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.
Banel & Adama (Ramata-Toulaye Sy)
A directorial debut programmed into the main Cannes competition is typically viewed with suspicion, if not overlooked altogether. Very rare is that lightning-in-a-bottle moment like the arrival of Son of Saul some years back. Typically, the only conversation these debuts generate is the critical debate as to why they’ve been elevated to the top of the pile when there are far more striking debuts buried deeper within the festival. This often means that accomplished films are overlooked and underappreciated by those on the ground, who may be subconsciously comparing a striking feature to the work of more established names it’s competing against for the Palme d’Or, approaching each debut with a “show me” attitude it wouldn’t be treated with if selected for placement in, say, Un Certain Regard. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
Writing on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island in 2010, Anthony Lane whipped a quote from Umberto Eco: “Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.” Eco’s words resonate even stronger in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, a fascinating simulacrum of festive movies in which references to annual favorites are thrust together with about as much delicacy as the family it tenderly depicts. The island isn’t Shutter but Long, specifically a small town in Suffolk County where we meet four generations of the Bolsanos, a blue-collar family going through the motions and rituals of their annual get-together, adoring and enduring each other as best they can in what might be their last year in the family home. The filmmaker behind this delicate, strange, reflective bauble is Tyler Taormina, co-founder of the Omnes film collective with Carson Lund, the cinematographer on each of his films to date; and over those three projects (Miller’s was preceded by Happer’s Comet and Ham on Rye) there is already the suggestion of a distinct, novel style: imagine a slightly jagged New Sincerity lensed by Russell Metty and you’re somewhere in the area. – Rory O. (full review)
Clara Sola (Nathalie Álvarez Mesén)
Earlier this year, in Goran Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone, a young witch becomes enamored with the life of humans. She starts to interact in a world where she is forbidden, giving up her relation to the witch mother keeping her under her control. Throughout that movie there are inklings of discovery, almost like a child first learning to walk and speak, to eventually realizing what love is. If there is a similar dynamic in Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Clara Sola, this is also a movie that finds its central character escaping religious suppression and contending with her burgeoning sexuality. It recalls Stolevski’s film in the treatment of “breaking out of the shell” as a sort of “growing up” but grounds itself in cultural tradition rather than historical fantasy. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice)
Curious, self-referential, and rich, Close Your Eyes has had a difficult passageway into the world, with its Cannes world premiere dogged by reports of conflicts over its runtime, its non-competition placement, and Erice’s own in-person boycott of the screening. Its final form also is a scarcely believable one, singular and self-possessed even amidst all the latter-day auteur work that’s screened in recent days: although it’s studded with other media, such as an unfinished film of Garay’s and trashy Spanish primetime TV, the main bulk is a pokily shot mystery “procedural,” told mainly in one-to-one dialogue scenes, shot in judicious singles with minimal coverage and muted lighting. But Erice is gradually able to accrete a rich character study of Garay and, yes, another meditation on the Grand Power of Cinema––not that we’re lacking in those at the moment––enriched by the fact that this theme, together with memory and longing, has long been the director’s modus operandi. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Directed by John Waters
There are few filmmakers with a better handle on what it means to be family than John Waters, making for the ideal holiday viewing. As the filmmaker somehow struggles to get financing for his Aubrey Plaza-led Liarmouth, Criterion Channel is now giving him the spotlight with a series featuring Multiple Maniacs (1970), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), and Cecil B. Demented (2000).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Dream Team (Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn)
Following their singular take on the Western genre with Two Plains and a Fancy, filmmakers Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn returned to the festival circuit earlier this year with Dream Team, an absurdist homage to ’90s basic-cable TV thrillers. Starring Esther Garrel and Alex Zhang Hungtai, with a producing team that includes I Saw the TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun, Leonardo Goi said in his Rotterdam review, “Like its predecessors, Dream Team hangs in a hazy, oneiric region; what the film is about is a lot easier to discuss than the entrancing feeling it evokes. As corals the world over start killing humans with poisonous neon-colored gases, INTERPOL agents No St. Aubergine (Esther Garrel) and Chase National (Alex Zhang Hungtai) are dispatched not to figure out so much as to ‘learn about’ the mystery, per their own admission, in a journey that keeps shuttling us from Mexico to British Columbia. Split into seven episodes, each given a beautifully evocative title (e.g. ‘Asses to Ashes’ or ‘Doppelgängbang’) and introduced by slightly different, growingly trippy renditions of the credit sequence, Dream Team apes a serialized TV structure only to frustrate the gratifications one would normally associate with the format. There’s no sense of closure here, much less clarity. As No and Chase travel south of the border, their quest gets more evanescent, and the plot––such as it is––more ethereal: storylines are dropped, new characters bob up everywhere, all while the mystery turns hopelessly intricate.”
