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.
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
After Poetry, it makes sense that Lee Chang-dong would find himself interested in deconstructing another literary genre: the murder mystery. Adapting Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” for the screen, the South Korean master has created something that feels akin to a real page turner, with each cut, the tensions, and the mystery rise as we become desperate to know whatever happened to Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), the young woman who went missing, leaving her childhood friend Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) searching for her. With pulpy characters, including a delicious Steven Yeun as a mysterious Gatsby-like figure, and a dark sense of humor, the film also serves as a study of class and the way in which the lives of the have-nots become cute anecdotes for the haves. Like in the greatest literature, the filmmaker allows for sumptuous moments in which the images wash over us in the same way we revisit our favorite passages in books we love. – Jose S.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Cruella (Craig Gillespie)
It’s true of most Disney films that the villain is the most memorable character, and often—like with Ursula in The Little Mermaid—the most beautifully drawn, as if even the animators enjoyed their company more. In no case is this more true than in 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Outfitted in a huge mink coat lined with blood-red silk and with acid green cigarette smoke billowing around her, Cruella De Vil is more charismatic and entertaining than the upstanding protagonists (and this includes the dogs). – Gabrielle M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Disney+ Premier Access
The Last Seduction (John Dahl)
A modern noir as deliciously dark as it is enticingly playful, John Dahl’s The Last Seduction was nearly lost to the TV movie realm of obscurity after premiering on HBO in 1994. Thankfully, it garnered enough attention to get a theatrical release where it became a modest hit, though star Linda Fiorentino––who delivers a femme fatale performance for the ages––was disqualified for Academy Awards because of the initial television debut. Following her character’s conniving plot to make off with her abusive husband’s (Bill Pullman) pile of cash from a drug deal, she winds up in a desolate town south of Buffalo as she reluctantly bonds with a man (Peter Berg) from the first bar she stops at and her actions catch up to her. With Fiorentino’s Bridget Gregory always one step ahead of every other character––and the audience––in her moody game of deceit and trickery, The Last Seduction will make one wish Hollywood didn’t give up on the erotic thriller. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Plan B (Natalie Morales)
It was about halfway through Natalie Morales’ Plan B (her directorial debut if you go by theatrical release date considering her festival title Language Lessons from earlier this year has yet to secure one) that Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg’s producer credits came into focus because it was there that the parallels to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle became undeniable. If actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart was created in the Superbad vein, Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan’s script was certainly drawn from that of the Cobra Kai showrunners’ breakthrough comedy. And it’s not just because they share having two non-white stars on a drug- and sex-fueled adventure in search of a holy grail. What connects them most is the heartfelt and inclusive ride-or-die friendship at their cores. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Water Man (David Oyelowo)
It’s starting to feel as though Gunner Boone’s (Lonnie Chavis) life is fitting to become a series of upheavals with no end in sight. First, it was living with his mother (Rosario Dawson’s Mary) while his father (David Oyelowo’s Amos) was stationed in Japan with the Navy. Then it was moving to Pine Mills upon his return home to America. And now it’s adjusting to the reality that his mother is dying of cancer and his father hasn’t been able to thus far adjust to being a “dad.” We see very clearly at the start that Mary is the bridge holding these two men together—a conduit to decipher their love and remind them that the only path forward is actually declaring those feelings aloud to each other. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Wrath of Man (Guy Ritchie)
With his new picture, Guy Ritchie continues down a familiar, albeit entertaining, road. Following a decade-plus of big budget tentpoles (two Sherlock Holmes movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a King Arthur, and an Aladdin), the gangster genre auteur settled back into the pocket with last year’s The Gentlemen. Wrath of Man brings back yet another element from Ritchie’s early success: Jason Statham. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
At once impenetrably hazy and startlingly clear, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama emerges as a film impossibly burrowed into the mindset of its eponymous bureaucrat, letting the torpor of his entrapped existence in a strange land suffuse every odd encounter, every diminishing framing, every unsettling flight of fancy. Appropriately, Martel refuses to provide any sense of concrete resolution, itself its own assertion of the primacy of the strange. All is real, nothing is real, everything is fated. – Ryan S.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Also New to Streaming
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Of Horses and Men
Trees Lounge
The Trial
The State I Am In
Tender
Three Brothers
Netflix