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.
A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski)
The asylum-based film is a fairly interesting mini-genre to deconstruct. These movies almost always deal with perceptions of reality, questions of the self, and an innate fear of those in positions of power who operate in worlds of the ethereal. The question of the protagonist’s madness is almost always central, and the uncertainty over whether their paranoia is unfounded or justified is from where the story often derives its most potent thrills. A Cure for Wellness, while not taking place in an asylum per se, hews so closely to and borrows so readily from the genre that it is impossible not to take the film as such. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Behemoth (Zhao Liang)
There’s just one thing missing from Zhao Liang‘s visually masterful documentary Behemoth: a before image of what this wasteland of coal and rock used to be before God’s beast was unleashed. That creature — as represented by the industrial machine — devours the mountains of Mongolia, exploding large formations into rubble to be separated by the Sichaun people acting as minions. These citizens become the cause and effect, each job necessary to aid in their survival also proving to be the root of their demise. All this land destroyed; all these innocents dead amongst the ash. What was once a haven of gorgeous landscapes has slowly devolved into a blight of dust and fire, its inhabitants’ purgatorial existence consumed as Hell rises from beneath. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: iTunes
Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson)
With only a solitary passing mention of The Avengers, Doctor Strange is as stand-alone an adventure as we will get from Marvel — prior to a mid-credits sequence, at least. As explained by a master of the mystic arts, Wong (Benedict Wong), the Zen-exuding good guys here are meant to protect a mystical realm outside the physical one we’ve seen endangered thirteen times prior in the MCU. This higher, inherently more important calling pleads for more demanding visual effects, and it comes in psychedelic spades throughout director Scott Derrickson’s origin story. But despite all the aesthetic glee tied to infinite dimensions and symmetrically-collapsing architecture, the “origin” of Doctor Strange feels disappointingly rote and the “story” is little more than a series of groovy platitudes relayed to Benedict Cumberbatch as he jumps around the universe — or, more accurately, two-to-three primary locations. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Donald Cried (Kris Avedisian)
See an exclusive clip debut above.
Donald Cried opens in medias res on Peter (Jesse Wakeman), in a cab ride through a snowy suburb, realizing that he lost his wallet, and from there gives successive details of him present due to the death of his grandmother and this, our setting, being his childhood home in small-town Rhode Island — a good omen for this comedy being in the milieu of the Farrelly brothers. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma)
“It’s very dirty, and I know dirty.” Near the end of Brian De Palma’s oneiric exercise in sleaze, Dressed To Kill, high-class prostitute Liz Blake (Nancy Allen) recounts a recurring dream where she strips in front of a phantom intruder before he puts a razor blade to her neck. It’s remarkably similar to the film’s first scene — a dream sequence where a showering Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) vainly attempts to attract her shaving husband’s attention, only to be murdered behind a thin veil of glass. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: FilmStruck
Life (Daniel Espinosa)
If Hollywood’s revitalized interest in space — embodied by Gravity, The Martian, and Interstellar — has proven anything, it’s that the galaxy is terrifying enough without the presence of extraterrestrial life. As the horrors of eternal darkness, flying debris, spacesuit malfunctions, and grappling with the psychological effects of loneliness weigh on our protagonists, Life attempts to up the ante by adding to the equation a creature hell-bent on destroying every human in its path. Although wholly derivative of the sci-fi touchstones that came before it, Daniel Espinosa’s streamlined, down-and-dirty approach makes for a refreshingly self-contained survival thriller. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Zodiac (David Fincher)
The most ready-made accolades handed out to our greatest film artists are invocations of other art forms. An artist can be labeled “painterly,” “literary,” or perhaps one who’s “sculpting in time.” (But never “theatrical,” by God. One of the first things you learn on the IMDb Message Boards – R.I.P. – is that a movie is NOT a play.) Such is the lot in life for the vulgar medium of cinema, the runt art that in 2007 was tiptoeing into only its second century. The “architectural” art form is invoked for the most meticulous craftsmen, directors whose camera and sets worked together in sharp straight lines to create worlds that often literally loom over their characters. Usually Hollywood artists, the “architectural” filmmakers include Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and have David Fincher as a modern spiritual heir. Fincher’s 2007 masterpiece Zodiac prominently features works of brutalist architecture inside which the hunt for the Zodiac Killer is carried out by a group of obsessives. It is about the flowering and wilting of that obsession in the face of mounting indifference, and the failure to find any closure for the hole that an obsession creates. It’s a carefully brutal film. – Nate F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Elián (review)
The Exception (review)
Vincent N Roxxy
Amazon Prime
Blow Out (review)
Long Strange Trip
FilmStruck
La cérémonie and La truite
Cailleach and I Know Where I’m Going!
Another Year
Cat People
12 Angry Men
Wooden Crosses
Les dames du Bois de Boulogne
Wild 90
Maidstone
MUBI (free 30-day trial)
Weddings and Babies
Lovers and Lollipops
Papirosen
The Wind of the Night
Under the Bombs
The Wicker Man
The Bridge
Netflix
Chronic
Detour
Full Metal Jacket
Masterminds
My Left Foot
Rounders
The Queen
The Sixth Sense
Young Frankenstein