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.
Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)
If a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film excised all its action scenes––save a stray explosion or gunshot––while employing a script with a pop John le Carré sensibility, it might resemble something like Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. A hyper-slick, suave spy thriller, it’s mainly relegated to dinner tables and office rooms as stages for rapid-fire, gleefully barbed verbal sparring scripted by David Koepp, returning to the genre after Ethan Hunt’s first outing. Primarily focusing on a trio of couples working in British intelligence, Koepp’s script poses the question: it is possible to have a healthy relationship when there’s no such thing as separating work from life, particularly when your job description is one of a professional liar? – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Dangerous Animals (Sean Byrne)
With Jaws celebrating a 50th anniversary, it wouldn’t be the summer movie season without a shark picture. With his first feature in ten years, The Loved One‘s Sean Byrne delivers the best of its kind since at least Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, all while mixing in a serial-killer movie to boot. Dangerous Animals thrives on the intensely villainous performance from a never-better Jai Courtney, who finds novel ways to offer up his victims to the treacherous waters. If it doesn’t add up to much more than a 90-minute thrill ride, the direction is sharp enough to feel like you are in the hands of an accomplished entertainer, pulling the strings to deliver pure summer fun. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Shudder
Diciannove (Giovanni Tortorici)
Luca Guadagnino, for better or for worse, is an arbiter––and cultural signifier––of taste. Follow his lead and you are assured a sensuous journey, albeit one that never goes too far beneath the surface. In the years since’s Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino has put his weight behind up-and-coming voices whose films are also aesthetically pleasing and intellectually promising. There’s the Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (Antonia, Beckett) and, more notably, the Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili (April). Last year, Giovanni Tortorici, a former assistant director for Guadagnino on the HBO series We Are Who We Are, added his name to this list when Diciannove premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, where it was well-received by critics. A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age picture about a repressed homosexual intellectual under the Tuscan sun? Consider me seated. – Nirris N. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Drowning Dry (Laurynas Bareiša)
Memories can be slippery things. Take what happens around the halfway point of Laurynas Bareiša’s beguiling second feature: two women––more specifically Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) and Juste (Agnė Kaktaitė), sisters on holiday with their respective families (a husband each, with one son and one daughter, respectively)––start dancing to Donna Lewis with what looks like an old routine, part half-remembered movements, part muscle memory. This entrancing sequence is cut short when their kids ask to go swimming, where one of the children appears to drown. The film then jumps forward in time, where Ernesta is visiting a man whose life was saved by one of her late husband’s organs. Before finding out how he died, we jump back again: same holiday, same sisters, same dance, only this time it’s Lighthouse Family. “When you’re close to tears, remember,“ Tunde Baiyewu sings, “someday it’ll all be over.“ – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
Emmanuelle (Audrey Diwan)
The most striking thing about Audrey Diwan’s reinterpretation of Emmanuelle––the infamous novel-turned-softcore franchise from fabulously named director Just Jaeckin––is that the original dramatic beats largely remain intact. Perhaps this is why it received a critical drubbing at its San Sebastian premiere: those expecting the drastically different, radically feminist take on this material you’d assume would materialize courtesy of the filmmaker behind the Golden Lion-winning Happening would be disappointed by an unexpected faith towards its source. The way Diwan and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski recontextualize this material is also out-of-step with recent cinephile backlash towards the lack of sexuality in contemporary cinema. As soon as the film opens with Emmanuelle (Noémie Merlant) joining the mile-high club, the tryst framed as dispassionately as its heroine’s blank expression, you can sense many viewers immediately checking out of a film which removes any ounce of titillation or sensuality from a narrative inherently defined by it. Like this iteration of Emmanuelle herself, Diwan’s film feels unmoored from sexual desire, laboriously going through the motions as it mimics many of the beats (and hook-ups) from material that was unabashed about its sensual nature. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Folktales (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady)
In their documentary Folktales, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady weave Norse mythology (specifically that of “the three Norns”) and evocative imagery (courtesy of DP Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo) with the modern-day story of northern Norway’s Pasvik Folk High School, a place where kids can take a gap year in the wild as a means of self-discovery. Ewing and Grady focus on students Hege, Romain, and Bjørn Tore. All three are dealing with their own traumas: Hege is lonely, still reeling from the tragic death of her father; Romain is a fearful high school dropout unsure of his ability to survive the camp and the wilderness; finally, Bjørn Tore thinks of himself as strange, awkward, and incapable of making friends. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)
The level of enjoyment audience members will have with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is tied directly to their tolerance for the humor of Tim Robinson. The star of the meme-inspiring Netflix series I Think You Should Leave has cultivated a devoted following by creating situations of embarrassment and characters who veer wildly from absurdist rage to complete self-delusion. (See the infamous “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” meme.) In my mind, I Think You Should Leave is the funniest series of the last decade or so. While Robinson’s full-length feature as star does not reach his show’s highs, it’s still a hysterically funny, pitch-black comedy. – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)
Spike Lee’s first narrative feature in five years is Highest 2 Lowest, his reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low that marks a reteam with Denzel Washington after Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man. Also starring Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, and A$AP Rocky, the film premiered at Cannes a few months ago and is now arriving on Apple TV+ after a painfully small theatrical run. Luke Hicks said in his review, “The duo is responsible for one of cinema’s greatest cinematic achievements, Malcolm X, while the other three would have a fighting chance at most directors’ best. If Highest 2 Lowest falls on the lower end of their partnership, the sparks of brilliance they’ve found in the past will flare up multiple times.”
