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.
Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez)
It’s a dire, inhospitable environment, wherein corporate interests can give way to ghoulish monstrosities, and those just trying to navigate the chokehold of capitalism are doing their best to survive. In a way, Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus may be the most meta Alien film to date. No stranger to playing in others’ sandboxes, the Evil Dead helmer is, at first glance, an encouraging fit for the sci-fi horror franchise. Like the original, 2017’s Alien: Covenant––an underrated high point for these films––was at its peak when threading its headier notions with gleefully mean-spirited cynicism towards its human subjects. Alvarez has that same kind of nasty streak in him, and much of Romulus’ mandated fan service smacks of carefully chosen battles in an effort to commence with the gnarly stuff. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Bookworm (Ant Timpson)
After the dark comedy Come to Daddy, New Zealand director Ant Timpson travels back to his home country with lead actor Elijah Wood for Bookworm, an adventure designed for all ages. In his introduction at the opening of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, Timpson cited 1970s family movies as an inspiration and admitted he wanted nothing more than to make a good, entertaining time for audiences. That aim is apparent in every moment of Bookworm, whose odd-couple pairing of an estranged father and his precocious daughter on a camping trip gone wrong feels engineered to be a broad crowd-pleaser. But Timpson, along with co-writer Toby Harvard, prefer to take the easy way for achieving their goals, the film leaning into dated comedy and a relentless charm offensive that makes its efforts too strained to fully embrace. – C.J. P. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo)
Magical realism, or even history-fantasy hybrid films, serve the narrative purpose of allowing protagonists to transcend their experiential reality and find solutions (or “escapes”) into another world. This generally involves children, whose innocence in times of war and tragedy often lend to creating imaginary situations in one’s mind. In El Gran Movimiento, director Kiro Russo provides a different kind of catharsis in mysticism. While he suggests his central figure, Elder, can transcend his ailments, he doesn’t suggest the cure will work. Or that it is even a cure. What the film instead offers is a pained reality of a life of labor, where escape comes in two forms: stop working or die. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Lee (Ellen Kuras)
There are few actors who command the screen like Kate Winslet, and with Ellen Kuras’ Lee, the thespian has one of her sturdiest roles in years. As tenacious, groundbreaking American war photographer Lee Miller, Winslet appears in nearly every scene, dominates nearly every conversation, and says more with an arched eyebrow than many actors can say across pages upon pages of dialogue. Winslet’s work here is every bit as strong as the performances she gave in films like Sense and Sensibility, Revolutionary Road, Little Children, and The Reader. There’s argument to be made that Lee features her finest turn. – Christopher S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
MaXXXine (Ti West)
If knives weren’t already being sharpened for Ti West prior to MaXXXine––the third installment in his X series of exploitation throwbacks––they likely will be at the ready once discerning horror fans experience it. On the surface, this is West returning to the same bloody ground as his terrific 2009 breakout The House of the Devil, only with a much starrier cast in tow for this 1985-set slasher mystery. Like that movie, the backdrop here is Reagan-era Satanic Panic, a fitting bedfellow for a story that begins in the adult entertainment industry––that other key scourge for social conservatives in the decade that style forgot. Wider ties between The House of the Devil and MaXXXine, beyond their shared cultural contexts, are few and far between, yet it’s hard not to regard this movie as something of a self-aware victory lap for its director; West isn’t just returning to a milieu that will remind long-term fans of where it all began, but telling a rags-to-riches Hollywood story that knowingly carves out his place within the genre’s storied history. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Monkey Man (Dev Patel)
With a premise that is as simple or as complex as you’d like it to be, Monkey Man anoints Dev Patel as a new action director and star. Filmed on location in Mumbai and Indonesia in the height of the COVID pandemic and saved from a Netflix direct-to-streaming deal by Jordan Peele and Universal, this film about reinvention bursts with the same frenetic energy of a Danny Boyle or John Woo picture, with Patel––co-writer, director, star, and sometimes camera operator––throwing everything he has at the screen, and then some. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
A Sacrifice (Jordan Scott)
“We’re all so fucked, right.” So says Mazzy (Sadie Sink), a young woman visiting her father Ben (Eric Bana). This observation matches the dreadful tone of the film as a whole. Titled A Sacrifice, written and directed by Jordan Scott and inspired by Nicholas Hogg’s novel Tokyo, this is a small-scale psychological thriller informed by the loneliness of the coming climate apocalypse and comforting allure of group-think. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders)
The best studio animation of the year by quite a wide margin, The Wild Robot is an adventure as wondrous as it is heartfelt. Exploring the trials, tribulations, and joys of parenting through the story of a stray robot in the wilderness, Sanders nails the emotional throughline to create a stirring, human-free experience. While the script could have used perhaps a bit more specificity, what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in earnestness and craft, chock full of detailed environments and wonderful character design. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD
The Wolf House (Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña)
When it comes to the field of animation, many productions can often succumb to a certain sameness in their respective visual approaches. This is certainly not the case for a bold new Chilean film. Directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, The Wolf House is a stop-motion animation that plays out in a single-sequence shot, telling a fairy tale story based loosely on Colonia Dignidad, a German émigré-run colony in post-WWII Chile that was revealed to have been used to imprison, torture, and murder dissidents during the Pinochet regime. A nightmarish feast for the eyes, we hope these directors continue to carve out new paths in the animation field. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Woman of the Hour (Anna Kendrick)
The logline of a serial killer and rapist taking part in a television dating game show sounds like a high-concept pitch so fabricated it couldn’t possibly be founded in any veracity. Yet, in 1979, Rodney Alcala––whose victims are believed to be as many as 130––was a bachelor on The Dating Game. For her directorial debut, Anna Kendrick expands the 30 minutes of airtime into an inquiry of misogyny and the everyday silencing of women, exploring both Alcala’s shocking murders and the story of a fledging actress hoping for a big break. With a careful threading of humor and horror, it’s an ambitious, slightly strained gamble that Kendrick mostly manages with a formally precise vision and script that doesn’t rely on platitudes. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
Hulu
The Menu
Y tu mamá también
Prime Video
Brothers
Fat City
Memento
Shudder
Daddy’s Head
VOD
Bad Genius
Caligula
The Falling Star
Strange Darling
The Universal Theory