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.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta)
In 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the Jimmy gang is back, led by Jack O’Connell in a role that oddly mirrors his Irish vampire villain in last year’s Sinners. They’ve taken Spike (Alfie Williams), the pre-teen protagonist of the previous entry, now separated from his parents, under their wing. They ended the last film saving Spike’s life from the infected, but it’s soon revealed they have nefarious means to install themselves as new leaders of a post-apocalyptic society, among them the brutal torture of any other survivors who won’t conform. The rather unpleasant violence in these sequences is a different beast than all the goofy spine-ripping (still here) of Boyle’s predecessor. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
Blue Moon, which world-premiered at the Berlinale, is another beautifully personal work from Linklater, full of authorial idiosyncrasies and tics, but distinguishing the film from his corpus is it being the kind you can only make at a mature career stage. It’s not so much that Linklater has nothing to prove––screenplays like Robert Kaplow’s and its rarified, remote milieu of mid-WWII New York theaterland can typically send financiers balking. With a “legacy” career, little favors and gives come your way; for Linklater, maybe his next will be a legitimate awards contender, and new relationships with acting talent can be brought to bear. And different or lower expectations for the end product allow him to really express who he is as an artist at this point in his life. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Dracula (Radu Jude)
Radu Jude is one of the great filmmakers of the decade. His latest, Dracula, is ostensibly a satire on Vlad The Impaler––the most famous Romanian of all, who appears throughout in all sort of guises––but its main target is AI learning models. It’s a film that revels in the technology’s potential for vulgarity and stupidity while stoking anxieties around all the other things of which it’s capable. For this, Jude has made a film that’s both crude and puerile by design, but one I’m not fully convinced is funny enough to avoid earning those same descriptors. A little too smug and self-indulgent, Dracula takes a whopping 186 minutes to make its point; while fans of the director’s more farcical tendencies might find a way into its rhythms, I struggled giving it the benefit of the doubt. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
East of Wall (Kate Beecroft)
The degree of difficulty in making East of Wall must have been enormous: a small budget, a series of remote locations, a slew of non-actor performers, and the incredibly arduous task of working with horses. Written and directed by Kate Beecroft, the film stars Tabatha Zimiga as a version of herself. In real life, Zimiga runs a South Dakota ranch where she raises horses she then sells via social media. Her daughter Porshia also stars here, and is quite good. The film as a whole is a fictional narrative wrapped up in the facts of the Zimiga clan. Following the untimely death of her husband, Tabatha is burdened with significant financial responsibilities as well as a large chosen family that lives at her ranch: a number of older children with no place to go have found a home with her and her biological children. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (Quentin Tarantino)
One of the great theatrical experiences I had last year was Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, Quentin Tarantino’s version of the revenge epic that was originally presented in two volumes. Removing the cliffhanger ending from Vol. 1 and the recap that began Vol. 2, the new addition includes a never-before-seen, 7½-minute animated sequence. With no new Quentin Tarantino film on the horizon (at least one he’s directing), one can now experience the long-awaited holy grail of his filmography at home.
Where to Stream: VOD
No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
There’s no telling whether Park Chan-wook is a fan of the Sex Pistols. But during his latest film, No Other Choice, I found myself pondering the line John Lydon memorably uttered during the band’s disastrous final performance in 1978: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” No Other Choice is 139 minutes centered on such a feeling––what it means to be cheated by employers, competitors, and artificial intelligence. It is also about what it takes to fight back––really fight back. – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Portobello (Marco Bellochio)
Celebrating his 86th birthday a few months back, Marco Bellocchio is one of Italy’s most accomplished directors and the rare filmmaker who has stayed quite prolific in his late career. Following Kidnapped, he’s now returning with Portobello, a six-hour, six-part series which debuted its first two parts at the Venice Film Festival and is now HBO Max. The first Italian HBO Original series is dedicated to the dramatic story of TV host Enzo Tortora, who became the protagonist of a senseless judicial ordeal.
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Urchin (Harris Dickinson)
A few scenes into Urchin, we take a trip through the Bardo. First the camera (as in a million films before this) closes in on a shower drain, but then something new: a tunnel of darkness and color that gives way to damp, mossy calm, where a lone man in a clearing, standing with his back to us, is taking in the light. The director of this intrepid sequence is Harris Dickinson, who has found the time––somewhere between becoming a beloved actor and sex symbol and playing John Lennon––to direct a thoughtful, adventurous film. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)
While ghosts and spirits have long been the conduit for cinematic scares and jolts, from The Innocents to Poltergeist to The Ring, a relatively recent wave of films exploring the supernatural has been more concerned with the tangible, emotional effects these specters can have on the living. In that sense, a spiritual cousin to the likes of Uncle Boonmee, Personal Shopper, A Ghost Story, and Light from Light, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s directorial debut A Useful Ghost is a strange, tranquil, humorous exploration of the conundrums that would emerge were ghosts an accepted occurrence in everyday life, and what such phantoms could illuminate about the social and political troubles of modern Thailand and industrialization at large. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Hulu
Rental Family
Kino Film Collection
The 78 Project Movie
The Empire
MUBI
Being John Smith
Mekong Hotel
Netflix
Diggers
The Iron Claw