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.
Black Film Archive
Created by Maya Cade, the newly-launched Black Film Archive is an essential resource featuring every Black film made between 1915 and 1979 that is currently available stream. With over 200 films indexed, if you’re looking for a place to start, check out Cade’s curator picks, ranging from Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl to Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come to Madeline Anderson’s I Am Somebody. Also, if you’re able to help the evolving, self-funded project, consider supporting their PayPal, Cash App, or their monthly Substack here.
Where to Stream: Black Film Archive
The Courier (Dominic Cooke)
Early on in The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) realizes he’s sitting at a table with both a MI6 officer (Angus Wright) and a CIA officer (Rachel Brosnahan). Excited, he admits: “I can’t believe I’m having lunch with spies!” It’s a moment of brevity that speaks to the interesting tonal dance the filmmakers are trying at. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Los Reyes (Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff)
When it comes to dog movies, Hollywood usually piles on extraneous family-friendly melodrama to build up a narrative. A new documentary hailing for Chile, however, puts our stars–and pretty much only our stars–front and center. Los Reyes is a formally impressive, heartfelt look at canine best friends who more or less govern a skate park and those that cross their path. Told with a patient eye and little frills, one comes away with a raw, poignant feeling of camaraderie. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Mosquito State (Filip Jan Rymsza)
See an exclusive clip above.
Grafting Cronenbergian body horror onto the 2008 financial crisis, Filip Jan Rymsza’s horror-tinged Mosquito State takes its title very literally, beginning with the up-close birth of a mosquito and ends, quite appropriately, with an insect apocalypse as the stock market collapses. In-between those potent images, however, is a work with plenty of grandiose ideas and little sense of how to communicate them. Thematically muddled but visually stunning, Rymsza’s film serves as a warning call for those who prioritize form over all else, elaborately staged shots doing little to hide the ever-growing narrative inconsistencies. – Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Shudder
My Zoe (Julie Delpy)
From her work in the 2 Days series to her performances in Three Colours to the Before trilogy, which she co-wrote with Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy often imbues her characters with a tinge of heartfelt lunacy, going on creative, insightful, and downright hysterical outbursts regarding some sociopolitical scheme or the real reasons people fall in and out of love. In her latest film, My Zoe––which she wrote, directed, and leads––she takes these career-long ideas to deliver one of her most passionate performances and ambitious scripts to date. – Erik N. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
No Man of God (Amber Sealey)
Partly playing out as a chamber piece that fictionalizes a series of conversations between Ted Bundy (Luke Kirby) and FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier (Elijah Wood), Amber Sealey’s No Man of God is an actors showcase that purposely eschews mythologizing Bundy or his crimes. Serving, in part, as a counterpoint to previous films and documentaries that play up Bundy’s charisma, Sealey and Kirby, alongside writer Kit Lesser, strip away that magnetism to reveal a needy individual who very much wants to claim normality, even in the face of his horrific crimes. Structurally bifurcated, with the second half of the film unfurling under a seven-day timeframe before Bundy is scheduled to be executed, Sealey’s film is an effective, if occasionally blunt, dive into the relationship between Bundy and Hagmaier. – Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
Another slow-cinema project devoted to the observance of some specific task (in this case cooking dumplings) initially has a been-there-seen-that air. By the second shot (fifteen or twenty minutes in) do rhythms overtake resistance: each composition, of which there are nine total, answers its previous in manner that’s immensely satisfying for the sense that activity and progress are steadily accumulating, its immersive sound mix the coup de grâce. (Repackage this as dumpling-making ASMR and a hit shall emerge.) That one’s aware of duration without weighing it in quantitative terms may be the final secret of Liu’s genius. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel (along with Oxhide)
Wildland (Jeanette Nordahl)
While much entertainment can be had from stories of successful, high-level crime families, tales of low-level crime syndicates are often far more impactful. Case in point is the ménage of barely serviceable debt collectors in Jeanette Nordahl’s Wildland. Like the Irish gangsters in the recent film Calm with Horses, the family in this Danish drama is close-knit yet positively bursting with secrets. Into this family comes a teenage cousin with no knowledge of how they make their money. The results are, predictably, not going to be pretty. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
Experimenter
Sugar Daddy (review)
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Netflix
Virtual Cinemas
VOD