New to Streaming: ‘The Irishman,’ ‘Atlantics,’ ‘The Report,’ ‘Transit,’ and More
by Jordan Raup
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Before we get to our weekly streaming picks, check out our annual feature: Where to Stream the Best Films of 2019.
Atlantics (Mati Diop)
Somewhere along the stretch of Senegalese coastline where Mati Diop’s feature-length directorial debut Atlantics takes place, a futuristic tower stands tall and spectral above the ocean–a sinister crossbreed between a stalagmite and a lighthouse, its lights thrusting red and warm blobs into the night. It’s a fictional place in a story of magical, mysterious elements–a love story that crisscrosses between social commentaries and ghastly apparitions, addressing the global migrant crisis through a language of disquieting and stunning reveries. – Leo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria)
We discuss Lorene Scafaria’s crime drama Hustlers, starring Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, and Cardi B, here. For more, make sure to listen to The B-Side episode on Lopez, taking a deep dive into her career, here.
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
I Lost My Body (Jérémy Clapin)
Hands down one of the best animated films of the year, Jérémy Clapin’s directorial debut I Lost My Body tells parallel narratives: one, a more traditional romance between a failed pizza delivery driver and one of the women he delivers to; the other, a quest following a severed hand’s journey back to its owner. While the latter narrative may sound gruesome, Clapin’s film is, instead, hopeful, providing a previously unimagined emotional connection to a disembodied appendage. The ways in which these two narratives intertwine, and The Red Balloon-esque journey that the hand takes, balances an emotional journey that reflects on the role of trauma within the present, and the myriad ways in which we deal with loss. – Christian G. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
It’s a critical cliché to describe a filmmaker’s late-period output as elegiac, nostalgic, or any other adjective that suggests an aging artist grappling with their own mortality. With that said, Martin Scorsese actively courts this framework for his latest film The Irishman, a 209-minute crime epic that reunites him with actors Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, with whom he hasn’t worked since Casino in 1995. All three men, along with co-star Al Pacino, are septuagenarians who have been working in the film industry for upwards of half a century. To watch The Irishman means to confront their age, history, and inevitable decline. Scorsese filters this idea through a dramatization of a mob enforcer’s life, but there’s no ignoring the self-reflexive mode on display. – Vikram M. (full review)
Where to Stream: Netflix
The Mountain (Rick Alverson)
With Comedy and Entertainment, Rick Alverson has pulled no punches in delivering brutally, beautifully unpleasant scenarios and characters. His latest is no different. Rory O’Connor said in his Venice review, “As visually overcast as it is emotionally dead-eyed, The Mountain is probably the most intentionally–and unwarrantedly–bleak film you’re likely to see in 2018, a draining head-fuck of a movie with perhaps some stuff to say about misogyny, creativity, and mid-20th Century mental asylums.”
Where to Stream: Hulu
Ready or Not (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)
Writers Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy seem to have begun their writing process by mocking the central concept, landing a few good punchlines, and then realizing that by leaning into the absurdity they could create a gooey, gruesome, hilarious story. Thus, with their script and the game participation of the cast and crew, Ready or Not ends up, against all odds, becoming one of the best, most enjoyable surprises of the summer movie season. – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes, Google
The Report (Scott Z. Burns)
With it now being over a decade since the Bush-Cheney era, our perspective on the recent history is greater, which means it is time for filmmakers to have a stronger focus on mining the territory of post-9/11 political debacles. While Adam McKay’s Vice divided in its useful insight (or lack thereof), Scott Z. Burns takes a strictly procedural route in the thrilling, sharply written The Report. A student of the Steven Soderbergh school of filmmaking, it has the propulsive slickness of that director’s best films, without ever feeling derivative. – Jordan R. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Transit (Christian Petzold)
Migration isn’t just a hot-button issue in the political arena. It’s a hot topic in your local arthouse theater, too. At Berlin’s film festival, the subject is everywhere–from Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx and documentaries like Central Airport THF–perhaps natural for the capital of a country now home to more than a million recent asylum-seekers from the middle east and Africa. Local boy Christian Petzold’s audacious retelling of Anna Seghers’s World War II-set novel about refugees escaping Nazi-controlled France is a strange, beguiling creation that will be hard to beat in the competition line-up, and ranks as a rare period piece that utterly gets under the skin of contemporary concerns. It’s an engrossing, uncanny and somewhat disturbing film, and completes something of a trio of historical melodramas after Barbara and his worldwide hit Phoenix, but develops the themes of those in an adventurous, if oblique, way. – Ed F. (full review)
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime
Us (Jordan Peele)
When something is more than the sum of its parts, that is a form of achievement. Usually, if something is no more than the sum of its parts, that is considered a bad thing; a failure of some kind. Among many the questions that Us may raise in an audience, the foremost might be this: is being no more than the sum of its parts a bad thing if so many of those parts are really, really fun? – Brian R. (full review)
Where to Stream: HBO
Also New to Streaming
Amazon
Amazon Prime
The Criterion Channel
Hulu
MUBI (free for 30 days)
Zatôichi
The Prodigal Daughter
Bitter Rice
Bixa Travesty
Have Mercy On Us All
Big Deal on Madonna Street
The Other Side