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.
And the Razzie Goes to . . .
As much as we hate to give Razzies any sort of promotion, The Criterion Channel has a new series to show just how wrong the execrable organization has been over the past decades. Launching today, they are spotlighting comedic gems like Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered, Elaine May’s Ishtar, and Neil LaBute’s The Wicker Man, alongside Cruising, Heaven’s Gate, Xanadu, Querelle, Under the Cherry Moon, Cocktail, Showgirls, Barb Wire, The Blair Witch Project, Swept Away and Gigli.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)
In BlackBerry, the rise of a blue-chip tech company sets the stage for the dissolution of a longstanding friendship. Sound familiar? Just wait ‘til you hear the score. Directed by Matt Johnson, it tells the true story of Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, software engineers who founded the company RIM in the mid-80s and later invented a cellphone that could handle email. The film begins on the day when they meet Jim Basillie (Glenn Howerton), a Rottweiler who, alongside Lazaridis’ genius, turned RIM’s invention (only later christened BlackBerry) into the world’s most ubiquitous mobile device––at least for a time. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future (Francisca Alegria)
Chilean filmmaker Francisca Alegria’s The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future opens on pensive shots of the river and its inhabitants, most of whom are dead. As the dying and already passed fish sing a song of sadness, a woman, motorcycle helmet in tow, rises from the water. She walks aimlessly, hopping on a local bus and appearing outside a story, scaring her ex-husband into enough anxiety to land him in the hospital. The next 90 minutes of Alegria’s meditative drama exist largely in silence or one-sided conversation––people confronting their past like a monster that grows with each passing day. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
God Save Texas: Hometown Prison (Richard Linklater)
While there are still a few months to go until Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is finally released, a new, personal project for the director has arrived. As part of the omnibus documentary series God Save Texas (with parts also directed by Alex Stapleton and Iliana Sosa), the Texas-born director returns to the East Texas town of Huntsville where he explores the incarceration system. Surveying the justice system’s death penalty as well as those behind bars for an extended period of time, Linklater provides an intimate perspective to converse with those involved on all sides: those serving time, the ones ensuring their time is served, and the family and friends on the outside who are biding their time until their loved ones are released. Linklater once again proves an expert of empathy, finding the connective emotional tissue to bring these politicized issues down to a day-by-day, human level. Here’s hoping voters and decision-makers are listening.
Where to Stream: Max
Lee Fields: Faithful Man (Jessamyn Ansary, Joyce Mishaan)
A key yet overlooked figure in American soul music, Lee Fields has now received a much-deserved documentary. Lee Fields: Faithful Man charts the musician’s many contributions, having worked with Kool and the Gang, B.B. King, Bobby Womack, and more. While the editing can feel a bit choppy in passages, Fields’ passion and artistry shines through any time he graces the screen. Perhaps most interestingly, the film takes an unexpected turn about halfway through, jumping decades to show the artist’s renewed resonance during the recent vinyl resurgence. If anything, the documentary will make one wonder how many musicians of the past century have been lost to history and are equally deserving of such a documentary portrait.
Where to Stream: VOD
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman)
The documentary field’s finest depictor of process, Frederick Wiseman has found one of his best subjects with the delightful, breezy, and, yes, four-hour Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros. Peeling back the inner workings of a three-star Michelin restaurant in France, the 93-year-old master has found a restauranter family that holds the same virtues as the director: patience, artistry, and a dedication to delivering the best possible experience to the recipient. A stark contrast from some of the more complicated, messy, and ultimately unproductive bureaucratic organizations the director has captured in the past.
Where to Stream: PBS
Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Few stories are as gratifying as the narrative jigsaw. How to fool the viewer into believing one thing without lying about what happened? It’s difficult enough to execute on the page, but much more can be hidden in writing. With film it’s a matter of obscuring the context of what we both see and hear, which requires some trickery. Like any sound cinematic tool, it can be misused and abused (see: the MCU), but with tasteful restraint it can be the backbone of a masterclass in mystery. See: Monster. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Napoleon (Ridley Scott)
In a conversation with Empire Magazine, Ridley Scott promised a cut of his latest movie Napoleon that is over four hours long and “fantastic”; this would be an exciting prospect on paper, maybe, if the two-and-a-half-hour cut of Napoleon felt like anything beyond a cursory scroll through Wikipedia. The acclaimed director’s latest historical epic––not so much sword and sandal as it is cannon and boots––starring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, however, is an unfortunate slog: all filler, no killer, stretching into tedium before its rushed ending. – Fran H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Apple TV+
One Day Pina Asked… (Chantal Akerman)
The Belgian luminary charts an early dance tour of the then-rising German choreographer Pina Bausch. Commissioned for a European television series on modern dance, One Day, Pina Asked… follows Bausch and her company through Wuppertal, Milan, Venice, and Avignon. To quote the film’s narrator, it “is more than a documentary about Pina Bausch’s work, it’s a journey through her world, through her tireless quest for love.”
