With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (Jim Hosking)
Writer-director Jim Hosking seems determined to entertain–and divide. From a segment in The ABCs of Death 2 to his feature debut The Greasy Strangler, it was made crystal clear that Hosking has a fascination for deviants and dark comedy. With An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, he lands on a sort of strange hybrid between David Lynch and Napoleon Dynamite. Incorporating the uncanny valley of the former and the indie ineptitude of the latter, the result is an off-kilter, at times hilarious film that nevertheless loses some of its impact as it stumbles through its own delirium. – Mike M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes
Galveston (Mélanie Laurent)
Adapted from the novel by Nic Pizzolatto, the fourth feature from Mélanie Laurent, Galveston, focuses on perhaps the least interesting part of its narrative, closing on a scene that would have made for a better beginning of a movie than the beautifully lensed but derivative road movie it ends up being. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)
While many breakthrough directors achieve such a status by helming one feature, Josephine Decker achieved acclaim with two films, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch, which received theatrical releases simultaneously in 2014. Marking her return to narrative feature filmmaking at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Madeline’s Madeline is a drama of boundless spontaneity as Decker deftly examines mental illness and the potentially exploitative lines a performer may cross when pulling life into art. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Night Comes for Us (Timo Tjahjanto)
When considering writer-director Timo Tjahjanto’s new film, it will be difficult to omit two words: The Raid. Similarities between the two certainly have their veracity, with overlapping stars and head-cracking choreography at the forefront of these comparisons. Akin to The Raid 2 in particular, Tjahjanto blends emotion and scale with close-quarter savagery to craft an experience both exhilarating and exhausting. Yet The Night Comes For Us manages to carve its own brutal path, leaving in its wake a pile of bodies and a measure of emotional heft that stand as its own achievement. – Mike M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Sentence (Rudy Valdez)
A powerful DIY film cobbled together from testimonials, iPhone videos, and home movies, Rudy Valdez’s personal documentary The Sentence explores the personal toll of mandatory minimum drug sentences on a family. Cindy, the one who pays the highest price, was not a mastermind behind a drug empire, she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Six years after the death of her drug-dealing boyfriend, a happily married mother of three who has turned her life around is charged and arrested by the US Marshals and sent to federal prison for a 15-year sentence imposed by a judge who lacks the latitude to see the injustice. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Go
Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)
The term “post-prime Federer” has recently come into the sporting lexicon as a way to describe the great Swiss tennis star’s career in the years since his supposed peak ended in 2010; the rub here being that this unique entity has actually won more Grand Slam titles than Andy Murray, to take one example. Similar innocuous comparisons could soon be made for the prolificacy of “post-retirement Steven Soderbergh.” Indeed, it was never going to be easy for the director of Sex, Lies and Videotape to step away from the camera — his finger has always been too close to the pulse to ignore it, his inputs too wired to the cultural zeitgeist. Despite being shot months before the New York Times and New Yorker aired Weinstein’s dirty laundry, his latest effort, Unsane — which is essentially a b-movie in many respects — is arguably the first psychological horror of the #MeToo era. – Ed F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Buybust (review)
Gabriel and the Mountain
Generation Wealth (review)
The Spy Who Dumped Me
Amazon Prime
Devil
Donnie Darko
Slice
The Yellow Birds (review)
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Three Quarters
Ears, Nose and Throat
Ada Kaleh
Season of the Witch
Line of Demarcation
The Swindle
The Wolf House