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 platforms. 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, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
American Pastoral (Ewan McGregor)
If my limited experience with Philip Roth adaptations is any indication, his novels deal in emotion. There are existential crises concerning identity involved, each a character study about life’s impact beyond the surface experiences propelling them forward. This isn’t something easily translated from page to screen when so much consists of internalized motivation. You must really look into the text, ignoring plot to find the core reactionary cause for everything occurring. If a daughter’s disappearance indelibly changes every second of her parents’ lives in the aftermath, we must see their psychology driving every move — not simply the over-the-top breakdowns shoving their turmoil in our faces. Success arrives in how powerful a pause between chaotic highs and lows proves. With American Pastoral, I only felt that power’s potential. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Streaming: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)
The Handmaiden is pure cinema — a tender, moving, utterly believable love story. It’s also a tense, unsettling, erotic masterpiece. There’s a palpable exhilaration that comes from watching this latest film from Park Chan-wook. From its four central performances and twisty script to the cinematography of Chung Chung-hoon and feverish, haunting score by Cho Young-wuk, The Handmaiden is crafted to take your breath away. It’s hard to imagine a 2016 film with a better look, feel, and sound. – Chris S.
Where to Streaming: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance)
Despite being packaged as the kind of period weepy Nicholas Sparks would kick himself for not coming up with first, it’s clear what attracted a director like Derek Cianfrance to The Light Between Oceans. In the breakout drama Blue Valentine and narratively ambitious follow-up The Place Beyond the Pines, he showed a fascination with relationships fractured by sin and the ripples of regret. Cianfrance finds another thematically fitting story in M. L. Stedman’s hit novel and brings a sense of naturalism in the locale, but he could’ve taken more daring liberties in the adaptation process. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Streaming: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Loving (Jeff Nichols)
Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton deliver remarkably nuanced performances in Loving, a late ’50s- / early ‘60s-set true life story of a mixed-race couple whose illegal marriage became a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court. Having tried his hand at the coming-of-age drama (Mud) and both small- and large-scale science fiction (Take Shelter and Midnight Special, respectively), the increasingly prolific Jeff Nichols branches out once more here to the awards season period drama. This heartwarming and wonderfully refined film might not do a whole lot of things we haven’t seen before in the civil rights-era picture, but it does the familiar stuff with enormous care and control. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Streaming: Amazon, iTunes, Google
I Am Michael (Justin Kelly)
Sure to ignite many impassioned discussions, I Am Michael tackles complex issues of sexuality and faith with a balanced view. The directorial debut of Justin Kelly, a past collaborator with Gus Vant Sant (who produces here), the drama’s formal elements aren’t as compelling as the ideas it wrestles with, but it does make for one of James Franco‘s more accomplished and complicated performances. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Streaming: iTunes
The Vessel (Julio Quintana)
Movies that wrestle with faith, religion, grief, and the melding of those three are not all that uncommon, but it is uncommon that they should approach these subjects in the same manner as The Vessel. Beginning from a place of immense tragedy before drilling down into the finer details of its effects, writer-director Julio Quintana‘s feature debut peers into every nook and cranny of sadness to find the ways in which it infects and alters its hosts. Shot with the sort of ethereal, haunted camerawork that makes one feel as though they are a ghost observing the soon-to-be-dead, this Terrence Malick-produced drama delivers a cinematic experience unlike any other you might find this year. – Brian R.
Where to Streaming: Amazon, iTunes, Google
Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore)
Say what you will about Michael Moore — as if it hasn’t already been said, and not at all from a single side of the two-party battle line — but the man knows how to fashion viewpoints and distribution methods into a fine point. Six years after Capitalism: A Love Story, the documentarian brings Where to Invade Next, a feature that will first play as thoroughly familiar to any of us who can envision his work at the drop of a hat. Give this a bit of time, though, and it becomes clear that he’s found a way to expand his interests. At play here is a multi-part (some would say shotgun-spray) outline that combines the common Moore question (what is a particular American system doing wrong?) with a query about how — not if, and only in a certain sense why — other countries are doing it better. Rather than the standard procession of interviews, clips, documents, etc. revolving around one pressing matter, Invade uses a pressing matter as the springboard for a greatest-hits collection. Violence! Education! Institutional corruption! Factory conditions! The doings of politicians! You probably had some vision of what you would be getting when you heard Moore made a new feature. This time, you’ll be getting it in spades. – Nick N. (full review)
Where to Streaming: Amazon Prime
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
A Patch of Fog (review)
Long Nights Short Mornings (review)
Inferno (review)
Trolls
Amazon Prime
FilmStruck
Amarcord
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Where is My Friend’s House?
The Intruder
The Films of Agnes Varda
MUBI (free 30-day trial)
Americano
Bad Day to Go Fishing
Pit Stop
Spider Baby Or, The Maddest Story Ever Told
The Yakuza Papers 4: Police Tactics
The Ninth Configuration
The Red and the White
Netflix
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon