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.
Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez)
It’s a dire, inhospitable environment, wherein corporate interests can give way to ghoulish monstrosities, and those just trying to navigate the chokehold of capitalism are doing their best to survive. In a way, Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus may be the most meta Alien film to date. No stranger to playing in others’ sandboxes, the Evil Dead helmer is, at first glance, an encouraging fit for the sci-fi horror franchise. Like the original, 2017’s Alien: Covenant––an underrated high point for these films––was at its peak when threading its headier notions with gleefully mean-spirited cynicism towards its human subjects. Alvarez has that same kind of nasty streak in him, and much of Romulus’ mandated fan service smacks of carefully chosen battles in an effort to commence with the gnarly stuff. – Conor O. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Atlantide (Yuri Ancarani)
Italian director Yuri Ancarani, whose previous film The Challenge was a formally vivid look inside the strange, opulent world of amateur falconry carried out by Qatari sheiks, returned with Atlantide a few years ago. Without distribution since its Venice 2021 festival premiere, the film, which is set on the edges of Venice as we follow the world of motorboat racing, is now finally available to stream.
Where to Stream: Fandor
Blitz (Steve McQueen)
Steve McQueen has long been upfront about his desire to make a musical; before Widows underwhelmed at the box office, it appeared likely that a passion project within that genre would be his next film. With each subsequent effort, it seems McQueen is slowly pushing himself into that wheelhouse, getting audiences to imagine what such a film in his distinctive style would look like––it’s similarly become apparent that it would be less reminiscent of the downbeat New York, New York sequence in Shame, more like the jukebox joys of his Small Axe entry Lovers Rock. For a filmmaker who was initially characterized as one obsessed with bleak character studies, he is increasingly finding an inner warmth through music, and in his large-scale WWII drama Blitz he utilizes the power of a communal sing-along in ways reminiscent of Terence Davies, cutting through the darkness with tunes wherever possible. – Alistair R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Apple TV+
Bread & Roses (Sahra Mani)
While recent documentaries such as Hollywoodgate and Retrograde explored the terrifying after-effects of 2021’s fall of Kabul to the Taliban from a militaristic (and therefore male) point of view, a new film takes a much-needed female look at the struggle of Afghan women. Sahra Mani’s Bread & Roses, backed by Jennifer Lawrence, is a portrait of the everyday fight for a group of women against the oppressive and abusive men in power, both politically and domestically. From being forced to stay indoors to brutal attacks against those protesting to far worse, the majority of the footage is shot by the subjects themselves, creating a sense of imminent danger by the very act of documenting. While this approach makes for a formally scattered affair, Sahra Mani more than makes up for any inconsistencies by assembling a fight for freedom to be conveyed as loud and clear as possible.
Where to Stream: Apple TV+
Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
Death Proof in particular was supposed to be Quentin Tarantino’s ultimate gift to the movies he grew up on. The problem: no one saw it. While Tarantino has been largely deitized, ten years later, it’s still the only film from the director that hasn’t been reclaimed as some sort of lost classic, and the sad truth of the matter is that it should be. In indulging his own childhood film fantasies, Tarantino distilled the very vibe of his movies into a thunderous roar of total cinematic adrenaline and effortless cool. – Willow M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Flipside (Chris Wilcha)
There is no surprise twist in Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, a documentary making its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This is not a true-crime doc or a story of unearthed family secrets. (Although there is lots of ephemera excavated after years of quasi-hoarding.) Instead of a twist, though, there is an audience awakening, one that takes a rather standard there-are-places-I-remember doc into surprisingly resonant territory. Ultimately, Flipside is a moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian. – Chris S. (full review)
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Firebrand (Karim Aïnouz)
Few would have imagined that Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz––whose The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão won the top prize in Un Certain Regard four years ago––would make his Competition debut with a Tudor period drama, Firebrand. For his English-language debut, Aïnouz was handed a script penned by Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth (writers of Tell It to the Bees and Killing Eve), the feminist tone of which is quite obvious. Even if one can easily tell that Aïnouz was attached to the project rather than seeking it out himself, his outsider perspective brings a certain freshness to this loosely historical retelling of the last months of King Henry VIII’s (a tyrannical Jude Law) reign. Yes, the one who beheaded his wives. – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
The Line (Ethan Berger)
The Line is unpleasant. But then it should be, shouldn’t it? Written by Ethan Berger and Alex Russek and directed by Berger in his feature debut, this is a film about a college fraternity and all of the horrible sins committed in the name of tradition and brotherhood. Alex Wolff stars as Tom, a sophomore with bad grades but a good reputation among his fraternity, KNA. Their president, Todd (Lewis Pullman, great here), has Tom pegged as his replacement. The film takes place during the pledge period in which a new batch of freshmen are tortured and tested so that they might earn the privilege of joining KNA. – Dan M. (VOD
Night Is Not Eternal (Nanfu Wang)
After capturing China’s one-child policy and the country’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nanfu Wang shifts her focus to Cuba in her latest documentary, Night Is Not Eternal, while still finding parallels to her native country. Following human rights activist Rosa María Payá in her fight for Cuban democracy, and Wang’s own amiable relationship with her subject, what begins as a noble attempt to shed light on a fight for freedom soon turns slippery. After Payá is spotted on stage with Donald Trump, Wang begins to question if the ideology of her subject is truly shared. While it’s a compelling turn, adding complexity to a rather by-the-numbers portrait, there’s more to unpack in this knotty director-subject relationship that Wang forgoes in order to tackle macro issues of world politics. The result makes for a more informative but ultimately less interesting documentary.
Where to Stream: Max
The Piano Lesson (Malcolm Washington)
After Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Denzel Washington is shepherding another August Wilson play to screens and, this time, it’s a family affair. Malcolm Washington, son of the Fences director, makes his directorial debut with The Piano Lesson, following a family in 1936 Pittsburgh whose heirloom piano becomes a focal point in exploring their past. Sharply shot by Mike Gioulakis (Us, Old, Under the Silver Lake), it’s the finest-looking of this trio of adaptations, truly singing during its few musical stretches. While John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler handle the painful material with aplomb, there’s a stagnant sense to much of the drama, missing the bitter spark and emotional punch of the aforementioned adaptations.
Where to Stream: Netflix
Surveilled (Matthew O’Neill, Perri Peltz)
There’s no arguing the ways in which governments across the world are invasively tracking citizens is a vital issue, but the new Ronan Farrow-produced documentary Surveilled feels little more than a conventional TV special ticking the broadest boxes of the investigative journalism process. Specifically exploring the spyware company NSO Group and its software Pegasus, exposed in Farrow’s 2022 New Yorker article, the documentary adds little new to the conversation and is ultimately short-sighted in capturing a sliver of a much more nefarious new era of intelligence-gathering.
Where to Stream: Max
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
Atomic Cafe
Hit the Road
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Antibirth
Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite
Witches
VOD
Smile 2
The post New to Streaming: Blitz, The Piano Lesson, Flipside, Alien: Romulus & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
