Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
Armed with a bevy of iPhones, 28 Years Later is definitely an “I’ve still got the moves” gesture from Boyle. It’s a case where his frenetic energy, paired with returning writer Alex Garland’s structurally odd screenplay, creates a film that one never feels a step ahead of––a deep compliment for something about to be unleashed on multiplexes. Even if that doesn’t necessarily result in a great film, per se. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Celebrating Michael Roemer
Although he passed just a few months ago, Michael Roemer was thankfully alive to see much of his work restored and embraced. The director’s stellar features are now available to stream on the Criterion Channel, including Nothing but a Man (1964), The Plot Against Harry (1969), Dying (1976), Pilgrim, Farewell (1980), and Vengeance Is Mine (1984).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Eight Postcards from Utopia (Radu Jude)
If Eight Postcards from Utopia is undoubtedly a compilation-essay, it’s an unusually crowd-pleasing one. Co-directed with philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz, it surveys Romanian-produced TV advertisements from the country’s post-Ceaușescu era up to the present day, the found material first presented unadorned and unabridged before Jude starts to hauntologically alter and manipulate them à la passages of Do Not Expect. Shilling telecom deals, confectionary, and grooming products, they are lively and often creative in and of themselves––Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim would love the bombastic, lo-fi graphics––but Jude and Ferencz-Flatz are more concerned with their latent references and instructions towards ideological change, referencing the country’s hard ’90s turn from a planned economy in favor of free-market and Western-consumer values. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Final Destination: Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam Stein)
Another reason I’ll describe Final Destination: Bloodlines as a disaster movie pastiche instead of an outright horror comedy is because of its biggest weakness: no matter the brilliance of the comic timing, the splatter is undercut by a relance on CGI gore over anything practical. In an age when even the worst studio slop is beginning to pivot back to the art of prosthetics, the computer-generated carnage here would feel underwhelming if it weren’t for the nailing of comedic beats. The prior movies didn’t exactly utilize good, old-fashioned buckets of blood either, and there are scenes here which could only have been created with the aid of VFX artists, but when even some simpler deaths have largely been cobbled together in post, it does make it harder to recommend for horror fans in particular. I assume the filmmakers are hedging their bets on you being too busy laughing to care; at least for me, their gamble paid off in the moment. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Hot Milk (Rebecca Lenkiewicz)
A mother-daughter relationship is rarely a love story, at least not in any of the ways art has dramatized it thus far. Sure, a mother loves her daughter deeply (and vice-versa), but it is a sentiment defined by ambivalence and often laced with resentment. British writer Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel Hot Milk speaks to the very core of that ambivalence; seasoned screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, She Said) has now adapted the acclaimed book into her first foray as a director. Set during a hot and heavy summer in Almería on the southeastern coast of Spain, the blistering Hot Milk follows 25-year-old Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her partially paralyzed mother Rose (Fiona Shaw) as they navigate everyday ailing and maternal traumas, always together and somehow always apart. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan)
In just over a decade, Mike Flanagan went from promising indie director to one of the best American genre filmmakers working today. Starting with Absentia and Oculus, he soon worked his way up to studio fare (Doctor Sleep) before spending the past several years making Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher. With The Life of Chuck, his first film in five years, Flanagan takes a step away from horror to make an elaborate drama about life and mortality. It’s only a slight step outside of his wheelhouse, as he’s adapting a non-horror novella by none other than Stephen King, an author he worships for better and worse. – C.J. P. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Killer Films 30th Anniversary
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of their company Killer Films, pioneering producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, Metrograph is putting together a deserved tribute, with screenings in person and available online, the latter including Todd Haynes’ Poison, Antonio Santini’s Mala Mala, Tom Kalin’s Swoon, and Steve McLean’s Postcards from America. Be sure to listen to our dicussion with the producers on The B-Side above.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Meeting with Pol Pot (Rithy Panh)
In 1978, journalist Elizabeth Becker was one of three westerners granted permission to enter Cambodia while under the communist rule of the Khmer Rouge. “We were all conscious of our role as singular witnesses of the revolution,” she writes in When the War Was Over. “And, perhaps, of the war everyone was predicting.” Oddly enough, when they arrived in Phnom Penh, apart from armed guards who accompanied them wherever they went, the city was deserted of any signs of life, “a tropical twilight zone.” It was no longer the vibrant city she had once known. They were expected to have a meeting with the party’s dictator––the ambiguous, charismatic Pol Pot––but soon they learned not to believe what they were being told: that the facade, which appeared to have been created just for them, was beginning to crack. – Nirris N. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Akira
The Bodyguard
Chess of the Wind
The Competition
Deep Cover
Dig! XX
Eastern Condors
Le garçu
Ghost in the Shell
Good Will Hunting
Graduate First
Grosse Pointe Blank
The Hottest August
The Hungry Ghosts
Judgment Night
Kalpana
Loulou
The Magnificent Butcher
Ma mère
Mallrats
The Mouth Agape
Moving
Paprika
Pedicab Driver
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Redline
Singles
So I Married an Axe Murderer
SubUrbia
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
Trainspotting
Two Girls on the Street
Under the Sun of Satan
Van Gogh
Variety
Velvet Goldmine
We Won’t Grow Old Together
Kino Film Collection
Hussy
Metrograph at Home
3 Faces
Music
This Is Not A Film
MUBI (free for 30 days)
A Field in England
Petrov’s Flu
I Was a Simple Man
August at Akiko’s
Spa Night
Louder Than You Think
Oslo, August 31