With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)
On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin embarked on a historic lunar odyssey, successfully landing on the moon and then returning to Earth. Free of talking heads, reenactments, and newly-recorded narration, the new documentary Apollo 11 takes viewers on this nine-day journey, constructed from astounding, never-before-seen 65mm Panavision, 35mm, and 16mm footage, as well as audio culled from over 18,000 hours of tapes. A perhaps initially unintended result when NASA handed over this remarkably pristine footage to director Todd Douglas Miller, his documentary is also a fascinating time capsule of this specific era. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Pamela B. Green)
How does someone like Alice Guy-Blaché become forgotten in time? Director Pamela B. Green answers this question while doing her damnedest to rectify the error in the arresting documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. Narrated by Jodie Foster and featuring interview snippets from a slew of impressive female filmmakers (Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins, and Julie Taymor, among others), many learn about Alice Guy for the first time (!) while others express a limited knowledge of her accomplishments. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Hail, Satan? (Penny Lane)
Amusingly, Penny Lane’s documentary Hail Satan? is interested in clarifying one critical misconception about the Satanic Temple: its members don’t, in fact, worship the Devil at all. Rather, the organization—or religion, as they’d prefer to be called—is, essentially, an ultimately altruistic group of people, typically self-proclaimed misfits, who wish to highlight the double standards of the so-called separation of church and state—all while co-opting Satanic iconography to get a rise out of Christian conservatives. – Jake H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
A movie so audacious in concept and execution, it should get the blood pumping within the first ten minutes, and by the last ten, you’ll be breathing a sigh of relief while cheering with such fervor your head will spin. Like the best of Tarantino’s work, it sends a love of cinema coursing through your veins. Christoph Waltz gives the best performance of its respective year, and what will likely be his career. It has a brain behind the brashness that is uncommon in today’s multiplexes, and will sadly continue to be. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Passion (Brian De Palma)
Passion‘s mounting dream logic is almost Lynchian, bizarre things occurring and resolving with seemingly no impact on narrative. The bafflement of the audience rises with the paranoia and franticness of the protagonist. It’s an operatic, arch transposition of mental state onto aesthetic presentation. It is, as previously stated, Lynchian in narrative, but more akin to Irving Rapper in terms of tone and aesthetic, making it at once seemingly more accessible while also forging an even deeper wedge between the film and a more modern audience. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Serenity (Steven Knight)
Above all else, credit to all involved for the audacity. Within the first fifteen minutes or so of Serenity, written and directed by Steven Knight, an old-school noir plot is set into place. We have an eerily pleasant island called Plymouth, a sun-baked sea-boat captain named Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) with a tuna obsession and a desperate need for cash, an older seductress with a beachfront view (Diane Lane) and a curious cat, a disgruntled first mate (Djimon Hounsou), and an ex-flame (Anne Hathaway) back in town with a lucrative, deadly proposition. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Detective Pikachu (podcast discussion)
Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy
Skin (review)
Tolkien
The Wedding Guest (review)
Amazon Prime
Atlantic City
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Hard Eight
HBO Go
Red Sparrow (podcast discussion)
MUBI (free for 30 days)
The Thin Blue Line
Vernon, Florida
Gates of Heaven
Spread
Braguino
The Exterminating Angels
Céline
Netflix