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.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)
Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a film about retribution and redemption. Not just on screen, but in execution. After their last attempt at a blockbuster was shelved in the name of a tax loophole, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah seem intent on unleashing all their pent-up energy, whether they’re selling us Batgirls or Bad Boys. Even if it bears the baggage of a meta redemption arc for its star, Ride or Die brings enough stylistic gusto to its action in the absence of Michael Bay but has a hard time justifying most other decisions, which adopt the tedium rampant in modern blockbuster filmmaking. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Femme (Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping)
It’s near-impossible to make a revenge narrative that doesn’t serve as a commentary on clichéd gender roles. Male-centered vengeance stories, even at their most knowingly ludicrous, typically focus on wounded men aiming to reassert the dominance stripped of them; female-centered ones are about why women shouldn’t be underestimated because of stereotypical, outdated ideas of femininity. It’s an enduring, still-thrilling formula even as the boldest films within this pantheon can’t help reverting back to this template. The greatest strength of Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s stylish debut Femme is their self-awareness as to how pervasive this genre trait is even within an unmistakably queer narrative, making their protagonist’s quest for vengeance a borderline-B-plot within a character study of increasing moral murkiness. It won’t be anywhere near as liable for highly charged discourse, but in its best moments it feels positively reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, another seemingly straightforward revenge tale flipped on its head by the way power dynamics subtly evolve. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Is Now a Good Time? (Jim Cummings)
Upon the release of a major new Marvel tentpole, there’s often a PR opportunity of goodwill as news breaks that someone on their deathbed was granted early access to view a forthcoming tentpole as their dying wish. Jim Cummings’ dark, hilarious new short film Is Now a Good Time? imagines such a scenario with biting yet empathetic satire. In just the span of eleven minutes, Cummings manages to tackle Marvel’s limp attempts at inclusion and their global capitalistic drive, Scorsese’s superhero views, the ephemeral nature of superhero tentpoles across the span of cinema history, and, ultimately, finding some pleasure in a world of despair.
Humane (Caitlin Cronenberg)
To paraphrase former White House Chief of Staff Tom Card, whispering in the ear of George W. Bush: a second Cronenberg offspring has made a movie. Whereas her older brother Brandon Cronenberg has more openly sought to replicate the visceral, satirical body horror of their father’s earliest work, offering some delightfully nasty thrills with the likes of Antiviral and Infinity Pool––even as he remained comfortably within his dad’s shadow––Caitlin Cronenberg couldn’t be accused of simply conforming to the expectations that come with her family’s brand-name recognition. The biggest surprise with her directorial debut Humane might be just how comfortably this could sit alongside Blumhouse and Screen Gems shlock at your local multiplex: a well-engineered, single-location thriller that prioritizes bloody, gut-punch twists and turns over the more thoughtful introspection that typically accompanies this in a Cronenberg effort. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Shudder, AMC+
Kill (Nikhil Nagesh Bhat)
Amrit (Lakshya) admits near the beginning of Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s no-holds-barred action extravaganza Kill that the only reason Fani (Raghav Juyal) and his extended family of dacoit train robbers are still alive is because they aren’t on a battlefield. Had he and his Commando Captain partner Viresh met them in combat, they probably wouldn’t have even seen them coming. So be glad for a few broken bones and lacerations. Things could be so much worse. I just never quite imagined how much worse. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Lousy Carter (Bob Byington)
What a year it’s been for David Krumholtz. In 2023, the actor has added a Tony-winning play (Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt) and a box-office sensation (you know which one) to his resumé. In both cases that affable face, so often in the margins, nudged toward center stage. Krumholtz goes one further with deadbeat comedy Lousy Carter, a premiere in competition at the Locarno Film Festival wherein the actor plays a graduate lecturer who learns he has six months to live and decides to try seducing a student. It’s less creepy than it sounds and, at its best, it’s all his. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Nothing Compares (Kathryn Ferguson)
One year after her passing, we commemorate the fearless and beloved Sinéad O’Connor with a sweeping portrait of her meteoric rise to fame, guided by a moving voice-over by the feminist pioneer herself. Belfast-born documentarian Kathryn Ferguson’s debut feature charts the icon’s legacy and global impact while revealing how her radical personality made her an outcast in the music industry.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
La Práctica (Martín Rejtman)
While its release unfortunately digital-only, we’re excited that many months after seeing it at the New York Film Festival, Martín Rejtman’s first film in a decade arrives now. Nick Newman said in his NYFF review, “You’re plenty absolved for not knowing the deal. It’s been 30 years since Martín Rejtman’s debut feature (Rapado), almost 10 from his last (Two Shots Fired), and nearly everything he’s made is only accessible through darkweb torrent networks I wouldn’t name here for fear of losing membership. In recent years, still, a small-even-by-small’s-standards cult has emerged, a just-enough status for this master of incident, image, and interactions––hilarious as in funny-ha-ha, not the dread ‘arthouse humor.’ If there’s anything to account for a non-pareil comedic director falling so out-of-step with means of exposure, consider what the landscapes––financing, exhibition, distribution––roundly not-great for just about anybody would do to a sui generis Argentinian. A near-decade’s absence hasn’t futzed with skill: La Práctica continues Rejtman’s reign as Argentina’s purveyor of mirthful chuckles, his characteristically patient and absurdity-spotted lens now trained on the lives of recently divorced yoga practitioners.”
Where to Stream: VOD
Starve Acre (Daniel Kokotajlo)
With great success comes great expectation, and I doubt that Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre will quite live up to the favorable notices of his first feature, the BAFTA-nominated Apostasy. The story, which has been adapted from a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, concerns Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette Willoughby (Morfydd Clark), who have recently moved from the city to the comparatively desolate Yorkshire Dales. At the village fair, their son Owen, who has complained of hearing the voice and whistles of a sprite named Jack Grey, blinds a horse with a sharp stick and is duly sent to a psychiatric hospital. Shortly after his consultation, which includes a nightmarish brain scan, he dies suddenly at the family home, paralyzing Richard and Juliette and further enlivening the spirit that so tormented him. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
With Love and a Major Organ (Kim Albright)
Set in an alternative world that at times seems like our own, With Love and a Major Organ can also feel as if someone asked ChatGPT to write a quirky postmodern romantic drama about technology in the style of Michel Gondry. The result, written by Julia Lederer (from her play) and directed by Kim Albright, is a film loaded with metaphors and similes where fragile hearts are made of paper and nothing is left to chance. Brains are scanned and uploaded to the cloud for a revolutionary new app LifeZap, emotions are explored in an experience that mimics escape rooms and nothing is left to chance. In short: a dreary hellhole in which human emotions are “disrupted” in favor of suppression. – John F. (full review)
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
Bob le Flambeur
Port of Shadows
Max
Knox Goes Away
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Life Is Not a Competition, But I’m Winning
Penance
Netflix
Wicked Little Letters
Prime Video
Putney Swope
VOD
Fresh Kills
The Linguini Incidentent