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.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
The horrors of war are often told through male-centric narratives. Heroes who go through hell on the battlefield, brothers who sacrifice everything for each other, soldiers who return home scarred for life etc., all of which we’ve seen put on the big screen time and again. But wars are of course collective nightmares, tears in the fabric of history that leave no one–men, women, children–unscathed. This is the premise of Russian writer–director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature Beanpole, a radical relationship drama that examines the trauma of war from a distinctly female perspective. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Eileen (William Oldroyd)
Considering how many jokesters online talk about supporting women’s wrongs, Eileen should have made a billion dollars. Alas, not everyone can have impeccable taste. William Oldroyd’s character study grabs you from the first scene, making a meal of Otessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel’s whip-smart script. Anne Hathaway may be the talk of awards season — and she’s wonderful here — but this movie is really all about Thomasin McKenzie, who can enact an entire emotional journey using just her eyelids. And don’t even get me started on the Marin Ireland monologue! If you like vaguely gay movies with dirtbag protagonists and Boston accents, look no further. Some lesbians watch Carol every Christmas. I will be watching Eileen. – Lena W.
Where to Stream: VOD
Foe (Garth Davis)
Foe’s potential is immense. The new sci-fi drama from director Garth Davis, who garnered acclaim after 2016’s Lion, stars beloved under-30 actors in Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan. It’s adapted from a book by Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things).The two Irish stars play an American couple, Henrietta and Junior, living in the Midwest later this century, existing in a world ravaged by a climate crisis that’s caused an unending drought. An unknown man named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) visits their farm, claiming that Junior must go to space to help save the human species while Henrietta stays behind with a clone of her husband. Foe has a solid director, a great cast, and a good-enough premise. The movie, considered against its potential, borders on laughable and cements itself as inane. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Întregalde (Radu Muntean)
In Întregalde, a group of well-meaning young people attempting to deliver aid to a remote region of Transylvania are derailed when their car gets stuck in the mud. Radu Muntean’s film captures that unique sensation of being lost or stranded, as an initially-inconvenient situation spirals into something more dangerous—the dread growing with each hour that help does not arrive. Not quite a horror film, however, it’s making larger points about the futility of middle-class efforts to help the disadvantaged. But like any good socially conscious art, Întregalde also works as an expertly plotted drama-thriller. – Caleb H.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
James Gray’s New York
Along with surveying the far reaches of space and deep in the Amazon jungle, James Gray is perhaps best known for his tales of New York City. Five of his stand-outs in this regard, Little Odessa (1994), The Yards (2000), We Own the Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008), and The Immigrant (2013), are now streaming on The Criterion Channel. And for a capper, head over to Prime Video for Armageddon Time.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Ken Russell’s Shocking Rhapsodies
One of the most truly radical filmmakers to ever contribute to the medium, Ken Russell now gets a spotlight on The Criterion Channel, featuring The Boy Friend (1971), The Devils (1971), Savage Messiah (1972), Mahler (1974), Altered States (1980), Gothic (1986), The Lair of the White Worm (1988), Salome’s Last Dance (1988), The Rainbow (1989), and Whore (1991).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
One Fine Morning (Mia Hansen-Løve)
If there’s ever a Mia Hansen-Løve film I don’t admire, I will be surprised. Like Éric Rohmer before her, her vision is one of such formal effervescence and emotional acuity that the lie of cinema is never felt. Her latest work, following the intertwining romantic and personal journeys of Léa Seydoux’s character, is the perfect film: one that is so immersive you only realize you’ve been completely swept up when the bittersweet final frames appear, and being pulled out of this world brings a unique kind of heartbreak as the spell is broken. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Plan 75 (Chie Hayakawa)
The alternate present of Chie Hayakawa’s debut barely registers as a dystopia, despite its plain and obvious darkness. Japan has the world’s fastest-aging population; birth rates continue to plummet, which has plunged the country into a quiet existential crisis for the best part of a decade. The first-time filmmaker explores this via proposing the most extreme conceit, a voluntary euthanasia program for anybody over 75, but despite fixating on the soulless bureaucracy tasked with carrying out the scheme––making the bleakest reality into one that’s strikingly mundane, like an inversion of Kore-eda’s After Life––it very easily finds humanity in the face of despair. Perhaps this is why it never feels like a dystopian narrative; it’s haunting, but never hopeless. – Alistair R.
