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 Accident (Giuseppe Garau)
It’s nice when a film chooses not to overstay its welcome, as writer-director Giuseppe Garau understands in The Accident. For 65 minutes, Garau drops viewers in on Marcella (Giulia Mazzarino), a single mother whose life is falling apart. Over the course of one day where she’s late picking her daughter up from school, she gets fired by her boss (who also happens to be the father of her ex and grandfather to her child), gets into a minor car crash with her daughter, and ends up losing custody. By using a clever formal gimmick that limits events to a single perspective, The Accident makes for a kinetic, creative, surprisingly funny experience as we watch Marcella not so much climb her way back to the top as drag herself through the mud, one humiliation to another, just to come out the other side. – C.J. P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Fandor
The Assessment (Fleur Fortune)
The “old world” is a wasteland. People still live there, but not for very long. Those in the “new world” live hundreds of years thanks to a drug that slows aging. It’s groundbreaking technology that comes at a price: the combination of scarce real estate on which to live safely and figurative immortality means less to go around for a populace that never decreases. The compromise was thus to take China’s now-defunct “one-child policy” to the nth degree and render the conception of all children illegal. Unless you’re granted a waiver by the government, but that permission is understandably not easily won. You must prove yourselves worthy as a couple via a seven-day evaluation. This is the sci-fi backdrop to Fleur Fortune’s The Assessment. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Autobiography (Makbul Mubarak)
General Purna (Arswendy Bening Swara) never had a son, so returning to his mansion to ready for a reelection campaign (the days of military dictatorship in Indonesia might be over, but the power structure surely isn’t) makes him grow sentimental at the sight of young Rakib (Kevin Ardilova). The boy is the youngest son of Amir (Rukman Rosadi)—a man Purna calls a “friend” despite their relationship truly being one of employer and employee. It’s been that way for three generations with Amir’s father serving Purna’s father, grandfather for grandfather. So, no matter how progressive the nation believes itself to have become, the townsfolk still fear what Purna represents. And if that authority allows Rakib a comfy existence as his servant/chauffeur, why not make the best of it? – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
Eric LaRue (Michael Shannon)
Michael Shannon set himself up with quite a daunting challenge for his directorial debut: how can one capture oppressively bleak, soul-consuming feelings of guilt while not having the viewer feel trapped in a flat register of misery porn? Thanks to his patient, quiet approach, assiduous performances from Judy Greer and Alexander Skarsgård, and accentuating aberrations of uneasy humor amidst stomach-churning situations, Eric LaRue––scripted by Brett Neveu from his own 2002 play––nearly escapes these oft-recurring pitfalls and clichés. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
From Ground Zero
From Ground Zero is a film that, in an ideal world, would not exist, and cannot be written about as if it were a normal production. This anthology of 22 shorts is Palestine’s submission for the Best International Film Oscar and has deservedly made the 15-title shortlist. Like any anthology film, it suffers from certain pieces being better-realized than others, though it’s difficult to critique this in all good conscience; when making art in a war zone, there’s an inherent urgency that outweighs dramatic shortcomings. As the title reminds us, these are dispatches from a living hell unfathomable to any viewer, and the fact that several filmmakers have been able to keep creating under such circumstances is a miracle––one anybody with a heart would trade for both an end to the bloodshed and these directors being able to create art on their own terms. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
In the Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson)
Before jumping directly into the action, Paul W.S. Anderson’s In the Lost Lands opens with a framing device we’ll return to only at film’s end. The George R. R. Martin adaptation otherwise gives no context whatsoever, and when the plot elements finally reveal themselves it’s near-fablelike, with a powerful Queen despondent that she hasn’t been able to experience the true mysteries of the world. She requests that the witch Grey Alys (played, of course, by Milla Jovovich) grant her powers to transform into a werewolf. Until then the movie is a set of seemingly unstructured action sequences with no narrative information to grasp and nothing to connect to. Things seem to happen purely mechanically––at one point, portions of a fight scene take place telepathically between two characters. But far from being confusing, the effect is entirely thrilling. – Neil B. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych)
With Putin’s stronghold on the media communications out of Russia, it can be hard to get a true sense of how demoralized their armed forces are over Ukraine’s formidable defense of the unwarranted attack. Two years after the invasion, a new documentary publicizes private recordings from Russian intercepted by the Security Service of Ukraine. With a formally precise approach capturing the devastating warpath in Ukraine, Oksana Karpovyc’s Intercepted takes an unprecedented dive into the psyche of the attacking forces. We listen to stories of the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians, how they’ve succumbed to eating dogs, and are so disorganized they are injuring their own forces as the family back home feeds fake propaganda about nuclear stockpiles and COVID origins. It’s a stark, uncompromising documentary that shows how life must go on in Ukraine while also confirming that, even when the war eventually ends, a mutual hatred will endure for generations. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Magazine Dreams (Elijah Bynum)
How do you make people like you? How do you make people remember you? These are the Google search queries of Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors), a bodybuilder with delusional dreams of fame and an isolated life, tending to his Vietnam veteran grandpa as he dedicates every waking second to improving his physique and pushing his body to the extreme. A ruthlessly nihilistic beast of a movie, Elijah Bynum’s second feature Magazine Dreams provides a one-note powerhouse acting showcase for Majors, who ends up getting lost in the drawn-out second half as thematic points that initially sting get repeated ad nauseam and red herrings meant to shock become unnecessary side plots. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Mickey 17 ( Bong Joon Ho)
