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 Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)
Though All Quiet on the Western Front aims to show the brute ugliness of war, it has the DNA of a Hollywood movie, and as such seeks to also valorize death and tragedy as a spiritual sacrifice. Its most morally dubious but cinematically appreciative quality is that it’s entertaining to watch. Battles orchestrate violence in ways very similar to the famous beach-storming sequence of Saving Private Ryan. Sweeping tracking shots of soldiers stampeding across a vast canvas of dirt and hills look stunning on a huge screen; too bad this is going straight to Netflix. – Soham G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre)
During the early morning of March 24, 1976, a radio and TV broadcast informed the Argentinian people that their country was now under rule of Joint Chiefs General of the Armed Forces, who had overthrown Isabel Perón’s government. Less than a week later Jorge Rafael Videla named himself president, announcing the beginning of one of the deadliest military dictatorships in history. By the time democracy was restored and elections were held again it was 1983; more than 30,000 people had disappeared. A return to democracy, however, assumed that the reign of violence and fear Argentineans lived under for almost a decade had been just another government. Normalcy was expected as President Raúl Alfonsín took over. But can a country be healed if justice isn’t served? That depends on your idea of justice—or so is the thesis of Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985, which chronicles events surrounding what became known as the Trial of the Juntas, in which nine military officers, including Videla, were tried by a court of civilians for war crimes. – Jose S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Barbarian (Zach Cregger)
The kind of horror film that resembles the experience of traveling down the dark recesses of one’s nightmares, Barbarian is also quite funny to boot. While its thin characterization and merely surface-level thrills hold it back from being a profoundly high mark for the genre, they are also perhaps a necessity to adhere to its rather surprising triptych structure. Above all else, with its rollercoaster tone, we imagine this is the inaugural year for a perennial Halloween watch.
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Beba (Rebeca Huntt)
Writer-director-subject Rebeca Huntt worries aloud whether her family will ever speak to her again after watching her feature debut Beba. It’s a real concern: not only because of how intimate and uncensored this introspective look at her life and ancestry proves, but because they have a history of verbally and emotionally shutting themselves off from each other. Her brother and father haven’t spoken in over a decade. Her brother isn’t seen or heard from during the film, beyond still photographs. The depiction of her parents makes it seem they aren’t on great terms, either, despite continuing to live together in their rent-controlled Central Park West one-bedroom apartment. None of these truths or assumptions are judgments, though. They’re merely facts Huntt has been forced to confront. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Benediction (Terence Davies)
Time is everything in a Terence Davies film. In Benediction, his biopic about English poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden), he eventually covers his subject’s marriage to Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips). There’s a shot of the couple standing still, facing the camera as they pose for a wedding photo (a shot that tends to pop up throughout the director’s filmography). The camera flashes, we see the black-and-white photo, and then a fade transitions us to the future, where it rests on their bedside while Hester looks at their newborn child. The sequence is an encapsulation of what Davies does best: observing life with one’s head facing backwards, the cumulative weight of the past bearing down on every moment of the present. – C.J. P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde)
Where better to set a paradisal experimental housing development than Palm Springs? The sun is always shining and the empty desert expands as far as the eye can see in every direction, a vast, impenetrable barrier between manicured reality and the rest of the world. It all but guarantees privacy and safety, perhaps the two most cherished values in suburban society, and the two values most under fire in Olivia Wilde’s psycho-sexual thriller Don’t Worry Darling. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
Just when we think Wes Anderson’s exhausted his quirky, colorful, dry, indie extravaganza filmmaking style, he proves us wrong—again. The French Dispatch sees Anderson employing new tricks as confidently and creatively as he does his old favorites. The star-heavy film takes us ceremoniously through the last issue of “The French Dispatch” via three separate stories told by their respective writers (Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright). Nearly every shot a masterfully considered feat, all very hard to look away from. – Luke H.
Where to Stream: Hulu
Nadja (Michael Almereyda)
28 years after its premiere, Michael Almereyda’s vampire film like no other streams for the first time—free and this week only, courtesy Le Cinéma Club, and with an accompanying text written by Managing Editor Nick Newman.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Phenomena and Tenebrae (Dario Argento)
Following the release of his first film in a decade, Dark Glasses, Dario Argento’s filmography has gotten a welcome reappraisal thanks to new restorations at his first U.S. retrospective in some time this past summer at Film at Lincoln Center. Two of the best films I saw there, the wildly entertaining Phenonema and Tenebrae, are now available to stream on Film Movement Plus. The former, starring a young Jennifer Connelly, mixes a delightfully bizarre concoction of insects, monkeys, and the grotesque while the latter might rank as my favorite film the Italian maestro, a perfect giallo backed by one of Goblin’s best scores.
Where to Stream: Film Movement Plus
Resurrection (Andrew Semans)
Not all is well from the opening scenes of Andrew Semans’ Resurrection, based on his own Black List-charting script, which begins as a chilly, slick workplace and mother-daughter drama before exploding into a stomach-churning psychological thriller. Though its preposterous narrative ends up getting into rather silly territory that obfuscates its initial, more pertinent thematic ideas, the film is another stellar showcase for the immense talent of Rebecca Hall. One also can’t entirely fault the director for following through and taking his rather illogically extreme set-up to its most logically absurd conclusion. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Shudder
Stars at Noon (Claire Denis)
Stars at Noon––based on a minor novel by the underrated American author Denis Johnson––is Denis’ second film to premiere this year, after Both Sides of the Blade at the Berlinale, and a slightly rocky reaction to that film diminished some of the anticipation for this one. Her latest work is not one that feels fully achieved and realized, suggesting an absolutely confident mastery of her primary source material, but it’s still deeply watchable, laden with sex and intimacy in a way that doesn’t apologize for itself, and provides an alternate gloss on her key themes of power, bodies, and postcolonial afterlives. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Wendell & Wild (Henry Selick)
Sometimes tragedy begets opportunity. Case in point: Henry Selick’s The Shadow King being unceremoniously scrapped by Pixar. It was supposed to be his follow-up to Coraline and buzz was strong before things went south. So while Selick took a creative step away in the aftermath, he found Key and Peele debuting on Comedy Central. The director would ultimately finish its five-season run and declare Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele the “boldest, bravest, and funniest” comedy duo of his lifetime, vowing to reach out and broach the subject of collaboration in the future. While that inevitable meeting’s purpose was to enlist their vocal talents, Peele turned the tables to ask if he might also produce whatever Selick did next. And there in the drawer sat Wendell & Wild. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
MUBI (free for 30 days)
The Old Dark House
A Human Certainty
Surviving You, Always
Spectre: Sanity, Madness and The Family
Evil of Dracula
The Commune
Netflix
The Good Nurse