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.
Billy (Zachary Epcar)
An emerging experimental filmmaker uses a series of 16mm close-ups to capture the textures and objects that characterize suburban life in this short horror film inspired by the ‘90s soap opera Melrose Place. Zachary Epcar’s approach to presenting household items––plastic FIJI water bottles, Nespresso pods, Amazon packages––using a combination of sharp visuals and eerie sounds produces a nightmarish thrill-ride through the suburbs that renders commodity culture itself as a movie monster.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Blackout (Larry Fessenden)
As with Depraved, writer-director Larry Fessenden returns to the world of classic, Universal-inspired monsters in Blackout. Whereas that title brought the mythos of Frankenstein’s monster (and its ample room for social commentary) into the present-day, this latest update shifts focus towards the so-called “wolfman.” – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Coup de Chance (Woody Allen)
Making a very natural transition into classy Francophone cinema, here he has the choice of a potential royal flush of French stars. (Though Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve, who have sounded-out collaborating with him in interviews, are absent amidst many more.) Coup de Chance is rather pleasurable in and of itself: a parlor game for long-suffering Woodyheads to tick off the typical tics and reflexes while marveling at how consistent and industrious his story-construction skills (if not other literary faculties) remain. – David K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen)
The kind of movie made to stumble upon surfing cable at 2 am in a half-awake, half-intoxicated stupor, Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls aims for a lower artistic bar than anything the director (and certainly his brother) has previously approached, which accounts for much of its charm. Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke first completed the script some two decades ago––titled Drive-Away Dykes both then and now, if one goes by the end credits––and the film’s B-movie, pleasure-first appeal lies in the feeling that they simply dusted off a copy and immediately embarked on production. A slapdash narrative populated with eminently likable characters best described as joke-delivering caricatures, this marvelously queer road-trip comedy caper is a fleet-footed ride designed to pack in as much sex, violence, and psychedelic mind trips as an 84-minute runtime will allow. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Peacock
Ennio (Giuseppe Tornatore)
“A director can’t understand the final result from a description. You cannot describe music; it needs to be listened to.” So says Ennio Morricone in one of many talking-head sections that comprise Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary. But Ennio, as it’s aptly titled, can feel part-documentary, part-video essay, and, yes, part-talking head compilation. It’s 156 minutes, but even the first four hint at its simplicity. A barrage of musicians, producers, and filmmakers spout what the film quickly compresses into glorified soundbites. Morricone was a towering artist. Audiences already knew this. But Tornatore doesn’t fully unpack the composer’s impact; he does more to describe it. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Films from Whitney Biennial 2024
In an exciting new collaboration, MUBI has partnered with The Whitney Museum of American Art to present a selection of eight films from their film program as part of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing. The selections feature Siku Allooloo’s Spirit Emulsion, Seba Calfuqueo’s TRAY TRAY KO, Kite’s Pahá kiŋ lená wakháŋ (These hills are sacred), Ligia Lewis’ A Plot, A Scandal, Nyala Moon’s Dilating for Maximum Results, Raqs Media Collective’s The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time Cone, Penelope Spheeris’ I Don’t Know, and Clarissa Tossin’s Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los volcanes canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing.
