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.
Broker (Hirokazu Kor-eda)
The title of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is also the job title of two of its three leads: Broker. They’re like most other brokers: they sell goods on behalf of an invested owner. It’s just that instead of money-grubbing elite, they sell on behalf of anonymous new mothers. And instead of, let’s say, real estate, they sell babies. It sounds downright evil, but it’s quite the opposite. They traffic children in a good way. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Innocent (Louis Garrel)
Eternally the rebellious loverboy of the Sarkozy era, Louis Garrel, now at 40, is seemingly easing into an elder statesman role. No longer too brooding a presence, and also at the point where paranoia about losing roles to younger, newer stars might necessitate a pivot to directing, the French idol has made his transition agreeable with a couple of likable pictures under this belt. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahleski)
There is a go-for-broke, frenzied aura upon John Wick: Chapter 4. Even for a franchise so heavily steeped in bullets and body count, this outing finds a way to leave all its cards on the table. Seemingly fashioned with a “no bad ideas” ethos, John Wick: Chapter 4 gleefully trades in the kind of maximalist excess that characterized last year’s Babylon. In a similar fashion, not only does Chapter 4 endeavor to be a potentially final John Wick movie, it plays as an attempt at the last action movie ever made. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Occidente (Ana Vaz)
Brazilian artist and filmmaker Ana Vaz’s preoccupation with the natural world is splayed wide across her film-poem Occidente. Melding together glistening, cerulean 16mm footage, HD video, and Google Street View, Occidente is an exercise in “reverse ethnography,” charting a transatlantic voyage of Brazilian new-worlders and the Portuguese working class by way of gamboling peacocks, Chinese porcelain, dinner table intimacies, and choppy surf attempts.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
She Said (Maria Schrader)
“Can I quote you?” As it did throughout Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey’s intrepid investigative journalism for the New York Times, that question reverberates in Maria Schrader’s She Said, an understated, polished procedural that chronicles the way two reporters exposed Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse and assault. Their unrelenting pursuit to convince accusers to go on-record comprises the majority of this movie, which builds to pressing publish on the bombshell, 3,300-word article that uncovered allegations made by actresses—most notably Ashley Judd—and current and former employees, along with previously undisclosed corporate records, documents, and settlements that kept numerous women from speaking out. – Jake K-S (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller)
In Three Thousand Years of Longing, an introverted historian (as if there’s another kind) meets a genie. The historian is played by a bespectacled Tilda Swinton, affecting a North English accent, and the genie (or “djinn,” to use Arabic, as is this film’s wont) by Idris Elba—blue, shimmering, with pointy ears, and liable to disappear in a puff of smoke if the appropriate words are spoken. The director is George Miller, directing for the first time since Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015. As acts to follow go, they don’t get much harder. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko)
There are clenched fists aplenty in Unclenching the Fists. Stuck in a former mining town high in the mountains of North Ossetia, its characters are as weighed down with misfortune as they are with strained mitts. There are the protagonist Ada’s, racked with frustration; her brother Akim’s, all white-knuckled and ready for swinging; but most obviously there are their father Zaur’s, strict as iron and with a rigor-mortis grip. The film is the second feature from Kira Kovalenko, a filmmaker from Nalchik, in the foothills of the Caucuses—a locale just next Ada’s, and that sense of place is apparent. The film, a bleak and provocative work with few (if any) soft edges, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regarde sidebar, where it was awarded the Grand Prix by a jury led by Andrea Arnold—another filmmaker synonymous with tales of young women and isolated places, the lecherous men they encounter, and their dreams of breaking free. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Victim/Suspect (Nancy Schwartzman)
For all the good that has come from #MeToo movement, one unfortunate side effect is the chauvinistic, appallingly celebratory response to women who have been charged with filing a false report of sexual assault. Through the stories of a number of victims, Nancy Schwartzman’s new documentary explores the multitude of nuanced factors in biased policing procedures that lead to rapists walking free. While the filmmaking could use more polish and focus, Victim/Suspect will enrage any viewer to take a deeper look when they see similar headlines moving forward. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Worst Ones (Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret)
Winner of the Un Certain Regard at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret’s The Worst Ones arrives in the U.S. with a certain amount of clout. A knotty meta-narrative about the ethics of filmmaking, it takes its title from the non-professional actors who are cast in an independent film shot in the working-class town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Tracking the production of the film-within-a-film, Akoka and Gueret spotlight the ambiguities and exploitation that propel one’s search for realism in art. – Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Now
Also New to Streaming
Disney+
Wild Life
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Ruin
Mustang
The Skin
Hyenas
Padre padrone
The Potemkinists
Netflix
Missing
The Son
Prime Video
The Dirties