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.
Avatar: Fire and Ash (James Cameron)
James Cameron closes a chapter on big filmmaking at a time whenhis maximalist spirit is in increasingly short supply. Few filmmakers have the dexterity to juggle a kitchen-sink approach with clarity of storytelling; even fewer manage the level of care and precision he’s hellbent on preserving. With two films’ worth of pixel-perfect world-building, this outing to Pandora trades table-setting for character depth. Shockingly frank examinations of grief, assimilation, and cyclical violence are woven into the eye-popping spectacle, with performers old and new feeling fully comfortable in their own blue skin. Cameron remains steadfast that more is more. – Conor O.
Where to Stream: Disney+
Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
In a state of arrested development after his wife unexpectedly died from a freak accident, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is suicidal, pleading to a truck to just run him over and begging that he be fired from his job as cantor at the local Jewish temple in upstate New York. While this set-up may not scream comedy, Between the Temples is in fact hilarious, packed with endless jokes and adoration for physical gags while we witness Ben find new meaning in life through an unexpected acquaintance. Above all, Nathan Silver’s feature, from a script he co-wrote with C. Mason Wells,is a thrillingly alive, nimble piece of filmmaking: shot on 16mm by Sean Price Williams with faces of its ensemble guiding every movement, and edited by John Magary with a frenetic yet defined rhythm, Between the Temples is a witty, biting portrait of finding one’s footing in both faith and friendship. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari)
Blue Heron, Romvari’s feature debut, once again mines the director’s own history, following a Hungarian family of six as it settles in a nondescript stretch of suburbia outside Vancouver. The opening line, “I struggle now to remember much of my childhood,” belongs to the youngest child, Sasha (Eylul Guven), the film to her older stepbrother Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), a sullen, taciturn adolescent with a history of self-destructive behavior no one has learned how to deal with, much less address. Yet Romvari refuses to write him off as a troubled child. Yes, the kid is most certainly not all right, but he traverses Blue Heron as its most mysterious, elusive character, and that impenetrability is a measure of Romvari’s empathy. Rather than pathologizing his pain––a tendency his own parents succumb to––she invites us to sit with it and bask in his drawn-out silences, in the gaps between the words and imperfect memories that grown-up Sasha (Amy Zimmer), in the film’s second half, will try piecing together. – Leonardo G. (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: VOD
Good One (India Donaldson)
It’s been nearly two decades since Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy showed how the wilderness can be an open canvas to explore the breaking points of male friendship and reckoning with a midlife crisis. While those emotional quandaries are evergreen, it’s appropriate timing to bring an entirely new element to this conceit. India Donaldson’s carefully observed, refreshingly patient, beautifully rendered debut feature Good One shifts the perspective, concerning a 17-year-old girl who embarks on a camping trip in the Catskills with her father and his best friend. Through an accumulation of minute details and uneasy glances, the drama becomes a portrait of increasingly crossed boundaries leading to an ultimate breaking point. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: MUBI
I Love Boosters (Boots Riley)
A parody of dialectical materialism (you’ll understand what this means when you see the film), superficial economies, and the cult of fast fashion, I Love Boosters—the second feature from rapper, activist, and filmmaker Boots Riley—proves a spirited and hilarious comedy in its first two acts before falling back on action-comedy tropes in its finale. Perhaps there’s no way to fully sustain the gonzo energy delivered in its set-up, which initially offers a sharp critique of capitalism as biting as Riley’s debut feature Sorry to Bother You. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
In the Hand of Dante (Julian Schnabel)
“There is no reason why a kid from a family of gangsters couldn’t be the reincarnation of Dante Alighieri,” reads Julian Schnabel’s director’s statement on his new film, In the Hand of Dante. Such boastful aplomb is indicative of the final result, an Out of Competition entry where everything is possible. If Renaissance genius Dante Alighieri can forsake his Beatrice for another woman, then Gerard Butler can surely portray a Renaissance Pope and Gal Gadot can appear as Botticelli’s Venus while still resembling a cardboard cutout amidst a frantic production largely financed by Cartier. Plot-wise, In the Hand of Dante parallels two timelines with distinct aesthetics––the 1300s are in color, the early 2000s in black-and-white––and an equal amount of disinterest in what those worlds share (notwithstanding actors playing different characters in each). – Savina P. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Magic Hour (Katie Aselton)
