I really ruined it. And it was entirely my fault, Hugh Grant said about his performance in Nine Months. Id blame the script.
"I really ruined it. And it was entirely my fault," Hugh Grant said about his performance in Nine Months. I'd blame the script. Nine Months

Unstreamable is a weekly column that finds films and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. This week: Straights fret about babies in Nine Months, Dutch resistance heroes fight back in Soldier of Orange, hot ass sumo wrestlers in Sumo Do, Sumo Don't, and David Hasselhoff's leather suit isn't tight enough in Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

If you're thinking: "Unstreamable? In this pandemic?" Scarecrow Video offers DVD takeout and a great rental-by-mail service so you can safely rent rare DVDs during self-isolation. Click here to learn more about their program.

NINE MONTHS
USA, 1995, 103 minutes, Dir. Chris Columbus
Peep the king cake babies.
Peep the king cake babies behind the DVD. CB

This is one of director Chris Columbus's critical duds of the mid-90s, although it certainly wasn't a financial dud. It made almost $140 million at the box office and is buoyed by a cast that's only stars: Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Jeff Goldblum, Joan Cusack, Tom Arnold... It's Grant's first US-starring role, and his famous sex worker scandal happened in the lead-up to the film's release, which only helped the movie's buzz.

But the script is straight drivel. An offense to its gay setting of San Francisco. Grant plays a doctor who is nonsensically afraid of having a baby with his smart, compassionate, overly attractive and reasonable wife. This is their only problem. Everything else is blessed and rich. Grant's character doesn't even have vices. He's not a player. He doesn't screw anyone else. He's just afraid of having a baby with his pregnant girlfriend—until, boringly, he discovers the baby has a penis. This changes everything for him.

There are a few good scenes. There's a cute montage where Hugh Grant and Jeff Goldblum get matching earrings and go rollerblading through San Francisco. And Joan Cusack is a fucking gem. It's just the script. It's a crappy script. CHASE BURNS

Available for rental on DVD at Scarecrow Video and Netflix DVD.

***

SOLDIER OF ORANGE
Netherlands | Belgium, 1977, 155 minutes, Dir. Paul Verhoeven
The score in this movie slaps.
The score in this movie slaps. JK
Horniness is Unstreamable's North Star when it comes to picking movies to feature in our column every week. Enter Rutger Hauer. In America his commanding stature, intense cheekbones, and European accent put him firmly in villain territory for us (to be fair, the first time I saw him was in Batman Begins, lol), but in his native Holland he's a sophisticated hero. At least that's who he plays in Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange, an epic about World War II centered around a group of students in the Netherlands.

Based on an autobiographical book, Hauer plays the aloof yet courageous Erik, a Dutch resistance spy who finds himself serving his exiled queen, crossing paths with fascists and hot sexually open women alike. This film helped introduce Hauer to an international (American) audience with him going on to star in one of the most iconic films in history. Though Soldier of Orange is a rather by-the-numbers affair—with a lot more tongue-in-cheek humor than you might expect—you must watch for the scene where an undercover Erik dances the tango with a university mate who went full-blown Nazi. It's a tense (and a little homoerotic) scene that realizes the stakes of the situation without being too melodramatic. And incredibly convincing of Hauer's star quality. JASMYNE KEIMIG

Available for rental on DVD at Scarecrow Video and Netflix DVD.

***

SUMO DO, SUMO DON'T
Japan, 1992, 105 minutes, Dir. Masayuki Suo
One of my favorite movies from one of my favorite directors.
One of my favorite movies from one of my favorite directors. CB

I'm on a Masayuki Suo kick. I just watched three of the Japanese director's biggest movies in a row, starting with Shall We Dance? (best known for its gaudy 2004 US remake), then Fancy Dance (about a Tokyo punk rocker who becomes a monk), and then Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (about a college slacker forced to join his school's failing sumo team). Suo's films often use the same actors and general stories (a hip slacker must do something traditional, like become a Buddhist monk or learn sumo). I'll pull all those films for this list eventually, but for now: Sumo Do, Sumo Don't.

In it, Suo combines hip styles of the early '90s with traditional sumo, resulting in his lead often naked except for a Keith Haring-printed baseball cap, sumo sash (mawashi), and sneakers. The plot is simple: A college's terrible sumo club has no enrollees. It gathers a few misfits. Those misfits become popular. They get slightly better at sumo, etc, etc. The final sumo matches are genuinely exciting. It's a sport I can understand: There are two people in a circle. They have to push each other out. That's basically it. No constant stopping-and-starting. Just brute force, tradition, and a lot of ass. CHASE BURNS

Available for rental on DVD at Scarecrow Video.

***

NICK FURY: AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
USA, 1998, 90 minutes, Dir. Rod Hardy
I challenge you to get very stoned and watch this movie, itll be so good.
No one tell Hasselhoff that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. got made 15 years later without him... JK
I do not believe that "straight Camp" exists. But Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. gets pretty freakin' close because of course "straight Camp" involves an annoyingly masculine superhero character played by David Hasselhoff. The leather suit he wears isn't even that hot. This made-for-television movie was meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for a full series—Marvel's Mulholland Drive, if you will—but got terrible reviews and those plans were canceled. And, apparently, Hasselhoff was pretty bitter about it, telling Movieline in 2012 that "my Nick Fury was the organic Nick Fury that was written and discussed with Stan Lee before anyone got in there to change it." Yeah, take that Samuel L. Jackson! Watching it now, you can see the confines of a late-'90s production budget—the flat lighting, the shitty effects, the casting of Lisa Rinna. Ironically, all of those things make this superhero movie a better watch than any of those overly-long, CGI-heavy, hollow Marvel films being pumped out of The Russo Brothers' butts on this side of the millennium. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Available for rental on DVD at Scarecrow Video.

Unstreamable means we couldn't find it on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, or any of the other 300+ streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn't find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don't consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.