Hello Reader, You are receiving this as a paying subscriber to The Globetrotting Watchlist (which includes Film Adventurer and Cinephile Members), a monthly newsletter that helps you expand your cinematic horizons through streaming recommendations for the best socially progressive under-the-radar films worldwide. Your support helps us pay our expenses to keep Seventh Row, a non-profit, ad-free and online. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter This month, I'm recommending: One of the best...
10 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, When it comes to watching movies... There are the choices you want to be making for yourself (e.g., watching your cultural vegetables that will feed you emotionally and intellectually) And there are the choices you actually make (e.g., watching junk food)...which might be because you're not even sure which choice to make because your watchlist is so long that you're endlessly scrolling. If this predicament sounds familiar...you're not alone. The Good News? Watching your cultural...
12 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Happy New Year! Most of us want to watch good movies. However, good intentions can fail when we are left with decision fatigue. Or we keep telling ourselves we should watch a particular movie but endlessly put it off until we have more time and energy. Instead of watching worthwhile movies, we often choose the easy option, which isn't always synonymous with what we wish we were watching. If this sounds familiar to you, don't despair. There's a solution! You have to make it easy...
19 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, 2024 has been a big year for Luca Guadagnino movies: his tennis movie Challengers was a spring hit, and his William S. Burroughs adaptation Queer is now in cinemas and Oscar campaigning. So this felt like a perfect opportunity to celebrate Guadagnino's 2017 queer romance Call Me by Your Name on the podcast -- especially as the opening credits of Queer are a direct callback to the opening credits of Call Me by Your Name. The film made Seventh Row's list of the top 10 films of the...
24 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, You are receiving this as a paying subscriber to The Globetrotting Watchlist (which includes Film Adventurer and Cinephile Members), a monthly newsletter that helps you expand your cinematic horizons through streaming recommendations for the best socially progressive under-the-radar films worldwide. Your support helps us pay our expenses to keep Seventh Row, a non-profit, ad-free and online. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter This month, I'm recommending: Two movies set...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hello Reader, A great character drama isn't just interested in its characters as individuals but as people responding to the world around them (other people, the culture, systemic structures, etc.). So many movies make the mistake of becoming star vehicles without realizing the star can only shine as bright as the world they're responding to. But there's a new movie out this week that exemplifies this definition of a great character drama: a film as interested in the characters at its centre...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Have you ever seen a movie that hit you so hard, so personally, that you felt like, "Someone reached into my brain and made a movie about my life"? That's how I feel about the film Oslo, August 31st, the film Seventh Row named the best film of the 2010s. It wasn't just a movie I loved, but one that would have substantial ripple effects on my life as a cinephile and critic. But I almost didn't see it. In fact, it sounded exactly like the kind of movie I was trying to avoid! Yet,...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Last week, a listener who had heard my episode on Small Things Like These expressed to me that she couldn't believe how hard it was to see the film. "I live in Brooklyn, and it's only playing in one cinema! This film has terrible distribution!" That is, the film's rollout to cinemas is terrible. And that got me thinking. That is terrible distribution. And yet Small Things Like These actually has very good distribution for an indie movie, especially given its subject matter, even...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Are you tired of endlessly scrolling through streaming services for something promising to watch besides classics? Do you find that even your local arthouse cinema is reluctant to play films that aren’t in English, don’t have big stars, or haven’t been generating tons of festival buzz? Do you struggle to find recommendations from film critics for films you haven’t heard of? Not everyone has time to go to dozens of film festivals and watch hundreds of foreign films that might not...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read