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.
Abel Ferrara
One of America’s boldest auteurs is getting a much-deserved spotlight. The Criterion Channel is now streaming the work of Abel Ferrara, featuring The Driller Killer, Ms .45, Fear City, China Girl, King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, Body Snatchers, Dangerous Game, The Addiction, The Blackout, New Rose Hotel, ’R Xmas, Napoli, Napoli, Napoli, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, Welcome to New York, The Projectionist, Tommaso, Padre Pio, and Turn in the Wound.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler)
Writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler paints an intimate portrait of a woman trying to reckon with her fractured identity, trying not to fall into the grip of madness. Mumenthaler understands that motherhood requires an element of performance that reminds the mother that her life is no longer hers alone. Though the love for her daughter is still there inside, she cowers from it, preoccupied with inspecting the current shape of her life. In therapy, Lina expresses a fear of water’s power and the strength of a current that could wash her away. It’s as if she now knows the fragility of her existence, and that the confidence that once governed her was washed away when she jumped off the bridge. Despite the eccentricity of her fears, the emotions behind them are painfully relatable to any woman who feels that the inertia of her life has taken over. – Jourdain S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Kino Film Collection
Erupcja (Pete Ohs)
It’s no coincidence that Bethany (Charli xcx) and Rob (Will Madden) find themselves in Warsaw. While an obvious fact—she recommended the Polish city as an alternative destination when he suggested Paris—it’s also a familiar escape hatch now that things have grown serious. Because Bethany senses a proposal on the horizon. She’s lived with Rob for a year in London and he’s started hinting about a surprise for his “love.” It’s time to pull the ripcord. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
I Want Your Sex (Gregg Araki)
I Want Your Sex is Araki, at 66 years old, telling the younger generation that while life experiences can be painful and messy––and the flight instinct might scream at them to stay home and avoid at all cost––the alternative of being old and reflecting on missed opportunities is far more painful. To put it in more Araki-like terms: you only live once, so stop watching so much porn and get out there and connect with (i.e. bang) one another. Tracy gives Elliot countless mini-speeches to such effect, ranging from the entertaining to overly didactic. Elliot occasionally pushes back on Tracy’s dismissive attitude, at one point laying out a host of factors for why his generation isn’t having sex. But like Tracy’s speechifying, this retort feels unnatural, as if pulled from a think piece in the Atlantic or New York Times. – Caleb H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)(Lucrecia Martel)
There is a direct and conscious through-line between Lucrecia Martel’s previous historical film Zama to her contemporary legal documentary Nuestra Tierra. We see the lives of indigenous communities in Argentina continue to be treated with little regard and a clear class and racial fissure exists in the nation. Martel films the court scenes and the footage of the disputed land as two battlegrounds spanning time. The murder of the Chuchagasta indigenous community leader Javie Chocobar at the hands of corrupt businessmen and bureaucrats reflects and mirrors the history of Argentina as, to this day, a disputed territory. While Martel’s cinema is known for its heavy use of metaphor, blending of fantasy and realism with impressionistic camerawork, this is a movie that pares everything down to cinema’s base elements, making crystal clear what is at stake. – Soham G.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Ricky (Rashad Frett)
Ricky (Stephen James) has only been out of prison a few weeks, but the real world has already become too much for him. His parole officer Joanne (Sheryl Lee Ralph) keeps showing up at his house to berate him. His mother Winsome (Simbi Kali) treats him like he’s already a lost cause. He just lost a job that was supposed to be guaranteed by childhood friend Terrence (Sean Nelson). Fifteen years ago he convinced Ricky to do a robbery with him; when the heat came down on them, Terrence split and Ricky was left with the consequences. And having spent so much of his life in prison, he doesn’t know how to be around people anymore. He struggles to speak and look others in the eye. He’s a strong guy with muscles and an imposing stature, but inside it’s like he’s still that scared teenager who was arrested all those years ago. He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it, but Ricky has one thing going for him––he knows how to cut hair. With dreams of opening a barbershop one day, Ricky attempts to build a life for himself. – Jourdain S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Romería (Carla Simón)
Continuing in the low-key register of her Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, Carla Simón returns with Romería, another tale of intergenerational dissonance. A film about the stories families choose to tell and the ones they bury deep inside, it unfurls on Spain’s Atlantic coast, where 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) hopes to reunite with her paternal family. It’s also a story about displacement and yearning for lost roots, themes that cut close to the bone for a director whose parents died of AIDS when she was still a child, and who reunited with her father’s family in the town of Vigo, Galicia, where the film is set, at the same age. Simón has always been an autobiographical filmmaker; Romería might be her most personal work yet. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Teenage Wasteland (Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss)
In 1991, Middletown High School teacher Fred Isseks started an elective class that every student wanted to take. “Electronic English” introduced teenagers to new media and emerging art forms, providing them access to camcorders, editing machines, and digital photography. Each day, students filmed music videos, shot horror movies, and hosted talk shows, developing their broadcast and rap skills in an environment that encouraged creativity and the kind of collaboration and critical thinking that other classes couldn’t. – Jake K-S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
The Ballad of Narayama
The Beguiled
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Blue Velvet
Boogie Nights
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Clean
Days and Nights in the Forest
Desperately Seeking Susan
Detention
Distant Journey
The Doors
The Eel
Evangelion Death (True)²
Flow
Josie and the Pussycats
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
Linda Linda Linda
The Little Sister
Los Sures
The Love Witch
Nadja
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
New Wave
Our Land
Penance
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
Streets of Fire
Summer 1993
Thief
Third Act
Times Square
Uncle Howard
Wildlife
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Hidden in Pieces
Max
Fuze
Metrograph at Home
Bright Future
By the Stream
Creepy
The Demons
Everyone Else
Genesis
Santosh
To the Ends of the Earth
Who by Fire
Netflix
The President’s Cake
Shudder
Nightborn
VOD
Coexistence, My Ass!
Just Play Dead
