With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Gemma Bovery (Anne Fontaine)
It might be hard to conceive of how a tragic story like Madame Bovary could be turned into a farcical and winning comedy, and yet here we stand. With remarkable tonal control from director Anne Fontaine and a winning pair of performances from Gemma Arterton and Fabrice Luchini, Gemma Bovery somehow manages to be an affecting and hilarious treat. Set in modern day Normandy, Gemma Bovery updates the Flaubert classic through a metatextual twist that both pays loving homage to the novel while also tweaking the tendency people who are obsessed with such works of fiction have to try to apply their favorite narratives to real life. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz)
As its moniker suggests, one never quite knows that to expect when it comes to secret screenings during Fantastic Fest. At times they can be highly-anticipated titles that blow the doors off the venue or they can present films that had little-to-no demand that simply rock. This year was most certainly the latter as Goodnight Mommy (or Ich Seh Ich Seh) screened, a film I’m thoroughly convinced of its divisiveness and also one that I imagine will be highly rewatchable. There’s little doubt about the insanity within this chilling Austrian thriller. While the more vague the better, it is a cruel twisting narrative that too obviously telegraphs some aspects but also keeps a handful of the proceedings mysterious and is all the better for it. – Bill G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Killing Them Safely (Nick Berardini)
Killing Them Safely is, above all, an example of excellent, ethical, fair, and balanced journalism allowing both sides to state their case. What emerges in its later passages, after the arc of its first act, is a criticism of policing that I believe to be fair: bad policing, including laziness, poor communication and training, a lack of maturity, and a reliance upon tools without further study, kills. The Taser is simply one tool and one that may be too often deployed not as an alternative to deadly force, but as an alternative to deescalation. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Manhunter (Michael Mann)
No Michael Mann film fits into its genre. There are crime pictures (Heat, Miami Vice), thrillers (The Insider, Collateral), a biopic (Ali), a horror film (The Keep), and historical epics (The Last of the Mohicans, Public Enemies) — all molds we can imagine, but none Mann seems interested in conforming to. Manhunter, a crime-thriller with direct horror overtones — the lattermost thanks to Thomas Harris‘s Red Dragon, upon which it’s based — eschews conventions, bringing forth the psychology of its characters through both sound and image. (For reference, look at this video essay from 2009.) What starts as an unsettling portrait eventually blossoms into an inescapable nightmare, but it’s the kind you’ll want to revisit again and again. Thanks to Netflix, that’s now possible. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn)
There’s little way to look at it: Only God Forgives is a thoroughly minor career entry — if not, however, a poor or overtly familiar one. While Nicolas Winding Refn often shows himself to be infatuated with the comic absurdity of violence — even the aftermath of Drive’s elevator scene is worth a chuckle — its corresponding brutality is, here, taken to a different height, frequently imparting the sense of a darker-than-night comedy about the worst familial strain we could dare dream up. It works, for the most part, a soft register be damned. Credit, too, for avoiding the easy route: this is not the film most would’ve made after they landed themselves in multiplexes, even more so when one of the world’s most famous men is positioned as your central star. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Partisan (Ariel Kleiman)
Why You Should See It: Whether it’s Martha Marcy May Marlene or Sound of My Voice or this year’s The Wolfpack, we’ve seen a number of films at Sundance deal with communes and closed communities, but few bring the level of danger found in Partisan. The directorial debut of Ariel Kleiman (Sundance jury winner for the short Deeper Than Yesterday) is a patiently unfolding drama that displays the lengths one will go to provide shelter and community, and what happens if you step out of bounds. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
The Princess of France (Matías Piñeiro)
Although his films are rarely filled with the obvious cinematic references that color the works of Tarantino, Matias Piñeiro’s films are a different type of cinephile’s delight, engaging essential questions of how we watch and think about movies. His approach — relaxed, inconspicuous, playful, and, at times, perhaps mystical — makes their engagement of these issues feel revelatory. Then again, Hitchcock didn’t make Rear Window as a film directly about screen-based scopophilia, and Piñeiro’s films are up the same alley. His first four followed young lovers in and around Beunos Aires, shape-shifting their way through the texts of Shakespeare, their country’s own history, and, most importantly, their own romantic relationships. The Princess of France, his fifth endeavor, is decidedly his most complex, an investigation into the idea of the off-screen — though that’s only scratching the surface. – Peter L. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert)
The first thing to announce itself in The Second Mother is an insistence on never losing sight of Val (Regina Casé), the maid, chef, and occasional surrogate parent for a wealthy São Paulo family. Her tasks are exactly what we’d expect — wiping down surfaces, vacuuming, cleaning utensils — and the manner in which they’re staged, photographed, and assembled into a more unified whole is what anyone familiar with the basic tenets of slow cinema can anticipate. (Think Jeanne Dielman with more long shots and fewer signs of portent.) But it’s a fun game, guessing if she’ll be in the next shot and how she might show up at that. Not that your answer is much of a surprise. Even when you begin to think she’s finally outside our point of view, there she is, and even when you cannot imagine how she’ll fit into the scenario occurring inside any given shot, there she is. It’s the sort of strategy one might credit for consistency and creativeness, little else, and eventually tire of. – Nick N. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Victoria (Sebastian Schipper)
A two-hour-and-eighteen-minute thrill ride from joyous celebration to abject despair, Sebastian Schipper‘s one-take wonder Victoria is a must-see. This isn’t a formal gimmick, like with Birdman, but instead a conscious effort to truly understand the visceral and emotional experience had by the titular Spaniard and her new Berliner friends. From burgeoning love to life-or-death stakes as these clubbers are tasked with robbing a bank, we’re given an unfiltered look at regular people thrust into a dangerous situation without escape. Adrenaline pumps as instinct replaces control for an adventure lacking the latitude for even one false move. – Jared M.
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
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