Is it still a twist if the script tells you what’s happening around the 15-minute mark? The marketing that surrounds Katie Aselton’s Magic Hour seems to believe so. I’d argue the film itself does not, though, because it needs us to know what happened in order to understand what’s happening now. The struggle between Erin (Aselton) and Charlie (Daveed Diggs) to stay together isn’t about betrayal—it’s about grief and, ultimately, acceptance. – Jared M. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
Power Ballad (John Carney)
A film squarely in the wheelhouse of co-writer and director John Carney, Power Ballad plays the hits with a few heartfelt twists. It leans into the natural chemistry of its leads while exploring the cost of stardom, ownership, and identity within the music industry, following two Americans in Ireland: Rick (Paul Rudd), a past-his-prime rocker living a “dream deferred” who connects and jams with boy-band refugee Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas) after Rick’s wedding band, The Bride and Groove, plays a private gig at an Irish castle. – John F. (full review)
Where to Stream: VOD
The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda)
The biggest gulf in terms of expectations and the final product this year thus far, Minions director Kyle Balda proves his live-action chops with the rather delightful, thoughtful mystery film The Sheep Detectives. Following the herd of a farmer (Hugh Jackman) who take it upon themselves to track down the mystery behind his murder, the playful proceedings make for the ideal gateway for any young viewer to get into the world of Agatha Christie and the plethora of media that was inspired by it. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Prime Video
Tuner (Daniel Roher)
Following the release of the rather troubling The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher’s narrative debut will arrive this month. The TIFF and Telluride selection Tuner is a fast-paced immersion into a troubled piano-tuner’s dive into a criminal underworld. While taking one too many notes from Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, including a script just as far-fetched, it is quite a showcase for both Leo Woodall and Roher’s rhythmic style.
Where to Stream: VOD
Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)
When Donbass arrived in 2018, sandwiched between the start of the 2014 Russian-backed conflict in the titular eastern Ukrainian region and full-scale invasion of the country four years since its release, the world Sergei Loznitsa trained his camera on was a surreal, decaying wasteland. It’s not that the film was necessarily prophetic about the atrocities that would later spread across Ukraine. But it spoke to concerns that now feel especially of-the-moment, the same that have long served as a cornerstone of the Belarus-born, Kiev-raised director’s oeuvre. While Donbass was a work of fiction, its preoccupations with the way truth can be manipulated also haunt the archive-based documentaries for which Loznitsa is arguably best known. From Blockade (2006) to The Kiev Trial (2022), the director hasn’t exhumed USSR-era footage as a sort of time machine, but a means to reappropriate history from the regime’s official narratives. Which is why to salute Two Prosecutors as the filmmaker’s “return to fiction,” as the Cannes Film Festival did upon welcoming Loznitsa’s latest to its Official Competition, is both technically accurate and somehow misleading. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
The World Cup in Recife (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
The Brazilian auteur observes the real-life impact of the global soccer event on his hometown in this short docu-essay that tackles the ecological effects alongside the more hilarious cultural miscommunication that arises from hosting the World Cup. Alternating between interviews with locals and tourists, The World Cup in Recife offers a mosaic-like look at the commotion brought on by the arrival of international soccer teams and their fans in the port city. His short encapsulates the unique blend of whimsy and satire that makes Filho’s cinema so enjoyable.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Also New to Streaming
HBO Max
undertone
Kino Film Collection
Remembering Gene Wilder
Winter in the Blood
VOD
Eagles of the Republic
The post New to Streaming: Blue Heron, I Love Boosters, Tuner, The Sheep Detectives & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
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