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.
Anemone (Ronan Day-Lewis)
The first time Daniel Day-Lewis shows up in Anemone, he’s cloaked in shadow, sitting inside a small cabin in the middle of the North England wilderness. It’s a nearly indecipherable introduction that almost feels by design––a soft, silhouetted launch for his unexpected and welcome return to the big screen. In 2017, right before the press tour for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, the three-time Oscar winner announced his retirement from acting, marking the end of a prolific and singular career. He’d taken breaks before––like in 1997, when he left Hollywood to become a shoemaker in Italy for several years. But this second schism felt different. He was leaving “for good,” he said, the kind of bold declaration that doesn’t leave room for interpretation. Which is why, eight years later, when the light eventually catches his 68-year-old features to reveal a thick goatee, short white hair, and that familiar gaunt face, it’s both a thrilling reveal and a reminder that even the greats can swallow their pride and heed the call to create again. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Peacock
Carol & Joy (Nathan Silver)
After reaching his largest audience yet with last year’s hilarious Between the Temples, director Nathan Silver has reteamed with the great Carol Kane for an intimate documentary capturing the relationship between the actor and her mother, the 98-year-old Joy Kane. Shot during an afternoon in their Upper West Side apartment, Silver mostly lets the outgoing pair do the talking, revealing stories of both shared love and suppressed pain as artistic ambitions, both fulfilled and dashed, are discussed. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky)
An oft-exhilarating take on the worn genre––with the occasional caving to a tired trope––Aronofsky’s newest joins the upper echelons of lonely-man-with-cat(s) cinema, in the ranks of The Long Goodbye, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Children of Men. It doesn’t sit quite so high in the much-busier upper echelons of crime cinema, but that’s a major bar to clear. As it turns out, the cat and sobriety end up being blessings in disguise. The entangled web of crazed killers, on the other hand… – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Damned (Roberto Minervini)
A filmmaker whose work always renders as thrillingly intimate and alive, Roberto Minervini (Stop the Pounding Heart, What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?) took another unexpected turn in his latest film. The Damned, which picked up the Un Certain Regard Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, heads to the frontier of the Civil War as we follow a group of volunteer soldiers. Jake Kring-Schreifels said in his review, “While The Damned sometimes resembles a reenactment, Minervini makes a valid attempt to highlight war’s aimless priorities on its marginalized and unheralded members. Throughout his career, the Italian director (who’s lived in the United States for more than two decades) has aimed to blur the boundaries between documentary and narrative (Stop Pounding the Heart, The Other Side, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?), capturing the forgotten and mundane aspects of life with non-professional actors whose ambiguity and lack of star power invite authenticity. He’s interested in the ways landscapes and conditions impact people, toggling between fiction and reality and using that tension to mine a deeper truth.”
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
The Family McMullen (Edward Burn)
Edward Burns has been the leading man of films big and small while he continues to make modest indie dramedies of a certain niche. This holiday season, Burns returns to his original film family with the sequel The Family McMullen, arriving on HBO Max this Friday, December 5. It’s a confident, mature piece of filmmaking and one of his very best films. We spoke with Burns about the new movie, his most underrated previous films, the future of his acting career outside of his own work, and how he’s improved as a visual stylist over these thirty years. Read my conversation here. – Dan M.
