In part because its goal is to have something for everyone, few streaming services are more awash with movies of all kinds than Netflix this fall season. While checking out all the available titles on the streaming service, you might find yourself suffering from crippling indecision about which ones you should prioritize and which ones to avoid.
If you just want one movie that you should definitely make time for, then we’ve selected just the movie for you. The Nest was released in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, and as a result, it flew under the radar. It tells the story of a crumbling marriage that is falling apart largely because the father in the family is in serious debt. Here are three reasons you should check it out in October.
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Jude Law and Carrie Coon are splendid together
The couple at the center of this movie are played by Jude Law and Carrie Coon, and each of their characters goes on their own odyssey of sorts over the course of the movie’s runtime. Together, though, they are dynamite.
Law is great as a sniveling con artist who can’t stop lying to everyone around him, including his wife, and Coon is even better as a woman who knows exactly how full of nonsense her husband is, but can’t help but love him anyway. Although this movie was ignored by the Oscars, both actors would have been nominated in a more just world.
Director Sean Durkin has a particular skill with dread
Director Sean Durkin, who also made Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Iron Claw, is incredibly skilled at sapping every ounce of tension out of what might seem like fairly mundane interactions.
In The Nest, that comes from scenes where the couple at the story’s center are speaking with one another, but also from moments the two of them have apart from one another. Durkin is also an underrated stylist, and he gets some striking images out of the family’s move from the U.S. to the rural U.K. near the start of the film.
It’s a movie about the perils of self-belief
The 1980s were a time rife with people who believed that they could succeed on their own merits. After all, this was the dream that capitalism was selling, and it was at its zenith in the 1980s, which is when The Nest is set.
This movie, though, is about a man who believes that he can accomplish anything he puts his mind to, and discovers that he isn’t the kind of savvy master operator that he believes himself to be. One of the most important questions this movie asks is when self-belief turns into self-delusion, and whether anyone can ever really tell the difference.
The Nest is streaming on Netflix.