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.
The Hottest August (Brett Story)
Where better than New York City to make a structuralist film? Cities are iterative, their street grids diagrams of theme and variation, and New York most of all—with its streets and avenues named for numbers and letters and states and cities and presidents and Revolutionary War generals spanning an archipelago, intersecting at a million little data points at which to measure class, race, culture, history, architecture and infrastructure. And time, too—from this human density emerge daily and seasonal rituals, a set of biorhythms, reliable as the earth’s, against which to mark gradual shifts and momentary fashions. Summer is for lounging on fire escapes, always, and, today, for Mister Softee. Yesterday it was shaved ice. Tomorrow, who knows? – Mark A. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)
History, art, ideology, and love make up the four pillars of Ephraim Asili’s The Inheritance, a thrillingly alive debut feature that resides both inside the square rooms of a West Philadelphia house and outside the boundaries of genre. As its title suggests, to assume the past experiences, lessons, and artistic creations of others can be liberating. But there’s also great personal responsibility to pass on that knowledge in some productive way. – Glenn H. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
John and the Hole (Pascual Sisto)
John and the Hole, the directorial debut from Pascual Sisto, is exactly what you’d expect from its title. The film, written by Nicolas Giácobone of Birdman, depicts a 12-year-old boy named John (Charlie Shotwell) who finds a hole in the ground, trapping his parents and older sister in said hole for an extended period of time. Early in the film, his parents correct him, telling young John that actually it’s a bunker, not just a simple hole. Much like the first 15 minutes of the film, John doesn’t flinch at this or any other happening, including his experiment of drugging the local gardener. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
John Huston
One of Hollywood’s greatest and most consistent directors, John Huston, gets the spotlight on The Criterion Channel this month with a massive retrospective including Across the Pacific (1942), In This Our Life (1942), Let There Be Light (1946), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Moby Dick (1956), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Freud (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), A Walk with Love And Death (1969), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Wise Blood (1979), Annie (1982), Under the Volcano (1984), and The Dead (1987), with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) available on October 1.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Paradise (Michael Almereyda)
Never before released and newly edited, Michael Almereyda’s documentary Paradise is now streaming on Grasshopper Film’s Projectr. A Mekas-like diary film of material captured during 10 years of travels, Paradise gives interactions in nine countries with friends and strangers a sense of mystery, wonderment, and sly humor—linked, Almereyda says, by “the idea that life is made up of brief paradisiacal moments—moments routinely taken for granted, and always slipping away.”
Where to Stream: Projectr
Pig (Michael Sarnoski)
Pig will be a victim of expectations. While marketed as Nicolas Cage’s equivalent to a darkly comic and surreal John Wick, and though a study of the desire for vengeance to an extent, it is not a revenge film—one that provides no violent catharsis for its blood-soaked protagonist. Pig is rather about the increasingly fragile connections we make as human beings and the isolationist tendencies that can infect our lives after experiencing harrowing grief. With director Michael Sarnoski subverting expectations from the start, the experience is ultimately a rewarding one. – Logan K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
La piscine (Jacques Deray)
The first repertory offering I got to experience this summer was, fittingly, the sparkling new restoration of Jacques Deray’s sensual psychological drama La piscine. The inspiration of Luca Guadagnino’s more expansive yet quite structurally similiar A Bigger Splash, the Jean-Claude Carrière-scripted original features Alain Delon and Romy Schneider on a summer holiday on the Côte d’Azur as tensions rise to a breaking point. After a Criterion disc release, it’s now streaming and an ideal way to close out the season.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Morgan Neville)
Anthony Bourdain took his own life. It’s common knowledge. It’s not the most defining facet of his legacy, but he knew his death would be of interest. He talked about it often and joked about it just as much, posing an ironic sense of confrontation that leaned more toward the what than the why. And while his passing isn’t the whole truth, Morgan Neville’s documentary immediately focuses on it. It opens the film; it holds over a nearly two-hour runtime, anticipating to bookend the story. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is, like its subject, not too focused on the why. What happened happened; what matters is how it felt. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
A war film has never been quite as death-haunted as Terrence Malick’s masterpiece. Most are indeed filled with the loss of human life, but the philosophical complexity and natural necessity of death has never been more integrally explored than here. Soldiers wrestle with their own moral guilt over the taking of life, dying men attempt to understand the point or meaning of their loss. In staring at the face of the Japanese dead, one soldier finds the common thread of humanity—mortality. All of this is couched in the discomfiting truth: war and death are natural to God’s creation. – Brian R.
Where to Stream: Hulu
Val (Leo Scott and Ting Poo)
With over 100 acting credits to his name since his debut in 1984’s Top Secret!, Val Kilmer has one of the wildest, most varied careers in Hollywood. As a recent New York Times profile attests, his fascinating life has also not been without heartache as he’s recently battled throat cancer. The actor and author is now getting his own documentary and it looks to be quite intimate. Val, directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, is based on footage from Kilmer’s personal documentation of over 40 years. Check back for our full discussion on The Film Stage Show.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Whirlybird (Matt Yoka)
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” a voice keeps screaming. There’s a man flowing from a side channel into a main canal during a flood, and he breaks past a wall of white rapids. Now he’s floating away as a rescuer catches up to him, and during this matter of life or death, the narration continues: “30 feet! 20 feet! 10 feet! Five feet!” The rescuer grabs him by the torso, and the static rises: “And he’s got him!” The voice belongs to a person who at the time identified as Bob Tur, founder of Los Angeles News Service. He was as ambitious as he was reviled; a real-life caricature of a newscaster on the field and a family man at home. Well, he tried to be both. He met his wife, Marika Gerrard, in the late ‘70s while she worked at a movie theater in Westwood. He asked her on a date and they went on one—to film stab victims in LA’s Skid Row. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Insider
Light Sleeper
The Limey
Moneyball
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Something Wild
The Criterion Channel
HBO Max
Basic Instinct
Collateral
Heaven Can Wait
The Suicide Squad
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Gebo and the Shadow
Kékszakállú
All Hands on Deck
Ran
The Brothers Bloom
Netflix