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.
Araby (Affonso Uchoa and João Duman)
“I’m like everyone else,” writes about himself Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), the working class hero at the center of Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans’ Araby, “It’s just my life that was a little bit different.” Calling that an understatement would be a euphemism. An average-sized and average-looking factory worker in the Southern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Cristiano is an everyman par excellence. Neither charismatic nor particularly striking – at least not on a first look – he seems so ordinary it takes us twenty minutes to understand he’s Araby’s protagonist, and not some flickering extra. When we first meet him, he is given a lift to his steel factory; up until then, Uchoa and Dumans had followed Andre (Murilo Caliari), a pensive and bookish teenage boy living with his aunt Márcia (Gláucia Vandeveld) in a derelict house close to the hellish steel mill. By the time we next hear about him, Cristiano has suffered an unseen work accident, and is stuck in a coma. Asked by Márcia to collect his belongings, Andre arrives at Cristiano’s place, and happens upon a spiral-bound notebook which the man has used to transcribe a decade’s worth of memories. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: iTunes
Borgman (Alex van Warmerdam)
Set in the Netherlands, Alex van Warmerdam’s Dutch thriller Borgman focuses on an enigmatic character Borgman, played with subdued menace by Belgian actor Jan Bijvoet, whose bizarre motivations propel this unsettling experience. Reminiscent of such films like Ben Wheatley‘s Kill List, Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games and cult hit The Wicker Man, the drama slowly creeps under your skin with an unsuspecting dose of malice. Equal parts mystery and dark satire, Borgman is an original take on an abstract horror premise that never fully appears to be what you might expect it to be. – Raffi A. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
Made with a kind of formal rigor that one would’ve assumed was long past Schrader after the “post-cinema” experimentations of The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog, First Reformed is first and foremost most admirable for its sustained mood. Shot in The Academy aspect ratio and maintaining a stillness and greyness that manages to seem utterly alien to the slow cinema standards of contemporary art films, one gets the sense of the director really having a genuine stake in the making of this picture. It seems the religious content is not so much an affect as a genuine late-in-life plea. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
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 Prime
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an anomaly. It’s the sixth installment of a decades-old franchise that has hit full steam. This is stranger still when considering its origins during the ‘60s-TV-adaptation boom of the late ‘90s and early aughts. What should have been a passing trend burgeoned into an auteur’s playground of action and intrigue, a feat that becomes doubly impressive when viewed alongside the plasticity of contemporary summer fare. Now add to all that an aging star (Tom Cruise) and his safe choice for director (Christopher McQuarrie)–the only one to return to the fold–rather than a fresh recruit. In theory, this film is out of its depth, doomed to be put out to pasture by something younger and sleeker, making it that much more exhilarating to see Fallout pummel its way into being one of the decade’s best action films. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
McQueen (Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui)
By the time he was 25, Lee Alexander McQueen had gone on to launch his own fashion label. Before he was 30, he had designed costumes for David Bowie and Björk. By age 31, Gucci had acquired his company naming him artistic director and expanding his empire to include flagship stores all over the world. His success, in more than one way, defied Great Britain’s antiquated but prevalent class system; for how could a gay man born to a teacher and a Scottish taxi driver ascend to the highest levels of society? Rather than sticking to a traditional (i.e. fairy tale-esque) rags-to-riches narrative, in McQueen directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui explore the ways in which the designer constantly rebelled against the establishment and still managed to become one of the most celebrated figures of his time. – Jose S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Outrage Coda (Takeshi Kitano)
Thrilling, talky, and densely plotted to a point of convolution, Outrage Coda closes Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage trilogy, which follows various warring yakuza crime organizations in Japan and now, South Korea, centering around an enforcer named Otomo, played by Kitano under his acting name Beat Takeshi. It’s interesting that Kitano’s work first hit North America under the banner of Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures. Luckily for audiences, Kitano is a filmmaker utterly unspoiled by the post-Tarantino wave in which hitmen became preoccupied by discussions about the discography of Hall & Oates as they sliced their target’s throat with a garrote wire. (Although the two filmmakers do share a love of Godard.) Outrage Coda is a gangster revenge film which slyly favors plot over character; where the violent antiheroes talk about the film’s plot, and absolutely nothing else.
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes
Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle)
For her breakthrough documentary The Wolfpack, director Crystal Moselle discovered a group of sheltered brothers in NYC’s Lower East Side and captured their passion for filmmaking. With a muddled style and questionable directorial choices, it didn’t quite live up to the film’s initial hook, but Moselle clearly showed talent for making a connection with the youth of the city. That latter quality continues with Skate Kitchen, which uses a narrative backdrop to place us in the center of a female teen skater group–who Moselle discovered on a subway ride–all of whom exude a care-free independence as they make NYC their playground. It’s such a step-up in vibrancy, scope, and emotion that it feels like the introduction of an entirely different, more accomplished filmmaker. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)
Sorry to Bother You is a bold debut–in every sense of the word–for rapper-turned-director Boots Riley. There are truly radical, thrilling ideas both in the script and on screen, and also his boldness sometimes undercuts the character- and narrative-building aspects as we jump from compelling idea to idea. Mixing the droll comedy of Office Space with the race-backed satire of Putney Swope, and adding an imaginative dash of Michel Gondry (who gets a parody shout-out in an animated bit), at least something in Sorry to Bother You will surely strike a chord with any viewer, even if it doesn’t fully cohere. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
The Happytime Murders
Makala (review)
The Nun
Operation Finale
Peppermint
Science Fair
Amazon Prime
HBO Go
Hulu
MUBI (free 30-day trial)
Hunger
The Case of the Morituri Divisions
Quay of the Goldsmiths
Le Corbeau
Chaudhvin Ka Chand
Antonia.
Continue: Where to Stream the Best Films of 2018
