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 the interwebs. 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 Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
99 Homes (Ramin Bahrani)
Ramin Bahrani made a name for himself with three independent films over the last decade, focusing on humanity’s daily struggles, reinvented foreign lives in America, and a fundamental sense of decency. With 2012’s At Any Price and this year’s 99 Homes, Bahrani has twice returned to the festival that launched his career, presenting the evolution of those themes. Not coincidentally, the worst years of the financial crisis stand between his acclaimed Goodbye, Solo and the tepidly received 2012 picture, and they must have had a profound effect on the direction of Bahrani’s filmography. With a broader canvas, flashier casts, and a more overt penchant for melodrama, At Any Price and 99 Homes single out agriculture and real estate as the catalysts of contemporary American sufferings. – Tommaso T. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
A Walk Among the Tombstones (Scott Frank)
Indicated by the proliferation of his action-oriented films in the last half-decade, simply uttering the name Liam Neeson spurs the specific notion of a certain sort of slick, B-movie thriller. Considering the box-office he can bring in, it’s no surprise that even with the loosest connection to a Taken-esque plot, his features in the genre are marketed as bullet-riddled blow-outs. While his latest film, A Walk Among the Tombstones, may contain impassioned phone calls, kidnappings, and even open with all-out warfare, it is distinctly of its own world: a brooding, sharp and skillfully crafted, character-focused detective story. – Nathan B. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Go
Dope (Rick Famuyiwa)
Dope opens with a sense of energy proclaiming that writer-director Rick Famuyiwa has something to say, and he’s going to do it in his own particular way. Difficult to quantify, the Sundance drama is many things: a love letter to the 1990’s era of style and hip-hop, a coming-of-age story, a crime drama, a romance, an examination of social media, and an offbeat comedy. While some of these strands don’t entirely excel, Dope is often a refreshingly lively and passionate work of filmmaking. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Glassland (Gerard Barrett)
There’s no doubt that Irish actor Jack Reynor deserves recognition for his role in Glassland, a modern-day kitchen sink drama set in a south Dublin social housing suburb. He won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival for his portrayal of John, a poor Irish lad trapped by the demands of caring for his severely alcoholic mother. To that end, the latest from filmmaker Gerard Barrett functions better as a career stepping stone for the 23-year-old up-and-comer, rather than as a worthwhile examination of addiction and poverty. – Amanda W. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Grandma (Paul Weitz)
Lily Tomlin has had more than just one “role of a lifetime” in her filmography, but in writer/director Paul Weitz’s Grandma she’s given the type of project that celebrates an entire career. A little gem originally unveiled last January at Sundance, Grandma is a crowd-pleaser potent with Tomlin’s DNA, from the razor-sharp wit in dialogue to the way the movie itself speaks to sometimes pointed, but necessary ends. – Nick A. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Night Before (Jonathan Levine)
The Night Before isn’t mired in the same discussions of perception/identity of those aforementioned movies, but it does still rely on the outsized personas of its stars to supply the movie with its own personality. If other recent meta comedies have been about deconstructing the expectations of star/persona, then this is merely an excuse to give wealth porn a holiday skin. Even then, its holiday bonafides are nearly an afterthought, crowded into symbolism around the city and nods to touchstones like Home Alone. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Peanuts Movie (Steve Martino)
When any beloved property is adapted in a new medium for the big screen there is bound to be a slew of anxiety that comes along with it. The odds of someone taking something you know by heart and love on a soul-deep level and disrespecting it in the name of commerce are stacked astronomically against you. That goes double for a film based on a comic involving children as characters and an appealingly dark existential streak. With children as characters, the film will invariably be geared towards children, and so one would be forgiven for believing that the soul of the story would be altered to appeal to them as well. So it is was a huge relief to find that The Peanuts Movie manages to maintain the soul of the comic strip even as it upgrades the visuals. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Railway Man (Jonathan Teplitzky)
The story of Eric Lomax began as one of great misfortune, only to became extraordinary because of the forgiving choices of the man at its heart. A British signals officer in WWII, Lomax was taken as a prisoner of war bythe Japanese during the fall of Singapore in 1942. In addition to enduring torture at the hands of his captors, Lomax was also pressed into service building the Burma Railway, the same one that featured prominently in David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai. What sets the story apart is not what Lomax was subject to—tragically, over 60,000 POWs were forced into similar situations on the “Death Railway”—but how he reacted years later when confronted with the possibility of meeting one of the men chiefly responsible for his misery. Based off Lomax’s own poignant memoir, Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man does its best to honor the unique compassion of the account without succumbing to schmaltz or banal arthouse prestige. The success rate here is a little better than half. – Nathan B. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Secret In Their Eyes (Billy Ray)
Foregoing the emotion at the core of Juan José Campanella’s Oscar-winning drama The Secret in Their Eyes, Billy Ray’s cold procedural remake (titled Secret in Their Eyes, evidently taking advice from Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker) walks the walk, transplanting the story to a post-9/11 Los Angeles from 1970’s Argentina. The motivations are somewhat different this time around. Instead of writing a novel, Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) returns to his old stomping grounds to pay a visit to the one that got away: both his work crush Claire (Nicole Kidman) and a murder suspect whom he thinks he’s located. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Southbound (Various)
The V/H/S series has crashed and burned badly, but producers Brad Miska and Roxanne Benjamin have moved on to a different anthology of horror shorts, now joined by a new cadre of collaborators. Four directors (Benjamin, fellow V/H/S veterans David Bruckner and Radio Silence, and Patrick Horvath) have spun out the five different scary stories which make up Southbound. But whereas many anthologies are united only by a theme, these segments share locations and cross over certain characters, all within the same vista of an undefined stretch of desert in the American Southwest. This, however, does not result in any appreciable improvement over generic indie gore-mongering. – Dan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Tumbledown (Sean Mewshaw)
From its opening of characters listening in stunned awe to the music of a legendary fictional folk singer, Sean Mewshaw’s admirable but disappointing Tumbledown traps itself with unfair expectations. As a study of grief, it’s moving, featuring authentic performances and a keen understanding of the receding hibernation that comes with losing a cornerstone person in one’s life. As a romance, it’s slow-going but believable. And as a look at the unfair mythos attributed to the dead, it’s nuanced and incisive. But in attempting to balance these complementary parts, Tumbledown is buried by its own ambitions. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
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