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.
Anora (Sean Baker)
Sean Baker’s Anora expands his filmmaking vision, pushing the writer-director-editor’s fifth consecutive story on sex workers into a higher plane of awards and commercial success. It’s a romantic comedy, a madcap dash around New York City, a movie ruminating on loss, love, and class disparity. Baker aims to put audiences through a ringer of emotional swings, ending with a desolation that’s been building in the background, easier to spot once the tinsel’s shimmer fades. With a true star-making performance from Mikey Madison and a deep bench of supporting actors, Anora whirls until suddenly it doesn’t, and all that’s left is earned, resonant silence from both its characters and audience. – Michael F.
Where to Stream: Hulu
Armand (Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel)
After her 2021 breakout with The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve’s 2022 and 2023 seemed fairly quiet, but she was working on no shortage of projects that finally saw the light of day. Following A Different Man, Handling the Undead, Another End, and Presumed Innocent, she leads Armand, which marks the feature debut from Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Savina Petkova said in her Cannes review of Norway’s selection for Best International Film, “How is a child’s life different from that of adults today? What is it like growing up around stimuli, in a world that is always-online, and with varying degrees of supervision? Is complete safeguarding even possible? These are questions contemporary cinema has been asking a lot in the last few years. Many classroom dramas, including 2023’s The Teacher’s Lounge, have explored complex ways the in-and-out-of-school dynamics intertwine, usually through the prism of a single incident. Armand, by Halfdan Ullmann Tønde, opts for that micro-as-macro approach and refuses to pass any judgment. As a result the film stays in this moral limbo between truth and lie, accusation and defense, instead zooming into its characters’ psychological states. Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve) has been summoned to an emergency parent-teacher meeting after her six-year-old son Armand is accused of crossing boundaries with his classmate Jon. What actually happened, we do not know.”
Where to Stream: VOD
Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine)
Baby Invasion is capital-A Art, a new standard for cinematic absurdism in which every audio-visual element is thrown to the wind. It’s less interested in entertaining than it is in pushing boundaries, the kind of work made to start a conversation about what movies are, what “rules,” frameworks, and devices they’ve outgrown––the kind of film made to stretch and challenge our idea of cinema, to get us thinking about the ways it can evolve. And Korine bashes us over the head tirelessly with the conversation, as he’s always done best. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (Christian Gudegast)
Ah, what a relief after the year-end self-importance of The Brutalist and Nosferatu to have some good January pulp in our filmgoing lives again. Seven years in the making, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera finally brings us back into the world of weary, hard-drinking cop Big Nick (Gerard Butler) and aspirant master-thief Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.). A film that even its biggest fans gave the backhanded compliment of “douchebag Heat,” the original Den of Thieves strangely endured––if partly due to a mixture of ambition and sleaze, almost like the grizzled anti-heroes at its center. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Exhibiting Forgiveness (Titus Kaphar)
“Your heavenly Father will forgive you if you forgive those who sin against you; but if you refuse to forgive them, he will not forgive you.” This gospel of Matthew is the thematic crux of Titus Kaphar’s feature debut Exhibiting Forgiveness, a nakedly emotional, overwrought, schematic tale of how the artistic process converges with the unexpected return of past trauma. Led by André Holland in an impressively anguished performance, the ensemble elevates a script that has its heart in the right place but feels lacking in layers of complexity that we see from the art on display. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (Robert Connolly)
If there is any justice in this world, we’ll get an Aaron Falk mystery every few years in perpetuity. Force of Nature: The Dry 2, written and directed by Robert Connolly and based on the novel by Jane Harper, offers up a brand-new case for viewers and does not require that you’ve seen its engaging predecessor (The Dry). This time the setting is the Giralang Ranges, a fictional rainforest of labyrinthine density (the film itself was shot all over Victoria, Australia). Along with the drastic change in scenery from the first outing (which hewed closer to an outback aesthetic tourists would expect), there’s been an expansion of production value. As Falk closes in on the identity of the killer, a violent storm closes in. This time there are more characters, more plot, and more conflicting motivations. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Outrun (Nora Fingscheidt)
Maybe the smartest decision made in The Outrun, directed by Nora Fingscheidt, is its fractured narrative device. Based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by Amy Liptrot (co-writing with Fingscheidt), the film offers a frank, unwavering look at addiction with the great Saoirse Ronan (who also produces) in the lead role. We move forward and backward in time, often relieved to be clear from horrible sins of the past only to be thrust back into them minutes later. In this way, the picture reflects its subject with painful precision. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar)
“We are here to become human again.” This is the mantra of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, founded in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a prison just north of New York City, and the subject of Greg Kwedar’s emotionally restorative new feature. While led by a stellar Colman Domingo with an equally great supporting turn from Paul Raci, the majority of Sing Sing‘s cast knows the program all too well, either as alumni or currently going through it. That authenticity in casting carries through every frame and every line, as if Kwedar has walked these halls and been in these rooms, an observer to the intimate conversations he’s scripted alongside Clint Bentley. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung)
When Lee Isaac Chung was announced as director of a legacy sequel to Twister, many were quick to bemoan the fact that we’re stuck in an age where helming a Best Picture nominee isn’t enough to ensure funding for your next, personal project. After all, the past few years have shown it’s an uphill battle for any filmmaker with indie cred to smuggle their personal touch into a franchise tentpole––just look at Chloe Zhao, whose strange, uneven MCU project Eternals fell short of even being interesting enough to become a cult curio à la Ang Lee’s Hulk. That specter of an increasingly compromised studio product must have been on Chung’s mind throughout making Twister$, so it’s both a surprise and relief that the DNA of a director who has previously only made intimate character dramas can be keenly felt throughout. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Wicked (Jon M. Chu)
“Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” The conundrum of theodicy has long plagued humanity, just as it’s plagued the Ozians of Munchkinland. Like the source novel and Broadway musical, Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of part one of Wicked (penned by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox) doesn’t dig into the existential nitty-gritty of the question. But it makes its position on the matter as blunt as the theatrics are dazzling: no, people are not born wicked. It’s thrust upon them by circumstance or, more specifically, the powers that be. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Peacock
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
Chained for Life
Falling Star
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Carol
The Last of the Mohicans
The Prestige
O’Dessa
The Roundup: No Way Out and Punishment
True Lies
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Autobiography of a Handbag
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Audrey
VOD
Cleaner
Last Breath
My Dead Friend Zoe
Riff Raff