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.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Peter Browngardt)
Directed by Peter Browngardt, this is a charming affair. Modeled after sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s and starring Looney Tunes legends Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Eric Bauza), The Day the Earth Blew Up starts with a UFO landing. The spacecraft takes off on the roof of Porky and Daffy’s broken-down house (bequeathed to them by surrogate father Farmer Jim) just before crashing. It goes on to infect a local scientist (Fred Tatasciore) with a zombifying goo not long after. Soon enough, the goo is in the mix at the gum factory, where Porky and Daffy have taken jobs in a last-ditch effort to save their beloved home from being demolished. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Hard Boiled (John Woo) and City on Fire (Ringo Lam)
The first newly restored titles as part of Shout! Studios’ massive acquisition of 156 films owned by Hong Kong’s legendary Golden Princess have now arrived. Landing digitally ahead of physical releases is a thrilling Chow Yun-Fat double feature with John Woo’s Hard Boiled and Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, each with restored 4K video and audio and newly translated subtitles. And get ready for much more.
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
With imagery quite literally conjured from the deepest bowels of darkness, it’s clear why Nosferatu has been on the mind of Robert Eggers since he saw F. W. Murnau’s silent classic at the impressionable age of nine. The director’s fourth feature is his most assured and accomplished, an impeccably crafted, knowingly humorous, and perhaps too-rigid odyssey into the depths of true evil where one can feel Eggers’ obsessions flow through every nocturnal frame. While The Northman was evidence he could work in a bigger playing field, his latest is the ideal marriage of focused, character-driven frights of his first two features and the imaginative world of his Viking epic where no detail was left unconsidered. As Nosferatu relates to the vampire tales that have come before, from Murnau to Herzog to Coppola, the experience isn’t seeing how the director reinvents the wheel, but precisely how he honors this timeless myth with an exacting, full-bodied vision in all its evocative, erotic, gory gothic horror. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Pavements (Alex Ross Perry)
If the Hollywood superhero-industrial complex is perishing, the Rolling Stone and Spin magazine extended universe is hastily being built. What better defines “pre-awareness” for the studios like the data logged by Spotify’s algorithm, where billions of track plays confirm what past popular music has stood the test of time, and also how––in the streaming era––you can gouge ancillary money from it? But unlike the still-brilliant Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which stood to excoriate the nostalgia sought by such films, recently reinvigorated by the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, on the eponymous ’90s slacker idols, justifies that every great band deserves a film portrait helping us to wistfully remember them, and also chuckle as pretty young actors attempt to nail the mannerisms of weathered, road-bitten musicians. So good luck, Timothée. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams (Luca Guadagnino)
Biographical documentaries, just like the biographical narrative film, tend to benefit from some specificity. Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs movie was quickly forgotten but it felt remarkably fresh upon release. This was thanks largely to the structure of Aaron Sorkin’s script, which honed in on three key nights to explain the bigger picture. Salvatore: The Shoemaker of Dreams, a detailed account of the legendary cobbler Salvatore Ferragamo’s life, goes the more conventional route––taking us from rags to riches and cradle to grave. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
The Woman in the Yard (Jaume Collet-Serra)
While horror films function as an important part of this writer’s interest in cinema, it’s been hard not to feel some growing personal contempt for the genre. The reason being not just the high/low budget demands of the market over-saturating us, but the punishing self-awareness of Gen X and Millennial genre nerds now making them and the post-Get Out flop sweat over needing “metaphor.” So when a new horror film is not just kind of good, but also genuinely scary and tense, it’s cause for celebration. Such is the case with the modest proposal that is The Woman in the Yard. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Peacock
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
The Galapagos Affair
Mademoiselle Chambon
VOD
Escape From the 21st Century
The G
I Don’t Understand You
Let Me Go