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 Death of Robin Hood (Michael Sarnoski)
How many times has the story of Robin Hood been told? How many books have been written, how many movies made about the outlaw? With The Death of Robin Hood, writer-director Michael Sarnoski goes back to the source. Rather, the supposed sources. The earliest stories of Robin Hood were ballads told by commoners across England. These tales tell of an outlaw who does not give anything stolen to the poor, instead taking pleasure in killing the rich. In the medieval ballad “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,” Robin beheads Gisborne and sticks his head on a spike. – Dan M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli)
Some critics are going to say The Drama is not about race, or that if it is, this is simply an accident born of colorblind casting. There is a reveal—the reveal the entire premise hinges on—early in the film that would perhaps make more sense to people if it had come from a white person. It’s definitely something that, historically, is more associated with troubled white American men. But this is a film, not real life, and The Drama presents us with a character viewers have never seen on the big screen before. – Jourdain S. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO Max
Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella)
Being queer—especially in this rapidly regressive age—means becoming acquainted with a base level of fear for most of your life. It is something you learn early on: not only when you must discover who can be trusted with your survival, but whether they might betray that trust later. Violence takes so many forms that it can lead to a sort of paranoia that folds in on itself. Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus understands this intimately. By blending the mechanics of It Follows with the trauma of conversion therapy, he crafts a tense, thematically potent feature debut that is more than just a clear metaphor—this is a creepy horror picture in its own right. – Devan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Maddie’s Secret (John Early)
You can’t accuse John Early of not committing. Through the majority of his acting career, the comedian has become a reliable avatar for a palpable, toxic, hilarious narcissism, playing characters oblivious to the world outside the bubbles they’ve so thoroughly cultivated. That was particularly evident over four seasons of Search Party, as well as last year’s Stress Positions, a Sundance favorite that exposed the absurdity of living in quarantine over a masked summer. As an agoraphobic tenant in a Brooklyn brownstone, Early took the situation’s disaster and approached it through his very specific kind of self-assured, righteous mania to such an extent that his freak-outs are still rattling around in my brain. – Jake K-S. (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: VOD
Pretzhell (ZXY)
ZXY — The Gyslexic Die is an enigmatic musician from Estonia. He goes by many names, some of which are more famous than others. This is the music video for his recent single “PretzHell.”
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Renoir (Chie Hayakawa)
Just three years since earning a special mention from the Camera d’Or jury for Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa returns to Cannes as one of seven filmmakers debuting in the main competition––an uncharacteristic breath of fresh air from a festival known for sticking with the old guard. In Plan 75, an acidic work of speculative fiction, Hayakawa imagined a near-future timeline where Japan decided to see to its aging-population crisis by introducing a voluntary euthanasia program. Hayakawa approaches adjacent themes in her sophomore feature, Renoir, a film about family, death, and intergenerational friction that looks not to the future but the director’s own past. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Underland (Rob Petit)
As humanity continues mining Earth’s resources with wanton abandon, the concerns of those with the most influence have been towards the skies––the space dreams of inhabiting another planet once we’ve depleted all this one has to offer. But what could exploring Earth’s subterranean wonders tell us about the origins and future of our species? Robert Macfarlane’s evocatively transportive, poetically imaginative 2019 book Underland investigated such questions through the perspectives of those seeking the void. In adapting the text to the screen, Rob Petit takes a compelling (if more straightforward) excavation into the depths of our planet. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Disney+/Hulu
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Kino Film Collection
Successive Slidings of Pleasure
Netflix
A Private Life
Shudder
Nightborn
VOD
Westhampton