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
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: VOD
Gaucho Gaucho (Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw)
Following the success of The Truffle Hunters, which showed all it takes to make a subject interesting is to approach it with curiosity and openness to wonder, directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw are back with Gaucho Gaucho, a stunningly beautiful chronicle of an Argentine gaucho community who closely follow the rules and traditions of their culture, despite time and progress. – Jose S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Jolt
Good One (India Donaldson)
It’s been nearly two decades since Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy showed how the wilderness can be an open canvas to explore the breaking points of male friendship and reckoning with a midlife crisis. While those emotional quandaries are evergreen, it’s appropriate timing to bring an entirely new element to this conceit. India Donaldson’s carefully observed, refreshingly patient, beautifully rendered debut feature Good One shifts the perspective, concerning a 17-year-old girl who embarks on a camping trip in the Catskills with her father and his best friend. Through an accumulation of minute details and uneasy glances, the drama becomes a portrait of increasingly crossed boundaries leading to an ultimate breaking point. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Hitchcock for the Holidays
A robust Alfred Hitchcock retrospective has now arrived on the Criterion Channel, featuring Downhill (1927), The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969), and Frenzy (1972).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
In Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) finds himself in an unenviable position: not only was he selected for jury duty, but something odd occurs during the murder trial’s opening statements. Details surrounding the night of the murder begin to trigger memories for him. First, he realizes he was in the same bar as the defendant James Sythe and his girlfriend Kendall, that same evening one year ago. An odd coincidence, but not too bizarre––there are only so many bars in a small town. But then he recalls an accident he had on the way home that night, right where the murder occurred. He hit a deer––or so he thought––with his Toyota 4Runner. He eventually surmises it must have been he who unknowingly struck and killed Kendall walking alone in the dark. And now he’s on a jury who must decide the fate of a man accused of murdering her. – Caleb H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Kim’s Video (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin)
A sweeping documentary by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video follows the personal-inquiry, man-on-the-street format from their previous works Mardi Gras: Made in China and Girl Model. With Redmon largely remaining behind the scenes, asking questions while holding his camera, the film is simply left to wander where the story takes it: from the cool counterculture of the East Village before eventually turning into a heist film with a mafia connection. Haunted by the ghosts of cinema, Youngman Kim’s collection calls out to David; eventually he’s able to rescue and repatriate it back to Lower Manhattan. Its happy end is known, with a collection of over 55,000 rare VHS tapes and DVDs from the chain’s flagship Mondo Kim’s now available to rent at the Alamo Drafthouse’s lower Manhattan outpost, the Found Footage Festival’s Nick Prueher responsible for the preservation and cataloging of titles. Redmon and Sabin’s Kim’s Video shows us exactly how that deal went down. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Kneecap (Rich Peppiatt)
While Michael Fassbender’s appearance in a brief role may garner the most headlines, Kneecap is the story of an Irish rap group of the same name, with members Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh playing themselves. Exploring the polticially charged time of Troubles and the identity and ownership around language, the film is a blast of infectious energy, utilizing the frenzied delivery of the group’s home-grown lyrics as an aesthetic template. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
Anne (Léa Drucker) is an esteemed lawyer: as uncompromising as she is in her line of work, she is free to enjoy her private life. In her ’40s she has it all, the job and the family she never thought would come. So begins Catherine Breillat’s newest film, Last Summer, which may be a remake of May el-Toukhy’s 2019 adulterous drama Queen of Hearts, but yields to the French filmmaker’s every wish. Even though we never get any backstory to Anne’s character, it’s hinted that her youth was not a pleasant one, as an early abortion took away the possibility to have children of her own. But now, in the summer of her life, she is a mother of two adopted girls and stepmother to an unruly teenager named Théo (Samuel Kircher), from her husband Pierre’s (Olivier Rabourdin) previous marriage. Amidst the idyllic rituals of daily life in the countryside, Anne seems composed and satiated. She is not one to look for trouble. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)
