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.
Boys Go to Jupiter (Julian Glander)
Boys Go to Jupiter, an animated feature directed and written by Pittsburgh-based 3D artist Julian Glander, is truly a product of its time. And that time is now. As the press notes mention: “[The film] was self-produced and animated entirely over 90 days on the free open-source 3D modeling program Blender. Peisin Yang Lazo executive produced.” Running about 85 minutes and featuring an impossibly stellar voice cast (including Elsie Fisher, Julio Torres, Sarah Sherman, Joe Pera, Janeane Garofalo, Demi Adejuyigbe, Cole Escola, and Eva Victor, to name just a few), this film is often funny and sometimes introspective about this land of screens we find ourselves trapped inside. A bit long in the tooth at times, it is undeniably engaging and reliably weird. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
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: Hulu, Disney+
La grazia (Paolo Sorrentino)
It’s fair to say that, with La Grazia, Sorrentino managed to rein in his penchant for the spectacular over the meaningful, seen most notably in his last feature Parthenope. The style-substance ratio here is still not ideal, but the film offers enough of both for an appealing, intellectually, and emotionally tickling experience. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
Hamnet (Chloé Zhao)
Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel operates in an emotional register that’s easy to ridicule. The premise itself is ripe for mocking: what if the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet was the direct inspiration for his play Hamlet? Yet there is so much quiet tenderness here, so much patient filmmaking. For me, the honesty behind any artifice worked like the most beautiful of magic tricks. Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes, while Paul Mescal plays her husband, William Shakespeare. These two young stars cannot be denied, and Zhao allows them to blossom within her frames. Some movies are about the right thing at the right time in a viewer’s life. Hamnet is that for me. Watching earnestly helped me. And for that I am grateful. — Dan M.
Where to Stream: VOD
Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)
Henry Fonda for President is the rare piece of film criticism that is not only a work of art but a genuine cinematic experience. Shaping much more than a simple tribute to the actor, Austrian critic Alexander Horwath chronologically traces, across three hours, American history through Henry Fonda and Henry Fonda’s history through America. It’s ultimately a road movie, with archival footage juxtaposed against contemporary views of Trump-era America as Horwath retraces locations important to Fonda’s films. He’s on the hunt for that psychogeographic, nearly fantastical America Hollywood implanted so forcefully on the global imaginary across the 20th century. What results is a poem of the alienation, longing, class resentment, and folk values swirling around that elusive entertainment we colloquially refer to as the American dream. — Joshua B.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Obex (Albert Birney)
While the likes of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Steven Lisberger’s TRON have examined the thrills and fears of humanity’s relationship with screens since the early ‘80s, there’s been a recent, renewed interest as the number of screens in one’s life has ever-expanded. At last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Jane Schoebruen explored identity-forming bonds with media and the eventual curdling nostalgia with I Saw the TV Glow. This year, OBEX finds Albert Birney following Strawberry Mansion with another inventive and lo-fi adventure, but one that finds the director honing in with a more satisfying focus. Even though our main character spends every waking moment in front of a screen, this is no damning screed but an earnest, even poignant look at how entertainment can provide a sense of comfort for the most lonely souls. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Plague (Charlie Polinger)
If you’ve ever encountered tween bullying, you’ll know that, long before it gets personal, the process of picking out a target begins by being as annoying as possible; the first person to get ground down by this is easily the most psychologically susceptible. The Plague, the debut of writer-director Charlie Polinger, operates in the same way, bombarding its audience with a relentless score seemingly comprising a small army making irritating taunting sounds, all but asking you to admit defeat. It’s too dumb to be called mental warfare, but when placed in the shoes of a 12-year-old who’s being sized up as a potential target for the boys of a water polo summer camp, it definitely feels like it––at least up to a point. There’s a ceiling to the level of sustained dread Polinger can create at the threat of bullying and ostracization, especially when adults are circling around and not fully oblivious to the situation. It eventually becomes too much of a challenge to continue suspending disbelief at the sheer level of teacher-student negligence required for the narrative to function. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
The Conradian title conjures up expectations of espionage, surveillance, and violent action. But Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers far more in his immersive portrait of life under Brazil’s military dictatorship. It isn’t all doom and dread for leading man Wagner Moura: 1970s Brazil explodes in colorful, enveloping detail in Mendonça Filho’s memory piece brimming with fascinating characters and their stories, urban legends half-remembered, even an intrusion from the future that reframes the past. The Secret Agent stands as Mendonça Filho’s culminating magnum opus. — Ankit J.
Where to Stream: VOD
Splitsville (Michael Angelo Covino)
Covino and Marvin pen and perform these leads with a tone very particular to each of them. For Marvin, that looks like some variation of a bumbling sweetheart fool with the ghost of backbone, a wheezy-whine of a voice, and (somehow) lackadaisical charm. For Covino, that looks like a cocksure, unemotive man who has everything he wants and truly doesn’t know how to appreciate it. But both play, in some way or another, an unfiltered manchild full-speed crashing into a bonfire of their untapped emotions. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)
The memes won’t let you forget, but 2019 was half a decade ago. That was also the year Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network––an odd return to the realm of his TV series Carlos, and subsequently picked up by Narcos-era Netflix––premiered at the Venice Film Festival. That was Assayas’ last feature, making the intervening period (Irma Vep for HBO aside) the longest dry patch of his 38-year career. The dexterous director returns this week to the Berlinale with the aptly titled Suspended Time, a personal essay wrapped up in an effortless comedy that shows no signs whatsoever of long gestation. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
The Road to Shame
Shari & Lamb Chop
MUBI
Making Mr. Right
Kill the Jockey
Shanghai Blues
Touki Bouki
Valley Girl
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Moonstruck
Leaving Las Vegas
Oh Sun
The Two Faces of Bamiléké Woman
Chez Jolie Coiffure
Delphine’s Prayers
Mambar Pierrette
Shall We Dance?
Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t
Fancy Dance
Pictures of Ghosts
Netflix
After Hours
Best in Show
For Your Consideration
A Mighty Wind
Honey Don’t
Queen of Chess
Waiting for Guffman
VOD
The Housemaid