If you aren’t eager to see something like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, can Watch With Us interest you in some movies that you probably haven’t heard of before?
We can admit that mainstream movie offerings can be tiresome, but thankfully, streaming platforms offer an easy way to access movies that otherwise struggled to find an audience.
This April, Watch With Us recommends three overlooked movies that you should stream right now.
Our first pick is Kinds of Kindness, the eccentric anthology film from Yorgos Lanthimos starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Margaret Qualley.
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‘Kinds of Kindness’ (2024) — Hulu
This absurdist black comedy features three distinct stories, all loosely connected by the brief and seemingly arbitrary inclusion of a man named R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos). The first story centers around an employee named Robert (Jesse Plemons), who is at the perpetual behest of his domineering boss and lover, Raymond (Willem Dafoe). The second story follows police officer Daniel (Plemons), whose missing marine biologist wife, Liz (Emma Stone), returns but does not seem to be herself. And the third story follows Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons), two sex cultists seeking a woman who can reanimate the dead.
Bookended between the critical and awards successes of Poor Things and Bugonia, Kind of Kindness got lost in the shuffle, seen as a lesser inclusion to Yorgos Lanthimos’ filmography. However, the film is nonetheless a unique, biting and hilariously misanthropic triptych of surreal stories featuring not one, but multiple great performances from Stone, Plemons, Dafoe, Hong Chau and Margaret Qualley. The film is an intriguing commentary on the thin line that exists between kindness and cruelty.
‘Please Baby Please’ (2022) — Tubi
In a highly stylized version of 1950s Lower Manhattan, young newlywed couple Arthur (Harry Melling) and Suze (Andrea Riseborough) are accosted by a group of street thugs calling themselves the Young Gents, after the couple witnesses the gang beat another couple to death. After being interrogated by the gang’s leader, Teddy (Karl Glusman), about where they live, the Young Gents eventually vacate the premises. But Suze and Arthur nevertheless find themselves preoccupied by their encounter and the reverberating consequences on both of their gender and sexual identities.
Please Baby Please is a campy and eccentric gender-bending drama that considers questions of what it really means to be a man or a woman. The maximalist production design, visual inventiveness and handful of musical numbers add to the fantastical and surreal quality of the film, allowing it to feel both refreshing and unique. Helmed by an incredible performance from Riseborough, the supporting cast also includes Demi Moore, Cole Escola and Dana Ashbrook.
‘The Sweet East’ (2023) — Hulu
While on a field trip to Washington, D.C., South Carolina teenager Lillian Wade (Talia Ryder) gets whisked away on a road trip across New England. After visiting a pizza restaurant that is attacked by an armed man (Andy Milonakis) who believes it houses a covert ring of pedophiles, Lillian finds herself in with a group of anarchist political activists led by Caleb (Earl Cave). After that, she winds up in New Hope, Pennsylvania, with a neo-Nazi named Lawrence (Simon Rex), then New York City, where she is cast in a film off the street, striking up a romance with her famous co-star Ian Reynolds (Jacob Elordi).
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Though thematically and ideologically murky, The Sweet East is nevertheless a spirited and riveting satire on the kaleidoscope of Americana that can be found along the Mid-Atlantic and the flailing American Dream we’ve been left with. Directed by cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, The Moment), The Sweet East draws stylistic cues from 1970s American cinema, yet becomes its own wonderful and weird thing as it explores the self-discovery that occurs when we leave our hometown.
