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 Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
Brady Corbet’s long-gestating architecture epic looks and feels as painstakingly crafted as its lead character’s intricate architectonics. For as barren and minimalist as László Tóth’s (a terrific Adrien Brody) designs are, they pack a beautiful, mysterious, occasionally revelatory punch, much like Corbet’s winding three-and-a-half-hour (complete with built-in intermission!) story about a Hungarian architect who immigrated to New York after WWII only to be mentally and emotionally sucked in by the tide of a momentous decades-long project initiated by a ruthless Pennsylvania business tycoon. Its scope is enormous––almost impossible not to get wrapped up in. A sense of impending gravity gives this film the weight of the real, as if we’re witnessing history. Cinematographer Lol Crawley captures sprawling green hillsides, gleaming Italian marble mines, immovable caves, and towering opuses in a dark, richly textured VistaVision that’s like a magnet for your eyes, and composer Daniel Blumberg, in his second score ever, locks you in with galvanizing refrains that keep The Brutalist chugging along at a mean rate, radiant floating pianos disarming you to characters’ sympathies. – Luke H.
Where to Stream: VOD
Companion (Drew Hancock)
Competently aping David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh’s cold, formally precise styles, director Drew Hancock’s mise-en-scène successfully conveys the antiseptic near-future we’re probably already living in, but can’t seem to work around the stakes and thrills being relatively low. To be more specific about the tension of Companion: it isn’t stupid, dull, or badly made per se, but it’s unlikeable, and awfully smug for something not that high on insight or genuine surprise. The multiple instances of Josh spelling out his modern male psychology of entitlement and abandonment issues point to the fact that basically no January New Line Cinema genre movie can just be termite art anymore. – Ethan V. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Last Showgirl (Gia Coppola)
Pamela Anderson receives the role of a lifetime in Gia Coppola’s engaging (if simplistic) character study The Last Showgirl, playing a glamorous showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. Christopher Schobert said in his TIFF review, “’I’m older––I’m not old,’ says Shelley, the longest-term performer in a past-its-prime Las Vegas revue. She is played by Pamela Anderson, the international icon who has never, ever had a role like this. Shelley is 57 years old, living paycheck-to-paycheck, estranged from her daughter, and intensely vulnerable. Clearly we are far from the beaches of Baywatch and action spectacle that was Barb Wire. And Anderson is one of the chief reasons Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a noteworthy film. But this is not stunt casting. It’s a real-deal performance, and Shelley is one of the more memorable Vegas denizens in recent cinema.”
Where to Stream: VOD
Love Me (Sam and Andy Zuchero)
A cosmic love story that takes place over 13.7 billion years about a floating buoy and a satellite circling the earth, Love Me might best be described as a domestic drama in lockdown. The light, thoughtful, and occasionally repetitive debut feature from Sam and Andy Zuchero takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have gone extinct. All that remains––that we know of––are two machines bobbing and floating with A.I. operating systems and a virtual database of Internet archives spanning all of human history. Without the opportunity for social interaction and physical contact, the pair tries the best it can to establish some sort of connection––to determine what that might even look and sound like. – Jake K. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
A sensual, classically gothic reimagining of both Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the 1922 silent film, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu sees the director return to his pure horror roots and fascination with historical verisimilitude. Anchored by an assured, career-best performance from Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård as a monstrosity that would feel repetitive if not for the gravitas he brings, Nosferatu is grand, operatic, and more than a little bit self-serious. But it also represents another big swing by a director cashing in on his creative capital to beautifully reimagine one of the most adapted texts of our time. – Christian G.
Where to Stream: Peacock
The Quiet Ones (Frederik Louis Hviid)
Premiering at TIFF last fall, Frederik Louis Hviid’s thrilling The Quiet Ones tells of the group that pulled off the largest heist in Danish history back in 2008. Jared Mobarak said in his TIFF review, “Based on the true story of Denmark’s largest-ever heist, The Quiet Ones does well to ensure we know the motivations of each major player from the start. Kasper is the family man interested in legacy––either via the sport he loves or the infamy of criminality. Slimani is a violent, control-driven man who has no qualms taking it by any means necessary. Maria (Amanda Collin) is a much smaller piece than those two, but her devotee of the law and the chase it affords her to pursue bad guys in the name of justice is no less important. Kasper wants to win; Slimani wants to kill; Maria wants to save the day.”
Where to Stream: VOD
The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar)
Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) haven’t seen each other in a lifetime and rekindle friendship through a unique wish: will you be there the day I choose to die? Martha, a former war photographer diagnosed with cancer, and Ingrid, an author whose oeuvre ruminates on death, become dance partners swaying to the unpredictable melody of existence in Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut––as if Persona morphed into vibrant Technicolor. – Jose S.
Where to Stream: VOD
Squirrels to the Nuts (Peter Bogdanovich)
The late and great Peter Bogdanovich’s final film was She’s Funny That Way, starring Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Kathryn Hahn, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Aniston, Will Forte, Austin Pendleton, George Morfogen, Richard Lewis, and Cybill Shepherd. But wait! That’s only half-true! Before the half-hearted release of She’s Funny That Way, there was another version of the film. Its title? Squirrels to the Nuts. This is the cut that Bogdanovich wanted the world to see. Until the studio made him change it. James Kenney, the man who saved Squirrels to the Nuts, who joined us on The-Bisde back in 2022 to discuss the project, which is now finally available digitally. – Dan M.
Where to Stream: VOD
Sujo (Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez)
A film about growing up in your father’s shadow that mostly (and unexpectedly) examines the role of women as community pillars and violence interrupters, Sujo is the compelling new Sundance award-winning feature from Identifying Features team Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez. The father in question Josue (Juan Jesús Varela Hernández) is a sicario, a brutal gang enforcer killed early in the film by his cartel. The first chapter unfolds as young Sujo (Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna) watches his father conduct business at a distance, purposefully disorienting passages wherein we overhear conversations. Compounding the confusion, when his father doesn’t return home, we witness a chilling scene in which he’s hidden by his aunt Nemesia (Yadira Perez Esteban) when a member of the cartel comes to exact revenge after Sujo’s father killed his son. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Also New to Streaming
Kino Film Collection
Manuscripts Don’t Burn
Sophie Scholl – The Final Days
MUBI
The Childhood of a Leader
Grand Theft Hamlet
Happening
Paris, 13th District
OVID.tv
Coconut Head Generation
Mambar Pierette
VOD
Dog Man
Millers in Marriage
Mufasa: The Lion King
The post New to Streaming: The Brutalist, The Room Next Door, The Last Showgirl, Companion & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
