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.
The Batman (Matt Reeves)
Over the 80 years of his comic book, televised, and cinematic existence, Batman has always grappled with his secretive dual identity. Bruce Wayne hobnobs and toasts champagne with fellow philanthropic one-percenters during the day, while his Caped Crusader alter-ego attempts to clean up Gotham City and its never-ending crime problem at night, a particularly torturous method of dealing with childhood trauma. But in The Batman, director Matt Reeves’ moody and riveting addition to the canon, that binary is mostly absent. The cape and cowl isn’t so much a nocturnal costume as it is around-the-clock attire. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Brut Force (Eve Symington)
Finding a unique location to place a neo-noir––a genre usually synonymous with the concrete jungles of cities––Eve Symington’s directorial debut Brut Force is set within California’s central coast wine country. Led by Lelia Symington, Tyler Posey, Vico Escorcia, and Patricia Velásquez, the slow-boiling thriller has a number of hallmarks of the genre––most notably an insular small community with secrets to unravel and the one person to tug at the strings to do so. With a strong style, Symington brings a keen understanding of the aesthetic trademarks of neo-noir, though her script lacks the complexity to make the mystery a memorable one.
Where to Stream: VOD
Cypress Hill: Insane In The Brain (Estevan Oriol)
Not unlike Coodie & Chike’s vast, decades-spanning documentation for jeen-yuhs, released early this year, director Estevan Oriol has amassed quite an archive when it comes to the journey of Cypress Hill. Forming the foundation of a new documentary, along with more conventional talking head interviews, Cypress Hill: Insane In The Brain is a treat for both fans and newcomers alike. As someone raised with more appreciation and awareness of the east coast rap scene, to get insight into the rise of the hip hop superstars and their hand in cannabis legalization reform makes for quite the illuminating journey.
Where to Stream: Showtime
Delta Space Mission (Mircea Toia and Călin Cazan)
Dug out from the deep space archives, Mircea Toia and Călin Cazan’s long-lost, psychedelic animation Delta Space Mission has been restored in 4K from the camera negative by the Romanian Film Archive and Romanian Film Centre, and is now rolling out in the U.S. courtesy of Deaf Crocodile and Grasshopper Film. Fans of Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet will find much to appreciate here, along with a visual and aural approach that seems ripped from videogames of the era. While the story can more or less feel indiscernible––at least on the first go-around––take the substance of your choice and you’re in for quite a trip.
Where to Stream: Projectr.tv
Silence (Martin Scorsese)
Described in sequential order, Silence‘s string of narrative incidents hold a clarity (one might just say “simplicity”) that could’ve been the driving force of a more straightforward director’s respectable, unremarkable, adaptation. Scorsese, co-writer Jay Cocks, DP Rodrigo Prieto, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker‘s effort — not to mention the effort of a wide cast and crew who’ve left no detail to spare (those costumes! those sets! those locations they found!) — only grants access to what its protagonists know, or, rather — and far more troublingly — what they claim to know. Excepting a few suspense-building touches in its first stretches, and before a third-act breaking of the spirit, Silence is mostly positioned as a first-person story that subsumes viewers into the total conviction of an other’s faith; in so aggressively doing, it only makes more doubtable that the purity of his intentions are synonymous with total reason or compassion. – Nick N. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
To the Night (Peter Brunner)
If you, as I, are the type to presume that a “dramaturgical assistant” is some form of midlevel job in a hospital’s oncology department you might be startled to see that none other than the great Michael Haneke is credited on the promotional material of To The Night–an unrelenting new work from filmmaker Peter Brunner–as being that very thing. We are, naturally, being rather facetious here. The film in question, which follows an artist/arsonist’s (artsonist’s?) creative attempts to get over the horrific loss of his family–who perished in a fire from which he himself was the lone survivor–is in fact the third feature film from Brunner, a 35-year-old Austrian director who was, as it turns out, a student of Haneke’s at the Vienna Film Academy. If one’s old professor happens to have two Palme d’Ors and an Oscar lying around, why not ask them to assist on some dramaturgy? – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Sexual Drive (Kôta Yoshida)
If Ryûsuke Hamaguchi satiated your appetite for Japanese triptychs with the best film of last year, and you are now seeking more to devour, look no further. Kôta Yoshida’s Fantasia Fest favorite Sexual Drive, which offers a compact, 70-minute compendium of three stories involving food and sex, is now available digitally. Led by Manami Hashimoto, Ryô Ikeda, Mukau Nakamura, Honami Satô, Tateto Serizawa, Shogen, and Rina Takeda, the unconventional triptych is equal parts thriller, sex comedy, and gastronomy.
Where to Stream: VOD
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair premiered at Sundance in 2021 and hasn’t left my mind since. Jane Schoenbrun’s film is about a teen girl named Casey who takes the World’s Fair Challenge (an online role-playing horror game) and slowly but surely documents the changes that may (or may not) be happening to her. Its deceptively simple plot description hides what a rich text exists within; an ambitious and haunting coming-of-age story that also happens to be one of the most loaded queer films in years. – Juan B.
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Amazon Prime
Pain & Gain
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
The Criterion Channel
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
MUBI (free for 30 days)
My Golden Days
Queen of Versailles
La Ricotta
Someone to Love
Dog
The Visitor
Croupier
Shudder