Searching for good movies to stream at home? Look no further. We will be spotlighting films that flew under the radar and didn’t earn the praise or the turnout they deserved.
Let’s begin with a 2016 movie that sneaked up on me when it came out. It seems pleasant enough at the start but gets deeper and richer as it goes along. Only when it’s over do you fully realize how satisfying it has been. That’s the best way I can describe The Confirmation, which marks the directing debut of Bob Nelson, the Oscar-nominated writer of Nebraska.
This is another small-town saga that takes an empathetic, clear-eyed look at working-class people. Clive Owen stars as a luckless finish-carpenter who’s trying to kick a drinking habit and clear the air with his ex-wife (now remarried) and young son (Jaden Martell, then billed as Jaden Lieberher). He’s scheduled to spend the weekend with his boy and it starts out on a promising note as he’s hired for a job beginning Monday. Then he discovers that someone has stolen his tools. This leads to a series of adventures and encounters that test the son’s strength of character, as he is about to take his first communion and be confirmed at church.
Contrary to every Hollywood movie cliché, the characters in this film don’t act or react in extreme or predictable ways. Owen is a troubled man but has a code of honor and genuinely loves his son. Lieberher is trying to take his new role as churchgoer seriously but has questions that even his priest can’t answer. Every supporting role is filled by a first-rate actor who brings color and nuance to his or her role, including Maria Bello, Stephen Tobolowsky, Patton Oswalt, Tim Blake Nelson, Matthew Modine, and the late and much-missed Robert Forster.
Funny, sad, ironic, poignant: many films strive for these results but The Confirmation delivers them all, in unpretentious fashion. And if, the morning after, it occurs to you that it resembles The Bicycle Thieves, so much the better: it was one of Bob Nelson’s chief inspirations.
The film can be streamed on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and iTunes.
