ready
58 Singapore setting
59 Squad
60 Supporting votes
62 Some essential
workers, for
short
63 Prefix with
genderANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLEPUZZLE BY BYRON WALDEN12/1/20Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles,
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Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.1234 5678 91011121314 15 1617 18 1920 21 2223 24 25 2627 28 29 30 3132 33 34 35 36 37 3839 40 4142 43 4445 46 47 4849 50 51 52 5354 55 56 57 58 59 6061 62 6364 65 6667 68 69HATH BAH OT TAWA
EROO ART SAUNAS
MA R C T I MHOR T ON S
BAKESAL E DDE
SHE L BOXSEAT
YEATS C I A
SCENAR I O ANYONE
HOP I CO L A S I VAN
EN I GMA AL I ENATE
HEN REORG
STUTTER I SSA
URN APR I COT S
MA P L E S Y R U P R E P O
AL I GNS ETA RA I N
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