Is Mark Ruffalo giving a Trump impression? It’s early into Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 when the actor struts into the frame in a velvety blazer, wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) in tow, gloating as a crowd stands and claps like he’s the second coming of Christ. Ruffalo is Kenneth Marshall, leader of some cult-adjacent Church and one-time presidential candidate behind a new space mission designed to yank humanity from a near-inhospitable Earth and drop it onto Niflheim, a planet in some remote corner of the galaxy. A hopeless narcissist surrounded by a cabal of yes-men armed with cameras immortalizing his every move, he speaks with impossibly white teeth forever bared in a self-congratulatory grimace, nostrils flared, vowels ever so slightly drawn out. In a film ostensibly following not one but two (!) Robert Pattinsons, it’s Ruffalo that takes center stage. And if his diction and mannerisms instantly jolted me back to another real-life narcissist surrounded by a cast of sycophants of his own, that came more as a revelation than distraction. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Naked Blue (Mati Diop & Manon Lutanie)
A sensitive and propulsive portrait of ballet-trained dancer Oumy Bruni Garrel filmed against an oceanic blue backdrop. Made in collaboration with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Devonté Hynes (also known as Blood Orange), whose original composition is heard throughout the film, Naked Blue offers a tender look at a dancer on the cusp of adolescence. As in their previous collaboration, Liberian Boy, the film attends to the interplay between light and movement to produce a distinctive exploration of dance.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni)
One of our favorite titles from last year’s New York Film Festival was Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch follow-up On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes in its Un Certain Regard section (an honor shared with Roberto Minervini’s The Damned), Michael Frank said in his review, “Nyoni’s film becomes a mixture of rage and tackling of Zambian burial rites, a clear-eyed look at the impossibility of these situations for the abused, the affected, the broken. But Shula often doesn’t seem broken. She’s strong, stoic, and often much quieter than those around her. She cares for Nsansa and a young cousin who’s clearly been a victim of her uncle’s horrific actions. Chardy embodies this character with a near-silent anger, a simmering frustration with the systems that push her uncle to the forefront of the community and blame everyone else. Among them are an overwhelmed teenage wife who is constantly compromising, nodding her head to help those who won’t admit her uncle’s wrongdoings, forced to watch while someone who assaulted her be recognized for a local hero. Chardy gives one of the performances of the year in one of the films in a year; I just hope audiences seek it out.”
Where to Stream: VOD
Seven Veils (Atom Egoyan)
You have to hand it to Atom Egoyan: no matter how many flops he’s accrued, he won’t chase trends. While his new film Seven Veils positions itself in the high-definition now––family zoom calls, iPhone-captured showbiz misconduct, or the most disingenuous line-delivery of the word “podcast” ever––the Canadian director’s latest feels like his millionth variation on “trauma mediated through a low-res video camera.” Though not so much another of his small-scale thrillers as it is Hitchcock’s Marnie meets Tár, an odyssey through the power dynamics of a hoity-toity creative world colliding with sexual trauma. Made concurrently with Egoyan’s own stint staging the opera Salome in Toronto this past winter, the film is nothing if not interesting for being an example of a director racing to put together a movie that grafts his usual preoccupations onto a quickly available business opportunity. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
There’s Still Tomorrow (Paola Cortellesi)
After decades of celebrated performances in Italian cinema and television, Paola Cortellesi made her directorial debut with There’s Still Tomorrow, a 1940s-set post-war drama that she also co-wrote and leads. Following the matriarch of a working-class family navigating a toxic marriage and a daughter whom she doesn’t want to follow in the same footsteps, as well as romantic fantasies of a better life, the black-and-white crowdpleaser was a massive box-office sensation in Italy, where it is among the country’s 10 highest-grossing films of all-time. – Jordan R. (full interview)
Where to Stream: VOD
A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sangsoo)
Alongside their past collaborations Claire’s Camera and In Another Country, the latest from Hong Sang-soo and Isabelle Huppert has arrived on MUBI. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “A Traveler’s Needs takes place in Seoul and follows a dilettante claiming to be a French teacher (Huppert) who has apparently drummed up a new way to teach the language. Her method involves carrying a small stack of notes, tied up in a rubber band, and waiting for a moment when her client is fully present (either emotionally heightened, for whatever reason, or fresh from playing a musical instrument). She then takes a note from the stack and translates their description of the experience from English to French, all in the hope that they might absorb the language through some kind of hokey, emotional osmosis. She also has a fondness for makgeolli (which seems to have replaced soju as Hong’s spirit of choice), claiming to drink three bottles of the milky rice wine a day. When she shows her earnings to her boyfriend, he can’t believe it. Is she the real deal or a boozy con artist? Who’s to know.”
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)
Following his Guy Maddin-influenced debut The Twentieth Century, Matthew Rankin has returned five years later. Universal Language, which premiered at Cannes, marks quite an invigorating aesthetic pivot for the director, employing an Abbas-Kiarostami-meets-Wes-Anderson approach in telling a unique, Winnipeg-set tale. Rory O’Connor said in his review of the Oscar-shortlisted film, “Contrary to that exciting bustle of ideas, Universal Language‘s aesthetics are some of the most controlled in Rankin’s work. The film features diorama-like compositions that will call to mind both Wes and Roy Anders(s)on––a nice mix of the Texan’s sweet and the Swede’s dour––but any risk of twee is offset by the film’s naturalism and warmth: for all its surrealism, the world of Universal Language feels lived-in, and those lives feel consequential. It’s like nothing I’ve seen in Cannes this year.”
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Disney+
The Abyss
Hulu
The Abyss
Lake George
Magpie
Kino Film Collection
Aviator’s Wife
Boyfriends and Girlfriends
Prime Video
G20
VOD
The Alto Knights
Novocaine
The World Will Tremble