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.
Beatles ’64 (David Tedeschi)
While Andrei Ujică’s TWST / Things We Said Today, which premiered on the fall festival circuit this year, took a more avant-garde approach to Beatlemania in the United States, the David Tedeschi-directed, Martin Scorsese-produced Beatles ’64 is a far more straightforward and therefore fan-pleasing documentary about the Fab Four. Capturing their February 7, 1964 descent upon NYC, the neatly-assembled, restored archival footage shot by Albert and David Maysles is the finest part of the documentary, while present-day talking heads memories from Paul McCartney (speaking on how their lyrics attempted to make a universal yet personal connection), Ringo Starr, and especially David Lynch provide welcome context. The Mulholland Dr. director remarked about seeing Beatles in a boxing ring, waxing poetic about the power of rock: “Music is one of the most fantastic things, almost like fire, or water, or air. It does so much.”
Where to Stream: Disney+
Conclave (Edward Berger)
The twisty political thriller Conclave wastes little time getting right into it: the Pope is dead, and after a three-week time jump, the world’s most powerful cardinals gather in Vatican City, their mission to elect a new leader from among their ranks. Our window into this closed world is Cardinal Lawrence, portrayed in characteristically sturdy fashion by Ralph Fiennes. Dean of the College of Cardinals, Lawrence is in charge of this conclave, and while he takes his duties very seriously, they’re complicated by a recent request to the (now-dead) Pope to resign his post and be sent elsewhere so that his faith might be reignited. Request denied––perhaps because the former pope knew he needed him to run this forthcoming conclave––Lawrence finds himself in a position of immense power. As a reluctant leader with deep convictions (but still capable of missteps), he is a relatable window into this foreign world. – Caleb H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
Nine years since that underground epiphany, along comes Eureka, a film that, for large chunks, seems to emerge from the same hallucinatory terrain Jauja opened up. Like all its predecessors, this unfurls as a literal journey dotted with solitary wanderers either searching for or mourning lost relatives. (“All families disappear eventually,” Gunnar was told down the cave, a line that might as well double as the director’s motto.) Old tropes and motifs notwithstanding, Alonso’s latest is his most ambitious: a tripartite film, Eureka sides not with the white strangers in strange lands that had long peopled Alonso’s oeuvre, but with the native communities facing these invaders. Its scope is ecumenical, its geography massive. In barest terms, Eureka’s designed to sponge something of, and locate parallels between, the experience of Indigenous communities stranded in three markedly different milieus: the Old West; South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in the present day; and finally the jungles of early-70s Brazil. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Fix (Kelsey Egan)
Set in a near dystopian future where a toxin has infected the world’s air, forcing the world’s population to wear a mask or, if you have the funds, purchase the coveted, expensive drug from Aethera to gain immunity. When the company’s model Ella (Grace Van Dien, great-granddaughter of Robert Mitchum) gets her hands on an experimental new drug, things turn rough for her both internally and from external forces who want a piece of it. Blending commentary on our recent pandemic, climate change, and corporate greed, The Fix may seem too blunt to make a true impact on a story level, but Egan sports chops in world-building on a limited budget, offering a compelling calling card for a project with a bigger scope.
Where to Stream: VOD
Here (Robert Zemeckis)
Far and away the most unfairly maligned film of the year, Robert Zemeckis’ Here finds the director in this modern era at the apex of his technological fascinations and storytelling showmanship. Conveying millions of years (but primarily a stretch of a hundred or so) through a single fixed camera angle, the adaptation of Richard McGuire’s astounding graphic novel takes a bittersweet look at both the moving and mundane of everyday life. Breathtaking in how the various time jumps will cause reflection in one’s own ambitions and failures, here’s a film that I imagine will not only become more resonant as time goes on, but will speak greater to one the more time they’ve had on this Earth.
Where to Stream: VOD
Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot)
Grace Pudel (the voice of Succession’s Sarah Snook) is wishing goodbye to her elderly friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver), who’s currently prone on her deathbed. Once she finally perishes, Grace––who’s somewhere in her 20s, yet wears a black beanie customized with the pop-out eyelids of a snail––parks herself on a nearby bench and begins narrating her life story (in a manner that’s a tad Forrest Gump-ian) to her own pet snail Sylvie, who slowly slithers away as she’s setting herself free. Such events being in early Aardman-style claymation certainly enhances their kookiness. But regarding this animated medium, Memoir of a Snail’s director Adam Elliot (following-up his enduringly popular 2009 feature Mary and Max) prefers the term “clayography”––his own portmanteau of claymation and biography––which does someway capture the uniqueness of what he’s doing. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Nutcrackers (David Gordon Green)
David Gordon Green’s career is one of the most unpredictable in Hollywood. Since his masterful and celebrated debut George Washington, he’s not been shy about planting a flag in a wide variety of films––dramedies, gritty thrillers, franchise horror reboots, political satires, and stoner comedies among them. It’s been more than a decade since he has made a film that resembles anything like Nutcrackers. 2013’s Prince Avalanche was a peculiar, convention-straying work built on a loose screenplay that tended to meander and flow in various different directions, even touching Malickian territory in its poetic aims. It might not have wholly worked, but it did aim to buck conventions of a male-bonding film. Nutcrackers, on the other hand, follows them to the T, such that its unfolding feels ludicrously prescribed. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger)
By far one of the most delightful films of the year––even when it breaks your heart––Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams is a deceptively simple take on companionship that uses robots and animals to tell a very human story about friendship and life. Adapted from Sara Varon’s 2007 graphic novel of the same name, Berger’s lively film respects the form, telling its story without dialogue and instead relying on music and sound effects to drive the story of Dog and Robot forth. Dog spends his life in a sterile East Village apartment, circa the 1980s––eating microwaved meals, playing pong, drinking Tab, and yearning for companionship in the shadow of his YOLO poster. Flipping around the channels, Dog stumbles across an ad for a companion robot and spends the next few days assembling his new friend. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Also New to Streaming
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite
Prime Video
Four Lions
Little Joe
Pratfall
VOD
Cash Calls Hell
Daytime Revolution
Heavier Trip
Never Look Away
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