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.
Bad Behaviour (Alice Englert)
Watch an exclusive clip above.
Bad Behaviour cannot pick a tone. Over the 107 minutes of Alice Englert’s debut feature, the only consistency comes from constant shifting. Following Lucy (Jennifer Connelly), a former child actor attending an enlightenment retreat, and her daughter, Dylan (Englert), the dark comedy switches between these two stories until they converge in the third act. Neither plotline has enough substance, though, acting like a series of half-baked ideas about wellness, parenthood, and happiness. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Heroes Shed No Tears (John Woo)
In this explosive precursor to his breakout film A Better Tomorrow, director John Woo demonstrates the genesis of his trademark style of hyperkinetic action and violence in the thriller he identified as his “first real film,” breaking a string of low-budget slapstick farces, and building the foundation for his over-the-top genre films that would follow. Making its exclusive North American streaming premiere on Film Movement Plus, Heroes Shed No Tears now arrives in a 2K digital restoration.
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
I’m ‘George Lucas’: A Connor Ratliff Story (Ryan Jacobi)
There is something genuinely heartfelt about I’m ‘George Lucas’: A Connor Ratliff Story. Directed by Ryan Jacobi, the documentary tells the story of New York-based comedian Connor Ratliff and his long tenure playing “George Lucas” on The George Lucas Talk Show, an improvised, monthly comedy series designed as a late-night panel talk show in which real-life guests act as though they are conversing with the real George Lucas. The majority of performances were staged at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. The show also gained a brand-new, expanded audience over Zoom during the pandemic. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
Tender yet rageful, quiet yet deafening, intimate yet expansive, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is a towering achievement of total artistic freedom, the kind of work where certain images will be eternally burned into your mind and the feelings it exudes will linger far after the credits roll. Expanding the aura of loneliness from We’re All Going to the World’s Fair into a vastly more ambitious, layered canvas, Schoenbrun’s third feature tells the story of Owen, played early on by Ian Foreman and later by Justice Smith in a revelatory performance. Following the isolated journey of questioning his identity through childhood and adulthood, we witness his special infatuation with a late-night TV show and the ineradicable bond it creates with another lonely soul, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine). The deeply expressive, imaginative ways in which Schoenbrun is able to articulate one’s struggle with identity is nothing short of staggering. This may not be a horror film in the conventional sense––in fact, every directorial decision assertively refutes convention––but I Saw the TV Glow emphatically argues nothing is more terrifying than being trapped in a body you don’t desire and having no words to properly express the feeling. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Origin (Ava DuVernay)
The second part of this year’s Venice Film Festival shines with at least two firsts: Ava DuVernay is the first African-American female director competing for the Golden Lion, here with a film about Isabel Wilkerson, the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Origin is inspired by Wilkerson’s seminal 2020 book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, but is a stand-alone cinematic retelling of a life, work, and the process of uncovering, from within, the perilous paradigms that shape our social structures. Even if such a premise reads a bit dry, DuVernay’s dedication to rawness and realism puts literary and conceptual devices to good use to make an affecting, vital film for our times. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)
Saint Frances is a warm-hearted indie comedy that captures the awkwardness of adulthood with real precision. Every one of these awkward moments–and there many–involves Bridget, an aimless 34-year-old beautifully underplayed by star and screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan. This tone of enjoyable (for the viewer) embarrassment is set in the opening minutes of first-time director Alex Thompson’s SXSW award-winning feature. An intense guy at a party pummels Bridget with a somber story “full of self-loathing and shame,” not to mention suicide. He then reveals it was just a bad dream. A forced exchange follows: “How about you, what do you do?” he asks. “I’m a server at a restaurant,” she responds. “You’re still in your twenties. It gets better.” “Actually, I’m 34.’ – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Skin Deep (Alex Schaad)
One of our favorite films coming out of the Venice Film Festival back in 2022, where it won the Queer Lion award, Alex Schaad’s feature debut subverts genre and gender as it toggles from body-swap thriller to intimate relationship drama. Jared Mobarak said in his review, “By wielding a science fiction conceit wherein two people can consensually transfer their essences into the other’s body, his co-writer and brother Dimitrij and he can begin tearing down walls of gender, sexuality, psychology, and identity itself. Because while our purest self is that essence, all the other pieces that make up who we are impact its formation, evolution, and, inevitably, disintegration. Leyla isn’t mired in a ‘rough patch’ like Tristan tells himself as a coping mechanism to deal with her obvious shift in personality from active lover of life to depressive hermit devoid of spark. Her body and brain—her very existence—have become a prison. And where the only escape had been death, this alternative promises rejuvenation.”
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette)
A combination of video diary, dysfunctional family scrapbook, found footage documentary, and pop musical elegy, Jonathan Caouette’s poignant, powerful breakthrough film tells the harrowing story of the filmmaker’s life, covering his mother’s damaging exposure to electroshock therapy in his youth, incidents of abuse, addiction, and abandonment, and his own unlikely survival through escape into musical theater and cinematic self-expression.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Will You Look at Me (Shuli Huang)
Winner of both the Queer Palm at Cannes in 2022 and the Short Film Jury Award at Sundance last year — Chinese newcomer Shuli Huang’s Will You Look At Me maps the filmmaker’s post-college emotional turmoil as he contends with his parents’ disapproval of his homosexuality. In a dreamy confessional with scintillating Super 8 visions, Huang offers a window into the moment when he confronts his mother about her refusal to accept him while offering joyful glimpses of his private life as a young queer man exploring Beijing with his friends.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Also New to Streaming
Disney+
Tomorrowland
Hulu
What Comes Around
Netflix
Remembering Gene Wilder
Spa Night
Ultraman Rising
Peacock
Monkey Man
Prime Video
Killer Joe
Stories We Tell
VOD
The Grab