With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro)
Crimson Peak works as many things: a melodramatic romance; both the recreation of a period and a revival of the way movies have made us perceive it; a genre-jumping comedy; and a critique of capitalistic excess. It does these things earnestly and without compromise, and it’s far braver — far more admirable — for having done so. What Guillermo del Toro’s film doesn’t work as: a haunted-house picture. Although the director will personally tell you it’s not meant to fit this mold, the genre’s shape and intended impacts are certainly identifiable enough to spring to mind. The extent to which it fails here is rather clear, and the entire endeavor is sadly hobbled as a result. – Nick N. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Directed by Isabel Sandoval
After earning acclaim for her latest feature Lingua Franca, director Isabel Sandoval’s first two films, Señorita and Apparition, are now available on The Criterion Channel, along with an interview with the filmmaker. Check out Jose Solís’ conversation with her last year, in which he said, “Her work is astute, impeccably shot, and often invites the audience to fill in the gaps of what she refuses to digest for them. Her debut Señorita was about a transgender woman who realizes she might influence a political race through a connection she made as a sex worker. In Apparition, the resilience of nuns in a Filipino convent becomes an act of resistance in the midst of the brutal Marcos administration. “
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Memories of Murder
With Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite recently making history, it was a given that more attention would be paid to his stellar prior works. Now, the new restoration of his crime drama masterpiece Memories of Murder, which arrived on The Criterion Collection this week, is also now available on Hulu. Marking the director’s first collaboration with Song Kang-ho, it’s a brilliantly conceived and executed exploration of obsession with an early glance at the director’s keen comedic sensibilities. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Mend (John Magary)
At one turn a comedy centered on two brothers, Mat (Josh Lucas, never more worn-looking) and Alan (Stephen Plunkett), and the dynamics their familiar character molds naturally create — the former’s a degenerate with glimmers of kindness and a hopeful existence; the latter’s an upper-class career man who’s seeing the most important piece of his life fall away, mostly because he’s no less an asshole than his brother, but merely a bit nicer in being so — The Mend also earns the right to be called an existentialist drama for relying as much on, say, the moods a room’s lighting might create throughout a given day as it does the forces of language. It’s a consistently wonderful, occasionally astonishing, deservedly moving piece of film craft layered on top of a screamingly funny screenplay, one that seems to have (rightfully) been designed for the sake of fitting around the muscularity of Magary’s formal expression. (Or vice-versa, perhaps; the dichotomy’s tight enough to make that relationship ambitious.) – Nick N. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel (along with a new short by Magary)
Mortal Kombat (Simon McQuoid)
Goro, Liu-Kang, Scorpion… the gang’s all here to help revitalize the Mortal Kombat brand, which—depending on your age—might be primarily associated with the notoriously violent video game or the 1995 movie that epitomized PG-13 entertainment parents would drop their kids off at the multiplex to see on a Saturday afternoon. For a 2021 reboot the obvious opportunity comes to take advantage of an R-rating template set by 300 or Deadpool, putting the game’s trademark fatalities onscreen in all their gruesome glory. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
Another slow-cinema project devoted to the observance of some specific task (in this case cooking dumplings) initially has a been-there-seen-that air. By the second shot (fifteen or twenty minutes in) do rhythms overtake resistance: each composition, of which there are nine total, answers its previous in manner that’s immensely satisfying for the sense that activity and progress are steadily accumulating, its immersive sound mix the coup de grâce. (Repackage this as dumpling-making ASMR and a hit shall emerge.) That one’s aware of duration without weighing it in quantitative terms may be the final secret of Liu’s genius. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Red Moon Tide (Lois Patiño)
Framed as a series of tableaux, in which the residents of a seaside town on the Galician coast appear to be stuck in time–unmoving against the changing scenery, yet constantly thinking through voiceover–writer/director Lois Patiño’s gorgeously trippy Red Moon Tide oscillates between fairy tale and visual essay creating an uneven narrative that is often overshadowed by the film’s compositional beauty. – Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Synchronic (Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead)
When two paramedic best friends in New Orleans discovered the first unexplainable injury on their route, they didn’t really think much about it. The second? Well, it was a body. They shouldn’t have even been called. What about the third, though? A snake bite in a hotel room without a snake alongside a disappeared boyfriend? That’s when you start looking for the connective tissue holding everything together besides Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) having the bad luck to catch them all. That’s when the label of a designer drug comes into focus. The name? Synchronic. Rather than a reference to “meaningful coincidences” (since coincidence was ruled out), directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead lean towards Carl Jung’s “togetherness” definition. They’ve simply defined the cause along with the meaning. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
Hulu
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Gyeongju
12 Days
Tideland
Chavela
Olivia
A Quiet Dream
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Netflix
Virtual Cinemas
VOD