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-upshere.
Bad Apples (Jonatan Entzler)
To international viewers, Bad Apples will play like a conventional dark comedy about a schoolteacher pushed too far by a student; to Brits, it’s a scorched Earth takedown of a state education system that has failed millions of children, any laughs to be had cathartic through the tears. What’s surprising is that such a state-of-the-nation takedown arrives courtesy of Swedish director Jonatan Entzler in his English-language debut, relocating Scandinavian source material to a classroom in the southwest of England. Working with breakthrough screenwriter Jess O’Kane, he’s done an impeccable job encapsulating decades of political failures towards younger generations into a morally slippery kidnapping comedy, weaponizing viewers’ own experiences in the classroom (both as parents and students) to try making you empathize with the criminal adult over their victim. It’s provocative simply because it’s a crowd-pleaser that relies on you abandoning any shred of empathy, highlighting a societal problem by making unsuspecting viewers delight in the worst possible solution to it while revealing unconscious biases. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Carolina Caroline (Adam Carter Rehmeier)
How do you tell when you stop being good people pretending to be bad and realize you’re just bad people who can’t even trick themselves into thinking they’re anything but? Caroline (Samara Weaving) asks this aloud earlier than you might expect, considering the crime escapade she and new boyfriend Oliver (Kyle Gallner) enjoy commenced at her behest. She didn’t just take his advice and wonder why she’d never left the one place she’s ever known. She didn’t just reject the notion of staying because it’s safe. No, Caroline chose to meet those realities with the decision to become a full-blown outlaw because it made her feel truly alive. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Do You Love Me (Lana Daher)
In what could’ve also been called Lebanon Plays Itself, Lana Daher’s ambitious, all-archival Do You Love Me captures some 70 years of Lebanese history, curated from a search that began with more than 20,000 potential sources. Consolidated to just 76 minutes, the resulting feat of montage is an experiment as playful as it is informative, showing a country in turmoil and citizens who still find happiness in everyday life. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD
Drunken Noodles (Lucio Castro)
The laws of time and space are met with frisky ambivalence inDrunken Noodles, Lucio Castro’s anticipated third feature and surely the hottest title in this year’s ACID lineup. Most people familiar with the New York-based, Argentinian-born director first encountered him throughEnd of the Century,a film of similar temporal disregard: set in Barcelona, it followed two men who seemed to fall in love only to realize it wasn’t their first encounter. Upon release in 2019, critics were divided over some of the film’s more adventurous flourishes––the sense of overreach. There are a handful of moments inNoodlesthat do something similar, but it’s an otherwise sultry and strangely calming film, 82 minutes of late-night hookups and late-season ennui that passes like a summer breeze. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The History of Concrete (John Wilson)
Like a movie tie-in, John Wilson’s debut documentary feature,The History of Concrete, picks up immediately where his HBO seriesHow To with John Wilsonleft off after three seasons. An elevated public profile does not lead to the next bigger, better project. Instead it’s illustrated via Wilson stumbling upon an empty bag of weed featuring an unauthorized branding of his likeness. The full-sized crew afforded by his show now absent, Wilson is forced back to his roots, filming the day-to-day scenes of New York City life solo. – Caleb H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Making Marie Antoinette (Eleanor Coppola)
Wrapped inside the visual splendor, luxurious elegance, and ornate decoration of Sofia Coppola’s resplendent and anachronistic Marie Antoinette is the story of a young woman leaving her family behind to help lead another country—an unknown journey and simultaneous document of wealth, excess, and its depressive isolation. Yet despite Coppola tapping into her short filmography’s recurring themes, at least on set, she never contended with the same separation and loneliness of her ill-fated heroine. That’s largely because her mother, Eleanor Coppola, was always by her side—lurking and observing and recording 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage with her digital camera inside the halls of Versailles.– Jake K-S. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
Musk (Alex Gibney)
A dense, probing, ultimately terrifying exploration of the world’s richest man, Alex Gibney’s four-hour opus Musk isn’t going to reveal anything new about the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX that you couldn’t glean from the myriad books, podcasts, and articles. There’s no smoking gun to explain his laser-like focus on domination or even his intense rightward political shift in recent years. Yet in sweeping across Musk’s life since about 1995—when he founded his first company, Zip2—Gibney nevertheless paints a damning picture in its totality and simplicity. That’s because for all his talk of AI, self-driving cars, and colonizing Mars, Elon Musk is a frighteningly simple person to decipher. The illusion of wealth, status, and brilliance that he carried through the 1990s finally gave way to actual wealth and status by hustling and grifting his way into a succession of companies that were already marginally successful.– Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Nicolas Cage
