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.
Age Out (A.J. Edwards)
The only thing worse than never getting your happy ending is having it within grasp and realizing you cannot accept it. To see salvation and turn around knowing it would be a lie is the type of heartbreaking choice we often have to make in order to keep on going. It’s the decision that separates man from monster: an admission of remorse, guilt, and regret. Our actions cause ripples that affect countless others we haven’t met yet or never will and while that truth allows some to sleep at night, the rest wonder what nightmares the collateral damage of their deeds endure as a result. You could say that the only thing separating those two groups is love. Knowing love is to understand its power and its pain. This idea is at the core of A.J. Edwards’ Age Out and his lead character Richie (Tye Sheridan). – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
The Beasts (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)
Fighting with your neighbors is awful because, well, they can literally hit you where you live. Antoine and Olga, a middle-class French couple trying to get by on their remote Galician farm, learn that the hard way in The Beasts, the fifth feature from Rodrigo Sorogoyen. At a yawning 137 minutes this is no thriller, but it is an engaging, timeless examination of human tribalism, the nature of nature, and cinema itself. – Lena W. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Dancing in the Dust (Asghar Farhadi)
Thanks to the breakout success of his Oscar-winning drama A Separation back in 2011, Asghar Farhadi’s earlier films have received newfound recognition thanks to new restorations in the subsequent years. Following his Cannes prize winner A Hero, the latest to get restored is his 2003 drama Dancing in the Dust, now available in a director-approved 2K digital restoration courtesy of Film Movement Classics.
Where to Stream: VOD
Dreamin’ Wild (Bill Pohlad)
Dreams are hard. Most of us wake up. And what a sad thing that is. Dreamin’ Wild, written and directed by Bill Pohlad and based on the article “Fruitland” by Steven Kurutz, aims to explore that ache through the lens of a quite-improbable true story. But first, some context. In the late ’70s, Donnie and Joe Emerson were teenagers living on their parent’s farm in Fruitland, Washington when they made an album called Dreamin’ Wild. Joe played the drums, and Donnie did everything else. Sadly, the records went largely unsold and un-listened. Three decades later, an anthropology student named Jack Fleischer discovered the album, listened to it, and loved it. This spurred an underground positive response to the album among collectors and music lovers alike. Finally it got into the hands of Matt Sullivan, co-owner of Light in the Attic, a reissue label that specializes in giving under-heard gems a fresh, new platform from which to be discovered. Dreamin’ Wild soon became a priority. The track you most likely know is the soulful “Baby.” – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Flora and Son (John Carney)
The career of Once and Sing Street director John Carney is a curious one, reiterating the same theme in each of his most notable movies: the power of music to heal emotional wounds and reconnect broken bonds. As his latest feel-good musical dramedy Flora and Son proves, he’s got this simple yet winsome formula down pat. Despite the machinations to tug each heartstring and coerce each smile being apparent from a mile away, Carney’s lively energy, flippant humor, and embrace of earnestness makes his latest work sing. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Apple TV+
Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story (Neill Blomkamp)
Gran Turismo, based on the PlayStation racing simulation games and directed by District 9 helmer Neill Blomkamp, is many things: a sports movie, an underdog story, a somewhat accurate biodrama. It is also a film about dads. We’ve all seen it before, whether in October Sky or High School Musical: a plucky young man wants to follow his dreams while his father disapproves. In Gran Turismo, Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) wants to leverage his virtual driving skills into a professional racing career. His ex-footballer dad (Djimon Hounsou) thinks, perhaps quite rationally, this is insane. But when a novel training program called GT Academy plucks Jann from his small Welsh hometown for the opportunity of a lifetime, our timid novice finds another father figure in the form of his prickly, reluctant mentor. – Lena W. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Meg 2: The Trench (Ben Wheatley)
The summer shark movie should be silly. It should know exactly what it is: a B-movie with a bigger-than-expected budget, a bankable star, and unlimited scenes of sharks eating people in absurd ways. Meg 2: The Trench, a follow-up to 2018’s hit The Meg, oscillates between its B-movie sensibilities and a self-seriousness unnecessary for this subgenre. Again starring Jason Statham as the megalodon-fighting, submarine-diving Jonas Taylor, the film, this time helmed by Ben Wheatley, struggles to replicate the same joy of the first. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Other People’s Children (Rebecca Zlotowski)
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, the French drama Other People’s Children has a simple plot linked with complex ideas. Following Rachel (Virginie Efira), a 40-year-old childless, single teacher, the film watches her fall in love with Ali (Roschdy Zem), a man with a young daughter named Leila. Rachel, always wanting kids of her own, becomes connected to Leila, forcing her to confront her own views on motherhood. Zlotowski’s film grows into a study of overheard conversations and biting words from kids, those who don’t know any better. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Reptile (Grant Singer)
For a first feature, Grant Singer could certainly do worse than Reptile. The question remains whether Netflix is capable of allowing anything better than routine potboiler material to fill their trove of originally produced and distributed films. Much of the streamer studio’s output has been heavily underwhelming and this latest offering is no different, the only adhesive element Benicio Del Toro’s natural screen gravitas. When he plays a cop or detective, like his Oscar-winning turn in Steven Soderberg’s Traffic or Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, it’s basically a cheat code. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson)
Following 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, the director adapts another Roald Dahl text, a 1977 short story of the same name. It’s rare to see two artists exist in such perfect symbiosis. Dahl was both a fabulist and conjurer, eager to conspire with children against the civilizing process of adulthood and concoct fables where the comic and sinister could meet and mingle. Watching Henry Sugar, it’s as if the director’s imagination served as an extension of the writer’s. Clocking in at 37 minutes, the featurette, as is so often the case with Anderson, is designed as a nesting doll of overlapping tales and narrators. We begin with Dahl himself (Ralph Fiennes), introducing what’s to follow (much like Bryan Cranston did in Asteroid City) and then bolt across time and space to meet the titular Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), a writer-cum-playboy who one day happens upon a report penned by an Indian doctor (Dev Patel) about a most curious patient (Ben Kingsley): a man who had trained himself to see without his eyes. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix (along with The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Anderson’s fourth new short, Poison, arriving tomorrow)