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.
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
One of last year’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further proclaims Wells as a director with immense talent and overflowing care. – Michael F.
Where to Stream: Paramount+
AI
As AI invades our everyday life, some twenty years after Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick delivered the ultimate film about said subject, The Criterion Channel is here to spotlight the sci-fi films that explore artificial intelligence. The series features Dark Star (1974), Zardoz (1974), Demon Seed (1977), Electric Dreams (1984), Making Mr. Right (1987), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Johnny Mnemonic (1995), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Teknolust (2002), 2046 (2004), Computer Chess (2013), Her (2013), After Yang (2021), and Life After BOB: The Chalice Study (2021).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Air Doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Despite coming from one of international cinema’s foremost working filmmakers, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2009 film Air Doll had never seen a release in the U.S. Adapted by Kore-eda from Yoshiie Gōda’s manga series Kuuki Ningyo, it’s a modern retelling of the Galatea myth—in which the king Pygmalion fell in love with his ivory statue and the goddess Aphrodite brought the statue to life. For a 21st-century spin on the tale, Kore-eda naturally updated the statue to a blow-up sex doll, played by Bae Doona (Cloud Atlas, Sense8). – Mitchell B. (full review)
Where to Stream: OVID.tv
Biosphere (Mel Eslyn)
Biosphere feels like a movie Mark Duplass was born to lead. Small sci-fi with a provocative twist. One location, two characters, and a lot of talking. This is one of the pioneers behind the mumblecore subgenre, after all. Most of it works, and some it works really well. Written by Duplass and Mel Eslyn, with Eslyn directing (a longtime producer making her feature directorial debut), it stars Duplass and Sterling K. Brown as the last two living human beings on Earth. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Blackening (Tim Story)
The original short directed by Chioke Nassor asked a group of Black friends to choose who among them was the “blackest” as a sacrifice to save the rest. Why? Because the killer got confused when starting his spree, unable to find the “Black character” his trope-fueled brain demanded as its first victim. Hilarity ensues, everyone desperately trying to erase said blackness to keep breathing, revealing embarrassing (some unforgivable) secrets along the way. It’s an ingenious conceit for satire that’s perfectly suited for a full-fledged horror comedy willing to tread heavily in that vein while also holding some surprises up its sleeve. So that’s exactly what screenwriters Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (the lone holdover from that skit) do with Tim Story’s The Blackening. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Cotton Club Encore (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Cotton Club, Coppola’s sprawling tapestry of the Harlem Prohibition-era jazz scene, titled after the legendary club at its center, is simultaneously a prime example of both the filmmaker’s prowess with visual and narrative experimentation later on in his career, and of the tragic circumstances that brought about his fall from mainstream celebration. Perhaps unfairly maligned as a result of both its chaotic production and box office failings (and in spite of its share of critical praise), the original iteration of The Cotton Club finds its vast amount of talent–both on and off the screen–unfortunately overshadowed by evident studio interference, budgeting limitations, and traditional blockbuster expectations. Simply put: its messiness is distracting, even if it does come off an intentional and integral aspect of the work. The Encore, recovered from an old Betamax copy of the film with about twenty additional minutes of footage, restored to modern audiovisual standards, and self-financed for $500,000, improves on the number of flaws present in the original and generally allows the movie to be revisited with the grandeur of which it initially promised. – Jason O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Give My Poor Heart Ease (William Ferris)
Le Cinéma Club’s third annual Summer Music Festival, featuring films that celebrate the power of live music, continues with a slection by Dust-to-Digital, the Atlanta-based record company and curator of a beloved archive of musical discoveries from around the world. American folklorist William Ferris’s Give My Poor Heart Ease is a handmade and heartworn riff across the Mississippi Delta in search of the blues. Featuring improvised performances from B.B. King, inmates at Parchman Prison, and a virtuoso guitar-playing barber, the collected interviews and rhythms offer a rich display of one of America’s dearest musical traditions.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
