A decade can whizz by in no time, with beloved movies you swear you saw five minutes ago hitting that landmark and making you feel unreasonably old. Lean into it with this SBS On Demand collection celebrating cinematic classics turning ten this year. Here are ten highlights.
Behind The Candelabra
Magic Mike filmmaker Steven Soderbergh isn’t shy about deploying a bit of drama in his movies. Never more so than in this fantabulously camp and yet surprisingly affecting biopic about glittering pianist Liberace and his troubled young lover Scott Thorson. Michael Douglas was an eyebrow-raising pick for the sequinned superstar, but delivers a deft performance perfectly matched by the equally cast-against-type Matt Damon as the young man who scores it all, only to be swallowed whole by the excesses of celebrity.
Behind The Candelabra is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
The Eternal Return Of Antonis Paraskeva
Andy Warhol once mused that everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Greek filmmaker Elina Psykou’s eye-opening provocation takes that idea to the extreme when an ageing morning TV host played by Christos Stergioglou, recognisable from Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth, attempts to shore up his waning popularity by faking his own kidnapping. But will his temporary hideout in a hotel closed for the summer drive him doolally while he belts out Gloria Gaynor classic ‘I Will Survive’?
The Eternal Return Of Antonis Paraskeva is streaming at SBS On Demand. Be quick, it leaves on 28 February.
Canopy
Australian , the long-awaited second film in a planned trilogy looking at the long shadow of war, last year. This opening chapter depicts the fight for survival of a young Australian fighter pilot (Khan Chittenden) downed during the fall of Singapore in 1942. Behind enemy lines, as Japanese forces seize control amidst the maelstrom of WWII, he hides in the sweltering jungle, stumbling across a Singapore-Chinese resistance fighter played by Taiwanese actor Mo Tzu-Yi. Their near-silent struggle to survive is a staggeringly immersive film that thrums with the roar of insects and birdsong.
Canopy is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Blind Detective
This deliriously surreal hit fuses three of SBS fans’ favourite things: international crime drama, romance and hunger-inducing food porn, practically guaranteeing a dopamine fix. Hong Kong New Wave director Johnnie To casts a game Andy Lau () as the vision-impaired sleuth of the title alongside Sammi Cheng’s rookie cop determined to prove her mettle. What follows is a genre-upending hoot that oscillates wildly in tone and proffers enough costume changes to make Lady Gaga blush.
Blind Detective is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Grand Central
French director Rebecca Zlotowski brings together two of her country’s brightest stars in Bond alumna Léa Seydoux and Tahar Rahim, the unforgettable lead of Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet. And what a way to combine them, with a nuclear-charged erotic melodrama that plays out within the confines of a spectacularly eerie power plant that’s seeping radiation poison into their DNA. Freud would have a field day with the sweaty chemistry on show as colleagues cross lines that are already glowing like an emergency alert.
Grand Central is now streaming at SBS On Demand. Be quick, it leaves on 31 March.
Honey
Naples-raised model-turned-moviemaker Valeria Golino delivers curly moral ambiguity with this cutting adaptation of Mauro Covacich’s novel. Jasmine Trinca’s Irene, who goes by the codename of the title – aka Miele in Italian – body swerves the system to help terminally ill patients die for a tidy sum. Part of her earnings goes towards regular trips to Mexico to buy powerful over-the-counter drugs to do the trick. But her clinical yet kind detachment is rocked when an architect in rude health (Vinicio Marchioni) who has simply had enough shakes her belief. Where they go from here is fascinating to observe.
Honey is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Still Life
If you want a weepy, Eddie Marsan – often the trusty wingman on British films requiring a character actor with chops – shines front and centre in this profoundly affecting look at life, love lost and loneliness from Italian writer/director Uberto Pasolini. Playing John, a local council employee who lives a humdrum life, he throws himself into his job, seeing to it that folks who die unnoticed get a decent send-off, trying to find living relatives. Even after he gets the sack, one last gig sets him on the trail of Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt’s estranged daughter. The results are sublime.
Still Life is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani
If you’re hankering for some serious romance, this swoony frolic from Indian director Ayan Mukerji marking its tenth anniversary this year could be just your fix. Premised on unrequited love, the film follow studious Naina (Deepika Padukone), a last-minute ring-in for a mountainous trek from Manali, during which she falls hard for reckless Kabir (Ranbir Kapoor) but can’t pluck up the courage to say so. This Bollywood dance-driven fancy throws countless hurdles in true love’s path, but you know where it’s going, gloriously so.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed
Taking its name from the first line of The Beatles’ tripped-out track ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, this ten-year-old treat is set in Franco’s Spain in 1966. Getting wind that John Lennon is filming Richard Lester’s pacifist comedy How I Won the War in the south, an English teacher who uses their lyrics in his classroom (Talk to Her star Javier Cámara) jumps in his car to track down his idol. Picking up two young hitchhikers along the way (Natalia de Molina and Francesc Colomer), the trip that follows is pretty blooming lovely.
Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
Belle and Sebastian
A ten-year-old kid who loved this beautiful, rabble-rousing tale of a boy and his dog battling Nazis in the Alps is now 20 and able to do shots legally in a bar. Once you’ve picked yourself up from the floor, it’s worth revisiting the latest in a long line of adaptations of Cécile Aubry’s adored 1965 book that also lent its name to Scotland’s twee-est pop band. Félix Bossuet is great as the brave young lad who befriends the giant fluffy hound, as is Tchéky Karyo as his adoptive grandfather in an adorably old-fashioned film by Senegal-born, Sologne-raised adventurer and director Nicolas Vanier. The film was the first in a trilogy – and are also streaming at SBS On Demand.
Belle and Sebastian is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
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