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.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
It is a fascinating thing to watch someone’s history of protest and addiction collide and conspire to hold a pharmaceutical company accountable and expose its parent family as reprehensible. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles the renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her fight through the AIDS and opioid crisis, but this is bigger than a biographical documentary. Through slideshows, interviews, and family videos, Poitras weaves a riveting, heartbreaking interconnected story of generational pain, its influence over the blurry boundaries between life and art. – Jake K-S.
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Hannah Ha Ha (Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky)
Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky’s dryly humorous character study picked up the top prize at last year’s Slamdance Film Festival and now arrives to streaming after a theatrical run. Matthew Danger Lippman said in his interview that their debut is “a perfectly realized suburban dramedy, with the titular Hannah (Hannah Lee Thompson, a Baltimore-based musician) fumbling to find employment after her start-up douche brother (producer Roger Mancusi) comes to town. He’s mystified at her life, which consists mainly of hanging with her father (Avram Tetewsky, Jordan’s actual dad), watching The Twilight Zone, and working on a farm. An oddball cast of local characters round out this melancholy, lightly-satirical trip through suburban Massachusetts.”
Where to Stream: Fandor
Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)
With its Twilight Zone-esque thrills, taking a high-concept, small-scale scenario and exploring it with pressure cooker intensity, Knock at the Cabin sets M. Night Shyamalan the restraints to craft one of his most impressive feats of directing. Further proving to be one of the most empathetic directors working on a studio level today, he also packs in moments of fright as we glimpse apocalyptic disasters through the omnipresent form of a television broadcast, grounding the unthinkable in a startling familiarity. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Peacock
Inu-oh (Masaaki Yuasa)
Director Masaaki Yuasa and screenwriter Akiko Nogi’s adaptation of Hideo Furukawa’s novel The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-oh Chapters finishes with a couple screens of text describing its titular Noh performer’s final years of success, despite his name being all but forgotten in comparison to the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s personal favorite. It’s why these three have brought the story of Inu-oh to life—to ensure his name, and that of his friend Tomona from Dan-no-ura, a blind biwa-playing priest, won’t disappear again. What better way to do so than a 14th-century anachronistic rock opera set during Japan’s Muromachi period, courtesy two cursed men who dare give voice to the voiceless and subsequently free themselves from the chains that society uses to bind them? – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Nope (Jordan Peele)
Only two films have cemented Jordan Peele as a formative voice in contemporary horror, Oscar winner, and rein-puller for one of the biggest properties in science fiction, The Twilight Zone. Although Nope likely aims for the heights of his first two horror ventures, its blend of Buffalo Bill and Buck Rogers aligns more with his Rod Serling proclivities. This is grand sci-fi showmanship with a social conscience, but its biggest shock is that Peele may be more invested in the former than the latter. In a refusal to rest on laurels he takes a big swing on a larger canvas. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (Guy Ritchie)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, belatedly arriving on screens a year after its initially slated premiere, suggests a director chasing former glories of an altogether different variety, his creative spark fallen so far that he’s aiming to recapture the magic of prior director-for-hire gigs––in this case 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I say such with no disrespect to that film––a stylish espionage thriller that best translated Ritchie’s earlier crime-thriller storytelling sensibilities into a summer tentpole––but to reiterate that he’s now watering-down an already-watered-down take on what a blockbuster “Guy Ritchie movie” might be. His latest is a watchable effort that coasts on the charms of its affable ensemble before fading almost entirely from memory the second it’s over. That being enough to place it among the strongest of Ritchie’s recent works should say all one needs to know about this era of his career. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Sin (Andrei Konchalovsky)
Like Andrei Rublev (1969), a somber epic of Russia’s greatest icon painter which Konchalovsky co-wrote with writer-director Tarkovsky, Sin follows an artist who’s never shown painting–or sculpting, for that matter. It unfurls as a study of a man struggling to reach the sublime while navigating a world riddled with conflict and misery. Nothing close to the violence that surfaced in Andrei Rublev, to be sure: in Sin, the conflict pivots by and large on the feuds between the Della Rovere and Medici families, rival clans who fought over Rome and Michelangelo’s loyalty. But there is also a deep spiritual conflict undergirding the drama, of a man struggling to find redemption through art, haunted by fame, deadlines, and moral failings. Continue reading Leonardo Goi’s interview.
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)
“He’s the fastest man alive.” Such is the kind of open self-awareness that is tastefully deployed throughout Top Gun: Maverick. Despite being the latest in a line of legacy sequels eager to capitalize on pandering nostalgia, Tom Cruise’s decades-in-waiting return to what made him a superstar only occasionally resorts to such bait. Thankfully, Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski are of a mind to make a film that ultimately exists on its own. Forced to contend with the pall of Reagan-era propaganda over the first Top Gun, this sequel has the gumption to take the original to task, while actively engaging with everything we know about its star. The film’s opening moments mirror that of its predecessor almost exactly. From the opening supers, to the music to the Tony Scott sunscapes, it’s just enough of a signal to let fans know they’re in a relatively safe space. But the fan service flourishes are dispensed up front, leaving plenty of runway to let the whole thing rip. Whether or not one is a fan of the first film, it can’t be overstated how impressive almost every creative decision in Maverick is. The action is practical, the propaganda is muted, and the cocksure hero has decidedly aged. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Also New to Streaming
HBO Max
The Wild Bunch
Hulu
Call Jane
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Melancholia
Terror’s Advocate
Self-Portrait
Wobble Palace
Phantom Love
Ava
Ghost in the Shell
Netflix
Carol
VOD
Kubrick by Kubrick
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game