The most famous and lauded of McCarthy adaptations also happens to be the best. Few regard his 2005 meta-genre novel––written as a screenplay in the ‘80s and turned into a novel much later––as the epitome of his work on the page, but by combining his literary sensibilities with their cinematic ones, the Coens produced an alchemy that still stands among the 21st century’s finest American films. Their most brilliant trick––one which no other filmmaker adapting McCarthy has yet reproduced––is tactically trimming the author’s verbiage to its sharpest tips while using the full breadth of their cinematic arsenal to capture the rhythm and meaning of his heightened prose. – Eli F. (full feature)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
After Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper confirms Olivier Assayas as the director most adept at drawing the best out of Kristen Stewart. Here she follows in the footsteps of Maggie Cheung and Asia Argento, actors whose exceptional central performances prevented fundamentally flawed films by Assayas – Clean and Boarding Gate, respectively – from foundering altogether. Stewart’s achievement is arguably even more remarkable considering that for the bulk of Personal Shopper’s running time, her only co-actor is an iPhone. – Giovanni M.C. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Quiet Girl (Colm Bairéad)
A thoroughly dull if not totally unpleasant work of nicecore cinema, The Quiet Girl is the case of a film being easy to dismiss but hard to hate. Are the intentions “good”? If hedging your bets around such a self-congratulatory gentle tone and story is, then yes. Yet it’s hard to deny how the story might touch anyone who’s moving past the pains of a difficult childhood with emotionally distant parents. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Sepa: Nuestro Señor de los milagros (Walter Saxer)
After years of working with someone like Werner Herzog, it seems you deserve some rest—especially after films as spectacular as Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both shot in Peru with grueling backstage problems that can be felt onscreen. That was the case for Walter Saxer, a Swiss producer who started as unit production manager in Herzog’s debut Even Dwarves Started Small, then retired and took residency in Iquitos, Peru, buying the hotel where the main production for both films was settled on, and turning it into a bed-and-breakfast called La Casa Fitzcarraldo. – Jaime G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Straub-Huillet: Early Works
An essential spotlight on the late Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet has arrived at Metrograph, playing both in theater and on their streaming platform, featuring The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, History Lessons, Machorka-Muff, and Not Reconciled.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Will-o’-the-Wisp (Joao Pedro Rodrigues)
A hopeful and bittersweet plea for a better future, Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ 67-minute oddity Will-o’-the-Wisp covers three periods in the life of Alfredo, a “Prince” of Portugal. If a little conceited and cutesy at times––perhaps “a musical comedy by” wasn’t literally needed to be specified in the opening credits––this a film that manages to remain likable throughout. Seemingly an accomplishment for something with so much on its mind. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Zoo Lock Down (Andreas Horvath)
In the spring of 2020, as the world collectively endured the terrifying and unifying horror that was the global COVID-19 pandemic, life didn’t change that much for certain sections of the population––the animal population, that is. As captured by Andreas Horvath in his observational, experimental documentary, the animals at Salzburg zoo carried out their everyday routines as usual. With no visitors getting in the way, the Austrian director was allowed more freedom to capture the reptitions and pecularities of this way of life, set against a score and rhythmic editing that at times verges on the unsettling. It’s an artistically compelling concoction that adds a disturbing layer to a rather simple endeavor.
Where to Stream: Fandor
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
’50s Kubrick
Breathless (1983)
British Noir
Dangerous Game
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Directed by Susan Seidelman
Eight Deadly Shots
Elvis!
Madeline’s Madeline
Mother of George
Showgirls
Summer 1993
Stanley Kwan’s New Wave Melodramas
Two Films by Masashi Yamamoto
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Synecdoche, New York
2046
The Exiles
Ivansxtc
Un Pur Esprit
Contemporary Color
The Idiots
Netflix
Clear and Present Danger
Titanic
Prime Video
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Cool Hand Luke
High Tension
Gaslight
Jackie Brown
The Limey
Night Moves
Ran
Saving Private Ryan