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.
The Dead Don’t Hurt (Viggo Mortensen)
Though The Dead Don’t Hurt gradually becomes Vivienne’s story as Holger disappears to fight, his presence still defines the film in strange ways. While Mortensen certainly looks younger than 65 and I’m not one of those people who busts out a calculator to determine what is or isn’t an appropriate age-gap relationship, Mortensen casting himself opposite Krieps in the romantic (even action hero) lead role he’s clearly too old for (beyond maybe financing requirements) reeks of ego. Maybe this wouldn’t matter as much if he dramatized these proceedings in a way more compelling than just its interesting conceptual ideas of immigrants in the west going through the passage of time together. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
In the tradition of Okja and Hail, Caesar!,writer-producer-director Joanna Hogg has gifted the world with two Tildas (Swinton, that is) in one film. Just shy of Suspiria and Teknolust’s respective triple- and quadruple-Tilda count, The Eternal Daughter uses this device differently than others. Where Bong Joon-ho and the Coens employed such technique for twins and Guadagnino and Hershman-Leeson used it for science fiction and horror, Hogg plays it more subtly: mother and daughter. Or, to boil them into one, an eternal daughter. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Flipside (Chris Wilcha)
There is no surprise twist in Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, a documentary making its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This is not a true-crime doc or a story of unearthed family secrets. (Although there is lots of ephemera excavated after years of quasi-hoarding.) Instead of a twist, though, there is an audience awakening, one that takes a rather standard there-are-places-I-remember doc into surprisingly resonant territory. Ultimately, Flipside is a moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner)
Everything that emerged in the lead-up to Horizon––the project’s scale, its runtime (181 minutes), the colon and hyphen in its title––has been pointing to one word; but calling something ‘epic’ has less to do with quantity than some movies would like us to think. In the most sweeping sequences of Dances with Wolves, Costner left the character all alone on the plains, dwarfed by the landscape and increasingly aware of his own place in it. Horizon, by contrast, seldom takes that kind of time to think. There’s a distinct lack here, too, of cinematic urgency, the sense that, regardless of length, there is somewhere the film needs to get to. The resulting feeling of watching Horizon will be familiar to anyone who’s ever binged a prestige show; but if that is a snag the viewer’s willing to overcome, Costner leaves plenty to enjoy. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Just the Two of Us (Valérie Donzelli)
A seemingly blissful union rapidly crumbles in Valérie Donzelli’s Just the Two of Us, a domestic abuse-drama presented as a harrowing-if-simplified psychological thriller from which escape seems near-hopeless. It’s impossible for Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud to give a bad performance; this drama certainly doesn’t break the streak. Yet Donzelli and Audrey Diwan’s black-and-white, overworked script is missing the kind of nuance each lead exudes in their physicality as they navigate a suffocating relationship where the smallest action or word can unleash a monster. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
This is a Rose Glass movie, which means it packs a killer, multi-faceted punch and resists easy classification. Her second feature after St. Maud is a stylized neo-noir love story, a drama about addiction, an athletic underdog tale, and a bloody thriller compounding genres and narratives that overlap and blend into each other without any wrinkles. It takes place in rural New Mexico circa 1989, where Lou (Kristen Stewart) helps manage a warehouse gym, plunging toilets and defending the advances of a co-worker named Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov). Lou has a bad smoking habit, a chopped-up mullet, and some dark secrets from her past. But her life changes when Jackie (Katy O’Brian) rolls into town from Oklahoma and starts maxing-out on weights. She’s looking to get to Las Vegas to compete in a bodybuilding competition and needs some money and a place to bulk before the big day. Jackie has a certain look and quiet demeanor that attracts Lou, who quickly gifts her new friend a bottle of steroids to gain a little edge. It’s not long before the pair start up a feverish romance that Glass portrays sensitively and seductively, then ferociously. – Jake K.S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Marianne (Michael Rozek)
50 years, 150-something films, and a stable of auteurs that beggars belief would suggest Isabelle Huppert has done it all––hence my surprise she’s not yet starred in a one-woman performance. Thus making all the more novel Michael Rozek’s Marianne, a new feature that finds the icon performing a metatextual, near-Brechtian monologue for 90 minutes. Though it’s not yet received U.S. distribution, Marianne will stream on Eventive through this Tuesday, July 23, featuring my hour-long interview with Rozek about the film, its history, and Huppert’s genius. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Eventive
New Strains (Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw)
