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.
2026 Sundance Film Festival
While Sundance Film Festival kicked off last week in Park City, those across the country can now experience the festival from home through this Sunday with online offerings. As of this publishing, there’s still online tickets available for some of my favorites of the festival, including The Lake, One in a Million, Night Nurse, Who Killed Alex Odeh?, Barbara Forever, Time and Water, Nuisance Bear, Kikuyu Land, and Jaripeo. Check out all our coverage here, and we’ll be sharing much more in the coming days.
Where to Stream: Sundance (through Sunday only)
Ella McCay (James L. Brooks)
Watch an exclusive featurette above.
There is an inspired moment in the middle of Ella McCay, written and directed by the great James L. Brooks, in which the titular Ella (Emma Mackey) enters her first-ever cabinet meeting as the newly-appointed governor. It’s not been three days into her term (Brooks regular Albert Brooks plays the governor who stepped down to become Secretary of the Interior, leaving Ella in charge) and everything is falling apart. As everybody stands up and applauds her entrance, she screams, “STOP CLAPPING!” A nice moment is immediately squandered, her face is aghast at her own actions, and her attempted recovery is no better. Brooks makes a meal of the scene, as does Mackey. It’s funny and relatable and a bit unexpected while existing in a higher register than “everyday life.” These are all things that appear in in the best of Brooks’ films. And while Ella McCay is not one of them, it is certainly his finest picture since As Good as It Gets. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs)
When I look at Peter Hujar’s portrait of poet Allen Ginsburg, taken on December 18, 1974, it’s strikingly nonchalant. Ginsberg is standing on the sidewalk, one hand in pocket and the other looped through the straps of a bag draped on his shoulder. He’s looking right down the barrel of the lens with an “okay, you’re taking my picture” expression on his face. Ginsberg is perhaps the most recognizable name to come out of the beat generation of poets but he looks like he could be anybody––he could be your buddy Carl. It was taken for the New York Times but certainly doesn’t have the gloss and sophistication of celebrity portraits we see in major publications today. The austere street beside him is on the Lower East Side, a neighborhood now flooded with tourists, boutiques, and banality. Just as Hujar’s photo is indicative of an era of artistic renaissance in New York City, so is Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day. – Kent M. W. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazandeiro and Miguel Gomes)
When the idea of “pandemic movies” becoming a sort of subgenre was formed and necessitated by global conditions, there was a groan that could be heard around the world. We know how this goes. Artists will jump on gimmicky opportunities to shallowly explore interior space and entrapment. It became a cliché before any movie was even made. Yet some great artists found a way to make unique, memorable studies of the current moment. Mati Diop’s In My Room used interior space and feelings of inability to escape to explore monotonous life. Rob Savage’s clever Host turned entrapment into a nightmare of computer-aided terror. The latest film from Portugal’s Maureen Fazandeiro and Miguel Gomes is an exercise in how art itself––and, by virtue, the people involved in making it––has been changed by the pandemic. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
When the Light Breaks (Rúnar Rúnarsson)
Watching When the Light Breaks on a recent day in Thessaloniki, I spared a thought for anyone in the audience who might be wary of Gen-Z’s famed sensitivity. For a film built around a painful secret and an awful tragedy, it’s delivered with refreshingly buoyant energy, yet the thing you hear most often is the sound of a stifled sob. It follows the death of a boy, Diddi (Baldur Einarsson), and how his group of friends cope with the immediate fallout. But here’s the twist: up until his death, he has been having an affair with a girl named Una (Elín Hall, in a captivating performance) behind the back of his girlfriend Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir). So when Klara eventually arrives on the scene, understandably devastated and taking the spotlight, it’s Una who must grit her teeth and hold back those tears. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Hulu
Eleanor the Great
Kino Film Collection
Archipelago
Netflix
Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight
VOD
Trifole
Zootopia 2