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.
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny perhaps garnered more press out of Cannes, another selection involving archaeologists and tomb raiders will have a longer shelf life. Alice Rohrwacher’s latest feature La Chimera (starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, and Alba Rohrwacher) ranked quite highly on our top 50 films of 2023 list for good reason. It’s a dreamy, magical odyssey in which the Italian director whisks viewers away with the kind of transportive vision she’s exuded in all her features thus far.
Where to Stream: VOD
Eileen (William Oldroyd)
Considering how many jokesters online talk about supporting women’s wrongs, Eileen should have made a billion dollars. Alas, not everyone can have impeccable taste. William Oldroyd’s character study grabs you from the first scene, making a meal of Otessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel’s whip-smart script. Anne Hathaway may be the talk of awards season — and she’s wonderful here — but this movie is really all about Thomasin McKenzie, who can enact an entire emotional journey using just her eyelids. And don’t even get me started on the Marin Ireland monologue! If you like vaguely gay movies with dirtbag protagonists and Boston accents, look no further. Some lesbians watch Carol every Christmas. I will be watching Eileen. – Lena W.
Where to Stream: Hulu
Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (Robert Connolly)
If there is any justice in this world, we’ll get an Aaron Falk mystery every few years in perpetuity. Force of Nature: The Dry 2, written and directed by Robert Connolly and based on the novel by Jane Harper, offers up a brand-new case for viewers and does not require that you’ve seen its engaging predecessor (The Dry). This time the setting is the Giralang Ranges, a fictional rainforest of labyrinthine density (the film itself was shot all over Victoria, Australia). Along with the drastic change in scenery from the first outing (which hewed closer to an outback aesthetic tourists would expect), there’s been an expansion of production value. As Falk closes in on the identity of the killer, a violent storm closes in. This time there are more characters, more plot, and more conflicting motivations. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin)
A knockout gut-punch off the ropes, The Iron Claw traces the devastating true story of the Von Erich family, a 1980s Texas wrestling dynasty comprising several brothers whose deep talents in the ring eventually collapsed under the weight of their exploitative, domineering father (Holt McCallany). As the eldest sibling, Kevin, Zac Efron turns in a transformative performance, navigating Sean Durkin’s visceral and intimate American fable with a roided-out musculature––all while trying to ward off a family curse of personal catastrophe. “If we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us,” Kevin remembers his father telling him. But outside the ring, that philosophy became a death sentence of tragic proportion. – Jake K-S.
Where to Stream: Max
Kim’s Video (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin)
A sweeping documentary by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video follows the personal-inquiry, man-on-the-street format from their previous works Mardi Gras: Made in China and Girl Model. With Redmon largely remaining behind the scenes, asking questions while holding his camera, the film is simply left to wander where the story takes it: from the cool counterculture of the East Village before eventually turning into a heist film with a mafia connection. Haunted by the ghosts of cinema, Youngman Kim’s collection calls out to David; eventually he’s able to rescue and repatriate it back to Lower Manhattan. Its happy end is known, with a collection of over 55,000 rare VHS tapes and DVDs from the chain’s flagship Mondo Kim’s now available to rent at the Alamo Drafthouse’s lower Manhattan outpost, the Found Footage Festival’s Nick Prueher responsible for the preservation and cataloging of titles. Redmon and Sabin’s Kim’s Video shows us exactly how that deal went down. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Last Stop in Yuma County (Francis Galluppi)
After watching Francis Galluppi’s deliciously entertaining, bloody one-location noir thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County, it’s easy to see how Sam Raimi warmed to his pitch for a new Evil Dead movie and hired him for the next installment. Galluppi’s highly accomplished debut feature follows a traveling knife salesman (a pitch-perfect Jim Cummings) who gets stuck at an Arizona diner in the middle of nowhere when some nefarious criminals stop in. With dialogue and turns that would make even the Coens smile, this is an homage that has an identity all its own.
Where to Stream: VOD
Let It Be (Michael Lindsay-Hogg)
It’s been four years since Disney and Peter Jackson announced intent to restore Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be––long enough (and with enough baggage) to think that might never materialize. It’s no mistake you’ve probably never seen the final film made during the lifetime of the world’s most-successful band: while Get Back did much to show a fruitful side of the Beatles creating their last(ish) album, Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 feature has long been notorious for its window into their discord, and by most accounts the group’s controlling interests were fine letting it languish in bootlegs. But it has now arrived at long last.
Where to Stream: Disney+
Shayda (Noora Niasari)
Director Noora Niasari’s debut Shayda––and Australia’s submission for Best International Feature at next year’s Oscars––is quite literally a lifetime in the making. Largely inspired by traumatic events from her own childhood as an Iranian immigrant in Australia, Niasari has repeatedly expressed that she still has a difficult time speaking about her film, the events depicted continuing to touch a raw nerve even as she’s separated from them by decades. And while the resulting work is too narrative-focused to ever be described as a pure “memory piece,” it’s littered with highly specific, lived-in details that appear to be directly lifted from her own experiences. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico)
The Wild Boys director Bertrand Mandico returned last year, debuting his 35mm-shot queer fantasy She Is Conann (yes, drawing inspiration from Conan the Barbarian) at the Cannes Film Festival. Savina Petkova said in her review, “Following The Wild Boys and After Blue, Conann marks the third feature-length project from prolific shorts filmmaker Bertrand Mandico. Many are still not convinced long-form fits his intense and imaginative style, but what’s certain is that Conann makes one heck of a watch. Part of the self-contained cosmos of Mandico’s explosive vision, this new film is a provocative tale of endurance and self-discovery inspired by the fantasy character Conan the Barbarian (or the Cimmerian). Mandico takes the figure of a sword and sorcery hero––obviously interested in his pulp magazine origins––and fashions a timeless, iterative narrative of phantasmagoric fluidity… and glitter.”
Where to Stream: VOD
The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng)
One of the most purely pleasurable films of last year, Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things brings Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel together one of the best culinary cinematic experiences since Babette’s Feast. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Last time Benoît Magimel appeared in the Cannes competition, a vision in Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, he played a foreign diplomat who stalked an island of French Polynesia like a trashy king. If Serra’s otherworldy film told a cautionary tale about feckless Euro-decadence, Magimel’s latest is more like a revelry. Adapted from Marcel Rouf’s 1924 novel The Passionate Epicure, The Taste of Things is a film about the pleasures of preparing food and consuming it, the idea of cooking as an act of giving and even of love––if a leitmotif exists in this film’s script, it is the sigh of ecstasy.”
Where to Stream: AMC+
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