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.
Boys Go to Jupiter (Julian Glander)
Boys Go to Jupiter, an animated feature directed and written by Pittsburgh-based 3D artist Julian Glander, is truly a product of its time. And that time is now. As the press notes mention: “[The film] was self-produced and animated entirely over 90 days on the free open-source 3D modeling program Blender. Peisin Yang Lazo executive produced.” Running about 85 minutes and featuring an impossibly stellar voice cast (including Elsie Fisher, Julio Torres, Sarah Sherman, Joe Pera, Janeane Garofalo, Demi Adejuyigbe, Cole Escola, and Eva Victor, to name just a few), this film is often funny and sometimes introspective about this land of screens we find ourselves trapped inside. A bit long in the tooth at times, it is undeniably engaging and reliably weird. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Directed by Jafar Panahi
With his stellar Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident now playing in theaters, the Criterion Channel is putting a spotlight on Jafar Panahi’s brilliant body of work. Their retrospective includes The White Balloon, The Mirror, This Is Not a Film, Taxi, 3 Faces, and No Bears.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Directed by Werner Herzog
A massive, nearly 30-film retrospective of the films of Werner Herzog has arrived on the Criterion Channel. From classics such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo to underrated gems like Land of Silence and Darkness, Stroszeck, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and many more, it’s a treasure trove of adventurous cinema.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fairyland (Andrew Durham)
Andrew Durham’s Fairyland features Scoot McNairy as Steve Abbott, a single father who takes his daughter Alysia to San Francisco in the early 1970s after the death of his wife in a car accident. Adapted from a memoir of the same name by the real-life Alysia Abbott, Durham’s debut feature explores nearly two decades of this father-daughter relationship. About halfway through the film, Alysia jumps in age, going from a precocious, carefree child (Nessa Dougherty) to an edgy, isolated teenager (Emilia Jones). Steve, possibly as open as a father can be, is bisexual, and his fate becomes intertwined with the AIDS crisis; the film’s ending never seems to be in doubt. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
In the rather niche academic field of monster studies, the common understanding of monstrosity is very similar to that of queerness: through being “different,” a monster destabilizes historical notions of normality and normativity, exposing how fictitious they were in the first place. In the case of Victor Frankenstein and his creation, per Mary Shelley’s eponymous novel, this defining relationship cannot be any more obvious. Maker and creature form an inseparable whole, laying bare an interdependency in the way we describe humanity: always against its “other.” When such motifs dominate Guillermo del Toro’s filmography, from Cronos to Golden Lion and Best Picture winner The Shape of Water, his highly anticipated adaptation of Frankenstein comes as no surprise. A delightfully pestilent Oscar Isaac plays the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein in almost unrecognizable shape at the beginning of the film, his overgrown beard and hair hanging upon his face in icicles at the North Pole. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Good Fortune (Aziz Ansari)
To hear a story from Azrael (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is to know the full potential of an angel’s work. He doesn’t just worry about natural disasters or inspiring genius––he saves lives by reminding lost souls of their value. Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) cannot help but be in awe and want to follow those footsteps. But he’s low on the totem pole with wings that barely extend past his shoulder blades. Martha (Sandra Oh) has him gently nudging text-and-drivers into looking up from their phones. He’s a meter maid yearning to be a rock star. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Materialists (Celine Song)
Materialists is a film with a classic screwball setup: a young, beautiful matchmaker meets the charming, rich man of her dreams on the same night she runs into her broke, handsome ex-boyfriend. But Celine Song’s sophomore feature takes a more dry, dramatic approach to explore dating in the modern world. Channeling Jane Austen, Materialists discusses relationships like a numbers game where height, income, and age are the key factors to dating success. Every moment we spend with our heroine Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is dominated by the most clinical judgments of men, women, and especially herself. When wealthy finance guy Harry (Pedro Pascal) takes her out to dinner, Lucy describes herself as a failed actress and college dropout with debt and an $80K salary (before taxes). Why be with her when he could be with someone ten years younger who doesn’t need to work for a living and has way more time to have children? This isn’t just her attitude. Nearly everyone in the film shares her point of view: men are commodities and women must fight for them, with their value decreasing each passing day. Being single is a curse on women that gets even worse once they pass the age of thirty. – Jourdain S. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Plainclothes (Carmen Emmi)
Set years before George Michael’s arrest and inspired by the bathroom raids that provoked a moral panic in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1963, Carmen Emmi’s Syracuse-set thriller Plainclothes offers a unique twist on the coming-out genre. Cruising the food court and men’s room at a local mall, young undercover officer Lucas (Tom Blyth) lures men into stalls, getting them to expose themselves before they’re taken down by a cop (John Bedford Lloyd) who is not above slapping a fellow officer on the butt in the gym, a thread the film never quite pulls fully at. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Smashing Machine (Benny Safide)
