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 Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich)
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, aims to foreground its primary literary material and historical context, but instead directs more attention to its oneiric touches and environmental phenomena––the “wind in the trees,” so to speak. The title figure, together with her more widely known husband Aimé Césaire, were both at the forefront of the négritude movement, which sought to put Francophone literature by colonized peoples in greater dialogue with their African ancestry, and to depict this with a supple, surrealistic view of the world. Assembled from deep research, assistance from academic specialists, and consultations with the Césaire offspring, Hunt-Ehrlich’s bold formal schema still prevents us from fully absorbing these efforts: “feeling” does outpace our full understanding. The vibrant Caribbean music and torch songs on the soundtrack make plain it’s a ballad, not a pedagogic Lecture of Suzanne Césaire. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Phantom Thread and Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
A pair of celebrated features from the director of the best film of 2025 are now available on the Criterion Channel. I wrote about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread upon its release, saying, “Although there’s an egomaniacal vein that runs through [Day-Lewis’] character, an elite fashion designer, there’s also a sly tenderness and comedic warmth that gives startling life to this shape-shifting relationship drama. Deeply engrossing and playful as it seamlessly weaves between romantic, unsettling, funny, and back again, Phantom Thread is defined by the women in Reynolds’ life (played by the astounding Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville), and it’s a joy to see their three-way psychological game unfold.”
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Dracula (Radu Jude)
Radu Jude is one of the great filmmakers of the decade. His latest, Dracula, is ostensibly a satire on Vlad The Impaler––the most famous Romanian of all, who appears throughout in all sort of guises––but its main target is AI learning models. It’s a film that revels in the technology’s potential for vulgarity and stupidity while stoking anxieties around all the other things of which it’s capable. For this, Jude has made a film that’s both crude and puerile by design, but one I’m not fully convinced is funny enough to avoid earning those same descriptors. A little too smug and self-indulgent, Dracula takes a whopping 186 minutes to make its point; while fans of the director’s more farcical tendencies might find a way into its rhythms, I struggled giving it the benefit of the doubt. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Films of Oliver Laxe and Hong Sangsoo
If you got the chance to see Oliver Laxe’s mind-blowing Sirāt last year ahead of its February release, then you are certainly looking to catch up on his early work. You All Are Captains, Mimosas, and Fire Will Come are now streaming courtesy of Metrograph, as is a pair of Hong Sangsoo gems: in water and In Our Day.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Happyend (Neo Sora)
“Something big is about to change,” is surely one ominous beginning for a debut fiction feature, but director Neo Sora knows how to calibrate the fine balance between anticipation and inevitability. A story set in the near future, Happyend makes Tokyo a vast playground to high-school seniors gathered around childhood pals Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka). Life is blooming and the future is ripe for those teenagers, even if the whole city is constantly preparing itself for a catastrophic earthquake. Daily drills and false alarms interrupt an otherwise-smooth rhythm where Yuta and Kou gather their classmates at their Music Research Club, an extracurricular that’s more enjoyable than practical in purpose. With a fully equipped school room at their disposal at all times, the gang can build a secure microcosm for the shared love of electronic avant-garde and a generally good time. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
Gather round, one and all, and let me tell you about a fabled time long ago when the world was a glorious place where each and every one of us could travel to local hangouts called “movie theaters.” In there, surrounded by strangers, we all could rejoice at the laughter of things called comedies made by movie studios—yes, those very entities that make the franchises you experience now and forget about the next day used to make movies that would create lightning-rod cultural moments and uproarious lines you’d quote back to your friends over and over until you were out of breath, doubled over in hysterics. The Naked Gun brings us back to that hallowed time, perhaps our last opportunity to experience such a wonderful thing together. One could recite any number of incredible zingers, or detail a bounty of “you need to see this to believe it” sequences, but I’ll simply leave you with this: “She had a bottom that would make a toilet beg for the brown.” — Mitchell B.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Passion (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
Friends meet at a restaurant for a birthday dinner in the opening scenes of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Passion. Everyone loves the wrong person. Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) is engaged to math teacher Kaho (Aoba Kawai), but like the married Takeshi (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), is drawn to post-grad Takako (Fusako Urabe). Their stories unfold in a world of diners, small apartments, and taxis familiar to fans of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and the Oscar-winning Drive My Car. Shot as his thesis film at the Tokyo University of the Arts, Passion is Hamaguchi’s second feature. Read Daniel Eagan’s interview with Hamaguchi.
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
The Threesome (Chad Hartigan)
A big swing and nearly a miss, Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome is not without its charms even as it can overstay its welcome. A rom-com that offers a more serious tone for characters either in a state of arrested development or a new kind of adulthood that defies labels, it has much in common with Hartigan’s previous films, which live and breathe as hangout movies. His latest, written by Ethan Ogilby, starts to wane as characters continue bantering over the predicament they find themselves in time and again, leading to an awkward balancing act. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Together (Michael Shanks)
Early in Michael Shanks’ directorial debut Together, Millie (Alison Brie) warns her boyfriend Tim (Dave Franco) that if they don’t “split up” now, it’s only going to be harder later. She didn’t know how right she was about that. After nearly 10 years together, Millie and Tim are no closer to marriage and kids than they were when they met. When Millie proposes to Tim in front of all their friends, he stands frozen, unable to speak. It’s not the best foundation to settle down together, but they move away from the city anyway, moving into a house far away from all their friends. Millie has accepted a teaching job at a small school and is excited to be more involved in her students’ lives. Tim doesn’t have a real job––he plays music and still has dreams of becoming a rock star. He also doesn’t have a driver’s license; Millie will have to drive him to the train station whenever he wants to go to the city for a gig. Millie wishes Tim had more direction, but she wants to support him in this new phase of their lives together. Complicating matters is Jamie (Damon Herriman) who lives next door and also works at the school with Millie. He’s charming, adult, and more secure with himself than Tim, who sees him as a romantic rival. – Jourdain S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Collection
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
All by Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story
At Land
Bacurau
Be Pretty and Shut Up!
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Brideshead Revisited
Bright Star
Cane River
Carlito’s Way
Chloe
Contemporary Color
Dazed and Confused
Dead Presidents
Death Is a Caress
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti
Family Viewing
The Fan
Fassbinder’s Women
Felicia’s Journey
Girl with Hyacinths
Hidden in the Fog
The Ice Storm
I Wanna Become the Sky
Joan of Arc
Lilting
The Limey
Limonov: The Ballad
Little Sky
Lost in America
Maniac
Maniac Cop
Maniac Cop 2
Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence
Meditation on Violence
Meshes of the Afternoon
My Back Pages
Neighboring Sounds
Nest
A New Leaf
Next of Kin
Now, Hear Me Good
Paper Moon
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The Private Life of a Cat
Queen of the Desert
Reprise
Ritual in Transfigured Time
Romy: Anatomy of a Face
Roots That Reach Toward the Sky
Safe Among Stars
Shirley Valentine
Sleepless in Seattle
Speaking Parts
A Star Is Born
Starting Over
A Study in Choreography for Camera
Summer of Sam
Tally Brown, New York
Trade Winds
Two Minutes Late
Velvet Goldmine
The Very Eye of Night
Vigilante
The Virgin Suicides
Where the Truth Lies
Winter Brothers
Kino Film Collection
Bushman
Metrograph at Home
Films by Henry Jaglom
Films by Nina Menkes
Saturday Fiction
VOD
Wicked For Good