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.
Antlers (Scott Cooper)
Scott Cooper is comfortable in the mud. The American director routinely finds himself in the confines of the lowdown and dirty, in gritty landscapes with working-class characters overcoming their shortcomings and often turning to violence to solve their problems. While his previous two features Black Mass and Hostiles failed to find tension in their deliberately tedious pacing, Antlers strikes the balance between methodology, terror, and blue-collar dynamics. – Erik N. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Blackhat (Michael Mann)
Michael Mann is one of the few directors still making thoughtfully composed and visceral action films for an audience that refuses to turn its brain off. That Mann also chooses to tackle concerns of the modern world while still maintaining his old-school action aesthetic is icing on the cake. Blackhat took some heat for its portrayal of a buff, rough and tumble hacker, but with a genuine understanding of computers and the implementation of classic Mann action scenes, this movie still stands as one of the best films of 2015. – Brian R.
Where to Stream: Netflix
For Lucio (Pietro Marcello)
The director of 2019’s critically acclaimed Martin Eden returns with For Lucio, a slim, charming documentary about one of Italy’s premier post-war crooners. Lucio Dalla, born in Bologna in 1943, witnessed Italy’s recovery from the destruction of the second World War as his pastoral Bolognese childhood was replaced by rapid industrialization in a country that was painfully losing its social and cultural identity. It may be brief at 78 minutes, but this is a rewarding film, mostly pivoting on a series of interviews with the singer’s manager Tobia, who regales stories of Lucio from his early days hustling for gigs in Rome to a nationally renowned artist with a powerful social conscience. – Ed F. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Here Before (Stacey Gregg)
New neighbors can be a source of great anxiety. Maybe they’ll be extremely kind and friendly, coming over to introduce themselves and strike up a friendship that lasts years. Perhaps they’ll be quiet and you won’t even know they’re there. But they could be absolute menaces, loudly causing disturbances all night long and creating tension that makes you uncomfortable in your own home. What if, though, their daughter is the reincarnation of your tragically deceased child? That’s the dilemma plaguing Laura (Andrea Riseborough) in Here Before, the feature debut of writer-director Stacey Gregg. – Mitchell B. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Coodie & Chike)
The falsified myth of the overnight success is further solidified in jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, a three-part, nearly five-hour documentary by Coodie & Chike, who have captured footage of Ye in fits and starts for over two decades. Structured with gratifying patience in detailing the painstaking ambition required to see one’s dreams come true, its first two “acts”––VISION and PURPOSE––are the most compelling, strictly focusing on his producer beginnings and the long journey of making his 2004 debut album The College Dropout. In exploring a figure as complicated and contradictory as Kanye West, this documentary mostly lets the artist speak for himself through the directors’ own footage, examining the mix of braggadocio and brilliance that slowly got him on the radar of top players in the hip-hop game. The project ultimately falters in its final act, AWAKENING, which moves from intimate to sprawling, attempting to swiftly wrap up over a decade and a half of West’s skyrocketing to a new echelon of fame and controversy. Yet through Coodie’s voiceover, this closing section also carries a resonantly mournful quality for witnessing the rotting away of a close friendship as Kanye’s instability leads to ostracization––the down-to-earth drive that formed his drug-addled cocoon of erraticism and unchecked self-deification. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Pawo Choyning Dorji)
Raised by his grandmother after his parents’ deaths, Ugyen (Sherab Dorji) is considered lucky by his friends. He became a teacher and is just one year away from finishing his mandatory government contract, yet the thing he’s discovered most during that time is the unfortunate truth that his heart isn’t in it. So while he’ll complete his tenure, his dream of immigrating to Australia to pursue a singing career is all that’s on his mind. And everyone knows it—including his boss. As punishment for his constant tardiness and obvious disinterest, she declares that his final posting will be at the so-called “most remote school in the world.” At almost twice the elevation of Bhutanese capital city Thimphu and an eight-day hike from the nearest town, Lunana awaits. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)
The oft-operatic Pedro Almodóvar composed an utterly tender chamber piece with Parallel Mothers, a film that defies the Spanish master’s usual scope by becoming a lullaby of sorts whispered by Penélope Cruz’s Janis, a photographer who will do anything to keep her infant from being taken away. Pedro and Pé explore the meaning of motherhood by contrasting it with the pain felt by their mother, Spain, as it continues mourning the loss of many children taken by Franco’s dictatorship—children whose mothers will never get to embrace again. – Jose S.
Where to Stream: VOD
The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg)
When Joanna Hogg released her meditative bildungsroman The Souvenir, inspired by her own young adulthood attending film school and falling in love, she captured the indelible feeling many burgeoning artists have gone through: one of isolation and vulnerability, masterfully conveyed by Hogg’s author avatar Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne). The structurally ambitious yet still personal Part II is the metamorphosis of these feelings into a passion to create. Hogg conveys that in order to live we must tell stories, if only to show that we are never truly alone in this world. It’s a masterful duology destined to be adored by artists and audiences alike. – Margaret R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Sundown (Michel Franco)
Writer-director Michel Franco throws the first curveball early during his latest film Sundown. We’ve already spent a bit of time with his quartet of European characters vacationing in Acapulco to make a few assumptions before workaholic Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) leans over to the quietly satisfied Neil (Tim Roth) and thanks him for coming along. Why wouldn’t he have? Isn’t he her husband and her kids’ father? He might be. Perhaps Alice and Neil are in the middle of a separation wherein he only agreed to come for appearances? It’s not like his laconic demeanor is giving anything away, though, so we’ll just have to wait until Franco decides to share the answer. And it won’t be the last time. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Taste (Lê Bảo)
Lê Bảo’s Taste is set in Saigon, but for the best part of its 97 minutes, all action is confined to a bunker-like abode where five people meet and hide. The place is dark, unfurnished, and dank; so spectral in its emptiness you’d wonder if the quiet tenants are alive or ghosts. In the stunning chiaroscuro of their unlikely home all motion slows into choreography, characters freeze in a state of protracted wait, and there seems to be only a very blurred distinction between the dreaming and the dead. – Leo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Titane (Julia Ducournau)
You could fill the length of a hundred firetrucks scribbling out words on Julia Ducournau’s body horror meets dark comedy meets homoerotic rave movie meets about a thousand other things, each of them as fascinating and fully realized as the last. Titane morphs and evolves through myriad themes across its runtime, but the aspect I find myself returning to most is how Ducournau shatters conventional understandings of gender, ripping open these societal boxes we’ve been placed in to tackle questions about what’s masculine, what’s feminine, and what those words even mean to begin with. Through her body horror, she destroys the flesh to remove those ingrained stereotypes and reveal something entirely new in the process. Watching Titane as a non-binary person myself, it tapped into how I see the world in a way no other film has done before, making me feel truly seen and validated. Such a rare, beautiful gift to have. – Mitchell B.
Where to Stream: Hulu
Also New To Streaming
Amazon Prime
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Thirst Street
Take This Waltz
Love Affair
Incident by a Bank
Heaven Knows What
Netflix
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
VOD