The Smashing Machine is a movie with a lot of heart and soul. It’s also a movie with great love for its subjects: the people involved and, for better and worse, the industry they helped build. It’s inspired by a 2002 HBO documentary of the same name and boasts a central performance from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mark Kerr, a veteran of the “no holds barred” combat circuit that eventually matured into the more lucrative UFC (albeit long after Kerr had exited the ring). I’m mostly happy to report that it’s a far weirder movie than it needed to be––an art film masquerading as a tried-and-tested staple that’s seldom less-than-interesting but also rarely charged with the tension of the best sports movies. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Sparrow in the Chimney (Ramon Zürcher)
There’s something electrifying about watching a filmmaker break free from well-worn formulas and push themselves into new, uncharted territory. The Sparrow in the Chimney, Ramon Zürcher’s third feature, is the final installment in a trilogy of highly flammable chamber dramas. Anyone familiar with the previous two, 2013’s The Strange Little Cat and 2021’s The Girl and the Spider––the latter written and directed with twin brother Silvan, who’s produced all his sibling’s projects––will likely remember the clash between their austere mise-en-scène and the tempestuous conflicts that coursed through them. Captured in largely static shots among contained locales (an apartment, a house) and timeframes (Cat spanned a day, Spider two), the films suggest exercises in geometry whose immaculate compositions are always on the verge of collapsing. Pushing against their steely facades are family feuds, acts of wanton cruelty, and violence; watching them, the tension at times is so unbearable you’re left crouching in anticipation for the frame to burst. – Leo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Sunfish (& Other Stories On Green Lake) (Sierra Falconer)
Filmmaker Sierra Falconer’s Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) captures a bittersweet feeling. That feeling of endings and beginnings, happening at the same time. For eighty minutes, we watch four short stories unfold in and around Green Lake. One involves a young girl (Maren Heary) learning how to sail after being dumped at the doorstep of her grandparents’ lake house by her neglectful mother. Another concerns a young boy (Jim Kaplan) at the fancy summer camp on the other side of the lake. He’s facing intense pressure from his mother to make first chair violin in the camp orchestra. An extended sequence of him practicing is particularly tense. The third story features an overworked young mother (Karsten Liotta) seduced by adventure in the form of a charming, wayward bar patron (Dominic Bogart) and a once-in-a-lifetime fish to be caught. Finally, there’s the lovely tale of two sisters (Tenley Kellogg and Emily Hall) running a lakeside bed-and-breakfast, the older of the two teaching the younger every needed task to completion before leaving for college. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Bad Timing
Ball of Fire
Barbary Coast
The Big Sky
The Big Sleep
Birthright
Black Angel
The Black and the Green
Black Christmas
Blackout
The Blood of Jesus
The Blue Gardenia
Body and Soul
Bones and All
Bringing Up Baby
The Bronze Buckaroo
By Right of Birth
A Christmas Tale
Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940
The Criminal Code
Crossfire
The Dark Glow of the Mountains
The Darktown Revue
The Dead
Deadline at Dawn
Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.
Dog Day Afternoon
Dogfight
Echoes from a Somber Empire
Eleven P.M.
The Exile
F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now
Faces, Displays, and Other Imaginary Things
The Flying Ace
Framed
Garden State
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
The Girl from Chicago
God’s Angry Man
Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus
Guilty Bystander
Hannah and Her Sisters
Heart of Glass
Heaven-Bound Travelers
Hell-Bound Train
His Girl Friday
Hold Me Tight
Hooghan
Hot Biskits
Household Saints
Huie’s Sermon
In a Lonely Place
It Happened One Night
Itam Hakim, Hopiit
The King of Comedy
Long Line of Ladies, Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome
maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore
The Many Miracles of Household Saints
Margot at the Wedding
Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled
Miss Navajo
Monologue
More Than Ever
Natural Born Killers
Navajo Talking Picture
Nebraska
Northern Lights
Nosferatu the Vampyre
Once Upon a Time in America
One Hand Don’t Clap
Only Angels Have Wings
Pieces of April
Pink Narcissus
Pop Aye
Prairie Fire
Rachel Getting Married
Rat Trap
Rebel Earth
A Reckless Rover
Red River
Regeneration
Remember Last Night?
Renata
Rev. S. S. Jones Home Movies
Rio Bravo
The Savages
Scarface
The Scar of Shame
The Sealed Soil
Shadow Kill
The Social Network
Survivor
The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the KKK
Ten Minutes to Live
Ten Nights in a Bar Room
Tiger
To Have and Have Not
Twentieth Century
Two Knights of Vaudeville
Veiled Aristocrats
Verdict: Not Guilty
We Were the Scenery
White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men
Within Our Gates
You Can Count on Me
Zora Neale Hurston Fieldwork Footage
Film Movement+
Empire of the Rabbits
Hulu and Disney+
Love+War
Kino Film Collection
Hi-Jack Highway
One Hand Don’t Clap
Razzia Sur La Chnouf
Metrograph at Home
35 Shots of Rum
Air Doll
Center Stage
Directed by Mary Stephen
L’intrus
Let the Sunshine In
Mayor
Morven Callar
The Pillow Book
Vive L’Amour
MUBI
Irreversible
Bones and All
God’s Own Country
Shirley Adams
Ramen Shop
Winter in Sokcho
VOD
Bang Bang
Waltzing with Brando