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 the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
It is a fascinating thing to watch someone’s history of protest and addiction collide and conspire to hold a pharmaceutical company accountable and expose its parent family as reprehensible. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles the renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her fight through the AIDS and opioid crisis, but this is bigger than a biographical documentary. Through slideshows, interviews, and family videos, Poitras weaves a riveting, heartbreaking interconnected story of generational pain, its influence over the blurry boundaries between life and art. – Jake K-S.
Where to Stream: VOD
Close (Lukas Dhont)
Dhont’s sophomore feature offers no narrative or stylistic fireworks, but it captures feelings so fine and true they speak directly to your human core. The story about two boys whose friendship is on the cusp of change radiates tenderness even as it quietly indicts a climate of internalized queerphobia. Thanks to the outstanding ensemble led by Eden Dambrine, an uncertain glance, a searching look, an evasive shake of the head all take on meaning that kids don’t yet have words for and adults struggle to express. Devastating, eloquent in all that’s left unsaid. – Zhuo-Ning Su
Where to Stream: VOD
Cosmos (Andrzej Żuławski)
The final film by Andrzej Żuławski (Possession) debuted to decent notices in 2015, and the eight years since have only allowed its vision of bourgeois madness to grow riper, sharper, and funnier. Littered with sui generis performances and more compositional ingenuity than almost anything released in recent memory.
Where to Stream: Filmatique
The Intruder (Claire Denis)
Coming off of a pair of films that deserved more attention, it’s an opportune time to catch up with Claire Denis’ greatest––and perhaps most under-seen––work. Exuding a wondrous formal adventurousness to convey an abstract journey, her 2004 feature L’intrus aka The Intruder is now on The Criterion Channel. The enigmatic story, traversing from the snowy Alps to Korea to Tahiti, follows an old mercenary (Michel Subor) who is in search of both a heart transplant and his long-estranged son (Grégoire Colin). – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Living (Oliver Hermanus)
Bill Nighy’s Williams finds a reason to live as the inevitable end approaches in this deeply moving retelling of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, transported to an emotionally repressed postwar London. Like its main character, this is an unfussy, unsentimental film, yet makes an extraordinary emotional mark, powered by a brilliant, nuanced screenplay from Kazuo Ishiguro and Nighy reaching the pinnacle of his career. At a time when we’re all recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, few films in recent years show how precious our time on this planet can be. – Ed F.
Where to Stream: VOD
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Steven Soderbergh)
Repeating the blissfully perfect, pure ode to pleasure that is Magic Mike XXL would be a fool’s errand, so nearly a decade later––with Steven Soderbergh back in the director’s chair–cinema’s finest stripper-verse is closing out on a more gentle, familiar, innocuous note. Hewing, unexpectedly, closer to a family film at its heart, Magic Mike’s Last Dance offers a more generalized message of the power of dance to engender community. This reliance on plot––and specifically this plot––rings a touch disappointing when considering the franchise’s bolder peaks. But thanks to a couple of memorable set-pieces, this final outing is still sexier than anything the likes of 50 Shades of Grey or Sam Levinson could ever dream up. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Michelle Yeoh Kicks Ass
With Michelle Yeoh having a banner year, The Criterion Channel has fittingly put together a series of eight films that further display her action prowess, featuring Yes, Madam! (1985), Royal Warriors (1986), Magnificent Warriors (1987), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), The Heroic Trio (1993), Executioners (1993), The Stunt Woman (1996), and, of course, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Palm Trees and Power Lines (Jamie Dack)
While there aren’t many palm trees in sight, the stretch of endless power lines in Lea’s (Lily McInerny) surroundings mirror the nature of her repetitive existence. Her single mom (Gretchen Mol) entertains a string of terrible boyfriends in the pursuit of ever-evaporating companionship. Her immature friends spend their time ranking the hotness of people in their class when they aren’t lifelessly scrolling their Instagram feeds. As a 17-year-old, Lea’s sexual awakenings are either taken as a joke, as her friend fingers a cream-filled donut poking fun at urges, or rather un-involving. In one scene, she starts to gaze out the window while having unsatisfying sex in the backseat of a car with a fellow classmate. It’s a summer defined by boredom, waiting out the days until she can escape the life she was born into. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Please, Baby, Please (Amanda Kramer)
If Rainer Werner Fassbinder had ever decided to take a swing at adapting West Side Story with a dash of John Water’s high camp aesthetic brought in—plus pertinent social commentary—that may be a close summation of Amanda Kramer’s underrated Please Baby Please. Replete with campy aesthetics, striking visuals, and catchy jazz numbers while also being suffused with an exploration of gender roles, Kramer has crafted a picture destined for queer cinema cult status. – Margaret R.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Starring Isabelle Huppert
With over 150 credits to her name, few actors have the batting average of Isabelle Huppert. The Criterion Channel has now assembled a collection of her finest performances, featuring Every Man for Himself (1980), Heaven’s Gate (1980), Loulou (1980), Coup de torchon (1981), La truite (1982), Entre nous (1983), The Bedroom Window (1987), Story of Women (1988), Amateur (1994), La cérémonie (1995), The Piano Teacher (2001), Home (2008), White Material (2009), In Another Country (2012), Abuse of Weakness (2013), Things to Come (2016), along with her Oscar-nominated EO.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Afrofuturism
Ester Krumbachová: Phantom of the Czechoslovak New Wave
Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy
Loving Highsmith
Made in Hong Kong
Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You. and This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Pre-Code Paramount
So Late So Soon
Starring Buster Keaton
Hulu
Bruiser
In the Cut
Spin Me Round
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Nymphomaniac: Volume I – The Director’s Cut
Nymphomaniac: Volume II – The Director’s Cut
America as Seen by a Frenchman
The Killing Floor
Glass Life
The Great Sadness of Zohara
Netflix
Magic Mike XXL
VOD
Consecration
Still the Water
The Year Between