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.
Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
After dabbling in dystopian fantasy (The Lobster) and period comedy (The Favourite), shocking us along the way with original creations (Dogtooth) and fanciful adaptations (Poor Things) alike, Yorgos Lanthimos has proven time and again that there’s not a single uncreative bone in his body. Remaking the criminally underseen Korean sci-fi comedic thriller Save the Green Planet!, he succeeds in honoring the original while putting his unique stamp on it. The result is a sleeker (if slightly paler) version of a truly bonkers film. –Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (Henry Jaglom)
Certainly the only movie in existence to star Larry David and Orson Welles, Henry Jaglom’s Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? was a wonderful discovery at the 63rd New York Film Festival last fall, where a new 4K restoration premiered as part of the Revivals lineup just days after Jaglom passed away. The Upper West Side-set feature stars Karen Black, who embarks on a new romance after getting divorced. Following a theatrical release, the new restoration is now streaming. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home.
A Magnificent Life (Sylvain Chomet)
It’s common for a successful artist to be asked about advice they’d give their younger self; one film from this year’s Cannes Specials selection does the opposite. In Sylvain Chomet’s animation A Magnificent Life, French playwright, filmmaker, and inventor Marcel Pagnol is 61 years old and very close to giving up on his career, so a younger Marcel comes to the rescue. When asked to write a memoir column for Elle magazine, Pagnol simply can’t do it––not without the help of hope and optimism personified in the figure of young Marcel. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Maya, Give Me a Title (Michel Gondry)
Running at a whisker over an hour, Maya, Give Me a Title is the most a Gondry film has lived up to the promise of his breakthrough short-form work in decades, rejuvenating his creative spirit while a minor work in intention. A selection of animated shorts made to entertain his young daughter while they lived on separate continents, all inspired by one-sentence prompts she wanted to hear stories about, the very broad boundaries set for him––both in the vagueness of each narrative concept and infinite possibilities for animation, even on this handmade scale––offer a reminder of why his breakneck imagination felt so revelatory a few decades earlier. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Stranger Eyes (Yeo Siew Hua)
In a film so concerned with our current media regime––the way we produce and consume images of each other––Lee saunters into Stranger Eyes as a kind of anomaly. There is a stark contrast between the surgical eyes of CCTV cameras and the actor’s own, the way surveillance devices capture reality and how Lee’s Wu processes it. I do not mean to downplay Wu and Panna’s turns. The former in particular channels a feverish angst, and his transformation from object of Wu’s obsession into voyeur himself largely works. But Stranger Eyes belongs to Lee. Whether or not Yeo wrote it with him in mind, I can’t think of a better performer to flesh out the chasm that powers the film: between different ways of looking, between fears as old as time itself and the state-of-the-art technology used to bring them to light. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
This Is Not a Drill (Oren Jacoby)
Watch an exclusive clip above.
About an hour into This is Not a Drill, the new documentary from director Oren Jacoby, comes a moment that is stark and unsettling. Sitting next to her daughter, Louisiana climate activist Roishetta Ozane asks what she thinks of the LNG (Liquefied natural gas) factories near their house. Her daughter responds: “If you don’t get the industry to stop, that will be the reason the world ends.” For as scary as the answer is, it’s also a hopeful one. Ozane acknowledges as much in her reaction. On one hand, there is the apocalyptic responsibility; on the other, there is the optimism that somebody like Roishetta Ozane can stop an oil company from ending the world as we know it. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: YouTube
The True Beauty of Being Bitten By A Tick (Pete Ohs)
Falling somewhere between a horror film and dark comedy about wellness crazes, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is, like director Pete Ohs’ previous Jethica, a film that suggests watching a play within a movie. Both features are difficult to discuss without spoilers––they seem to operate on a wavelength beyond genre boxes. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Letterboxd Video Store
An Unfinished Film (Lou Ye)
It’s perhaps fitting that Lou’s purportedly unfinished film didn’t find the best ending, but what a premise, what a build-up, what gloriously meta storytelling. This pandemic-era mocumentary is an act of defiance against the Chinese state censorship and among the most creatively inspired works of the year. Set around a film crew trying to complete an abandoned project when lockdown hit, the harrowing drama ponders the essence of cinema via performances within performances, by reconstructing memories and through the very passage of time. It’s invigorating on an intellectual level and deeply affecting for what it says about human resilience and an artist’s duty to remember. – Zhuo-Ning Su
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell)
Is the sight of the human tongue really so shocking? Were 1996 audiences ducking in their seats à la L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat when Matthew Lillard kept jutting his out like a jackass in Scream? Judging from Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, we’re meant to react like so to the sight of Jacob Elordi’s tongue in many of the film’s erotically charged scenes. That is perhaps a microcosm of this new adaptation’s failed transgression. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
95 and 6 to Go
Against All Odds
The Apartment
The Big Clock
Bitter Cane
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Bound
Breathless
Cat People
A Chinese Ghost Story
A Chinese Ghost Story II
A Chinese Ghost Story III
Clockwatchers
Conbody vs Everybody
D.O.A.
Daughter’s Daughter
Desk Set
E=NYC2
Él
Four Letter Words
Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us
Haiti: The Way to Freedom
Heaven’s Crossroad
His Girl Friday
House of Cardin
K-On! The Movie
Looking for Adventure
Lumière, le cinéma!
Man Wanted
The Man Who Loved Women
More Than a Secretary
My Ain Folk
My Childhood
My Way Home
No Way Out
The Office Wife
Onlookers
Point Break
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Queen Bee
Riotsville, U.S.A.
Rosewater
The Shepherd and the Bear
The Spirit of ’45
Summer of the Serpent
Suspended
Sweet Sugar Rage
The Terror and the Time
That Which Once Was
The Thing
The Thing from Another World
Tokyo Trial
We’re No Angels
Western
Where Are You Taking Me?
The Whole Town’s Talking
Woman of the Year
Women of Suriname
Working Girls
Film Movement+
Forest for the Trees
Hulu
Good Boy
Kino Film Collection
Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen
Metrograph at Home
The Circle
Closed Curtain
Come Here
Crimson Gold
Hope
Krabi, 2562
Only the River Flows
The Passengers of the Night
The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
Pushing Hands
MUBI
Farewell My Concubine
A Quiet Passion
Mother Couch
Boxcar Bertha
The Last Waltz
Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco
Dior and I
Westwood: Punk, Icon Activist
Mitski: The Land
Edge of Night
VOD
Didn’t Die
Forbidden Fruits
Hoppers
Life After
They Will Kill You