With the Golden Globes behind us and the Oscar nominations in, ’tis the season when cinephiles bemoan the overlooked gems of the year. Fortunately, these obscure little treasures are increasingly less obscure in the age of streaming, and anyone with Amazon Prime or Hulu accounts will have a selection of jewels at his or her fingertips. Here are just a few places to begin the hunt.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco: For those who enjoy luxuriating in the spell of soulful cinema, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an irresistible incantation. With its lush cinematography, stirring score, and operatic street scenes, Joe Talbot’s debut feature is a thing to behold. Talbot’s screenplay, cowritten with his longtime friend and leading man Jimmie Fails, is a meditation on home, history, and the vagaries of the capitalist urban economy. As the characters seek to reclaim a Paradise lost, the camera can’t help but capture the glory ever-present and all around. (Amazon Prime)
The Souvenir: Pieced together in hard cuts, like fragments of memory butting against each other, Joanna Hogg’s newest film is a portrait of the artist as a young woman. The writer-director conjures her formative years as a film student in 1980s London, a time when she struggled to find her artistic voice while simultaneously making herself small in a toxic relationship with a derelict lover. With its formal rigor and stately pace, The Souvenir is a properly English specimen, but its delicate handling of burgeoning female identity and its eye toward class and privilege translate richly across the pond. (Amazon Prime)
