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.
Birth/Rebirth (Laura Moss)
Likely a film that some will find underwhelming due to its lowkey, mostly affectless style, it’s a rather impressive feat of narrative economy that manages to separate itself from the seemingly endless indie horror crop. Directed by Laura Moss, there’s the sense they either don’t have much of a feel for the genre or rather harbors a general disdain for the shorthands it’s fallen into (hopefully they don’t get absorbed into bad studio product soon), the film’s tendencies refreshingly feel free of the trappings of calling-card cinema. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Shudder, AMC+
The Curse (Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie)
Following up the discomfitingly brilliant The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder has now joined forces with Benny Safdie, Emma Stone, and the Zellner Brothers for a look behind the scenes of the makings of a reality show. However, at least judging from screening the first three episodes, it’s not about the final product but rather the situations fabricated to ensure the audiences’ maximum attention. As smartly written as the show is, it’s just as interesting to see Fielder explore a narrative playing field, adopting a new kind of character.
Where to Stream: Paramount+ with Showtime
A Different Score (Anaïs Ngbanzo)
In her directorial debut, Anaïs Ngbanzo documents Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) as he prepares to perform selected pieces by the late esteemed composer Julius Eastman. Cutting between previously unseen footage of Eastman and Hynes’s reflections on the avant-garde artist, Ngbanzo produces the first documentary portrait of an unsung fixture of the New York music scene.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
The Eternal Memory (Maite Alberdi)
Filmmaker Maite Alberdi seems keen to remind us non-fiction cinema can belong to different genres rather than reinforce some notion that they are a genre unto themselves. In the delightful The Mole Agent she delivered a thriller of the absurd; a bittersweet detective movie in which an elderly man infiltrates a nursing home where there are suspicions of elderly abuse. With The Eternal Memory, she tackles romance and tells one of the most moving love stories in ages. – Jose S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Paramount+ w/ Showtime
Dicks: The Musical (Larry Charles)
When God (Bowen Yang) sees two virile young men plowing women, selling gears, and telling everyone they know that they do both of those things better than anyone else He ever created, He also sees their profound sadness. Because despite living their best lives, Craig (Josh Sharp) and Trevor (Aaron Jackson) don’t know love. Not familial love. One never had a father. The other never had a mother. And, as everyone knows, a one-parent home isn’t really a home at all. No, it’s borderline child abuse. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Foe (Garth Davis)
Foe’s potential is immense. The new sci-fi drama from director Garth Davis, who garnered acclaim after 2016’s Lion, stars beloved under-30 actors in Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan. It’s adapted from a book by Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things).The two Irish stars play an American couple, Henrietta and Junior, living in the Midwest later this century, existing in a world ravaged by a climate crisis that’s caused an unending drought. An unknown man named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) visits their farm, claiming that Junior must go to space to help save the human species while Henrietta stays behind with a clone of her husband. Foe has a solid director, a great cast, and a good-enough premise. The movie, considered against its potential, borders on laughable and cements itself as inane. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Killer (David Fincher)
Murderers abound in the cinema of David Fincher, yet up until now they’ve tended to operate on the margins (Se7en, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) or hardly appeared at all (Zodiac, Gone Girl). Fincher returns with The Killer, premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival and a film that plays to his directorial strengths and artistry. Based on Alexis “Matz” Nolent and Luc Jacamon’s popular series of French comics from the late ’90s, The Killer is the first of Fincher’s crime stories to not only place the criminal at its center but to delight in the ruthless rationalizations of his inner mind. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Midsommar (Ari Aster)
Midsommar split open my year like few films can. Getting the chance to catch both cuts (the director’s cut is tremendous) throughout the summer solidified writer-director Ari Aster’s sophomore feature as the horror odyssey to beat. Aster ditches the stilfied interiors and calculated precision of Hereditary for a more elemental, flowing picture, capitalizing on Florence Pugh’s God-tier performance and backing her talents with visual ingenuity and immersive sound design. Aster’s orchestration of bodies within a frame, and his play with wide angle and deep-focus photography creates a rich sensory experience, allowing the film to glide like the breeze while still twisting the screw toward incurable puncture wounds. This all builds toward a coda carried on Pugh’s shoulders, elevated by a searing, cranked up score, and bellowed like an exhalation—and obliteration—of trauma and grief. – Mike M.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Scrapper (Charlotte Regan)
It feels serendipitous that Scrapper, a somber slice-of-life British melodrama, screened at the Sundance Film Festival just days after hysterical reporting on Prince Harry’s book, Spare, and the announcement of King Charles’ coronation plans. Finding it a bit hard to sympathize and identify with––or care about––the ongoing drama surrounding the U.K.’s Royal Family? You can bet the characters in Scrapper wouldn’t care less, either. Audience members watching Charlotte Regan’s film will, however, care deeply about 12-year-old Georgie and her existence on the outskirts of London. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Squaring the Circle (Anton Corbijn)
You are likely familiar with the photographs and narrative films of Anton Corbijn (Control, The American, A Most Wanted Man), but now the artist has directed his first-ever documentary on a subject he knows well. Squaring the Circle, a Sundance and Telluride selection, entertainingly examines the work of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio, Hipgnosis. Featuring brand-new interviews with Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Gabriel, Noel Gallagher, and more, the documentary charts how the pair were responsible for some of the most recognizable album covers of all-time, including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run, and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, all three of which celebrate their 50th anniversaries this year. Read my interview with Corbijn.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie)
The transcendent central performance by Adam Sandler, the masterful cacophony of synths and percussion on Daniel Lopatin’s score, the incredible ways it builds and amplifies tension; much has been made of the latest film from Josh and Benny Safdie. A focal point of cultural discourse for months before its general release, it’s easy to forget there’s a beating heart at the center of Uncut Gems underneath the widespread fixation on Sandler’s instantly viral jeweled Furby and the layered aesthetics of the Safdies’ vision of New York. It’s this core that ties everything together and helps the film ascend to true greatness. Bolstered by an unrelenting tension and endless formal pleasures, the film never loses sight of a bigger thesis. – Logan K. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
Hulu
Edge of Tomorrow
The League
Prisoner’s Daughter
Metrograph at Home
Bitter Money
Three Sisters
Netflix
The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Prime Video
X
VOD
Dumb Money
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