One of the most iconic cinematic presences is getting a well-deserved spotlight on the Criterion Channel this month, featuring Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Rumble Fish, Valley Girl, Birdy, Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, City of Angels, Snake Eyes, Bringing Out the Dead, Adaptation, Matchstick Men, The Wicker Man, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Possible Love (Lee Chang-dong)
In a year of unknown quantities at the Venice Film Festival, Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love has delivered the triumph for which fans of the elusive director had been hoping. Lee’s first feature since Burning, a modern masterpiece that blew away the competition in Cannes eight years ago, is another novelistic gem, the kind of richly detailed and intricately scripted yarn in which alluring themes like class, sex, and sociology are always on the table to be picked at. It also bears a much-wider and more-specific political purview than its predecessor, which comes at a cost for its dramatic pull from time to time. Lee’s nevertheless returned with the most substantial film I’ve seen in this year’s competition and one that is easily amongst the best of the year so far. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix (Note: Netflix has also added most of Lee’s other films, including his 2022 short Heartbeat, available online for the first time ever)
Primetime (Lance Oppenheim)
Robert Pattinson was born to play Chris Hansen. In the opening shot of Lance Oppenheim’sPrimetime—the documentary savant’s first foray into fiction, this one based on a true story—we immediately see the popularTo Catch a Predatorhost as the menace Oppenheim and first-time screenwriter Ajon Singh want us to understand him as. He’s cast in a devilish red light, swallowed by shadow, displayed through an eerie mini-DV grain, and reciting the lines “I will undress you and you will undress me” over and over in Hansen’s trademark brassy, rehearsed, does-he-really-sound-like-that (yes, he does) tone. The chilling music of the haunted fairytale score glitches in and out while children’s-show chimes ring ominously. – Luke H. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Resident Evil (Zach Cregger)
Resident Evil, as a game series, has always borrowed heavily from cinema, whether it be the fixed angles and Kiyoshi Kurosawa inspirations of the first title to theTexas Chainsawriffs in the 7th. It’s less about the zombies, more the feeling of powerlessness and weird puzzles. Zach Cregger understands this on a deep level. His follow-up toWeaponsmay not be a pitch-perfect adaptation of the long-running lore, but it perfectly captures the spirit ofResident Evilas a whole, not to mention what it’s like to play it. The perfect title might actually have beenBiohazard.– Devan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Sense and Sensibility (Georgia Oakley)
It’s always tempting to discuss Jane Austen adaptations in comparison with their predecessors, especially when the most famous example here is Ang Lee’s version that earned Emma Thompson her second Oscar. Georgia Oakley recognizes this; rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or subvert this text, she instead delivers a sublime take that more than justifies returning to the well once more. For as much as we desire original stories, there’s just as much pleasure to be taken from a solid translation of sturdy material. And it confirms the Blue Jean director as a major talent—a great eye who can put a definite stamp on outside sources without going overboard. – Devan S. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (Bassam Tariq)
Latif (Mahershala Ali) is a righteous man. A religious man. He sees himself in a holy war to cleanse the world of his people’s enemies by picking up where the law ends. Those who know about his work justifiably condemn it, whether that be his Imam (Giancarlo Esposito’s Abdul Malik) or his wife. They don’t, however, condemn him. Because they understand his struggle. They know his pain. Why add to it? So, they grant him mercy instead. They accept him and hope he will one day find his way back. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
About Endlessness
Being John Malkovich
Belly
CB4
The Cell
CQ
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Guncrazy
Happy Hour
Home of the Brave
Human Nature
Labyrinthe
The Last Waltz
Laura
Leave Her to Heaven
Manal Issa, 2024
Maria Schneider, 1983
Never Let Me Go
Night and the City
No Picnic
One Hour Photo
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
The Replacement Killers
The Secret of the Grain
Se7en
Sexy Beast
Shades of Silk
A Swedish Love Story
This Is Spinal Tap
Thumbsucker
Trainspotting
Two Gods
Way of a Gaucho
Where the Sidewalk Ends
You, the Living
Hulu
Super Troopers 3
Kino Film Collection
Careful
Peacock
The Uprising
