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.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Kogonada)
If there’s a thread running through Kogonada’s films to date, it’s his distinct fascination with spare, deeply human character studies unfolding within meticulously designed worlds. As a sweeping, romantic fantasy, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is less grounded than the quiet modernist backdrops of Columbus or the pragmatic futurism of After Yang, but its blueprint is not wholly dissimilar. By design, the film is divorced from reality; a polished facsimile of a familiar world, leaning into a kind of Pinterest board chic to contrast with the plight of its characters’ sobering self-discovery. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
La Grazia (Paolo Sorrentino)
With style, focus, and a dash of humor, La Grazia starts very strong. Following an arresting opening sequence which simply reprints the Italian president’s (many) constitutional powers against an electro-fueled, wonderfully counterintuitive sonic backdrop, we’re thrown into the statesman’s daily routines that range from receiving foreign heads-of-state to having dinners with friends who still tell it like it is. These scenes depict, quite vividly, a rarified life to which few of us would ever have access. More importantly, they build a compelling central character that, despite their extraordinary circumstances, feels real and vulnerable. As required by his office, De Santis must follow protocol and decorum for doing just about everything. At the same time, he also needs old pals like the eccentric, loud-mouthed Coco (a scene-stealing Milvia Marigliano) to call BS on the politics and civility that surround him. From the outside, he seems like the epitome of poise and dignity, yet there’s much unrest bubbling right beneath the surface. You feel drawn to someone like that––someone with doubts and insecurities like the rest of us, but whose job requires life-and-death calls. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
James Bond
As Denis Villeneuve wraps Dune: Part Three and his 007 outing starts to take shape, starting a new chapter after No Time to Die paid farewell to Daniel Craig, it’s prime time to revisit the James Bond collection. Amazon MGM, after shelling out around $1 billion to gain control of the franchise, has hoped to begin to recoup some costs by licensing the collection of spy films to Netflix.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Little Trouble Girls (Urška Djukić)
This enchanting debut by director Urška Djukić follows introverted 16‑year‑old Lucija and her fellow Catholic school choir members as they navigate their emerging identities and sexual impulses within a traditional, somewhat out‑of‑time society. Told from a distinctly female perspective, the film resists judgment in favor of quiet observation. – Lucia S.
Where to Stream: VOD
Mother of Flies (Zelda Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser)
Mother of Flies melds aspects of body-horror and folk-horror, while drawing on two of its directors’ battles with cancer. Although set during the present, it’s far removed from modernity. Jake (John Adams) bring his daughter Mickey (Zelda Adams), suffering from terminal illness, for a three-day ritual with Solveig (Poser), a witch living off the grid. Notably, it pushes past the usual images of disgust with blood and bodily decay to embrace pain as part of healing. While Jake and Mickey seem strangely distant from each other, even though the actors are really father and daughter, the film’s style treats nature as an uncanny presence. – Steve E.
Where to Stream: Shudder
Mr. Nobody Against Putin (David Borenstein and Pavel Ilyich Talankin)
What does resistance look like in a country that runs on propaganda? As Russia’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine continues nearly four years later, a riveting new documentary explores how the government is forcing teachers to rinse and repeat falsehoods on a daily basis to their impressionable students about the country’s reasoning for attacking Ukraine. While the fact isn’t necessarily shocking, it is essential to see just how willing the brainwashed teachers are to spew the rhetoric. Enter Pasha, a teacher who finds unique ways to push back against the orders and inform students of the reality happening just over their border. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, filmed in secret, joins Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends as a vital guide for how to fight back when the morality of those in power is in shambles. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection, VOD
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Diego Céspedes)
As reminders that ignorance, bigotry, and hate can literally kill, stories about the AIDS epidemic will always be relevant. The latest, beautiful example arrived courtesy of Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes, whose feature debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar. Although the film may lack a narrative beat or two to fully take flight, it’s nonetheless a finely crafted, deeply affecting tribute to love and community––a piece of proudly, vitally queer art. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi)
One of the most heartbreaking documentaries of the last year, Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk premiered at Cannes just weeks after the Israeli occupation murdered the film’s subject, 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona. Constructed through passages of the director speaking with Hassona through FaceTime conversations, we get a glimpse at the day-to-day life under siege, both a powerful testament of living through terror and a damning cry for the Israeli government to stop destroying innocent lives. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Secret Mall Apartment (Jeremy Workman)
One of our favorite films to premiere at SXSW back in 2024 is now coming to Netflix following a theatrical and VOD release. Secret Mall Apartment retells the strange, true tale of a group of friends who created a secret apartment in the busy Providence Place Mall in the early 2000s, bringing back the participants together for the first time in nearly two decades. John Fink said in his review, “Shedding light on a quirky 2007 story that made national headlines, Secret Mall Apartment takes us deep into the bowels of the Providence Place Mall, centerpiece of the renaissance of Rhode Island’s capital city developed under convict mayor Buddy Cianci. (As it happens, a few months before the discovery of the secret mall apartment, I had been right above it seeing Cherry Arnold’s Buddy, an insightful film about the mayor and his transformation of Providence, at the mall’s Showcase Cinemas, but that is another story.) Apartment residents had the advantage of private access to the theater anytime they wished.”
Where to Stream: Netflix
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper)
The line “you did the best you could” is spoken at a crucial moment in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. It’s a platitude often used as a band-aid to cover up all manner of sins. But here, in writer-director-producer Scott Cooper’s Bruce Springsteen biopic (based on Warren Zanes’ book Deliver Me from Nowhere), it feels genuine. The film centers on the making of The Boss’ 1982 masterpiece Nebraska, and positions this process as a reckoning-of-sorts for the New Jersey legend. Following the stratospheric success of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River in a row, we meet Bruce (a very strong Jeremy Allen White) with little left to give. His manager and producer Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, sparsely used but great) serves as his lifeline and trusted confidante. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Disney+, Hulu
The Smashing Machine (Benny Safide)
The Smashing Machine is a movie with a lot of heart and soul. It’s also a movie with great love for its subjects: the people involved and, for better and worse, the industry they helped build. It’s inspired by a 2002 HBO documentary of the same name and boasts a central performance from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mark Kerr, a veteran of the “no holds barred” combat circuit that eventually matured into the more lucrative UFC (albeit long after Kerr had exited the ring). I’m mostly happy to report that it’s a far weirder movie than it needed to be––an art film masquerading as a tried-and-tested staple that’s seldom less-than-interesting but also rarely charged with the tension of the best sports movies. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Stonewalling (Ji Huang and Ryûji Otsuka)
There is a universal “art film” grammar prevalent across movie-making cultures––typically marked by a still camera, long takes, unvarnished settings, naturalistic acting, and general sobriety of tone. Stonewalling, by husband-and-wife directing duo Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka, is an exemplary example of this filmmaking scheme. It charts, without judgment, the multiplying consequences of an unplanned pregnancy in the life of a young Chinese woman. As a trilogy-capper alongside Egg and Stone (2012) and The Foolish Bird (2017), it also paints an immersive and insightful portrait of life in contemporary China with stunning, documentary-like realism. – Ankit J.
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
Il Dono
Prime Video
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