Watch This Netflix Movie. Now.

If you're having trouble viewing this email, view in browser

I've always loved the Sundance Film Festival. Watching four to five movies in one day is a marathon for the eyeballs—but every now and then, a debut filmmaker premieres a real diamond in the rough. This year, Train Dreams was one of the festival's standouts. The film, available to watch now on Netflix, is a spiritual and sentimental story about a railroad worker (played by Joel Edgerton) in the early 1900s. As Anthony Breznican writes in a sprawling review of the film below, Train Dreams highlights an "honorable masculinity" that men could really learn from nowadays. "It's an immersive journey through beauty and heartbreak, and an emotionally gripping portrait of a man who tries his best," he writes. If there's one movie you watch this holiday, this should be it.

- Josh Rosenberg, editor, news & entertainment

Every Man Needs To See Train Dreams

While watching the hauntingly beautiful new film Train Dreams, I found myself thinking of the four hemlock pines that stood side-by-side in the grassy yard beside the house where I grew up. Their trunks were as tall and straight as ship masts. Who knows how old they were, but I'm guessing they were planted when the house was built in the 1920s. By the time I was a boy, their tops towered high above the roof.

We played endlessly beneath the cover of these pines, twirling madly on a single rope swing attached to one especially formidable branch. The ground there is probably still embedded with toys lost in the mud once upon a time. I remember the grown-ups saying that if a tornado ever struck the neighborhood, these trees would guard our home as an immovable windbreak. That kind of emergency never happened, but as a child I found their presence reassuring. They were gentle sentinels, providing comfort in the shade and protection as a wall against the elements.

Trees have a powerful symbolic presence in director Clint Bentley's Train Dreams, a Sundance favorite that began streaming on Netflix this Friday. They are resilient, but not indestructible, much like Joel Edgerton's character at the center of this story. They give, but ask for little. They can be dangerous. They can also be easily unnoticed, blending into the background. But if you look closer, there is power and majesty to behold.

This film looks closer. It is an adaptation of the late Denis Johnson's novella from 2011, and chronicles life on the frontier of the Pacific Northwest just as industrialization is taking hold across the United States in the first half of the last century. Edgerton stars as Robert Grainier, a laborer whose two aspirations are the well-being of his loved ones and to live in harmony with nature, even as his axe helps fell the forests around him to clear paths for a new world to take over.

Joel Edgerton in Train Dreams / Netflix

Bentley, who had an adapted screenplay Oscar nomination this past year for Sing Sing, grew up in a ranching family and told me that Johnson's book reminded him of people like his grandfather, and others he once looked up to. We need more role models like them now, since the malignant types tend to fill the void. "My uncle was a logger and my dad was a jockey and a horseman," Bentley tells me. "My dad broke a collarbone and then just kept racing because that's what they did. He was one of the toughest guys I met, but then he would also be so tender. They weren't educated or anything like that. It was just how they were. So it's an odd thing to be where we're at now. I don't know where it got distorted along the way."

Mailbag!

If your family is one of the millions of households that watch football on Thanksgiving, the NFL is preparing to make this year's halftime shows a real spectacle. Post Malone, Lil Jon, and Jack White are all set to perform and represent their hometowns this holiday, likely right when everyone's food coma (depending on your time zone) kicks in.

Will any of their performances top the glory of Creed playing "Higher" to a stadium of fans in 2001? I'll see for myself. Let me know what you're watching on Thanksgiving at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk

Joe Keery opened up to Esquire about splitting his time between acting as Steve Harrington in Stranger Things and making music as Djo for the past decade. Now that the Netflix series is ending, he's trying to figure out what's next. "It's powerful to see your life on screen documented," he says. "Because I still feel the same way that I felt when I first started." Read the interview here.

John Cena just appeared in his final WWE Raw match. Esquire's Eric Francisco went to Madison Square Garden in New York City to take in the sights. "The retirement tour has been an excuse to commemorate Cena and his career, the likes of which few in this business will ever lead," he wrote the next morning. "But as Raw unfolded there were bitter pills to swallow amid the joy."" Read the story here.

Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's infamous Fast and Furious feud is explored in a new book about the film franchise titled Welcome to the Family. Author Barry Hertz shared an early excerpt ahead of the book's release that details the on-set fight between the two stars and the showdown that ended their time on screen together. You can read the story here.

Joe Keery / photo by: Rona Ahdout

The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week

Winner: HBO Subscribers

Good news for fans of HBO dramas: the network officially renewed several of its hit shows, including Task, True Detective, The Chair Company, I Love LA, and House of the Dragon. I loved (mostly) every show that HBO released this year, so they're still winning the streaming wars as far as I'm concerned.

Loser: Disney

Mickey Mouse and friends announced a live-action Moana remake, just nine years removed from the original animated film in 2016. From what Disney's shown in the first trailer, I don't know if you can call a film live-action if there's only 10 percent less animation.

Winner: Rush Hour

President Donald Trump wants Paramount to reboot Rush Hour. The longtime Bloodsport fan reportedly loves the action-comedy franchise starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, and he's personally pitched Larry Ellison the idea to revive it. Say what you will about the man's policies, but I'll give him this: he knows a good action movie when he sees one.

Loser: Moon Landing Truthers

Every week, it feels like another celebrity is empowered to reveal that they believe America faked the first Moon Landing. The latest to join in? Khloe Kardashian. She told People, "I feel bad about that, but I'm going to die on this hill!" (For what it's worth, Esquire debunked all their conspiracy theories six years ago). If the Moon Landing truthers are right, it only further proves to me that Stanley Kubrick was a master filmmaker.

Winner: Stranger Things Fans

The long wait is almost over. The fifth and final season of Stranger Things premieres its first batch of episodes this Wednesday, November 26. If you don't want to miss a single episode, make sure to keep our handy release schedule bookmarked through the end of the year.