With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Black Westerns
An often overlooked aspect of the western genre is the emergence of the Black-led films born around the Civil Rights era and continuing throughout the century. With essential context from guest programmer and film scholar Mia Mask, The Criterion Channel is now presenting a series of these works, including Rutledge (1960), Duel at Diablo (1966), The Learning Tree (1969), El Condor (1970), Skin Game (1971), Black Rodeo (1972), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Legend of Black Charley (1972), Thomasine and Bushrod (1974), Posse (1993), Buffalo Soldiers (1997), and Rosewood (1997).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)
Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas, Maggie Cheung delivered one of the best performances of her career in Stanley Kwan’s lush, definitive, and boldly conceived biopic Center Stage, also known as Actress. Now gorgeously restored in 4K from the original negative, and approved by Kwan himself, the film follows Cheung as iconic silent film star Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame. With Cheung receiving the Best Actress award at Berlinale, the film also mixes in interviews dissecting acting and fame, while also interspersing actual footage from Ruan Lingyu’s films. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
Come True (Anthony Scott Burns)
The darkened screen is almost pitch black before we can begin to discern shapes in the distance. First it’s wooden stakes in the ground at what looks to be a trailhead of sorts. Next it’s a mountain in the distance. Finally we come to a door that swings open as though we’ve been placed inside a videogame merging the puzzle mechanics of Myst with the brooding aesthetic of Hellraiser only to continue moving forward towards a bald figure with back turned—unmoving and foreboding with a mysterious air that can conjure nothing besides dread. And suddenly it’s over with a cut to Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) awakening from a nightmare, bundled inside a sleeping bag and laying atop a playground slide. The day commences. The images slightly fade. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
Death Proof in particular was supposed to be Quentin Tarantino’s ultimate gift to the movies he grew up on. The problem: no one saw it. While Tarantino has been largely deitized, ten years later, it’s still the only film from the director that hasn’t been reclaimed as some sort of lost classic, and the sad truth of the matter is that it should be. In indulging his own childhood film fantasies, Tarantino distilled the very vibe of his movies into a thunderous roar of total cinematic adrenaline and effortless cool. – Willow M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
F.T.A. (Francine Parker)
Against the star-spangled, quilted backdrop of what looks like it could be a friendly, amateur Fourth of July talent show, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and the company of the FTA Show raise their fists and middle fingers to the United States Armed Forces. They’re accompanied by the raucous cheers from thousands of enlisted service members who make up a fraction of the reported 64,000 total GI attendees over the course of the FTA Show’s tour through U.S. military bases in Hawai’i, the Philippines, and Japan. At each station they delight in having an outlet to tell their employers to screw off and set the date to get them back home. – Shayna W. (full review)
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)
History, art, ideology, and love make up the four pillars of Ephraim Asili’s The Inheritance, a thrillingly alive debut feature that resides both inside the square rooms of a West Philadelphia house and outside the boundaries of genre. As its title suggests, to assume the past experiences, lessons, and artistic creations of others can be liberating. But there’s also great personal responsibility to pass on that knowledge in some productive way. – Glenn H. (full review)
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
Quo vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Zbanic)
Some stories don’t leave room for a hero even if they provide ample opportunity for one to enter. And when it comes to the 1995 Bosnian genocide that occurred in the town of Srebrenica at the hands of the Serbian army, there’s hardly room for hope let alone saviors. With over eight thousand men murdered while the UN and the world looked on, what is truly left but mourning and memorial? What is there to say besides the truth of its horrors so that those who were blind and/or ignorant to these people’s plight can begin to understand? That’s ultimately writer/director Jasmila Zbanic’s goal with Quo vadis, Aida? as someone who knows all too well having survived a siege on Sarajevo. Mankind cannot afford to forget. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
A seminal documentary, and one of the most essential films of all time, IFC Films is bringing Claude Lanzmann’s magnum opus Shoah on demand for a whole new generation of audiences to witness. Exploring the scope of Hitler’s “Final Solution” through interviews from survivors of the Holocaust, witnesses, and participants of the atrocities committed during the genocide, the film has received its first-ever on demand digital release. – Margaret R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor)
Halfway through Dominga Sotomayor’s movingly tender coming-of-age tale Too Late to Die Young (Tarde Para Morir Joven), my mind jolted back to a movie I saw and instantly fell for a couple of months prior, Carla Simón’s Summer 1993. It took me a while to figure out why. Summer 1993 is set in early 1990s Catalunya; Sotomayor’s takes place at the decade’s outset, but on the opposite side of the world: a commune nestled in the arid cordillera towering above Chile’s capital, Santiago. Yet at some fundamental level, the two films speak the same language. Underlying Sotomayor’s follow-up to her 2012 feature debut and Rotterdam Tiger Award winner Thursday Till Sunday is a deep-seated nostalgia – the same longing for a long-gone era that rang achingly true in Summer 1993. – Leo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Winter Brothers (Hlynur Palmason)
It opens in darkness — the beams from headlamp flashlights and sparks of metal on rock our only points of illumination. This is the oppressive environment holding the over-worked and under-paid miners while their boss sits in his factory office without a care as to who the men in his employ are besides a social security number. They let off steam with a bottle of homebrew alcohol to cut the monotony of their daily routines before returning to their respective trailers back in town that barely deserve the label shelter. It’s a futile existence that simply churns along with little in the way of excitement besides the possibility of a cave-in risking each of their lives. So when someone falls ill and the system is altered, everyone takes notice. Writer/director Hlynur Palmason puts us in this dark and aggressive locale to ensure we know these men to be hard-workers with little time for nonsense. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
Women Make Film
Boat People
Mandabi
George Eastman House
Hulu
I Still Hide to Smoke
Blue Film Woman
Vever (For Barbara)
A Month of Single Frames
Beloved Sisters
Rabbit Hole