With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Complete Unknown (Joshua Marston)
Armed with two top-notch leads and a compelling premise, Joshua Marston‘s third feature, Complete Unknown, spends a lot of time hinting at which direction it will go, without going anywhere at all. Tom (Michael Shannon) is living with his wife Rehema (Azita Ghanizada) in New York City, spending the majority of his days drafting agricultural policy emails in a cramped government office. It is the night of his birthday party, and tensions are high. Rehema’s got an employment opportunity across the country, and the pressure for Tom to move is strenuous, no thanks to his obnoxious co-worker Clyde (Michael Chernus), who has come to the party with a friend named Alice (Rachel Weisz). – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Finding Dory (Andrew Stanton)
The major hindrance that Finding Dory must overcome is its choice of a protagonist. In Nemo, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), an adorable blue tang that struggled with short-term memory loss, was a comedic sidekick. Her addle-minded lack of focus and boundless optimism served as both a barricade and boon in Marlin’s (Albert Brooks) search for his son. It was a character trait that created conflict but also lead to many triumphant moments of victory for the character and that story. Here, it becomes a major plot point — the driving mechanism of the entire story — and the focus of many, many conversations about respecting and finding value in disability. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer)
An exploration of movement, motion, liminality, childhood and racial politics, The Fits is a fascinating psychological study of Toni (fearlessly played by Royalty Hightower), an 11-year0old living in Cincinnati’s West End. Set almost entirely within the walls of the neighborhood Lincoln Rec Center, we first find Toni taking up boxing, trained by older brother Jermaine (Da’Sean Minor). Abandoning the rigor of the boxing — requiring sprints across an overpass after hitting the speed-bag — Toni finds herself drawn to the dance troop practicing across the hall, where what she finds is nothing short of her voice. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Gleason (Clay Tweel)
Gleason is a decently effective sob-extraction mechanism, a nexus where sports fans and documentary enthusiasts alike can join to vent some ragged emotion. The film, which follows former football player Steve Gleason over the course of five years or so, during which he simultaneously succumbs to Lou Gehrig’s disease and experiences the joys of new fatherhood, is full of all the devastating and gladdening life beats you’d expect from both situations. And yet I was mostly unmoved. – Dan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Gods of Egypt (Alex Proyas)
It’s tempting to want to give too much credit to Alex Proyas’ Gods of Egypt for sheer invention. Not since last year’s polarizing belly flop, Jupiter Ascending, has a blockbuster been so filled to the brim with intricate, nonsensical, transcendently stupid world building. Within the first twenty minutes, an amber-encrusted Egypt obsessed with pageantry and grand gestures becomes a fiery hellscape ruled by winged mechs with designs based on dense Egyptian mythology shooting laser beams at each other. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Go
Indignation (James Schamus)
After helping filmmakers such as Todd Haynes, Ang Lee, and Todd Solondz shape their careers, James Schamus has finally made the leap from producer to director with an adaptation of Philip Roth‘s 2008 novel Indignation. The 1951-set feature follows Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a Newark-bred Jewish teenager heading to his first semester at a Lutheran college in Ohio. In doing so, he avoids the draft for the Korean War, which is claiming extended family and friends as victims. While a morally sound, eloquent, and confident individual, at college he grapples with sexuality and a distinct indignation, primarily inflicted by Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts). – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog)
Volcanoes are perfect for Werner Herzog. There’s a reason he keeps coming back to them, from La Soufriere to Encounters at the End of the World. They are violent representatives of the Earth’s complete indifference to those who walk its surface – as Herzog calls them, “crawling roaches, retarded reptiles, and vapid humans.” Most of this grand sphere is magma, and life ekes by on a thin crust floating on its surface, occasionally disrupted when the magma breaks out. Finally, Herzog has made a documentary entirely about volcanoes. Into the Inferno is a world tour of how humans confront geology’s most ruthless caprices. – Dan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Mad Max: Fury Road Black & Chrome Edition (George Miller)
“One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies,” George Miller said last year. “There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.” Well, he’s now gone and done it, and it seem like the results are quite dramatic. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Oasis: Supersonic (Mat Whitecross)
Oliver Stone. That’s the filmmaker who should have been asked to chronicle the career of Oasis, the hugely successful, ever-combustible, now-departed kings of Britpop. Looking at the entirety of the band’s lifespan — from the early 1990s to break-up in 2008 — it’s hard not to notice the trademarks of Doors-era Stone: controversies, fisticuffs, conspiracies, bravery, insanity, ego, vulnerability, lust, and violence. In rock and roll, these are positives, and the joys that emanate from such feelings and behavior is certainly on display in Oasis: Supersonic, a Noel and Liam Gallagher-approved documentary. The band’s career, however, is not really the subject of the new documentary directed by Mat Whitecross and from the producers of Amy, Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning Amy Winehouse documentary. Instead, Supersonic is about the rise of the band, the period from birth to its two concerts (to 250,000 attendees) at Knebworth. – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
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Miss Sharon Jones! (review)
Rats
MUBI (free 30-day trial)
Norwegian Wood
Miami Connection
Rolling Family
Nosferatu
The Hands of Orlac
The Weather Underground
Calvaire
Netflix
Big Eyes (review)
The Idol (review)
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
Kung Fu Panda 3