In the mood for a little love and espionage? If yes, then chances are you’re probably watching Black Bag in theaters this weekend.
The Steven Soderbergh thriller, which stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, has received rave reviews, and is the rare wide-release movie aimed at adult audiences.
If you’re not in the mood to venture out, there are plenty of options to choose from at home. Amazon Prime Video has tons of movies, and the following three are just the ticket for you to unwind and escape reality for a couple of hours.
My Old Ass (2024)
Elliott (Maisy Stella) is at a crossroads. She’s about to leave for college, and is in a casual relationship with another girl, Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera). One night, she takes some psychedelic mushrooms with her friends and hallucinates a future version of herself, Older Elliott (Aubrey Plaza). Proving she is, in fact, real, Older Elliott cryptically tells her three things: spend more time with your family, appreciate the farm that you grew up in, and avoid a boy named Chad. She disappears, but leaves her number in younger Elliott’s phone.
That’s the far-out premise of My Old Ass, a comedy that isn’t ashamed to be sentimental. Elliott doesn’t exactly believe anything her future self says at first, but gradually, she finds herself growing closer to her family. Chad eventually appears, and it’s in this development that My Old Ass reveals itself as an effective tearjerker in disguise. Plaza is great as always; if everyone grew up to be like Older Elliott, we’d all be just fine.
My Old Ass is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Party Girl (1995)
Parker Posey is back in the zeitgeist, and generating tons of shareable GIFs, with her sly comedic turn as a rich Southern wife and mom in The White Lotus Season 3, so it’s only appropriate to watch the movie that made her the darling of the ‘90s independent scene. In Party Girl, Posey stars as Mary, a free spirit who prefers buying couture clothes to paying the rent. But when she’s arrested for throwing a rave and has to repay her godmother for bailing her out, she decides to work at the New York Public Library to make some quick cash.
At first, she hates it, but gradually, she becomes enamored with the Dewey Decimal System and a lifestyle free of empty parties and bad voguing. When her budding romance with street vendor Mustafa (Omar Townsend) threatens her new calling, Mary must make some hard choices about where her life is headed, and if she can truly commit to being a librarian.
Party Girl sounds dry, and while it’s very ‘90s, it’s also a stellar vehicle for Posey’s talent. Mary is difficult and needy, but she’s also a blast to hang around with, and Posey makes her journey from club kid to book nerd funny and interesting. Look for Scandal’s Guillermo Diaz in an early role as Leo, Mary’s DJ roommate; his look of disbelief at Mary on the dance floor is priceless.
Party Girl is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Babylon (2022)
If you think Hollywood is morally bankrupt now, wait until you see what it was like in the 1920s. Damien Chazelle’s decadent epic Babylon takes you inside all the excesses of Tinseltown in the Jazz Age, when the booze flowed freely and orgies were as commonplace as movie premieres.
Into this modern Sodom and Gomorrah wanders young Manny Torres (Diego Calva), who wants to be in show business. He finds a kindred spirit in Nellie (Margot Robbie), a wild starlet who isn’t shy about dancing proactively at parties and doing drugs. As the years pass, their fortunes rise and fall, and both find out there’s a high cost to achieving their dreams of silver screen fame.
Babylon is primarily for movie lovers, who will dig all the allusions to real-life silent era titans like Clara Bow, Fatty Arbuckle, and Charlie Chaplin, but it’s also for anyone looking for a movie about debauchery among the rich and depraved. Among the stacked cast is Brad Pitt, who’s terrific as the fading matinee idol Jack Conrad, and Jean Smart, who has a few great moments as the tough gossip columnist Elinor St. John. The ending is bittersweet, and one of the best odes to the power of movies ever made.
Babylon is available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.
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