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.
Blue Bayou (Justin Chon)
After Antonio (Justin Chon) is wrongfully arrested in front of his wife Kathy (Alicia Vikander) and step-daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske), he’s surprised to learn he’s been flagged for deportation. Due to his adoptive parent’s oversight, Antonio, who was born in Korea but has lived in Louisiana since he was a toddler, doesn’t have citizenship. Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou is an amalgam of real stories like Antonio’s, among which there are thousands. – Gabrielle M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Detention (John Hsu)
As a subversive poem (according to the Chinese Nationalist Party that ruled Taiwan under martial law during the period known as the White Terror from 1947 until 1987) read by Miss Yin (Cecilia Choi) to the members of her and Mr. Chang’s (Meng-Po Fu) underground high school book club relates: a tree’s roots never ask to be repaid by the fruit that blooms as a result of their effort. It’s a succinctly beautiful metaphor for the education system and its liberal teachers doing all they can to ensure the next generation graduates with a full awareness of the problematic history surrounding them. Rather than facilitate the creation of future oppressors, those like Yin and Chang seek to cultivate free thinkers who will always refuse to blindly accept authoritarianism. That it comes from the cinematic adaptation of a Taiwanese videogame entitled Detention shouldn’t surprise anyone aware of how powerful art can prove regardless of the stigma its medium carries. Director John Hsu and his co-writers Shih-Keng Chien and Lyra Fu looked beyond the scares and atmosphere of this horror property to see the message at its center about the survivor’s guilt that’s all but assured in the aftermath of such a repressive nightmare that saw around 140,000 dissidents imprisoned with almost three percent of that number executed. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas
Khtobtogone (Sara Sadik)
If cinema is capable of anything, I still didn’t expect to recommend an animated short considering ideas of manhood within Marseille’s Mahgrebi community vis-a-vis Grand Theft Auto V‘s engine. Such is Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone, which Le Cinéma Club are now streaming free for one week. – Nick N.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
Old, the latest thriller from horror auteur M. Night Shyamalan, follows a family vacationing at a luxurious tropical resort. The parents (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps) have loud fights over marital and medical troubles that their children bear but don’t understand. They take a day trip to a remote beach, an environment which has the mysterious effect of rapidly aging them—about the rate of a year per half-hour. In turn, the group of strangers succumb to the ravages of time, unable to leave the beach without blacking out. – Gabrielle M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Old Henry (Potsy Ponciroli)
Henry’s (Tim Blake Nelson) been living and farming his Oklahoma land for almost two decades, if not more—the last ten as a single father to the now-teenage Wyatt (Gavin Lewis). Despite having help from his brother-in-law down the way (Trace Adkins’ Al), this life isn’t an easy one and the kid is desperate to escape it as much because of the work as the stone wall his dad has become. Wyatt feels he’s still being treated like a child when he knows he deserves more; Henry won’t let him hold a gun, let alone learn to shoot one. Tensions rise, Henry’s refusal to bend grows, and you can sense Wyatt is readying to leave the first chance he gets. Then everything changes. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Night House (David Bruckner)
It’s about 20 minutes into The Night House that it finds its footing. The school year has just ended and Beth (Rebecca Hall), a high school English teacher, goes back to work to input a few more assignments. When a soccer mom type (Samantha Buck) comes in to contest her son’s grades, Beth isn’t having it, to say the least. She stares her down with a trace of empathy that manages to undercut her dead eyes and Hall, ever the solid actor, pinpoints and explores the sarcastic humor latent to the script. When mom continues to press her, Beth flatly explains that her husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), has just shot himself. If this woman wants her son to get a B, he can get a B. It really doesn’t matter. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
El Planeta (Amalia Ulman)
In a café in Gijón, Spain, Leonor (Amalia Ulman) sits with a cup of coffee. An older man (Nacho Vigalondo) approaches her and joins her, and the two start discussing some sort of transaction. She’s considering sleeping with him for money, but then she reconsiders. “I’m wondering if it’s worth sucking a dick for a book.” Like Leonor’s own little gig economy she’s come to, this is one of the many vignettes El Planeta finds itself in. She was a fashion student in London before, but now that her father (and cat) has died, she’s home living with her mother (Ale Ulman), who’s facing eviction. The unemployment office has failed them and their time is scarce. Naturally, they start grifting to get meals and lower their bills. If someone else can pay for dinner, that’s great. If Leonor can sit in the hallway to read so she doesn’t have to turn on the lights, that adds up too. I’d be sad if it didn’t have such a droll approach. In some ways, it is. El Planeta isn’t the most thematically consistent, but it’s clever and brisk enough to be a good time. – Matt C. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Possession (Andrzej Żuławski)
The much-welcomed news of Metrograph’s return could have been led by just one movie. A cornerstone of the repertory circuit with powers so intense it’s seamlessly become canon, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession—for which words like “iconic” don’t exactly do justice—has suffered but one problem: it often looks like shit. Thus our excitement, nay elation, about Metrograph Pictures’ release of a 4K restoration, now available in theaters as well as their at home platform. – Leonard P.
Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home
Strangers in Paradise: 9 Films by Jim Jarmusch
Following his zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die a few years ago, we haven’t got word yet on what Jim Jarmusch’s next project may be, but now, thanks to The Criterion Channel, we can enjoy some of his greatest work with a 9-film series. Featuring Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), each are a perfect way to settle into the cool fall season.
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Undergods (Chino Moya)
We all like to think we have control—kings of our proverbial castles. It’s all a ruse, though. We’re actually slaves to a system that seems more and more likely to fail with each new day and each new declaration that its imminent demise is a call to arms to save it rather than move on and evolve. That false sense of control is thus a mechanism we use to combat the fear of knowing how little we truly possess. We dream of other men failing so as not to realize that unfortunate soul is probably a future version of ourselves. We play God opposite those we believe are beneath us because we feel the pressure of those above doing the same. And there’s absolutely no way out. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Universal Horror
It’s October, which means streaming services would be doing a disserve to not offer a plethora of horror titles. The Criterion Channel is thankfully doing their part with a series on the best of Universal horror titles, including Dracula (Spanish-Language Version) (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), The Black Cat (1934), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Raven (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)
A dark back-alley drowned in shadow; towering concrete walls on either side; on the top right a row of headstones overlook; the glimmer of a walking stick emerges in the distance, and then a funeral procession. 15 minutes later a women disembarks from an airplane and is greeted not by family but by the airport’s cleaning staff. “There is nothing for you in Portugal, Vitalina,” they say. Welcome—or perhaps welcome back—to the world of Pedro Costa, the austere Portuguese director behind Colossal Youth (2006), In Vanda’s Room (2000), and other haunting works with which to grapple. – Rory O. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)
Also New to Streaming
The Criterion Channel
HBO Max
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Styx
The Green Years
Change of Life
Your Day Is My Night
Hey, You!
The Wall
Shudder
VOD
The post New to Streaming: Possession, Old, Universal Horror, El Planeta & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
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