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.
Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s disheveled period story of the quasi-romantic friendship between precocious 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and immature, floundering 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim) brings the LA native back to his sun-kissed San Fernando roots. Hoffman and Haim, in their feature debuts, not only lead this film untethered to a big-name actor, but carry it with the ease of seasoned performers. Licorice Pizza is less a standard love story than a lyrical portrait of the thin, fragile line between adolescence and adulthood; of two people with one foot in one world and one foot in the other, intertwining somewhere in the middle at the most imperfect time. – Brianna Z.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Rebuilding (Max Walker-Silverman)
We can all feel lonely. Even if we’re constantly surrounded by people, we can find ourselves detached or isolated––lost in our own minds. For some, that feeling is brought on by devastation. The kind that arrives out of nowhere, takes everything, and leaves rubble. Many of us see it in the news, think “how awful,” maybe donate some money, but chalk it up to the indifference of fate and move on. In Rebuilding, Max Walker-Silverman considers if loss and destruction are part of life, then healing and rebirth must be, too. – Kent M. W. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Rental Family (Hikari)
There is a moment early in Hikari’s Rental Family that promises a much darker, more unsettling film. Brendan Fraser, a likable Oscar winner for Darren Aronofsky’s quite unlikable The Whale, plays a struggling actor in Tokyo named Philip. He is anxious to book any gig he can, and with good reason: in the film’s opening we watch him on a failed audition and get the sense that this is a common occurrence. When his agent offers one (it pays well!) that requires a black suit, Philip is happy to oblige. What he finds upon arriving is, well, startling. It is, as he puts it, “fake”––a make-believe funeral for a very-much-living individual who rises from his coffin to watch admiringly as warm words are shared. A gig’s a gig, right? – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Rip (Joe Carnahan)
Sometimes the simple pleasures of watching A-list actors slumming it in a down-and-dirty B-movie crime drama is all you need in January. Joe Carnahan’s The Rip will be forgotten by the end of the year (or more likely by March) but this relatively small-scale programmer is an ideal fit for Netflix’s small-screen ambitions, utilizing the charms of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (not to mention Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, and Kyle Chandler) to entertaining lengths. Following Miami cops who come across a mountain of money in a stash house, double crosses soon begin, and Carnahan effectively stages the twists and turns with just enough slickness to elevate this above the standard straight-to-streaming effort. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Tale of Silyan (Tamara Kotevska)
Described as the heart-warming tale of a farmer who saves and befriends an injured white stork in North Macedonia, Tamara Kotevska’s The Tale of Silyan is actually a harrowing, sadly resonant story about survival during an era of increasing wealth disparity. Nikola Conev doesn’t find Silyan until we’re already two-thirds of the way through the runtime; we are first exposed to his and Jana Coneva’s banner crop wasting away due to new government policies that allow buyers to low-ball prices and ruin lives. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Twinless (James Sweeney)
Twinless starts like a prototypical Sundance movie––grim and serious, plus unexpected levity. That’s the general formula for a festival that might as well have manufactured the term “dramedy.” In this case there’s an offscreen car accident and quick cut to a funeral. Roman (Dylan O’Brien) stands grieving beside his mother (Lauren Graham) as the casket containing his gay identical twin brother, Rocky, is lowered into the ground. It’s a somber affair––tears, tissues, a violinist’s rendition of “Danny Boy”––until the song pauses abruptly on a false note, engendering awkward silence. It’s the first permission you have to laugh, then to recognize the faint absurdity of a gathering in which mourners approach Roman and bawl at his uncanny likeness to the deceased. – Jake K-S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
On the Edge
The Oscar
Netflix
Bone Lake
Paramount+
The Running Man
VOD
Maldoror
Song Sung Blue