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.
It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
If you were handed over the man who destroyed your life and those of countless others––a psychopath who tortured, raped, and murdered in the name of a tyrannical system––what would you do? Would you exact revenge or do the impossible––forgive and set him free? It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi’s first film since his release from prison in Iran, hinges on that excruciating dilemma. The story is easy enough to summarize; its emotional wallop defies facile description. In an unexpected stroke of luck, four Iranians who did time for protesting the regime manage to abduct the guard responsible for the unspeakable atrocities they suffered behind bars. Having knocked him unconscious, they shove him in a van and travel around, wondering what to do. The whole journey spans less than a day. By the time it wraps, Accident feels like content under pressure. Panahi welds scorching social critique to a masterful command of form: a devastating cry for justice, his latest also serves as a superb thriller. It is a towering achievement. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
MEGADOC (Mike Figgis)
A risky filmmaking project with Francis Ford Coppola––what could go wrong? Or more accurately: imagine what might go legendarily right. Not all of his films have had troubled, turbulent productions, but the essential chaos of creativity he tries to harness––and the necessary friction that results with his collaborators––is how he ultimately thrives. Subtract all of these factors, and the result probably turns out like Jack. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Mistress Dispeller (Elizabeth Lo)
For as long as there have been relationships, there have also been affairs. It is perhaps one of the most durable narrative devices, so universal that just about anyone can find a perspective into such a story. To this, Elizabeth Lo’s Mistress Dispeller brings quite the intriguing concept: a Chinese service that women can hire to get their husbands to break up with their mistresses, thus preserving their marriage. While the film is well-made, it doesn’t penetrate the surface of such a compelling concept, rarely managing to locate the kind of drama that one imagines would be easily manufactured in a narrative take on this story. – Devan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Like all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, his tenth feature One Battle After Another is a rich text. A deeply-layered narrative that’s as funny as it is moving, the movie jumps from the U.S.-Mexican border to Baktan Cross—and from drama to comedy and back again—with breakneck speed. The story itself is fairly straightforward, especially compared with the other entries in Anderson’s filmography: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary who must protect his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) after an old nemesis (Sean Penn) reappears. Read Cory Everett’s full feature.
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi)
One of the most heartbreaking documentaries of the year, Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk premiered at Cannes just weeks after the Israeli occupation murdered the film’s subject, 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona. Constructed through passages of the director speaking with Hassona through FaceTime conversations, we get a glimpse at the day-to-day life under siege, both a powerful testament of living through terror and a damning cry for the Israeli government to stop destroying innocent lives. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Relay (David Mackenzie)
You always hear about whistleblowers––those who smuggle documentation for the benefit of the public out of corporations trying to make or save a buck at the expense of human lives––but what about those who decide the risk is too great? They’ve procured the papers. Got out of the building. And now find themselves victims of escalating harassment with nowhere to turn. Maybe they’re offered a settlement to have it all go away, but can they trust someone willing to bury evidence that proves culpability for the extinguishing of innocent lives? These are scientists, not lawyers. Paper-pushers, not security operatives. They need help. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Running Man (Edgar Wright)
Edgar Wright has mostly stayed in the pocket of action cinema since Hot Fuzz paid loving homage to the bombastic genre in 2007. But because subsequent projects like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Baby Driver maintained the same comic self-awareness about how divorced the genre was from anything approaching reality, The Running Man suggests his first pure action vehicle––the kind of brainless, trigger-happy adventure Nick Frost’s bumbling cop in Fuzz would have thrown on between rewatches of Point Break and Bad Boys II. It’s perhaps the first film of his that you couldn’t describe as a genre-comedy hybrid. Which isn’t to say he’s made something humorless, but that he’s consciously trying to retreat from making an “Edgar Wright film” with a joke-heavy screenplay that would threaten to diffuse tension. What a shame, then, that the most spectacular sequences here are when he allows himself to let loose, working towards his instincts rather than against them. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Song to Song (Terrence Malick)
A clear divide in his approach to filmmaking before and after The Tree of Life, also causing a rupture in the admiration of his films, if you’d read my previous year-end top tens, then the inclusion of Terrence Malick’s latest should be no surprise. What personally astonished me, however, was just how ravishingly fractured, open-hearted, and piercingly moving the experience was. As innocence gets eroded and redemption is sought, this is the most sonically impressive and emotionally honest a late period Malick film has been. I also encourage one to read Josh Hamm’s theological reading of the film–the best analysis I’ve seen–in which he explores how “philosophy is distilled into emotion.” – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Timestamp (Kateryna Gornostai)
Not a single image of warfare can be found in Ukranian director Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, but the irrevocable effect of Russia’s unjustified invasion of her country is felt in every expression and utterance, in the overwhelming destruction left behind. Shot between March 2023 and June 2024, this upsetting documentary observes the life-altering transformation of school-going for children, teenagers, and teachers in various parts of Ukraine. Cities are introduced based on how far they are from the frontlines of the war, with notations for those that have been completely demolished. Never focusing on one community too long, the cumulative effect is a patchwork of pain, perseverance, and adaptability as young innocence is forever lost, another rallying cry condemning the cruel futility of Putin’s maniacal warpath. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Prime Video
The Fishbowl
VOD
Endless Cookie
Grapefruit
Little, Big and Far
Serious People
The Things You Kill