What is it about Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away that makes it one of his greatest-if not the greatest-films he has ever made? Perhaps it’s because it represents the best expression of his most defining themes and concepts-the strength and perseverance of a young woman, the rapturous glory of flight, the spiritual struggle of personal and cultural amnesia with Japanese society, the redeeming power of love. Stars: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Yumi Tamai That the end of Kubrick’s odyssey returns us to the beginning only reaffirms that purpose: We are, and have always been, the navigators of our destiny.
So much more than a speculative document about the human race colonizing the Solar System, 2001 asks why we do what we do-why, against so many oppositional forces, seen and otherwise, do we push outward, past the fringes of all that we know, all that we ever need to know? Amidst long shots of bodies sifting through space, of vessels and cosmonauts floating silently through the unknown, Kubrick finds grace-aided, of course, by an epic classical soundtrack we today can’t extricate from Kubrick’s indelible images-and in grace he finds purpose: If we can transcend our terrestrial roots with curiosity and fearlessness, then we should. And yet, despite its ambitious leaps and barely comprehensible scope, every lofty symbolic gesture Kubrick matches with a moment of intimate humanity: the sadness of a mighty intellect’s death the shock of cold-blooded murder the minutiae and boredom of keeping our bodies functioning on a daily basis the struggle and awe of encountering something we can’t explain the unspoken need to survive, never questioned because it will never be answered. Clarke (whose novel, conceived alongside the screenplay, saw release not long after the film’s premiere), 2001: A Space Odyssey begins with the origins of the human race and ends with the dawn of whatever comes after us-spinning above our planet, god-like, a seemingly all-knowing, hopefully benevolent fifth-dimensional space fetus-spanning countless light years and millennia between. Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain, William Sylvesterįifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick told the story of everything-of life, of the universe, of pain and loss and the way reality and time changes as we, these insignificant voyagers, sail through it all, attempting to change it all, unsure if we’ve changed anything. Here are the 50 best movies on HBO Max right now: 1. You’ll find a lot of French gems here, not to mention an essential selection of documentaries, silent films, sci-fi staples, psychedelic monster movies, musicals and every shade of Oscar bait in between. Welcome HBO Max: You get a piece of us too.
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Whereas once these streaming services represented a more accessible alternative to an overpriced cable TV package, now we’re given no alternative, even though pretty much every movie imaginable is available for us to watch right now. Even Hayao Miyazaki, notoriously against having his movies available on streaming services, finally gave in. Like most other streaming services that aren’t owned by, say, the House of Mouse, there is no real overarching theme to what HBO Max presents, which is exactly why HBO Max represents such a powerful urge to just roll over and let it all happen. Basically, it’s like Criterion Channel Lite in some of its more highbrow corners. Ostensibly, this is a good thing: Below you’ll find masterpiece after masterpiece from the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Agnes Varda, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Barbara Kopple, Jacques Demy, Akira Kurosawa, the Maysles, Pennebaker, Ingmar Bergman-those looking for a crash course in world cinema can pretty much single-handedly thank Turner Classic Movies’ folding under the HBO banner for the bounties they’re about to inhale. The best movies on HBO Max reflect nothing if not the culmination of our streaming dystopia.
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