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.
Across the River and Into the Trees (Paula Ortiz)
Hemingway’s work across novels and short stories has been adapted for film countless times over, yet Across the River and Into the Trees has never properly been rendered onscreen. Until now. Written by Peter Flannery and directed by Paula Ortiz, here is a handsome film that is decidedly modest in its endeavor. The best thing going for it is Liev Schreiber as Colonel Richard Cantwell, the lead of the picture. Schreiber is one of those actors who has somehow always been underrated, despite being capable of playing nearly any kind of part. A kind boyfriend thrust into an impossible familial situation (The Daytrippers)? Check. Tough-but-fractured fixer living on the edge (Ray Donovan)? Check. A determined, cocksure Orson Welles making Citizen Kane (RKO 281)? Check. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi)
For a biopic about Donald Trump, The Apprentice is surprisingly concerned with other things. The film has exactly what you might expect and somehow a curiosity around every corner, a familiar historical intrigue firmly planted in a tonal shock. The shock comes from its subtlety and perspective, the latter of which has a unique bent for a film about an ex-President debuting in an election year that spotlights his third campaign. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Birthday (Eugenio Mira)
Gaining newfound attention nearly two decades after its initial premiere when Jordan Peele programmed it as part of a series of Nope influences during a Film at Lincoln Center series last year, Eugenio Mira’s The Birthday fits the perfect mold of a midnight cult classic. Led by Cory Feldman as he attends the birthday of his girlfriend’s father taking place in a mysterious hotel with all sorts of wild happenings, there’s a gonzo energy to the proceedings that is a blast to behold, particularly its go-for-broke finale. Now restored in 4K for its 20th anniversary, it’s available digitally as theatrical screenings continue. “A cinematic marvel that demands captivation and will never relent to your expectations. A true ‘what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch’ experience. Feldman at his best,” said Peele.
Where to Stream: VOD
The Coen Brothers
While the Coen brothers have recently traversed separate paths, with The Criterion Channel
Directed by Catherine Breillat
One of the most revelatory retrospectives of the year thus far for my personal viewing was Film at Lincoln Center’s Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Catherine Breillat on the occasion of her brilliant new film Last Summer. Now, a selection of her films, including a trio of brand-new restorations, are coming to the Criterion Channel featuring A Real Young Girl (1976), Nocturnal Uproar (1979), 36 fillette (1988), Dirty Like an Angel (1991), Perfect Love (1996), Fat Girl (2001), Sex Is Comedy (2002), and Anatomy of Hell (2004).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Endurance (Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Natalie Hewit)
After diving into narrative filmmaking last year with Nyad, Oscar-winning director Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi return to the documentary form, accompanied by Natalie Hewit, for Endurance. Telling the story of Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 Antarctic expedition, in which 28 men were stranded on ice for months, they crosscut with a voyage to find the wreckage over a century later. While there’s no denying the rousing nature of the original expedition, the trio of directors never find the right bifurcated storytelling rhythm or compelling cinematic canvas to make the story click. Add in a late credits reveal of AI used for voiceover re-enactments, and the only recommendation one can give for this documentary is for those deeply interested in the tale.
Where to Stream: Hulu, Disney+ (on Saturday)
Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
Last Things crunches 4.5 million years of planetary history into a 50-minute biosphere pageant at once de-humaned and vigorously hopeful for the future possibilities of a human voice. Of its varying source texts and urges, Stratman says, “There’s definitely an obsessive collection phase and then a kind of realization of, like,‘I better start pruning or this is gonna take over my space.’” I suggest that this process might be a little like carving because I am unable to get my head out of a hunk of rock, and she nudges the metaphor into something less rigid. “It’s definitely about removal, acts of removal. I think of it as distillation, or draining a little bit. Like the fishermen, sometimes, I’ll just cast and catch the fish, but for a lot of the time––especially the more essayist films––I tend to drain the whole dang pond to get the fish.” Continue reading Frank Falisi’s interview.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
I Like Movies (Chandler Levack)
A reverie of 2002 and 2003 in Toronto’s sleepy Burlington suburb, I Like Movies initially takes on the appearance of nostalgia with its sight of lined video store walls viewed in the age of streaming. But tougher subject matter is somewhat at hand, as we hone in on high school senior and outcast Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), the kind of kid who makes sure to note it as “Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love” when buying a ticket from a hapless cashier. A one-track mind making him oblivious to the pain of his single mother (Krista Bridges) and most of those around him, he’s basically the realistic version of the teen cinephile / aspiring filmmaker romanticized to countless young people by the character of Dawson Leery. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
About halfway through playwright Annie Baker’s self-assured and pitch-perfect directorial debut Janet Planet, 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) rolls over in bed and turns to her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) with an innocent prompt. “You know what’s funny?” she asks. “Every moment of my life is hell.” At such a gentle moment, in such a casual way, she delivers a melodramatic gut-punch. You can’t help choking out a laugh. – Jake K-S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
The Shadowless Tower (Zhang Lu)
Watching over Beijing’s Xicheng district is an enormous white pagoda, a relic of the Kublai Khan rule, so majestic and otherworldly in looks and stature it might as well have been dropped on Earth from a far-flung planet. Legend has it the monument casts no shadow––not in its immediate vicinity, at least––though its silhouette is said to stretch as far as Tibet. No other corner of the megalopolis features as prominently as this one in Zhang Lu’s The Shadowless Tower, a film to which the 13th-century wonder lends its title as well as a metaphor for the kind of permanence its drifters fumble after. And no one among them is as drawn to it as Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing). – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
Coralie Fargeat made a splash with her debut Revenge. But she was only standing in a puddle, endearing niche corners of the global cinephile community to her cinematic bloodlust for sexually violent men and gore-horror filmmaking. With her second, The Substance, she’s fully submerged in the ocean and making waves. Meet Elisabeth Sparkle, a Demi Moore-esque A-lister (played by Demi Moore) whose stardom has long since faded, leaving her, to great displeasure, in the instructor’s seat of a glam morning-fitness class called “Sparkle Your Life.” We learn about her iconic career through a cleverly designed timelapse that opens the film––a bird’s-eye view of her Hollywood Walk of Fame star being minted, premiered, adorned, celebrated, surrounded, stood on, passed, ignored, and eventually forgotten. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Youth (Spring) (Wang Bing)
Wang’s Youth series, set to progress through three more seasons, will be his farewell to shooting in China. Youth (Spring) documents a period of intense globalization and hyper-capitalism already well underway when he began filming nine years ago. The film stations itself down in the clothing factories of Zhili, where young people (some still teenagers) toil away for bottom-of-the-barrel wages. Although a little structurally scattershot, Youth (Spring) captures the trap laid out for its subjects, who repeatedly beg their employers for higher wages compensating for hard menial labor. The soundtrack’s constant grind of factory noise is more disturbing than any image. – Steve E.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Columbia Noir
Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy
The Linguini Incident
Open Your Eyes
Out of the Blue
Queersighted: Queer Noir
Le samouraï
Songs of Earth
Starring Ida Lupino
West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty
Disney+
Music by John Williams
Metrograph at Home
Cemetery of Splendour
Dry Ground Burning
Films by Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn
Short films by Jérémy Clapin
Three by Alice Diop
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Paramount+ with Showtime
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Ezra
The Treasure
VOD
Joker: Folie à Deux
Piece by Piece