Where to Stream: Criterion Channel
Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda)
Agnès Varda’s masterpiece is streaming free for the next week.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Return to Seoul (Davy Chou)
The kinetic energy of Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul rests on the face, and the dancing, of first-time actor Park Ji-min. She vibrates on the screen, her presence reverberating across everyone she meets. She has a tricky task, portraying a displaced soul, a young woman with a lack of place. The emotional chaos splashes on the screen in Chou’s film, heartbreaking in its sudden intimacy. The camera swirls around Freddie (Ji-min) until stillness inevitably comes, a consistent movement as she explores her home country. Ji-min is a revelation as Freddie, soul bared in front of any and all peers that are willing to watch. She’s unpredictable, much like Chou’s film, a switch than can flip at any moment, blistering in her embracing of the pleasures of life. The film hurls itself at the viewer, asking non-judgment and a pinch of trust, knowing that Chou is providing an experience unlike any other this year. – Michael F.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Scrapper (Charlotte Regan)
It feels serendipitous that Scrapper, a somber slice-of-life British melodrama, screened at the Sundance Film Festival just days after hysterical reporting on Prince Harry’s book, Spare, and the announcement of King Charles’ coronation plans. Finding it a bit hard to sympathize and identify with––or care about––the ongoing drama surrounding the U.K.’s Royal Family? You can bet the characters in Scrapper wouldn’t care less, either. Audience members watching Charlotte Regan’s film will, however, care deeply about 12-year-old Georgie and her existence on the outskirts of London. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Society of the Snow (J. A. Bayona)
In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed deep in the Andes, en route to Chile. The 45 passengers included the Old Christian Rugby team, friends, and family. 29 of them initially survived. A whole 72 days later, only 16 lived to tell the tale. And told they did in a carefully composed chronicle authored with journalist Pablo Vierci. Spanish director J. A. Bayona made a film bearing the same title, Society of the Snow, in collaboration with Vierci to bring this monumental survival tale to the Netflix screens, big and small. As the closing title of this year’s Venice Film Festival, it reaffirms the need for togetherness in the face of insurmountable dangers. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Time Bomb Y2K (Brian Becker and Marley McDonald)
We all felt doomsday looming over us when COVID-19 spread rapidly in March 2020. HBO’s all-archival documentary Time Bomb Y2K reminds us that, pre-pandemic, the world last witnessed this level of mass hysteria in the late 1990s (even though the 2003 SARS outbreak was more directly related). In the years preceding 2000 computer engineers realized a mass-scale glitch within electronic systems would incorrectly update the year from 1999 to 1900 as the new millennium began because most computer systems only store the last two digits of a year when recording calendar data. Soon theories about how this would lead to global information systems collapsing like wildfire. Hysteria ensued, prompting businesses to go berserk over tackling this problem and civilians to panic as they sought approaches to survive. – Edward F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Cat Movies
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
Directed by Juleen Compton
HandMade Films
Heaven Knows What
Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi
Roots & Revolution: Reggae on Film
Starring Ava Gardner
Sundance Favorites
Three by Isabel Sandoval
Hulu
Heat
It Lives Inside
The King of Comedy
Metrograph at Home
Francisca
Keane
Milla
The Strange Mister Victor
MUBI (free for 30 days)
American Movie
Pieces of April
The Blair Witch Project
But I’m a Cheerleader
Secretary
Medicine for Melancholy
Antiviral
Shithouse
Age of Panic
Bottle Rocket
Following
Don’t Be a Dick About It
Omelia Contadina
Keane
Whores’ Glory
Lost and Beautiful
The Illusionist
Netflix
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Charley Varrick
Elvis
The Equalizer
The Gambler
Good Grief
Jackie Brown
Jurassic Park
Meg 2: The Trench
The Parallax View
Prime Video
The Aviator
Black Coal, Thin Ice
Days of Heaven
Devil in a Blue Dress
Heaven’s Gate
The Long Goodbye
Something Wild
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Total Recall
Us
Tubi
The Apartment
Barry Lyndon
Heat
Her Smell
The Killing
The Last Waltz
Moonstruck
Serenity
Something Wild
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
True Lies
VOD
Short Vacation