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 Fever (Maya Da-Rin)
The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
French New Wave
Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le beau Serge (1958), Elevator to the Gallows (1958), The 400 Blows (1959), Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Breathless (1960), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Zazie dans le métro (1960), Lola (1961), Paris Belongs to Us (1961), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Jules and Jim (1962), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Suzanne’s Career (1963), The Soft Skin (1964), Band of Outsiders (1964), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Le bonheur (1965), Pierrot le fou (1965), Alphaville (1965), Les créatures (1966), The Nun (1966), Weekend (1967), La collectionneuse (1967), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), My Night at Maud’s (1969), Claire’s Knee (1970), Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), My American Uncle (1980), and many more.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Sundance Class of ’92: The Year Indie Exploded
As Sundance continues to champion new filmmaking voices and adapt to the changing times (on a dime, as this week’s news proved), it’s worth venturing back three decades to 1992, a major year for the festival. A new Criterion Channel series spotlights a number of notable premieres, including Delicatessen (1991), The Inland Sea (1991), Night on Earth (1991), Brother’s Keeper (1992), In the Soup (1992), Light Sleeper (1992), Swoon (1992), Where Are We? Our Trip Through America (1992), and more.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Sunset Song (Terence Davies)
A tension is formed by a cut, quickly transporting our heroine from an expansive wheat field to a confined classroom. We’re not just talking the difference of 70mm for the former and the Ari Alexa for the latter, but that of, to quote Kate Bush, the “sensual world” versus the punishment of destiny. Based on a mainstay of Scottish classrooms, Sunset Song is a triptych of sorts chronicling farmgirl Chris’ (Agyness Deyn) womanhood; the first deals with her abusive father (Peter Mullan) and the pain he inflicts on her and the others in the family, the second follows her falling in love and marrying Ewan (Kevin Guthrie), while the third sees Ewan enlisting to fight in World War I and coming back a violent man that resembles her father. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
The Tender Bar (George Clooney)
See an exclusive clip above.
Clooney is one of Hollywood’s most likable actors, yet almost impossible to root for in his directorial efforts. The Tender Bar does very little to change these fortunes, though gets far closer than any recent work at actually capturing his distinct personality––in its best moments reflecting the affable sense of humor so integral to his screen and public persona. But these prove too few and far between, the film suffering from the same problems that plague most of his work as director: the overbearing feeling he’s trying to self-consciously chase prestige respectability instead of telling a story directly from the heart. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
The Year of the Everlasting Storm (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, Anthony Chen, and Malik Vitthal)
Anthology films like The Year of the Everlasting Storm, wherein a flurry of esteemed directors create short segments tethered to a common theme, lack a strong track record. Take the Cities of Love series (Paris, New York, Rio, and Berlin), September 11, or To Each His Own Cinema. All have memorable, if not masterful, pieces. But it doesn’t matter how many noteworthy names are involved or how great some shorts might be—the collective feature experience often falls prey to a certain disjointedness endemic to the territory. It doesn’t help that the joint theme is pandemic isolation––a topic so few filmmakers have been able to tackle effectively in the immediate aftermath of quarantine living. Though this concept has inspired more cringe-worthy art than any thematic culprit, The Year of the Everlasting Storm offers hope. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze)
It’s not hyperbolic to suggest Alexandre Koberidze’s sophomore effort is one of the most original, alive, astonishing films to come around in years. A young Georgian couple meets cute only to have their romantic plans derailed after each wakes up the next morning looking like completely different people. The mysterious, affecting dual journey that unfolds is lovingly indebted to the rhythms and grace notes of silent cinema, the city symphony, romantic comedy, and work of Manoel de Oliveira. Ultimately, Koberidze’s all-timer proves there’s room for kindness and narrative reinvention in the face of a brutal world, “because everything happened the way it had to happen.” – Glenn H.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
HBO Max
Night and Fog
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Hulu
MUBI (free for 30 days)