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Glitter & Doom (Tom Gustafson)
Let’s start here: the production design in Tom Gustafson’s Glitter & Doom is impeccable, colorful, and memorable. Too often these days films lack an adventurous color palette. Here we have a welcome outlier. Production designer Geo Martínez breathes life into each frame. Next there’s the music. The film is a musical set to the indelible tunes of the Indigo Girls, the folk-rock duo (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, who both cameo) that became a household name in the late ’80s and early ’90s with hits like “Closer to Fine” and “Galileo.” Without question are music and lyrics the most essential piece of this problematically simple narrative. These artists are long overdue for legacy-laden admiration and celebration. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
Though far better known by its English title, the appropriately elegiac Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 masterpiece bears a rather different name in Mandarin (rendered here via pinyin): Bú sàn, which roughly translates to “never leaving,” or—if one prefers the Sartre connotation—“no exit.” It forms the root of two distinctly contradictory Chinese idioms, which perfectly encapsulate the lamentation and beauty of Tsai’s film: Tiān xià méi yǒu bù sàn de yán xí, the infamous “all good things must come to an end,” and Bù jiàn bù sàn, which more or less means “even if we don’t see each other, don’t give up and leave,” or “I’m not leaving until I see you.” – Ryan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
The Greatest Hits (Ned Benson)
Although not selected for the phenomenal soundtrack for Ned Benson’s follow-up to his similarly themed The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, Metric’s “Now or Never Now” nearly sums up the plot of his oft-sublime The Greatest Hits. Harriet (Lucy Boynton), a librarian mourning the loss of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), is triggered by songs that marked their relationship. An obsessive cataloger (a great quality for a librarian), she has mapped-out the trajectory of their relationships in songs and memorabilia that she accesses in a controlled environment. For the rest of her life there are noise-canceling headphones that she uses to block out songs that send her back into the past. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Io Capitano (Matteo Garrone)
Matteo Garrone’s talent for weaving stories out of the fabric of real events––especially those involving desperate or violent people––gets another airing in Io Capitano, an engrossing, visceral portrait of one young man’s brutal journey from Senegal to the coast of Italy. The director won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2008 for Gomorrah, his defining, excoriating portrait of the Camorra crime syndicate, and he performed the trick again ten years later in Dogman, inspired by a gruesome gangland murder in Rome. He’s also had success in comedies (Reality) and fantasy (Tale of Tales), but his new film is an epic embracing the defining issue of Italian politics right now––the flow of refugees crossing the Mediterranean heading for Europe––making a potentially abstract, no-less-urgent topic tactile and approachable. – Ed F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
LaRoy, Texas (Shane Atkinson)
Shane Atkinson’s debut sets itself in the ever-so-small town of LaRoy. Ray (John Magaro) is a man living the simple life, married to the local beauty-pageant queen and working at his family’s hardware store alongside his brother, Junior (Matthew Del Negro). He’s not unhappy, but not quite happy either. His existence depends on raising enough money for his wife Stacy-Lynn (Megan Stevenson) to open a salon. Her happiness results in his own happiness. Unfortunately, she’s not happy––at least not with Ray. – Michael F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Riddle of Fire (Weston Razooli)
A selection at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and TIFF’s Midnight Madness last year, Weston Razooli’s singular debut Riddle of Fire follows a group of mischievous children who embark on a woodland odyssey to deliver a pie, battle a witch, outwit a huntsman, befriend a fairy, and become best friends forever. Ankit Jhunjhunwala said in his review, “Films with child protagonists present a unique tonal challenge. If overly saccharine whimsy can alienate an adult audience, having precocious kids delivering mannered performances can seem too stylized and divorced from reality––what, say, Wes Anderson has a skill for, many others do not possess. With his debut feature Riddle of Fire, director Weston Razooli tries locating the balance between extremes to uneven results. On paper, this is a kids’ fantasy, action-adventure film, yet it’s difficult to discern the precise audience to whom it may appeal.”
Where to Stream: VOD
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: Netflix
Suzume (Makoto Shinkai)
About a third of the way through pop-sensation anime auteur Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume (a third, at least, by my rough estimation––time is a flat circle in this shapeless, repetitive film) the breakneck progression of plot incidents slows down for a moment so two teen girls can have a conversation about love and dating. Shinkai doesn’t feel compelled to show us the actual content of this conversation: he simply cuts to the characters’ stereotypical reactions. OMG! Boys are terrible!! Wink wink, tee hee! The film treats this as an emotionally substantive bonding moment. (Why else would it be there?) One of these girls is the titular protagonist; the other is an incidental character never to be heard from again. – Eli F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s first masterpiece of 2021, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, is an endlessly playful and inventive triptych. Exploring the thorniness of love, sparks of connection, and mistaken identities across three stunning vignettes, Hamaguchi’s skill at writing dialogue that is as entertaining as it is moving has never been sharper. On any given day my preferred of the three shorts changes, but there’s certainly no funnier or surprising sequence in cinema this year than revenge gone awry between Nao (Mori Katsuki) and Professor Segawa (Shibukawa Kiyohiko).
Where to Stream: Film Movement+
Also New to Streaming
Apple TV+
Argylle
The Nice Guys
Hulu
Lakota Nation vs. United States
Metrograph at Home
Sweet Dreams
Take Me Somewhere Nice
Netflix
Disappear Completely
The Look of Silence
OVID.tv
Counting
Museum Hours
Prime Video
Henry Fool
Ismael’s Ghost
Jackknife
Ran
Tokyo Godfathers
Tubi
Klondike
Pather Panchali
Rashomon
VOD
One Life