Where to Stream: HBO Max
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (Amy Berg)
Amy Berg’s It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is an impressive archival document as well as a celebration of the life of a tortured artist. And while the term “tortured artist” is certainly overused, it feels especially apt when writing about Buckley. Here was a beautiful man with an almost indescribably beautiful voice, beset by the tragedy of being alive and famous and supremely gifted all at the same time. Of being haunted by the ghost of a father (fellow musician Tim Buckley) whom he barely knew and who died far too young. In May of 1997, Jeff Buckley accidentally drowned in Wolf River in Tennessee. He was working on his second studio album at the time of his death. His sole record Grace is a masterpiece. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
Let’s start here: Billy Crudup is one of our truly great actors. Early into Jay Kelly, written by Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer and directed by Baumbach, Crudup appears for a one-scene turn that jump-starts the narrative. Over drinks, his Timothy confronts the George Clooney-like movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) about “stealing his life.” They were friends in acting school, and then Timothy made the mistake of inviting Jay to an important audition with an important filmmaker (Jim Broadbent). Now Jay Kelly is Jay Kelly and Timothy is a child therapist. A fist fight ensues. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The New Yorker at 100 (Marshall Curry)
As the art and practice of journalism continues to be eroded and print publications cease to exist, it’s a remarkable feat that the New Yorker has not only celebrated its 100th anniversary, but that the renowned magazine continues to thrive. In conjunction with its centennial, Marshall Curry has crafted a riveting documentary portrait of the people behind the words (and art), showing what it’s like to be on the beat, at the editor’s desk, crafting the cover, and many other fascinating aspects of ensuring a level of journalism integrity and quality day in and day out. For our readers, you’ll be happy to learn that the great Richard Brody does indeed get his due. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)
We begin with music that’s uncharacteristically tense for a Wes Anderson film––chugging cellos leading a full orchestra that’s more Mission: Impossible than Moonrise Kingdom––and opener à la Nolan blockbusters: an assassination attempt. It’s an exhilarating launch into a story that starts petering out soon after. Renowned criminal mastermind Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) sits before a gorgeously designed train car much like the off-white, wooden, burgundy, and plaid train car that will take him and his associates around Phoenicia for the rest of the movie. An unfortunate associate is crammed into the back corner. Without warning, a bomb obliterates any semblance of said corner, and we launch into The Phoenician Scheme, never to take a breath. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani)
Enter Reflection in a Dead Diamond. Set in an unidentified stretch of southern France, the same Mediterranean backdrop that housed Amer and Corpses, Diamond centers on a seventy-something retired spy, Monsieur Diman (Fabio Testi), whose sojourn at a luxurious seaside hotel is suddenly interrupted by fears his old enemies might be after him again. That’s a very succinct way of distilling what is, in fact, an impossibly intricate diegesis, a Russian Doll of stories within stories within films. Diman’s younger, James Bond-esque self (Yannick Renier), whose gruesome missions keep intersecting the old man’s retreat in rivulets of flashbacks, is not a real spy, but a character of some B-movie espionage saga, one “John D.” Which is to say that the increasingly violent memories Diman is exhuming in-between martinis may have less to do with actual, real-life experience than delusions around his own fictional alter-ego. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Shudder
Stranger Eyes (Yeo Siew Hua)
In a film so concerned with our current media regime––the way we produce and consume images of each other––Lee saunters into Stranger Eyes as a kind of anomaly. There is a stark contrast between the surgical eyes of CCTV cameras and the actor’s own, the way surveillance devices capture reality and how Lee’s Wu processes it. I do not mean to downplay Wu and Panna’s turns. The former in particular channels a feverish angst, and his transformation from object of Wu’s obsession into voyeur himself largely works. But Stranger Eyes belongs to Lee. Whether or not Yeo wrote it with him in mind, I can’t think of a better performer to flesh out the chasm that powers the film: between different ways of looking, between fears as old as time itself and the state-of-the-art technology used to bring them to light. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
2046
All I Can Say
American Psycho
And, Towards Happy Alleys
Anomalisa
Barton Fink
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
The Bellboy
Body of Evidence
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Children of Men
The Children’s Hour
Crosscurrent
Dance, Girl, Dance
Donnie Darko
Duet for Cannibals
The End of the Affair
Eve’s Bayou
Faithless
The Fan
Far from Heaven
Four Rooms
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
Grand Hotel
The Grandmaster
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
The Hours
I Am Not a Witch
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
Kaili Blues
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Lost in Translation
Louder Than Bombs
Maggie’s Plan
Maps to the Stars
Meeting with Pol Pot
The Million Dollar Hotel
Mother India
My Blueberry Nights
New Rose Hotel
Nine Months
One Day This Kid
Oslo, August 31st
The Palm Beach Story
Pariah
Pretty Red Dress
Psycho
Safe
Sarraounia
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Shoeshine
Sliding Doors
A Single Man
Somewhere
A Star Is Born
The Shining
Suddenly, Last Summer
Thelma
The Taste of Mango
Tea and Sympathy
These Three
Tokyo Godfathers
Tokyo Pop
Twice as Nice
Vanya on 42nd Street
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
What’s Up, Doc?
Will
HBO Max
Architecton
Kino Film Collection
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
Radical Wolfe
Metrograph at Home
Farewell My Concubine
Filmmaker Magazine Presents 25 New Faces: 2025
Films by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Soul And Soil: Ukrainian Poetic Cinema
Paramount+
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Prime Video
Kill the Jockey
Oh. What. Fun.
Merchants of Joy
VOD
Frontier Crucible
Man Finds Tape
Tron: Ares