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.
Agon (Giulio Bertelli)
With the winter Olympics now in the rearview, if you want a look at the preparation required for such athletic excellence that is far removed from sanitized 60 Minutes pieces or bite-sized, behind-the-scenes interviews, then Giulio Bertelli’s Agon is one to watch. A feat of slick directorial style that could be a cousin to Magnus von Horn’s Sweat, this Venice Critics’ Week selection takes a fictionalized exploration of the physical boundaries that need to be pushed to the limit in order to have a hope of achieving your dreams. While the experience could be deemed a bit too cold and calculated, Bertelli’s experimental vision is one to behold. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: MUBI
Late Shift (Petra Volpe)
Leonie Benesch can’t catch a break. After being put through the wringer contending with the intense demands of the school system in the Academy Award-nominated The Teachers’ Lounge, the actor’s latest role finds her balancing another high-wire act in a claustrophobic institutional setting. Petra Volpe’s Late Shift, set during the overnight stint at an understaffed Swiss hospital, examines the impossible responsibilities of a nurse and her small crew. Capturing a stressful environment of constant interruptions that distract from medical urgencies, Switzerland’s Oscar-shortlisted procedural is a work of high intensity and acute resonance, even if it lacks a certain personality by design. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
The opening credits of Marty Supreme features retro animation of a sperm fertilizing a giant egg; as Alphaville’s “Forever Young” blares over the soundtrack, the giant fertilized egg eventually transforms into a ping pong ball flying across the net of a table. The man hitting the ball, and the carrier of the victorious spermatozoon, is the early-twentysomething Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), a self-assured table tennis player who dreams of becoming a world champion. Stuck selling shoes in his Lower East Side neighborhood, still living with his mother in an Orchard Street tenement building surrounded by obnoxious family and neighbors, Marty longs to escape an environment rife with parochial values and limited opportunities. The year is 1952: the devastation of World War II is in the rearview mirror, economic prosperity will soon be on the rise, and America has been swept up in a wave of national optimism. It’s the perfect time for a charming striver like Marty to make his mark with the tools at his disposal: a paddle and a ball, which, as the credits sequence suggests, is the source of life itself. – Vikram M. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
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: Hulu
Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)
One of the most astonishing films of the year unfurls entirely in and around an old farm in Northern Germany. Yet none of it feels claustrophobic. Mascha Schilinski’s second feature is an extraordinarily ambitious and expansive work: a cross-generational portrait of a house that swells into a much larger chronicle of Germany across her tumultuous 20th century. But Schilinski, aided by cinematographer Fabian Gamper and editor Evelyn Rack, isn’t so much concerned with the memories of her characters as evoking what it feels like to remember them. It sinuously moves across different eras over long, unbroken Steadicam sequences: a shot might begin by dogging a character in pre-WWI Germany only for the camera to sneak out of a room and into another and catapult us decades into the future. In a lesser work, such technical wizardry might have registered as ostentatious; in Schilinski’s, the film’s form suggests a stupefying ghost story. I can’t wait to see what she’ll come up with next. — Leonardo G.
Where to Stream: MUBI
Kino Film Collection
The Big Switch
Die Screaming, Marianne
MUBI
Son Long, My Son
Submarino
Netflix
Apex
VOD
The Serpent’s Skin
Tow