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.
Enemies of the State (Sonia Kennebeck)
This ambiguity is where Enemies of the State becomes a must-see because it exposes how skeptical we’ve become about the truth. As soon as you admit systems can be manipulated for selfish gain, there’s no denying that it isn’t happening right now in ways that make you the victim. Donald Trump epitomizes this phenomenon because he’s akin to God to his sycophants. They won’t even look at proof of his lies because they’ve decided that anything refuting his words has already been fabricated. So when DeHart earns the backing of other whistleblowers and the media, his story gets spun as one of a maligned hero to everyone that believes the government can’t be trusted. But what if he knew that? What if that was his plan? – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
F9 (Justin Lin)
One-upmanship is the name of the game in the Fast & Furious franchise, from its humble carjacking beginnings to its globe-trotting (now globe-circling) feats of saving the world from the MacGuffin du jour. While its plotting implausibilities and character invincibility have always been part of the joke—never more so with its latest entry—each iteration has methodically upped the ante to some ridiculous next stage. Franchise veteran Justin Lin’s F9 follows suit, yet the prior film’s creakiness becomes expounded here. This is an adventure grasping at straws at every turn—stuck between fulfilling its grounded ideas and striving for franchise-topping action, everything feels like it’s running on fumes. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Freaky (Christopher Landon)
After steering two Happy Death Day films marrying slasher and time-loop tropes together for box office success, the question for writer/director Christopher Landon was, “What’s next?” Add Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse and you’d be right to assume it would be another horror comedy of some kind, but what sub-genre would be injected to give it a unique yet familiar flair? Or better yet: whose script would provide that injection with an overall sensibility he could get behind? Landon didn’t write the first Death Day film after all. Nor did he originate the treatment that became Scouts Guide. So when Michael Kennedy approached him with an idea he hoped to pitch to Blumhouse inspired by those films’ narrative inventiveness, Landon immediately asked to join the Freaky party. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Fully Realized Humans (Joshua Leonard)
Channeling both his debut feature The Lie and Humpday, his mumblecore outing with director Lynn Shelton, Joshua Leonard’s Fully Realized Humans is an emotionally honest yet minor comedy about a couple aspiring to find themselves before bringing life into this world. Elliot (Leonard) and Jackie (Jess Weixler) are the kind of upper middle class white couple that would annoy the hell out of you in Target and Trader Joe’s, obsessing over the quality of infant car seats and hummus, while wondering what their consumption choices say about themselves as people. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky)
In 2018, Victor Kossakovsky set out to shoot Aquarela, a survey-symphony that took the Russian documentarian around the world to capture glaciers, waterfalls, frozen lakes, oceans, and storms. Water, art-speak waffle as it may sound, served as Aquarela’s only protagonist: in that hyper-high-definition blue canvas, human faces seldom popped up, and voices were seldom heard, as Kossakovsky’s focus centered squarely on his liquid star alone. A mystifying follow-up working again to question and depart from an anthropocentric perspective, here comes Gunda, a black-and-white, dialogue-free documentary chronicling a few months in the lives of the animals stranded in a Norwegian farm. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Jungle Cruise (Jaume Collet-Serra)
Jungle Cruise’s overall accomplishment is not being too obnoxious, despite it feeling like everything is pulled in possibly the wrong direction. (A trip down the Amazon on Frank’s boat inevitably leads us to both CG ghost leftovers from Pirates of the Caribbean and an unconvincing romance.) Eventually shedding the chintzy pleasures of its sets for a full-on assault of The Future Stephen Sommers Wants, the film still maintains a kind of likable quality. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Disney+ Premier Access
Lorelei (Sabrina Doyle)
They had a plan. Wayland (Pablo Schreiber) would make as much money as he could running drugs for his local motorcycle club until he and high school sweetheart Dolores (Jena Malone) had enough to drive to Los Angeles and make their dreams come true. An undercover police officer changed all that, though. Instead of watching the sunrise over the Pacific together, Wayland found himself in jail for fifteen years while Dolores sought to make do on her own en route to having three kids from three different fathers. That they would ever think a reunion could reclaim the spark of their youth is a fantasy in and of itself, yet seeing each other after so much time has them believing their long-lost happy ending might remain possible. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Never Gonna Snow Again (Małgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert)
The lives of the bourgeoisie aren’t as perfect as they seem, says Małgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s Never Gonna Snow Again, the Polish submission to the Academy Award for Best International Feature. If you’ve seen any of the thousands upon thousands of films about suburban angst, you might be asking, OK… and? The Other Lamb director and her longtime cinematographer Englert, who now shares a directing credit, try their best to add something to that conversation, but they’re more successful at contributing beautiful new images than new ideas. – Orla S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Marquee
Profile (Timur Bekmambetov)
In Profile, a screen is a dangerous and revealing place. We all experience the anxiety of making sure our desktops are clean before screen sharing, or curating our Zoom backgrounds so as not to inadvertently reveal messy details of our lives. In Profile, these anxieties are heightened by life and death stakes. Amy begins regular Skype sessions with Bilel, who romances her, promising to bring her to Syria and make her his bride. Amy has to play the part of the innocent teen Melody, which means applying makeup to make herself look younger, covering up her tattoos, and ensuring nothing in her apartment looks suspicious. It also means that when Bilel asks her to share her screen, she has to think on her feet to hide her current desktop, which would give her away at a glance. – Orla S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Raúl Ruiz
One of the most prolific directors in cinema history, Raúl Ruiz’s filmography has extended past his death in 2011 with works finally getting completed. If you can’t catch one on the big screen in NYC this weekend, another (the playfully inventive meta film The Wandering Soap Opera) is now available via MUBI, along with his epic Mysteries of Lisbon and his 1983 film Three Crowns of the Sailor.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
The Criterion Channel
Postcards from the Future: Four Films by Chris Marker
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Freedom Fields
Volleyball (Foot Film)
The Unseen River
Krabi, 2562
Museum of the Moving Image’s Virtual Cinema
Netflix