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.
Clean (Paul Solet)
Hard-edged, old-fashioned, and anchored by a sturdy movie star performance from Adrien Brody, Clean plays well as a socially-tinged vigilante thriller. Directed by Paul Solet (from a script he co-wrote with Brody), the film moves fast and rises above certain genre tropes. Brody plays Clean, a garbage man seeped in the sins of his past. In the opening minutes, he goes about his day: driving his early morning route before retiring to his industrial dwelling wherein he retrieves abandoned machines from a junkyard and brings them back to life. The resurrected results he sells to local pawnbroker Kurtis (RZA, reliably great). – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Fallout (Megan Park)
Quite literally saved by her little sister Amelia, school shooting survivor Vada (Jenna Ortega) is thrust out of her seemingly normal life into an extended period of grief and guilt in Megan Park’s often moving drama The Fallout. Covering the same ground as many fiction and non-fiction works about grieving and action in the wake of tragedy, Park’s picture feels somewhat more nuanced, capturing the rhythms of upper middle-class suburban life as Vada finds herself drawn to a fellow survivor Mia (Maddie Zeigler) who just happened to be in the same girl’s bathroom at the time of the shooting. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)
A small, harmless frog peacefully existing by the water is the first image presented in Feels Good Man. What follows from that serene moment––a nod to the source of innocent inspiration for Pepe the Frog––is a clear-eyed, disturbing look at how the playful creation was perverted and carried through a malevolent maelstrom of digital discourse in the darkest corners of the internet. Arthur Jones’ documentary stays sharply focused on the specific path in which Pepe the Frog eventually became classified as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League, but he also paints a larger, more terrifying picture of how an anonymous population wields the power to shift political change from their keyboards and the juvenile motivation in which their flimsy ideology is founded upon. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
There have, of course, been a great many animated films about deeply serious subjects—many in recent years, from Persepolis to Anomalisa to Waltz with Bashir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee now comfortably fits on this shelf of profoundly affecting films. Indeed, Flee ranks as one of the most uniquely memorable animated films of this last decade: remarkably successful as a study of the refugee experience, as a coming-of-age drama set against a backdrop of fear and danger, and as a tribute to one individual’s ability to survive and even flourish. An extraordinary achievement. – Chris S.
Where to Stream: VOD
Futura (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, and Alice Rohrwacher)
Teenagers think about the future without hesitation. They worry about what jobs they’ll get, where they’ll go to school, who they will marry, who they might sleep with, and how they will make the money needed to live a comfortable life. In Futura, the documentary from Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden), Francesco Munzi (Black Souls), and Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro), those worries become talking points, a central thesis of Italian teens without a filter. These three established directors cannot move past the general shrug of teenagehood, though, making a film that remains interesting only for its initial stretch, so long as the teens stay provocative. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Liborio (Nino Martínez Sosa)
Depending on the storyteller, the early 20th century folk hero Olivorio Mateo (the Papá Liborio of the title), was a Creole saint or a dangerous cult leader. His origins are inauspicious: a farmer thought to be dead after a hurricane in San Juan de la Maguana in the Dominican Republic. After a Novena, he miraculously returns, claiming that he was in heaven and sent back to Earth by God. Nino Martínez Sosa’s lush, beguiling ND/NF selection Liborio recounts his influence––but not with the focused purpose or literary density of a biopic. Despite an otherworldly and ominous prologue of his origins, Sosa’s filmmaking approach largely sidesteps a version of his truth, favoring both over the shoulder angles in its visual language and a historically informed, but cryptic structure. – Michael S. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
The Olive Trees of Justice (James Blue)
The only French production shot in Algeria during the Algerian War and the first American film to win the Critic’s Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, James Blue’s landmark film The Olive Trees of Justice was the only full-length narrative feature the director ever helmed. Now, it’s been beautifully restored in 4K. Blue, who was Oscar-nominated for A Few Notes On Our Food Problem, shot the film under the pretext that it was a documentary about the wine industry. The drama, which was an NYFF selection, depicts the Algerian struggle for independence from the French by concentrating on a young “pied-noir” (Frenchman of Algerian descent) who returns to Algiers to visit his dying father.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home (through Feb. 3 only)
Rifkin’s Festival (Woody Allen)
Entering the “likely a money-laundering scheme for Spanish businessmen” part of his European travelogue era, Woody Allen turns uniquely narrow-minded and bitter with Rifkin’s Festival, which takes aim at the film culture that’s both alienated and abandoned him this past decade. Exciting though it is to see the proverbial gloves come off, the hands, sadly, don’t get very dirty. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Slamdance Film Festival 2022
Not the only festival to shift plans during the pandemic, Slamdance Film Festival is now taking place virtually through February 6 with quite an accessible All-Access Pass for just $10. Year after year, the event has championed truly independent filmmaking and the 2022 edition is no different. We already previewed one of the most intriguing films in this year’s slate, Therapy Dogs, executive produced by festival alums Matthew Miller and Matt Johnson (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche), and there’s a total of 28 features, 79 shorts, and 7 episodes to dive into.
Where to Stream: Slamdance
Whirlybird (Matt Yoka)
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” a voice keeps screaming. There’s a man flowing from a side channel into a main canal during a flood, and he breaks past a wall of white rapids. Now he’s floating away as a rescuer catches up to him, and during this matter of life or death, the narration continues: “30 feet! 20 feet! 10 feet! Five feet!” The rescuer grabs him by the torso, and the static rises: “And he’s got him!” The voice belongs to a person who at the time identified as Bob Tur, founder of Los Angeles News Service. He was as ambitious as he was reviled; a real-life caricature of a newscaster on the field and a family man at home. Well, he tried to be both. He met his wife, Marika Gerrard, in the late ‘70s while she worked at a movie theater in Westwood. He asked her on a date and they went on one—to film stab victims in LA’s Skid Row. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Also New To Streaming
The Criterion Channel
HBO Max
Hulu
MUBI (free for 30 days)
But I’m a Cheerleader
Gook
There Will Be No More Night
Maat Means Land
VOD