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.
Blue Film (Elliot Tuttle)
“Provocation” has become watered-down in recent times. All it takes to provoke someone is tossing off a bunch of half-assed offensive statements or aiming your cannon at every divisive mainstream issue on a quest to push people’s buttons. Getting a reaction out of people is easy; actually making them consider things is another matter entirely. Blue Film, by that token, is provocative in the truest sense of the term. Elliott Tuttle’s film seeks to unsettle, question, and, yes, provoke you. But his masterful two-hander wants, more than anything, to extend understanding to both men at the center, asking you to see them as flawed humans with depth and complexity, even if we’d rather not. – Devan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
I Am Frankelda (Arturo Ambriz and Roy Ambriz)
After getting much buzz on the festival circuit last year, Mexico’s first-ever stop-motion feature arrives on Netflix. Directed by Arturo Ambriz and Roy Ambriz, who worked under Guillermo del Toro, the fantasy tale I Am Frankelda was praised by Jared Mobarak in his review: “More than the similarly mythologized Monsters, Inc., the first stop-motion feature produced in Mexico (courtesy of the Cinema Fantasma studio) recalls an old childhood favorite from the ’80s: Little Monsters. Just like that Fred Savage vehicle, writers-directors Los Hermanos Ambriz (Arturo and Roy) have created a means to connect reality to nightmare so a human might embrace the latter’s mischief, mystery, and terror that the former rejects. The 19th-century-set I Am Frankelda is thus born from a young woman’s mind (Mireya Mendoza’s Francisca Imelda) as a manifestation of her aspiration to become a horror writer––a dream met with major pushback from publishers, society, and family alike.”
Where to Stream: Netflix
It’s Dorothy! (Jeffrey McHale)
Upon hearing the name “Dorothy” I, like most, immediately think of The Wizard of Oz. I remember watching the film when I was a kid, sitting on the couch with my family. I remember my parents calling it “a classic.” Dorothy Gale has become synonymous with many things over the 125 years since she first appeared in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from Kansas to ruby red slippers, Judy Garland to a 1950s LGBTQ+ signifier. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Peacock, VOD
LUZ (Flora Lau)
With an evocative opening-credits sequence as the camera swirls through a virtual landscape of neon signs and lights, one might think they are witnessing the beginning of the next Gaspar Noé film. Thankfully what follows in Flora Lau’s second feature LUZ is less puerile and exasperating than the work of that enfant terrible, but it could use an inkling more bite. A mood piece above all else, the emotionally detached drama follows two disparate, vaguely connected stories of alienated individuals adrift in a world consumed by technology that may in fact be the only path toward healing. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection, VOD
Paradox of Praxis 5: Sometimes we dream as we live & sometimes we live as we dream (Francis Alÿs)
Based in Mexico, Alÿs works across multiple mediums and makes art that confronts geopolitical situations through poetic means. Made in collaboration with Julien Devaux, Rafael Ortega, Alejandro Morales, and Félix Blume as part of his Paradox of Praxis series, in which he performs distinct physical actions in different social contexts, this film sees Alÿs kick a flaming soccer ball around Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a border city affected by cartel violence. His film explores the thorniness of art-making in the face of a terrible situation and poses, not unlike the World Cup, whether art can coexist alongside great social issues.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Also New to Streaming
HBO Max
They Will Kill You
Kino Film Collection
Daddy and the Muscle Academy
MUBI
Gregory’s Girl
Infinite Football
Mario
On the Seventh Day
VOD
Mārama
Michael
Saccharine