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.
Africans with Mainframes (Kima Hibbert)
What if electronic music was invented in the 1920s by Black sharecroppers in the American South? That’s the premise of Kima Hibbert’s debut short, in which a reclusive blogger uncovers a major conspiracy surrounding the origins of electronic music.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Bottoms (Emma Seligman)
It’s beginning to feel like South By Southwest is the Rachel Sennott Festival. After breaking out there three years ago with Shiva Baby (the movie premiered as a short in 2018 and would have again as a feature in 2020 if not for the pandemic), she made waves last year in Austin with sleeper horror hit Bodies Bodies Bodies. Now Sennott’s back with Bottoms, one of two new movies she’s headlining this week, and which adopts many characteristics of an SXSW offering: it’s gay, it’s bloody, and it’s horny. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
The Crime Is Mine (François Ozon)
As inevitable as a new day comes another François Ozon film––accomplishing the deft task of feeling equally breezy and clever, but never clearing an overall low ceiling of quality. Maintaining this pattern is The Crime Is Mine (whose awkwardly translated international title makes more sense in light of seeing the film), an Ozon which surprisingly skipped much of the international festival circuit and thus the critical corps’ frustration with his sometimes glib efficiency; it was a commercial-enough proposition to go straight to theaters, with a strong appeal to an older segment of the audience. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Good Time (Josh and Benny Safdie)
Like waking up to start your day in your dingy flat, only to realize you dosed three tabs of high-grade LSD before drifting off the night before; as the room shifts, your confusion rapidly develops into heart-thumping stress as you remember you have something really goddamn important to do today — life or death sorta stuff. This is the feverish, ultra-anxiety-inducing sensation that Good Time plunges viewers into from its opening seconds. A sort of cinema delirium, it pulses with a vibrant potency that reminds you film can grab you by the throat; I barely breathed, and I loved every second. – Mike M.
Where to Stream: Tubi
The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin)
A knockout gut-punch off the ropes, The Iron Claw traces the devastating true story of the Von Erich family, a 1980s Texas wrestling dynasty comprising several brothers whose deep talents in the ring eventually collapsed under the weight of their exploitative, domineering father (Holt McCallany). As the eldest sibling, Kevin, Zac Efron turns in a transformative performance, navigating Sean Durkin’s visceral and intimate American fable with a roided-out musculature––all while trying to ward off a family curse of personal catastrophe. “If we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us,” Kevin remembers his father telling him. But outside the ring, that philosophy became a death sentence of tragic proportion. – Jake K-S.
Where to Stream: VOD
The Lost City (Aaron and Adam Nee)
Without yelling at the clouds too loudly, let me just say: the theatrical experience is rough out there. There are still multiple screens dedicated to a certain web-slinging behemoth at any given cineplex. It’s an ever-present reminder that commerce is thriving, and movies for adults are, well, not. The rom-com, and studio comedies in general, have been all but relegated to streaming for some time now, that is if they aren’t chunked up into eight hour-long episodes as content fodder. It’s a hostile environment for a big-budget Sandra Bullock romance vehicle, but here we are. Despite those odds, The Lost City is a respite, an oasis, for anyone just looking to get away. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Lost in the Night (Amat Escalante)
When Rigoberto Duplas, the worrying conceptual artist and antagonist of Amat Escalante’s new film, tells Emiliano, our steadfast lead, that the cheap glass in his modernist mansion has a tendency to “rattle,” it sounds like a dig. Luckily, it’s a tendency our hero doesn’t share. Played with furrowed seriousness by Juan Daniel García (a standout in the recent Robe of Gems), Emiliano is the most convincing part of Escalante’s muddled mystery: a film about a young man on a mission to avenge his mother who disappeared after protesting the sale of a local mine. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Neptune Frost (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman)
Neptune Frost—the directorial debut from poet, rapper, actor, performer Saul Williams (co-helmed with Anisia Uzeyman)—exists in a state of singularity, teetering between present and future. Set in a makeshift village in Rwanda and featuring musical elements composed by Williams, the drama looks at technology, capitalism, and the big machine, and raises a middle finger by promoting protest, gender fluidity, and cosmic connection. Repetition becomes an anthem as Williams’ characters, a coltan miner and intersex runaway, find one another through shared dreams. It’s full of anger, passion, love, and a collective desire to impact the world and those that run it from high places. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
Several 2023 films share a desire to understand humanity’s worst tendencies through the eyes of perpetrators and the complicity that enables them. With Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan wields objectivity and subjectivity to unpack the motives behind innovating one of America’s greatest atrocities. It’s a portrait of brilliance choked by arrogance, naivete, and constant equivocation. Bringing these into conflict, Nolan avoids stodgy biopic form and instead traffics in backroom thriller––a once-in-a-generation experience yielding exhilaration and devastation. – Conor O.
Where to Stream: Peacock
Strange Way of Life (Pedro Almodóvar)
In preparation for his English-language feature debut, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest work is a stylish 30-minute western melodrama of heartbreak starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as their characters reunite after a 25-year absence. While it doesn’t strike a chord as much as the Spanish master’s feature-length works, and would have greatly benefitted from a bigger canvas, it’s still an interesting experiment and, above all, a great acting showcase.
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Hulu
The Abyss
Joan Baez: I Am a Noise
The Pod Generation
Next Goal Wins
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Lovely & Amazing
La Antena
Sorry to Bother You
Netflix
High-Rise
She’s Gotta Have It
Prime Video
Frailty
Husbands
This Is Me… Now
Tubi
Border
Colossal
Memories of a Murder
Possessor