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.
Christmas, Every Day (Faye Tsakas)
Rising documentarian Faye Tsakas explores the world of preteen influencers in her newest short film. Shot in rural Alabama, her observational documentary shows how much work influencers Peyton and Leyla put into developing their social media presence from an early age. Their parents assist them throughout, hopeful their help will allow their children to develop passive incomes and avoid a life of boring desk-jobs. Tsakas’ compelling visuals of child starlets filming TikTok dances against bucolic backdrops populated with tractors and livestock reveals how pervasive social media has become in modern times.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios)
Egos are charred and tempers seared in La Cocina, a kitchen nightmare set in the engine rooms of a vast Times Square eatery where the staff have more pressing things to worry about than rising temperatures. Take Pedro (Raúl Briones Carmona, in his third Alonso Ruizpalacios joint), a hardened and still-undocumented line cook whose outbursts of ideology can only mask his resentments and vulnerability for so long. Then there’s Julia (Rooney Mara), who is carrying Pedro’s unborn child, hiding her morning sickness in the staff room and planning to sneak out on break to get an abortion. And then there’s Estela (Anna Diaz), our eyes and ears: fresh off the proverbial boat, with barely a word of English, asking strangers on the subway how to get to 45th street before being unceremoniously tossed into a lunch shift that soon resembles The Raft of the Medusa, adrift on a sea of Cherry Coke. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
A Complete Unknown (James Mangold)
A Complete Unknown often seems lost in its efforts to live up to this motley pedigree. It follows Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) from the moment he hitchhiked into New York City in early 1961 to his landmark, legendarily divisive performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where his decision to bring electric rock music to the institution that had deified him was seen as a betrayal of his solo acoustic roots. This stretch of time, which ends before the now-83-year-old had even turned 25, is not coincidentally the extent of the vast majority of the popular consciousness’ knowledge of Dylan. There are later highlights that many can readily point to: the twin successes of Blood on the Tracks and Desire in the mid-70s, his long-awaited Grammy win for Time Out of Mind; the only one of these specifically mentioned in the requisite final title cards is his shocking win of the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is almost laughed-off in text form. – Ryan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
Nine years since that underground epiphany, along comes Eureka, a film that, for large chunks, seems to emerge from the same hallucinatory terrain Jauja opened up. Like all its predecessors, this unfurls as a literal journey dotted with solitary wanderers either searching for or mourning lost relatives. (“All families disappear eventually,” Gunnar was told down the cave, a line that might as well double as the director’s motto.) Old tropes and motifs notwithstanding, Alonso’s latest is his most ambitious: a tripartite film, Eureka sides not with the white strangers in strange lands that had long peopled Alonso’s oeuvre, but with the native communities facing these invaders. Its scope is ecumenical, its geography massive. In barest terms, Eureka’s designed to sponge something of, and locate parallels between, the experience of Indigenous communities stranded in three markedly different milieus: the Old West; South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in the present day; and finally the jungles of early-70s Brazil. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Ghostlight (Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson)
Watch an exclusive clip above.
A masterfully crafted work with nearly no false notes, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Ghostlight is a tender drama bearing profound moments of humor and small triumphs. The smartly constructed script by O’Sullivan buries the lede, revealing new narrative information with each layer as we watch a nuclear family slowly come apart and, later, find solace in the wake of their son’s suicide. Anchored by a real-life family, the film feels as if it’s been meticulously workshopped with the same intimate collaboration that gave O’Sullivan and Thompson’s last feature, Saint Frances, its authentic nuances. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
RaMell Ross––the Brown University film professor and writer-director behind 2018’s stunning impressionist portrait of rural Alabama life, Hale County This Morning, This Evening––made a splash with his second film and fiction debut Nickel Boys. This adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is a tender, enchanting movie that quickly develops a mood-defining dread stemming from America’s ugly history with abusive juvenile centers for Black boys. Innovatively shot in first-person to gripping effect, it follows Elwood Curtis, a young man wrongly detained at the Nickel Academy, as he develops a life-changing friendship and navigates the nightmares of Nickel, where the unmarked graves of rule-breaking children haunt the kids who still have to walk its grounds. Bouncing back and forth between Elwood’s days at Nickel and his adult life researching its crimes, Ross submerges us in what feels like a lifetime of beauty and trauma. – Luke H.
Where to Stream: MGM+
Presence (Steven Soderbergh)
For a prolific artist, a surge of creativity can often be synonymous with a dip in quality. Though not if you are Steven Soderbergh. He’s only continued to reinvent himself and forge ahead with new technology, subjects, and structural gambles. His latest film, Presence, is a haunting ghost tale wrapped in a nuanced family drama, and one of his most formally ambitious attempts yet. What if the camera, operated by Peter Andrews (aka Soderbergh), was the ghost? And every single shot in the film was a single take from this perspective? And, to further add to the self-imposed constraints, the ghost never leaves the house? From the very first shot, as we see the presence rapidly move through every room in the yet-to-be-sold empty house, laying the foundation for the horrors to take place, one senses Soderbergh is having a total blast with this concept. Reuniting after Kimi, David Koepp’s rollercoaster of a script is also one that doesn’t forget to flesh out its characters, making for a funny, disturbing, and nimble genre exercise that further proves Soderbergh is one of the most inventive directors to play the game. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
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