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 Black Sea (Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden)
For most of its runtime, Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden’s fish-out-of-water non-fiction hybrid The Black Sea teeters on the edge of being too cute. But Harden is the variable––the lead performer whose dynamic with both actors and non-actors skirts the right side of the line between intuition and invention. It’s a line that’s also been the driving cinematic force of Moselle’s insider approach to the stories of outsiders. And throughout her career, one of her greatest skills has been her eye for not only the right story, but the right storytellers. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Cidade Campo (Juliana Rojas)
Two tales of migration make up this mysteriously symmetrical film that explores the wonders and perils of life in the city/country. Employing the steady gaze of a field researcher and a fantasist’s flights of fancy, Rojas observes day-to-day injustices alongside unexplained ghostly interludes and sees how, in a land like Brazil, trauma is never far from touch. A relatively sparse plot notwithstanding, the intensity of the imagery leaves a strong impression and informs you intimately of the relationship between the characters and their environment. A magnetic, gritty-turned-trippy study of faces and places. – Zhuo-Ning Su
Where to Stream: VOD
Kim’s Video (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin)
A sweeping documentary by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video follows the personal-inquiry, man-on-the-street format from their previous works Mardi Gras: Made in China and Girl Model. With Redmon largely remaining behind the scenes, asking questions while holding his camera, the film is simply left to wander where the story takes it: from the cool counterculture of the East Village before eventually turning into a heist film with a mafia connection. Haunted by the ghosts of cinema, Youngman Kim’s collection calls out to David; eventually he’s able to rescue and repatriate it back to Lower Manhattan. Its happy end is known, with a collection of over 55,000 rare VHS tapes and DVDs from the chain’s flagship Mondo Kim’s now available to rent at the Alamo Drafthouse’s lower Manhattan outpost, the Found Footage Festival’s Nick Prueher responsible for the preservation and cataloging of titles. Redmon and Sabin’s Kim’s Video shows us exactly how that deal went down. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Tubi
The Last Showgirl (Gia Coppola)
Pamela Anderson receives the role of a lifetime in Gia Coppola’s engaging (if simplistic) character study The Last Showgirl, playing a glamorous showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. Christopher Schobert said in his TIFF review, “’I’m older––I’m not old,’ says Shelley, the longest-term performer in a past-its-prime Las Vegas revue. She is played by Pamela Anderson, the international icon who has never, ever had a role like this. Shelley is 57 years old, living paycheck-to-paycheck, estranged from her daughter, and intensely vulnerable. Clearly we are far from the beaches of Baywatch and action spectacle that was Barb Wire. And Anderson is one of the chief reasons Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a noteworthy film. But this is not stunt casting. It’s a real-deal performance, and Shelley is one of the more memorable Vegas denizens in recent cinema.”
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Legend of Ochi (Isaiah Saxon)
The Legend of Ochi, written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, is a lovely adventure built on imagination and skill. It certainly feels like the kind of film that will last a good long while. Short on dialogue and long on style, it tells of the small population in a village on the island of Carpathia: they live in fear of the Ochi, an apparently vicious form of primate haunting the nearby forest. Willem Dafoe plays Maxim, a warrior elder who’s been gifted the village’s children and will train them to fight the dreaded beasts. Among them is Petro (Finn Wolfhard) and Maxim’s own daughter Yuri (Helena Zengel). When Yuri comes across an injured baby ochi, she decides to care for the creature and take it back to its home. To do so, she must run from Maxim and his militaristic ways. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Mickey 17 ( Bong Joon Ho)
Is Mark Ruffalo giving a Trump impression? It’s early into Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 when the actor struts into the frame in a velvety blazer, wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) in tow, gloating as a crowd stands and claps like he’s the second coming of Christ. Ruffalo is Kenneth Marshall, leader of some cult-adjacent Church and one-time presidential candidate behind a new space mission designed to yank humanity from a near-inhospitable Earth and drop it onto Niflheim, a planet in some remote corner of the galaxy. A hopeless narcissist surrounded by a cabal of yes-men armed with cameras immortalizing his every move, he speaks with impossibly white teeth forever bared in a self-congratulatory grimace, nostrils flared, vowels ever so slightly drawn out. In a film ostensibly following not one but two (!) Robert Pattinsons, it’s Ruffalo that takes center stage. And if his diction and mannerisms instantly jolted me back to another real-life narcissist surrounded by a cast of sycophants of his own, that came more as a revelation than distraction. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Vermiglio (Maura Delpero)
Vermigilio is a splendid exemplar of “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” The sprawling, historical, novelistic, Visconti-esque family epic with dozens of characters has been smartly updated to modern sensibilities. Maura Delpero focuses on the working class rather than the wealthy, adopts a tight two-hour runtime rather than some indulgent length, and––most importantly––privileges the female perspective. Delpero shows gratifying ambition, curiosity, and accomplishment in just her second feature to date. – Ankit K.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Kino Film Collection
The Mill and The Cross
Netflix
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