While most films about the pandemic have either tried to find a genre bent to reflect our universal anxieties or provide a more anodyne look at everyday struggles in navigating our new way of life, Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw’s New Strains is a refreshingly lo-fi, emotionally naked, dryly humorous look at forced confinement. From releasing sexual tension to crafting the least-appetizing meals possible to journeys venturing out in our strange new world, there is both a familiarity and a freshness in its droll view of quarantine life. Winner of a Special Jury Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam and shot on Hi8 video, the film has a threadbare aesthetic that only adds to its relatability factor, stripping down mandatory monotony to bare essentials. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Memory
A Sacrifice (Jordan Scott)
“We’re all so fucked, right.” So says Mazzy (Sadie Sink), a young woman visiting her father Ben (Eric Bana). This observation matches the dreadful tone of the film as a whole. Titled A Sacrifice, written and directed by Jordan Scott and inspired by Nicholas Hogg’s novel Tokyo, this is a small-scale psychological thriller informed by the loneliness of the coming climate apocalypse and comforting allure of group-think. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Skywalkers: A Love Story (Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina)
It may have nothing to do with the fantastical creations of George Lucas, but in terms of achieving blockbuster-sized thrills, Skywalkers: A Love Story succeeds on a level where so many Hollywood productions fail. Following the trials and tribulations in love and play of a Russian influencer couple who have dedicated their life to illegally scaling the world’s largest skyscrapers, its immersive cinematography places us in nail-biting heights right alongside them. Following in the footsteps of the rousing Man on Wire and Free Solo, with a bit of Mission: Impossible-like espionage thrown in, the footage is about as thrilling and vertigo-inducing as one could imagine. Like another Netflix release––last year’s The Deepest Breath, which captured the story of free divers plumbing the depths of the ocean––Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s new documentary attempts to elucidate the thought process behind these daredevil theatrics. Yet it ends up doing more to glorify and celebrate their life-threatening, thrill-seeking actions than interrogate the complexity of why they have devoted their existence to an insane diversion that has seen many of their friends fall to their deaths. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Slingshot Hip Hop (J. Reem Salloum)
A vivid account of Palestine’s emergent hip hop scene in the early ‘00s. Palestinian-American filmmaker J. Reem had to sneak cameras past Israeli officials to film in Gaza and the West Bank to create this powerful vision of political resistance and creative activity under occupation.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
A Still Small Voice (Luke Lorentzen)
Over the first two years of the pandemic, healthcare providers navigated daily heroics with unprecedented professional burnout. The highs and lows of that specific time are chronicled in A Still Small Voice, Luke Lorentzen’s quiet, stirring, intimate look at spiritual caregivers in the midst of a year-long residency at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. Using a vérité approach, Lorentzen specifically follows Mati Engel, a resident chaplain, as she offers guidance to terminal patients and reports to her supervisor, Rev. David Fleenor. Though they both struggle to maintain their emotional and physical bandwidths, Lorentzen’s camera acts as a warm witness to the healing, exhaustive, on-call nature of a job that’s rarely seen. – Jake K.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
The Teachers’ Lounge (İlker Çatak)
In a penetrating essay on the life and work of Salvador Dalí, George Orwell observed the following about intellectual ambition: “It seems to be, if not the rule, at any rate distinctly common for an intellectual bent to be accompanied by a non-rational, even childish urge in the same direction.” Orwell was thinking mainly of artists and scientists, but I am sure he would have agreed that the same is true of politicians––that urges to hold office and curry favor with the crowd are often more explicable in terms of childish fancies of kings and courts than they are in terms of highbrow things like duty and virtue. İlker Çatak, the German-Turkish director and screenwriter, is clearly aware of this idea, and in his latest film, The Teachers’ Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer), he goes some way toward proving its validity. – Oliver W. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Thelma (Josh Margolin)
At the beginning of Thelma––a loveable, low-stakes joyride from director Josh Margolin––the movie’s eponymous 93-year-old grandmother sits on the couch with her grandson Daniel and marvels at Tom Cruise. They’re watching a recent Mission: Impossible sequel on her tiny television and can’t fathom Cruise’s running and jumping daredevil-ism at his weathered age. Thelma may live alone, need hearing aids, play solitaire, have trouble typing out an email, and get flustered when pop-up ads surprise her online. But much like America’s most extreme action star, she knows she’s still got it, too. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Tuesday (Daina Oniunas-Pusić)
If you’re quirk-averse, you might be immediately put off by a cursory description of Daina Oniunas-Pusić’s debut feature, Tuesday, in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus confronts death in the form of a shape-shifting, talking macaw. But from the distressing and immersive opening scenes, it’s clear Tuesday is an unsettling and bold vision that rewards a viewer willing to sit through some flaws (and some cringe). – Gabrielle M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Disney+
Young Woman and the Sea
Kino Film Collection
Diary of a Chamberbland
The Hun
Metrograph at Home
SCALA!!!
Netflix
Bone Tomahawk
The Inspection
Prime Video
Bob Marley: One Love
The Death of Dick Long