With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
’70s Horror
A horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, The Criterion Channel is spotlighting ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more. It’s an epic collection of essentials and the ideal way to kick off an unprecedented Halloween that should be spent in isolation. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)
Even though Faxon and Rash pay their respects to the original—sometimes mimicking specific scenes and capturing the claustrophobic feel of the family’s mountain resort—it would have been a stretch to expect a movie that captured Ostlund’s tone and subtlety. Like the duo’s first movie, The Way Way Back, which also premiered at Sundance in 2013, Downhill brings in a healthy amount of levity that prevents even the more dramatic and contentious moments from straying too far down their potentially darker paths. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
Playwright Radha Blank’s spirited directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Version in an often hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical tale of reinvention. Surrounded in a shoebox apartment of memories of her past including 30 Under 30 Awards, Blank plays herself, a playwright who is faced with two options for her new play Harlem Ave: a local family theater or a flashier off-Broadway venue with a hole in their schedule. Best friend Archie (Peter Y. Kim) convinces her to get dressed up and court Josh Whitman (a scene-stealing Reed Birney) who has just come away from producing a bi-racial reboot of Austin Wilson’s Fences. Whitman is known for producing “safe, white-friendly” black stories and after getting physically choked by Blank, he relents and agrees to put on a production of Harlem Ave. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi)
The reaction to Notturno is going to be as interesting to observe as the work itself, and it begs to be further contextualized by experts on the Syrian Civil War and ISIS. The stellar documentary further confirms Gianfranco Rosi’s mastery of his chosen form: concise narratives of ordinary people captured in their environments––often those afflicted by broader conflicts––and all depicted through precise still compositions that double as formally polished photojournalism. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: 58th New York Film Festival (through Sunday at 8pm ET)
Save Yourselves! (Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson)
Save Yourselves! offers a slice of small sci-fi in a comedy world, attempting to mesh social commentary with general irreverence. Unfortunately, the laughs fade about halfway through and the world-building never blossoms into something wholly engaging. Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, there is an energy early on that slips away as the narrative moves forward. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
One of Kiyosha Kurosawa’s finest films, I was shaken to the core by Tokyo Sonata after seeing it in theaters a few years ago. A downright brilliant family drama about self-inflicted loneliness, it’s perfectly paced and features one of the greatest endings of all-time. If you’ve only seen the Japanese director’s genre fare, add this to the top of your must-see list. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Tragic Jungle (Yulene Olaizola)
Fluid and far-reaching, the Rio Hondo snakes between Mexico and what was once British Honduras (now Belize). Terrain on both sides is dominated by the dense Mayan rainforest, rendering moot any notion of borders or nation-states. Yulene Olaizola’s mysterious and confounding Tragic Jungle takes place in the year 1920 when this hostile region played host to a bustling gum trade spurred in equal parts by colonialism and capitalism. – Glenn H. (full review)
Where to Stream: 58th New York Film Festival (tonight at 8pm ET through Wednesday at 8pm ET)
Undine (Christian Petzold)
Following up a successful work of lucid experimentation like Transit can be a tricky undertaking: does one lean back toward the basics or further up the ante? Christian Petzold shoots for the latter with his latest, a Berlin-based pseudo-supernatural melodrama titled Undine. And that name should prove telling: the myth of the watery nymph that inspired as far-flung old guys as Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Neil Jordan, and Hans Christian Andersen in their creative endeavors. Ever the intellectual, in his press notes Petzold references the female-centric version of Ingeborg Bachmann as his key inspiration and his story does prove, for the most part, to be told from the eponymous heroine’s angle. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: 58th New York Film Festival (tonight at 8pm ET through Wednesday at 8pm ET)
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings)
At just 80 minutes excluding credits, The Wolf of Snow Hollow has a pretty good amount of things on its mind. Not the wolf itself, though; that’s more of a MacGuffin. In fact, it’s not even too focused on the how of it all. As for the who? Well, it’s not too specific on that either, but what it does ostensibly focus on are the what and why. Alas, without the first two, the others never really come to be. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
The Lie (review)
Raging Bull
Rushmore
The Criterion Channel
Directed by Barbara Kopple
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Watching the Polls
Videodrome
Cat People
HBO
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Pushing Hands
Siao Yu
South Terminal
Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Youth
Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
OVID.tv
New York Film Festival
Beginning (review) (through Saturday at 8pm ET)
The Plastic House (review) (through Sunday at 8pm ET)
The Year of the Discovery (review) (through Monday at 8pm ET)