It’s a genuine miracle that The People’s Joker has managed to make it to screens unscathed, especially considering the legal battles which dogged the 2023 TIFF premiere could easily have left it trapped in the vault forever. Many of the rave reactions from that festival were written solely within the context of such lingering threat, with many critics doubling-up as armchair legal experts, not analyzing the qualities of Vera Drew’s film so much as they were assessing the likelihood of whether anybody else would ever see it. Now that this unauthorized take on the DC mythos is defiantly arriving on screens––albeit with a lengthy legal scrawl preceding the action itself––it’s immediately obvious that writing about it solely within the context of whether it constitutes a serious copyright violation is something of an insult. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Tell Me a Riddle and The Stronger (Lee Grant)
Among the most revelatory repertory cinema I saw last year, the much-deserved 4K restorations of Lee Grant’s short The Stronger and feature Tell Me a Riddle premiered at New York Film Festival and are now available digitally after a theatrical tour earlier this year. The Stronger, starring Susan Strasberg and Dolores Dorn, adapted August Strindberg’s play of the same name, with editing by Hal Ashby. Tell Me a Riddle, starring Oscar winners Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova with Brooke Adams, follows the lives of senior couple Eva and David, their shared past as revolutionaries, and their cross-country journey together when illness strikes Eva, and her husband decides to keep it a secret.
Terrestrial Verses (Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami)
Iranian filmmaking’s reliance on formal restrictions and secrecy are given new variations in Terrestrial Verses, co-directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, who’ve both enjoyed previous festival success with their solo features. Chiming indirectly with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests last year––the largest civil unrest in Iran for a generation––Asgari and Khatami take a panoramic view of its urban citizenry through nine vignettes, observing confrontations with state brass behaving at their most paranoid and arbitrary. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang)
The apartment complexes making up what used to be Kowloon Walled City effectively sealed it off from the rest of Hong Kong. Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In imagines Kowloon as a kind of steampunk ghetto controlled by an aging gangster known as Cyclone (Louis Koo). – Daniel E. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World (Michael Fiore)
A NYC institution, the East Village’s Veselka has become an essential staple for locals and tourists alike, serving up comforting Ukrainian food for decades. In less than 30 minutes, a new documentary takes a concise look at that history, involving the trials and tribulations both familial and societal, then spends the next hour exploring how Russia’s war on Ukraine has directly affected the staff and how the restaurant and the community at large is helping to support those back at home. It’s a bittersweet tale of perseverance and resistance that, while undoubtedly moving, feels like it never finds a precise rhythm, rather throwing the kitchen sink when it comes to every event captured. However, it’s all worth it for the brief scene in which Eric Adams looks like a total buffoon, posing for social media snaps while ignoring a plea to protect the Ukraine and its schools where children are being murdered.
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Apple TV+
Fly Me to the Moon
The Criterion Channel
12 Monkeys
Adelheid
L’amour fou
The Assassin
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
Benedetta
Bleak Moments
Bushman
Case for a Rookie Hangman
The Cry of Granuaile
Déjà Vu
The Devil’s Trap
Donnie Darko
Election
Forbidden
Four Murders Are Enough, Darling
The Hop-Pickers
The Image You Missed
Jackass: The Movie
Ken
Kenki
Kiru
Ladies of Leisure
The Lady Eve
Man’s Castle
Memento
Mind Game
Mulholland Dr.
No Country for Old Men
The Original Kings of Comedy
Out of Here
Party Girl
Phantasm
Le Pont du Nord
Room 666
Room 999
Run Lola Run
Shopworn
Ten Cents a Dance
Three Wise Girls
The Unfortunate Bridegroom
The Valley of the Bees
Virtue
The White Dove
Yentl
Kino Film Collection
The Holly and the Ivy
Max
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Metrograph at Home
Two by Jem Cohen
The Big Sleep
Farewell, My Lovely
The Last Seduction
Trouble in Mind
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
Listen Up Philip
Mister Lonely
Another Day in Paradise
The Limey
Peacock
Speak No Evil
VOD
Lake George