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Our Father, The Devil (Ellie Foumbi)
One of last year’s most difficult films, not from a standpoint of onscreen depictions of violence––which are may be the movie’s only major flaw––but from its depictions of forgiveness. Director Ellie Foumbi approaches the difficult task of trying to both understand the burning, reactionary nature of vengeance and the life of an immigrant refugee. Marie Cissé (Babetida Sadjo) recognizes the pastor of her elder care home as the man who raped and pillaged her village in Africa. In planning and executing her revenge, we get the initial thrills of a pulpy “boss girl” revenge thriller, but Foumbi has much more on her mind and twists the film into a Dostoyevskian tale of guilt, regret, and religious contemplation. One of the most unique “vigilante” films you may ever see. – Soham G.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Our Body (Claire Simon)
Claire Simon cites Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital (1970) and Near Death (1989) as key sources of inspiration for her latest film, and for much of its 168-minute runtime Our Body does function, à la Wiseman, as a study of an institution––in this case, the various units of a public hospital in Paris where women receive all manner of care, including treatment for pregnancy, fertility, gender transition, cancer, and end-of-life needs. Simon and her all-female crew observe their subjects in close-up; except for occasional establishing shots in hallways and the garden courtyard, the camera is seldom more than a few feet from the women and one trans man, their companions, and the doctors, nurses, and technicians who all perform their jobs with uncommon professionalism and grace. That the camera is likely capturing an idealized version of the daily grind of modern healthcare––every person we see has signed a waiver and is presumably putting on their best face––is mostly beside the point, because Simon is interested primarily in the strange, beautiful, holy machinery of bodies. – Darren H.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Out of Darkness (Andrew Cumming)
Andrew Cumming’s gripping paleolithic-set survival horror is much more than it seems. What starts as a typical last-man-standing monster movie quickly upends expectations by rebuffing familiar beats. The score, courtesy Adam Janota Bzowski, is incredible. It crawls into your bones and sends shivers of prehistoric fear down your spine. Over a tight 87 minutes, the story incrementally shifts into new territory that’s not often portrayed on film––territory that forces us to reckon with the reality of our species’ pitch-black evolutionary past. Re: spoilers, stay in the dark if you can. – Luke H.
Where to Stream: VOD
Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Bella Baxter––whose organic internal makeup I’ll leave to shocking reveal––was born an adult woman. The furiously beating heart of Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film, Poor Things, she was found dead at the bottom of a bridge, an unknown life left behind her, and reanimated from Jane Doe into Bella (Emma Stone) by a bubble-belching monster. Though, that’s not what he calls himself. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Spaceman (Johan Renck)
The new film from Johan Renck, efficiently titled Spaceman, offers two central conceits. The first: that a vessel en route to a cloud of purple dust, somewhere in the region of Venus, might be visited by a benevolent alien with the ability to guide a human through their own memories. The second: that the Czech Space Agency’s chief representatives, on earth and off, might be played by Isabella Rossellini and Adam Sandler. Besides director the music video for David Bowie’s “Blackstar,” Renck is best-known for the TV show Chernobyl, on which he directed all five episodes. With Spaceman he borrows that show’s aesthetic: the sickly green-and-yellow color palette, the retro-futurist Soviet designs, the stifling solemnity. One thing you won’t find in Chernobyl, however, is Hanuś: an arachnid with Paul Dano’s voice, a body the size of a labrador, and six unblinking eyes, each as wide and curious as WALL-E’s. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams)
After 22 years behind the camera––as cinematographer for the likes of Alex Ross Perry and the Safdie brothers––Sean Price Williams has emerged with his first directorial feat(ure), which boasts the creative flourish of a veteran on numerous levels, not least the seamlessly executed shifts in style and batshit Odyssean arc following a girl who must keep escaping the grasp of older men. The sweet cyanide screenplay was penned by film critic Nick Pinkerton, whose toe-stomping approach to character, theme, and colorful storytelling lays fresh ground for Williams to exercise every trick he’s ever learned. More non-musical movies should have integrated theme songs. – Luke H.
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Apple TV+
Catch Me If You Can
Fight Club
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Prestige
Titanic
Zodiac
The Criterion Channel
3:10 to Yuma
American Movie
Bergman Island
The Boys from Fengkuei
Broken Mirrors
Cute Girl
Dreadnaught
Dreaming Rivers
Drive My Car
El Norte
Forever a Woman
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Girls of the Night
The Green, Green Grass of Home
I’m Not There
Instrument
Kate Plays Christine
Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You
The Ladykillers
Love Letter
Love Under the Crucifix
Macao
The Master
The Passion of Remembrance
Raging Bull
Reservoir Dogs
The Revolt of Mamie Stover
Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles
The Silent Partner
Sophie’s Choice
The Tall Men
The Virgin Suicides
A Visual Diary
The Wandering Princess
Hulu
Dreamin’ Wild
Monica
Metrograph at Home
It Felt Like Love
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Radical Intimacy: Three by Margarethe von Trotta
Mia Hansen-Løve: Things to Come and Go
Takeshi Kitano: Destroy All Yakuza
The Most Important Thing: Love
Incendies
Ishtar
Greener Grass
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Netflix
Godzilla (2014)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Step Brothers
Prime Video
The Last Waltz
Take Shelter
The Whistlers