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.
Double Walker (Colin West)
If one is looking for some post-Halloween chills, Colin West’s micro-budget ghost story Double Walker mostly fits the bill, albeit with a few stumbles. Approaching the supernatural with a more grounded feel akin to Paul Harrill’s Light From Light and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, the film tracks a woman in specter form (a stand-out Sylvie Mix) who tracks down those responsible for her murder. While the production’s limitations can be painfully clear at times, with flat cinematography and flashbacks that feel far too on the nose, the film eventually coheres into a compelling look at the sins of humankind and what may come after death.
Where to Stream: VOD
Happy Hour and Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
If this year’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car are your introduction to rising Japanese master Ryusuke Hamaguchi, his prior two features are essential viewing as well. His five-hour epic Happy Hour and his playful romance Asako I & II are now streaming on The Criterion Channel. As for the latter, Ryan Swen said, “Full-fledged, complicated, rapturous romance is relatively rare in cinema nowadays, and one of the very best examples is Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II, which uses its doubled lovers as a way to reflect back upon its main character, in all of her doubts and uncertainties. Deeply rooted in its present moment, yet prone to flights of fancy as transportive and unreal as any in contemporary filmmaking, the film delights as much as it aches, staying in close step with the turns caused by the whims of the self and the other, moving back and forth in rapture. “
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Jungle Cruise (Jaume Collet-Serra)
Jungle Cruise’s overall accomplishment is not being too obnoxious, despite it feeling like everything is pulled in possibly the wrong direction. (A trip down the Amazon on Frank’s boat inevitably leads us to both CG ghost leftovers from Pirates of the Caribbean and an unconvincing romance.) Eventually shedding the chintzy pleasures of its sets for a full-on assault of The Future Stephen Sommers Wants, the film still maintains a kind of likable quality. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Disney+
Land (Robin Wright)
There is a scene about halfway through Land, directed and starring Robin Wright, in which Miguel (Demián Bichir) reveals a tragedy in his past. Edee (Wright), also grieving, reacts silently and subtlety, though we see so much happening on her face. Nothing said, only felt. It is, truly, a perfect moment captured on film. The kind of thing one will not easily forget. Often actors who step behind the camera will admit that they focused less on their own on-screen performances while directing, sometimes to the detriment of the picture they were making. This cannot be the case here, as Wright the filmmaker wrings out one of Wright the actor’s career-best performances. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Moments Like This Never Last (Cheryl Dunn)
When it comes to a good deal of documentaries about art, a director’s perspective can feel detached as if commenting on a consensus solidified decades prior. This is not the case when it comes to Cheryl Dunn’s immersive portrait of the late Dash Snow, a figure in the NYC art world of the 2000s who died from a heroin overdose at the age of 27. Through archival footage and present-day interviews with those in his circle, Moments Like This Never Last captures the anti-authoritarian spirit of Snow and this subset of boldly imaginative artists––whose work paved the way for the confrontational and confessional anything-goes digital world we now find ourselves in.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Night Raiders (Danis Goulet)
German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller coined the poetic confession “First they came…” in 1946. The post-WWII piece spoke about how groups like the Nazis would always find new targets to oppress once their recent victims were erased. First it was the socialists. Then trade unionists and Jews. The sigh of relief breathed by those not yet included under those labels is thus only ever brief. Unless you don the swastika to partake in the purges, they’ll eventually find a label to justify wiping you from existence too. The Holocaust taught a lot about the evils of man, yet it was our own ignorance that refused to see it earlier. It’s probably no coincidence that Canadian Indian residential schools’ mandatory attendance ended the following year. Cree-Métis writer-director Danis Goulet wondered how North America would look if the opposite proved true. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
No Time to Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga)
“This never happened to the other fellow” quipped a young, eager George Lazenby in 1969. The opening of Peter R. Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is to date the most self-aware the 007 franchise has run in its nearly six-decade history. It established a winking-but-perhaps-necessary acknowledgment for audiences hesitant to relinquish Sean Connery, as if to say “this will be different, we know, but you’ll be okay.” That sentiment is all over No Time To Die, and director Cary Joji Fukunaga is far from subtle about it. From the car to the music cues to the sentimentality at its core, Fukunaga seems indebted to the sixth Bond outing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in a way that has fascinating implications for the series and its future. As the first American at the helm, he appears more than suited to the role. That’s to say nothing of the storied production squabbles and rewrites upon rewrites, but the final output would dictate none of that holds sway. What’s on display here has the trappings of rousing, big entertainment. Given the track record of other Bonds’ final bows, Craig has been gifted a ceremonious farewell. That, for certain, never happened to the other fellows. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Passing (Rebecca Hall)
Rebecca Hall’s Passing has been fifteen years in the making, and that dedication shows in every meticulously crafted frame. Adapted from Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, the tense, black and white psychological drama is a study in intentional filmmaking. Every detail is an obsession with symbolism and performativity, from the by-turns absent and invasive score courtesy of Devonté Hynes to the elaborate period wardrobe from Marci Rodgers, to the affect with which stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga speak. This obsessiveness folds in on itself, creating a layered profile of reunited childhood friends Irene Redfield (Thompson) and Clare Bellew (Negga) whose muffled desire for one another exposes devastating cracks in each of their lives. By turns stifling and lucid with seduction, Hall’s debut is impressive, even when its atmosphere sometimes overtakes its pace. – Shayna W. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Violet (Justine Bateman)
Violet, Justine Bateman’s often sharp commentary on a certain side of the movie business, suggests what might have happened if the protagonist of Kitty Green’s The Assistant decided to stay in her toxic work environment for the rest of her career. Stuck in a different kind of development hell, Violet (Olivia Munn) is a production executive working for an independent producer Tom (Dennis Boutsikaris) who expects her to leverage all manner of her personal life to get the job done. Living with life-long friend Red (Luke Bracey), a screenwriter blacklisted by Tom, she has been guided by a menacing conversation in her head she calls “the committee” (voiced by Justin Theroux) who serves as a gatekeeper between her reality and true happiness. The voice casts self doubt which is sometimes, but not always, contradicted by hand-written notes that appear over the image on screen. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (Kier-La Janisse)
Running for more than three hours, overflowing with film clips, and populated by truly insightful experts, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is a cinematic graduate-level course––in the best sense. Written, produced, and directed with stylistic verve by Kier-La Janisse, the documentary is a staggeringly immersive experience, all somber music, eerie singing, and unsettling, often gruesome imagery. It is also a creation that inspires the viewer to dive even further into the world of “folk horror.” Tracking down and watching the films highlighted here would be difficult, if not impossible, but that search is part of the fun. Make no mistake: folk horror is fun. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Anchor and Hope
Heart
Dear Son
Hospital of the Transfiguration
Blue
Berlin Alexanderplatz