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.
’90s Horror, Art-House Horror, and Pre-Code Horror
It’s October, which means you are likely crafting an endless queue of horror films to consume. When it comes to a single streaming service to dedicate your eyes to this month, The Criterion Channel takes the cake with three different series. First up, ’90s horror brings together such films as The Rapture (1991), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Addiction (1995), and Ravenous (1999), while Art-House Horror features Häxan (1922), Vampyr (1932), Eyes Without a Face (1960), Carnival of Souls (1962), Onibaba (1964), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Sisters (1973), Eraserhead (1977), House (1977), Suspiria (1977), Arrebato (1979), The Brood (1979), The Vanishing (1988), Cronos (1993), Cure (1997), Donnie Darko (2001), Trouble Every Day (2001), Antichrist (2009), and more. Lastly, Pre-Code horrors brings together ’30s features such as Freaks (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Old Dark House (1932), Murders in the Zoo (1933), and The Black Cat (1934).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (William Friedkin)
Friedkin excelled with action (which I use as a term of endearment), often sublimating everything in his films to spectacle (which I note with more skepticism). The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is an action film with words, its cutting and command of space as sharp and rhythmic as the continuity edits splicing wides and close-ups in his car chases. What’s crucial is that there is no flashback to the tumultuous circumstances onboard; we receive alternating glosses on what happened, and who was responsible––especially regarding Maryk’s growing skepticism of Queeg and his possible mental instability across the ship’s whole campaign. It forces the unseen past events––a tense naval drama, in actuality––to vividly play in our head. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Showtime
Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
Denis Villeneuve has surmounted this slew of bad omens, by arguably––in filmmaking terms––making the most impersonal adaptation possible. For all his skill and talent, his deftness and subtlety, he acts as just a translator for Herbert’s largely uncompromised original vision, let alone an interpreter or proselytizer. Dune 2021, to register with necessary impact, needs a mind and careening imaginative spirit as reckless as that of its originator. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Empty Man (David Prior)
Putting aside the business of distribution and exhibition, as well as The Empty Man’s unique time and place in cinematic history, for much of the film’s running time it’s a meticulously-crafted feature film debut, adapted from Cullen Bunn’s graphic novel by Prior, whose credits include several behind the scenes/making of documentaries of David Fincher films. Clearly he has learned well by watching a master at work, directing an “elevated genre” picture that explores a rather silly idea and edges it towards that intersection of camp and art house with a few genuine thrills before completely derailing. It’s a bad sign in a horror film when it has to continue to explain itself and the story’s connection to its very long and evocative prologue. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Fair Play (Chloe Domont)
Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are madly in love. Engendering sex at every possible opportunity, their passion is a burning one and, after a quasi-impromptu engagement, their bond has become even deeper. Heading off to work from their NYC Chinatown apartment, though, something feels off. We quickly learn they are both low-level analysts at an elite, high-pressure financial firm and, due to company policy forbidding such a romance, their relationship must be kept a secret from everyone else. Complications ensue when a promotion is up for grabs, and this secrecy plants the seed for what festers into a gripping thriller that juggles power and gender dynamics in ways both cuttingly real and gleefully absurd. Beginning with a Margin Call-esque icy slickness in this kill-or-be-killed financial world before morphing into Adrian Lyne-style battle-of-the-sexes camp, Chloe Domont’s feature debut Fair Play cuts deep even as it comes dangerously close to careening off the cliff of plausibility with a screenplay that dips into sophomoric. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Passages (Ira Sachs)
Taking the Scorsese wisdom of “more than 90% of directing a picture is the right casting” to heart, Ira Sachs’ radiantly sexual three-hander Passages couldn’t have assembled a finer trio of actors to explore modern love in all its splendor and messiness. Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a German filmmaker finishing up his latest shoot, is married to Martin (Ben Whishaw), but when Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) comes into Tomas’ life, his world is torn asunder with a fiery passion. In his most mature and focused work to date, Sachs stays mostly centered on Tomas as his shifting heart gets pulled in different directions, Rogowski’s fierce magnetism transfixing the viewer even as his character’s behavior grows all the more erratic. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Stonewalling (Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji)
The ebbs and flows of a rather long, deliberately paced narrative can test most viewers. Especially difficult when it seems the movie’s central conflict doesn’t manifest in a few key sequences, instead building piece-by-piece over time, in small gestures. Those with a keen eye and ear, who are willing to soak in commentary on muted malaise of 21st-century youth, will find reward in Huang Ji and Ryûji Otsuka’s Stonewalling. Like the characters, it plays a waiting game: this film bets its outskirt sleepy venues will absorb viewers enough to find deeper meaning. Not only about the modern lives of China’s youth, but also the troubling economic and social inheritances that will come to the generations after. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)
Double Whammy is the kind of roadside “breasturant” that sells escapism alongside their fried food and burgers. They may in fact be a dying breed as those damn millennials are choosing to eat healthy, fresh, local, and artisanal; or as we’re told by Double Whammy’s national competition, Man Cave – millennials prefer booties. This is the kind of place with “big ass” or “man size” beers, big screen TVs, and “cute” young waitresses instructed to flirt with clientele. And it’s the setting for the most mainstream comedy yet from Andrew Bujalski, a founding member of mumblecore. Director of pioneering films of the sub-genre like Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax, Bujalski’s latest film, Support The Girls, is a very funny drama following a day in the life of manager Lisa, as played brilliantly by Regina Hall. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis)
A rare and elusive sense of myth is captured in The Tale of King Crab, a story of a 19th-century vagabond who falls in love with the daughter of a local farmer only to run afoul of a prince. (Tough luck.) Later on, astonishingly, he finds himself on the other side of the world. With that kind of spatial and temporal scope, it’s remarkable that Crab is only the first narrative feature from Italian filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, a duo whose output, while ostensibly non-fiction to this point, has often played on the boundary of fable. Small traces of both Black Beast (their 2013 short about a legendary animal) and Il Sonengo (their 2018 feature documentary about a lone hermit) can be located in Crab, a film with all the texture of a folktale—one passed through generations, the facts blurring and embellishments only growing more ethereal with each retelling. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
The Devil, Probably
Starring Linda Darnell
Disney+
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Beautiful Perversions: Films by Yasuzo Masumura
The Infiltrators
The Vanished Elephant
There’s Nothing Out There
The Devil’s Backbone
Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion
The Fifth Cord
The Possessed
Always Shine
Red Angel
Copycat
Indignation
Shortbus
Paprika
The Innocent
Loulou
The Innocent
A Bigger Splash
Portrait of Jason
The Mouth Agape
Rebels of the Neon God
Netflix
American Made
BlacKkKlansman
Brother
Get Out
Margot at the Wedding
Us
Prime Video
Boarding Gate
Support the Girls
Shudder and AMC+
V/H/S/85
Tubi
High Life
Jackie Brown
The Untamed