Where to Stream: Apple TV+
Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
At once Paul Thomas Anderson‘s loosest and densest film, Inherent Vice presents a world that’s easy to get lost in. Not because his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon‘s novel isn’t interested in hand-holding — it is a mystery from the point-of-view of a paranoid and confused pothead, mind you — but its melancholic tone, the Blake Edwards-like comedy, and array of endlessly eccentric characters, all of which add up to a transcendent two-and-a-half hours. This is a movie that washes over its viewers as long as they’re willing to go along for the trippy ride. It’s a strange, funny, and surprisingly sad story, almost more about a bad breakup than the mystery Doc has to unravel. Shasta Fay’s (Katherine Waterston) presence is almost always felt in Inherent Vice. Doc confronts equally confusing internal and external struggles in this dreamlike LA story. Despite a disappointing box-office, it’s up there with Anderson’s best work. – Jack G.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
In its original iteration, the Zucker brothers’ Naked Gun wasn’t just carried by Leslie Nielsen’s performance––nearly every aspect of the first two David Zucker-directed films was a reflection of it. As buffoonish detective lieutenant Frank Drebin, Nielsen’s scenery-chewing baritone encapsulated the square-jawed, hypermasculine self-seriousness of a generation of patriotic popular entertainment unleashed on America during the Reagan years, themselves often self-conscious mimics of the leading men and man-of-action morality plays of the midcentury Hollywood pulp on which Nielsen cut his teeth. Drebin’s guileless stupidity as he bumbles through formula-perfect cop thriller plots playing the maverick hero, and Nielsen’s readiness to bug his eyes out or call a man “Mr. Poopy Pants” in the middle of an otherwise dead-serious delivery, gleefully deflated the macho put-on, luxuriating in pushing the already juvenile nature of the popular fantasies just a few key steps over the edge from self-parody to parody. Accordingly, the films themselves are shot and scored like the mountains of formulaic schlock they’re spoofing, with laughs arising from the narrative tropes and cinematic language of post-Dirty Harry copaganda pushed just beyond the genre’s usual overcooked realism into mountains of visual gags and surreal, childish play-logic (say, a chalk outline of a corpse floating on water at the scene of a maritime murder). – Eli F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Realm of Satan (Scott Cummings)
Made in collaboration with the Church of Satan, as stated in its opening titles, Scott Cummings’ Realm of Satan doesn’t seek to expose hidden secrets of the religion, investigate the church’s place amongst belief systems, or, for the most part, even hear from those who may oppose its teachings. Rather, solely through a series of inspired cinematic tableaus, we are invited to take a look from the inside to witness the practices and everyday lives of those who follow this atheistic path. Due to the welcome decision of not delving deeper into the minds of the subjects––as well as displaying little input on the part of the filmmaker apart from the frames he chooses to capture––Realm of Satan becomes a compelling Rorschach test for how one may perceive the religious. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Sacramento (Michael Angarano)
With a plucky, inherent likability as a performer that extends to his leisurely directorial aesthetic, Michael Angarano’s second feature Sacramento is an amiable, freewheeling road trip dramedy that rides on its central performances, courtesy of Michael Cera and the actor-writer-director as strained best friends. In exploring fatherhood, mental health, and the lies we tell ourselves (and others) to keep trucking along, Angarano and co-writer Chris Smith haven’t uncovered a wealth of revelations on tried-and-true thematic ground, yet there’s just enough smart comedic timing and dramatic perceptiveness to make this an adventure worth taking. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Undine (Christian Petzold)
Following up a successful work of lucid experimentation like Transit can be a tricky undertaking: does one lean back toward the basics or further up the ante? Christian Petzold shoots for the latter with his latest, a Berlin-based pseudo-supernatural melodrama titled Undine. And that name should prove telling: the myth of the watery nymph that inspired as far-flung old guys as Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Neil Jordan, and Hans Christian Andersen in their creative endeavors. Ever the intellectual, in his press notes Petzold references the female-centric version of Ingeborg Bachmann as his key inspiration and his story does prove, for the most part, to be told from the eponymous heroine’s angle. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
All the President’s Men
Alucarda
The Anderson Tapes
Another World
The Beaver
Behind Convent Walls
Benedetta
Brewster McCloud
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson
Bugsy Malone
California Split
Carlos
Celluloid Underground
Chinatown
City of Ghosts
Coconut Head Generation
Colette and Justin
Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
The Company
Countdown
The Crow
Cut the World
Dark Habits
The Devils
Dr. T & the Women
Drone Bomb Me
Europe Endless: The Spectre of Eurocommunism
Fool for Love
Fresh Kill
Gosford Park
Hope There’s Someone
Killer Nun
Klute
Little Man Tate
Magnolia
Marcello mio
La marge
Marrow
MASH
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Millennium Actress
Ms .45
Nashville
Nell
Night Moves
Obsession
Pamfir
Panic Room
The Parallax View
A Perfect Couple
Popeye
Possession
A Prairie Home Companion
Prêt-à-Porter
Punch-Drunk Love
Quintet
Shadows and Fog
Sommersby
Sorcerer
Stealing Home
Taxi Driver
That Cold Day in the Park
To the Devil a Daughter
Towheads
Trouble Sleep
TURNING
Undercurrent
Union
Vincent & Theo
The Wind Will Carry Us
Winter Kills
Kino Film Collection
Oh Canada
Northern Lights
Metrograph at Home
A White, White Day
Winter Brothers
My Winnipeg
The Saddest Music in the World
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,
12:08 East of Bucharest, dir. Corneliu Porumboiu
Graduation
The Forest for the Trees
MUBI
New Jerusalem
Superior
Chan is Missing
Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart
Pilgrims
Prime Video
A Working Man
VOD
Architecton
Kill the Jockey
Shoshana