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 the interwebs. 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 Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The Blue Room (Mathieu Amalric)
Clocking in at a brisk 75 minutes, the film wastes little time in propelling forward its whodunit? narrative. It begins with two lovers, Julien and Esther (Amalric and Stéphanie Cléau), in a hotel room, their faces often cut out of the frame, their body parts fragmented, their beings usually depicted in isolation. When they both find their way into focus, they barely have enough room for the “classic” 1.33:1 ratio, suggesting isolation and an impending sense of the walls closing in. Heightening this is that, despite the narrower sight, shots nonetheless almost feel as if they may have been composed for 1.85:1 — people are cut-off and closed-in, eye lines are hidden from us, surroundings are short-sighted, and details are easy to miss. – Forrest C. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
On the surface, it’s the story of Weronika and Véronique (both played by Irène Jacob). Just beneath that, it’s about the connection music creates between two unrelated people. By extension, Double Life becomes an operatic ode to life and art, perhaps the greatest achievement of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s longtime DP, Sławomir Idziak, who shamelessly uses a number of filters, and of Zbigniew Preisner, who composed the score. Less concerned with hermeneutics than utilizing sound and image to create cinematic poems and draw us into the mindset of two inexplicably but undeniably connected women. Weronika and Véronique meet only briefly, but that only emphasizes the film’s lyrical aims, concerned far more with the inner workings of thought and feeling than with narrative drama and suspense. One could talk at length on a number of gorgeous images, but, to modify an oft-used quote (with no clear attribution), “talking about The Double Life of Véronique is like dancing about architecture.” It’s better to let it wash over you, fall into its spell, and stay there, hypnotized, until the end credits roll. – Forrest C.
Where to Stream: Hulu+
Girlhood (Céline Sciamma)
With Girlhood, writer-director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy, Water Lilies) deepens her preoccupation with coming-of-age stories focusing on strong, young female leads. Her characters are always outsiders looking to fit in, and each have intense love interests. In her latest, she explores a poor, minority community in France through a drama that could easily prove maudlin and over-the-top. Instead, she used non-actors to perform a script and complement direction that are always restrained and thoughtful. – Will M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Good Kill (Andrew Niccol)
Andrew Niccol made a name for himself with a particular brand of topical filmmaking (Gattaca, The Truman Show, S1mone, Lord of War, In Time) keen on capturing a particular phenomenon and crystallizing it as a concept in mainstream culture. Some of his films have been more successful at this than others, but they all attempted to find a specific angle on the subject to at least ensure some original interpretation. This is unfortunately not the case with Good Kill, just unveiled as part of the Venice competition. It’s difficult to find an original angle when the issue you’re exploring is drone warfare, which hits closer to home in terms of time and space — or, as Bruce Greenwood‘s chatty Lt. Colonel likes to put it, “the here and fucking now” — as well as cultural and media exposure. Niccol’s aim is single-minded and relentless: to pound away at the sense of alienation and disconnect that drone pilots experience by killing people from the (relative) comfort of an air base in Nevada. – Tommaso T. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German)
It is, without a doubt, a stunningly radical work: a three-hour journey into the heart of darkness that doesn’t just grab you, but envelops, haunted by a moral bleakness that leaves nothing beyond the images of terror it creates. While German remains simply a curiosity in the United States (he is as beloved as Tarkovsky in Russia), Hard to Be a God is the perfection of the director’s long-take approach, likely to remain unmatched for years to come. – Peter L. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
A movie so audacious in concept and execution, it should get the blood pumping within the first ten minutes, and by the last ten, you’ll be breathing a sigh of relief while cheering with such fervor your head will spin. Like the best of Tarantino‘s work, it sends a love of cinema coursing through your veins. Christoph Waltz gives the best performance of its respective year, and what will likely be his career. It has a brain behind the brashness that is uncommon in today’s multiplexes, and will sadly continue to be. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Netflix
In the Bedroom (Todd Field)
As we wait and see if The Creed of Violence, Beautiful Ruins, or one of the other long-gestating potential films from director Todd Field gets made, Netflix has added his stellar debut to their streaming platform. Featuring top-notch performances from Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei, and William Mapother, it’s a searing drama about grief and revenge that doesn’t follow an expected path. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
If there is a very loose thread connecting contemporary Russian cinema to its artistic heritage, it is that its best filmmakers still exude a desire to produce art on the grandest of scales. The great Czarist-then-Soviet-then-Thaw State has amalgamated a collection of artists known, in some circles, solely for their grand scale: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, with their intense emotional overtures that turn simple stories into mass-size tragedies; the overtures of Tchaikovsky, with their use of bellowing brass and percussion; and Kadinsky’s extreme use of space in his abstractness. Of course, there is its cinema: Eisenstein’s lightning-like editing, Tarkovsky’s profound stillness, Sokurov’s investigation of power — and, now, Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s intensely operatic examination of a land dispute escalated to epic proportions in Leviathan. – Peter L. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Spongebob Movie: SpongeBob Out of Water (Paul Tibbitt and Mike Mitchell)
Delightful and funny in a cheesy, silly way, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is a kind of cinematic sugar rush. While, like a Krabby Patty, not entirely nutritious, it’s thoroughly delightful in its zany relentlessness. Taking place largely under the water in the hamlet of Bikini Bottom, an external force, Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas) aspires to control the world via his food truck and the secret Krabby Patty formula served up at the Krust Krab. Garnering more attention than Shake Shake’s recent IPO, he succeeds. Stealing an ancient book from a deserted island, he’s able to manipulate the narrative of Bikini Bottom by simply rewriting any page he wishes. And those kids from Project Almanac aren’t around to stop him. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Zombeavers (Jordan Rubin)
Right from the start of director Jordan Rubin‘s Zombeavers, the film scores points for originality. Its horror-comedy tone is familiar, but not until 2015, somehow, have we seen the potent mix of zombies and beavers, and Jordan Rubin and screenwriters Al and Jon Kaplan deliver on that wonderfully ludicrous premise. What easily could have been a one-joke film is instead a lean, seriously funny 77 minute-long comedy that never runs the main gag into the ground. Zombeavers begins with promise, thanks to an appearance by a well-known musician and one of the best stand-up comics working today, Bill Burr, having a conversation that, really, could make for a great movie starring Burr. He plays a delivery guy discussing the one week he dated a guy, and the advantages that came with seeing a member of the same sex. The two morons are carrying a batch of chemicals, and when one of them is texting while driving, they run over a deer, causing one of the barrels to go into the lake, which ends up turning the beavers into wild zombies. – Jack G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Banksy Does New York
The Human Centipede 3
Into the Grizzly Maze
Strange Magic
That Guy Dick Miller
Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman
Young Bodies Heal Quickly
Netflix
What are you streaming this weekend?