With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman)
Burgeoning sexuality is the basis for nearly all coming-of-age films, but with her specific eye, Eliza Hittman makes it feel like we’re watching this genre unfold for the first time. With only two features to her name, she’s captured the experience with a sensuality and intimacy nearly unprecedented in American independent filmmaking. Following 2013’s It Felt Like Love, the writer-director follows it with another look at the teenage experience in Brooklyn for this year’s Beach Rats, this time with a protagonist five years older and of a different gender. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Blade of the Immortal (Takashi Miike)
Boldly marketed in Japan and abroad as the 100th film of the legendary Takashi Miike, one has to ask if Blade of the Immortal can be appropriately burdened with the weight of a summation of the director’s career? Well, if summation is too grand, is it at least a title representational of his oeuvre fair? For the prolific metteur-en-scene seemingly unable to say no to a project, not really. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Resisting a deep racial analysis in the vein of I Am Not Your Negro, master satirist Jordan Peele’s horror comedy Get Out requires an audience ready to hoot, holler, yell, and laugh along. In large part, his directorial debut is a success, a rare studio comedy/thriller with a surface-level social agenda. The true test of a film like this is rather simple: are we with it or do we resist? The answer is largely the former and Get Out has a great of fun satirizing our “post-racial” society in a horror comedy of manners, though it never actually tackles the depressing realities of the issue. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Go
Good Time (Josh and Ben Safdie)
It’s probably safe to say that, up until now, no lucid person had compared a Safdie brothers film to the work of Michael Mann. Indeed, it may still be a stretch, though Good Time — the New York siblings’ latest eye-popping, pill-popping, attention-deficit character study — could feasibly be described as just that. It’s in parts a heist movie (iconic masks included) and a chase movie, but not an homage in any sense — more an evolution, like a 21st-century fast-food hybrid that mixes trash television and drug culture with Day-Glo-splattered night-time cinematography and throbbing synthesizers, thanks to a standout score from Oneohtrix Point Never. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Kedi (Ceyda Torun)
I’m not going to mince words: Kedi will go down as the most unabashedly adorable film of the year. While there are self-proclaimed “dog people” out there, it is difficult to deny the power of a gorgeously composed, blissful image of a cat loving life. Nor can it be understated how infectious their playful and sleuthy energy is. This is the sweet spot in which Kedi resides. However, it has more on its mind than a cute YouTube compilation. Instead, the film is focused on the fascinating existence of our feline friends, and how they interact with — and occasionally guide — us humans. – Mike M. (full review)
Where to Stream: iTunes
The Lovers (Azazel Jacobs)
When a film is labeled as being a marriage drama, it is usually without question that it will contain some aspect of infidelity, and while The Lovers indeed begins with this premise, it presents the rather rare situation of “re-fidelity.” Featuring superb performances from Tracy Letts and Debra Winger, writer-director Azazel Jacobs has assembled an impeccable ensemble, but his script doesn’t quite have the dramatic acumen to make his Terri follow-up much more than an amusing farce. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
“You are alone you your revolution, Ms. Dickinson,” spouts a stoic headmistress in the opening sequence of A Quiet Passion, a biopic of 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson and the latest work from proud Liverpudlian auteur Terence Davies. In the scene, young Emily has apparently rejected both a life in the seminary and the option to be a practicing catholic, a decision the famously atheistic director clearly vibes with. That sense of empathy and understanding with his subject is rife throughout this quietly cleansing and exquisitely considered film, which shows the writer from her late teens (portrayed by Emma Bell) through to adulthood (Cynthia Nixon) and old age. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Luc Besson)
Are there rules on how to make a space epic? If there are, Luc Besson has certainly never heard them because in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, he takes the genre upside down, gives it a shake and rattle, and delivers one of the most positively bonkers films of the year. Based on the long running Franco-Belgian comic book Valérian and Laureline, which served as inspiration for other Besson projects like The Fifth Element, the film follows Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne), special agents of the World State Federation who enforce intergalactic safety, as they travel to a distant planet to retrieve a rare creature — perhaps the last of its kind in the universe — from the hands of toad-like aliens who run their business in a market straight out of Casablanca. – Jose S. (full review)
Where to Stream: iTunes
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Bitch (review)
Mayhem (review)
Patti Cake$ (review)
The Villainess (review)
FilmStruck
Still Walking
Washingtonia
Belle de jour
The Films of Shohei Imamura
MUBI (free 30-day trial)
Under Electric Clouds
She’s Lost Control
Diabolically Yours
I Won’t Come Back
Under the Sun
Peeping Tom
The Tales of Hoffmann
Netflix
Bernie (review)
The Dinner (review)
The Homesman (review)
The Iceman
The Journey
Killing Ground (review)