Four underrated gems leaving Netflix in December

Some heavy hitters are leaving Netflix at the end of the month. Jaws, 8 Mile, The Deer Hunter, and Psycho all sign off on December 31. That’s a combined nine Oscars and 18 nominations. If you haven’t seen any of them, I’d suggest you get them on your list ASAP.

Jaws is simply one of the greatest American action films ever made. Many critics don’t even bother with the “one of the best” when referring to Psycho. It is often considered the very best American horror. 8 Mile is a standout musical biopic, unsurpassed in the world of hip-hop. And The Deer Hunter, though difficult, controversial, and ever so slightly dated by now, was still a vital Vietnam War movie that took Best Picture for 1978.

But there are also some minor gems saying goodbye. So, if you’ve already seen the above-mentioned titles, or if the prospect of peering inside Eminem’s soul for a couple of hours doesn’t appeal, here are four other movies to put on your list. They run the gamut from good old-fashioned Western to trippy experimentation, from social-issue drama to comic romp. I don’t know you personally, but I can guarantee that if you watch all four of these, you’ll really like at least two of them.

Where are you going to get an offer like that? All of the following screen on Netflix through December 31, 2024.

Midnight Run (1988)

There was a time when director Martin Brest made tight, entertaining movies. Prior to Midnight Run, he had released fun romps like Going in Style (the original version) and Beverly Hills Cop, which helped launch Eddie Murphy. Midnight Run continued that hot streak. A buddy film about a bounty hunter and the nerdy accountant he is tasked with bringing in, it played off the surprisingly sweet chemistry between Robert De Niro (as the bounty hunter) and Charles Grodin (as the accountant).

De Niro had dabbled in some comedy early in his career, but by 1988, he was the reigning kind of heavy drama in American film. He had starred in the aforementioned The Deer Hunter, and even his movie The King of Comedy was very dark – and not very funny. (It was the model for Todd Phillips’ first Joker movie.) Midnight Run, an action comedy, showed another dimension of the actor – one that he would turn to more and more in the ensuing years.

Grodin was always a prickly actor – difficult to cast in lead roles. But here, his rapport with the gruff, no-nonsense De Niro works beautifully. The action scenes are brisk. Some genuine heartfelt character moments help balance the comedy – kind of a mob-based Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Sadly, Martin Brest would never make another movie like it. He would get bigger and more drawn out. His next movie – Scent of a Woman – would win Oscars, though it was a maudlin caricature. His final one – Gigli – would very nearly destroy the film industry. But Midnight Run is well worth a look.

Take Shelter (2011)

If you subscribe to the auteur theory, then Jeff Nichols is among the finest auteurs working in American film today. Take Shelter was his second movie, coming after the thrilling debut of Shotgun Stories. It stars his favorite actor, Michael Shannon, as Curtis LaForche, a man who becomes increasingly obsessed with some vague sense of impending doom. He manifests that obsession in his desire to build a bigger and better storm shelter.

Nichols takes a deep, at times painful dive into his lead character, and in Shannon, he has an actor who can play psychological torture with the very best of them. He has excellent support from Jessica Chastain (as his wife wife) and Kathy Baker (as his mother). Nichols uses dreams and other disorienting devices to explore Curtis’ increasing sense of dislocation. Is he merely paranoid, or is there something else going on in Curtis’ world that portends doom? Nichols keeps that question in play right up until the end.

Nichols would follow Take Shelter with Mud and Loving, two excellent dramas that wrestle with moral questions and which feature Shannon in supporting roles, and Midnight Special (not to be confused with Midnight Run), which stars Shannon and again examines the shaky line between the natural and the supernatural. After a long break, partially affected by COVID, he returned with The Bikeriders last year.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Some critics did not especially like James Mangold’s remake of the original Western classic. But I was never all that big a fan of Delmer Daves’ 1957 version, so I was not offended by a retelling. It is certainly a more brutal version of the story of a simple farmer trying to get out of debt by delivering a charismatic outlaw to justice.

The acting in Mangold’s remake is stronger than in the original. The two leads, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, probably could have exchanged roles and had an equally effective movie. Both are excellent. The real gem in this version, though, is Ben Foster as the outlaw’s right-hand man. Foster had been around for a while, carving out a name for himself in character roles.

His Charlie Prince in 3:10 to Yuma is a chilling display of mania fueled by his worship – romantic or otherwise – of Crowe’s outlaw. His final scene is remarkably touching considering how sadistic Foster’s character is throughout.

3:10 to Yuma was nominated for a couple of Oscars, including Sound Mixing (high-end Westerns are always nominated for Sound awards). The eclectic Mangold would go on to direct the X-Men origin story Logan and then find greater Oscar success with 2019’s Ford v Ferrari. It would win a Sound Oscar. (High-end racing movies also always get Sound awards.) His latest movie, the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, opens wide on Christmas Day.

Vera Drake (2004)

Mike Leigh is amongst the most celebrated of all current British directors. He has won multiple awards at the Cannes Film Festival and has seven Oscar nominations on his resume. He has generally focused his attention on typical working-class families confronted with a dramatic series of events, and he tends to be at his very best when exploring intriguing female characters. That was the case with Brenda Blethyn in 1996’s Secrets & Lies and with Sally Hawkins in 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky. So it is easy to see why the story of Vera Drake appealed to him.

The titular character is a working-class housewife in 1950s London who has a secret pastime performing rudimentary abortions for women in need. Vera does this out of her desire to provide help – she accepts no payment for her efforts. And those efforts land her in a lot of legal trouble and jeopardize her family’s well-being. Still, she is unflinching in her conviction to do the right thing as she sees it.

When Leigh is at his best, he has superb performances from his leading actors, and that is certainly true here. Imelda Staunton is brilliant, showing simple dignity, steely resolve, and a fine sense of humor as Vera. She lost out on the Oscar to Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby but was honored all over the globe, including winning the BAFTA and taking the Best Actress prize from both the Los Angeles and New York Film Critic Associations.

Leigh’s latest movie, Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, with whom he had worked almost thirty years ago in Secrets & Lies, is one more in a line of stellar portraits of working-class women. Like Staunton in Vera Drake, Jean-Baptiste is winning awards left and right for her work in Hard Truths.

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