New to Streaming: Black Bag, The Actor, The Monkey, Jacques Rivette & More

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 Actor (Duke Johnson)

For as much light as The Actor is bathed in, it’s equally shrouded in darkness. Duke Johnson’s solo directorial debut is a film of bleary sun and swallowing night and almost nothing in-between. It wouldn’t make sense to depict the in-between. That would be realistic, and The Actor is anything but real. Jubilant strings swell over vintage opening credits as we peer at the peaks of skyscrapers in a still, top-of-the-cityscape shot not too dissimilar from the angle we get on Saffron City in the original Super Smash Bros. The twinkling black-and-white image has a glowy 1950s TV-hour charm, the text surrounded by mid-century atomic sparkle logos (see: poster). It transitions neatly into the doomy film noir scene we open on––the inciting incident. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Art College 1994 (Jian Liu)

The disquieting and foreboding feelings of Liu Jian’s Art College 1994 is refreshing in contrast with the college-set films that can’t wait to cake the experience with nostalgia. It’s a very matter-of-fact film that presents college life through the semi-embarrassing philosophizing and the arrogant naivete of not having any answers, but never shutting your mouth anyway. For many, it’s the way it actually was, but we’d rather not remember it as such. That may take the conventional idea of ‘fun’ out of a college film, but I can’t say that this honest and somber portrayal, in its muted color scheme and decidedly non-expressive animation, is not enjoyable in and of itself. It takes the snapshot of youth on the precipice of a breakthrough. While obnoxious and optimistic, it lends its characters and their lives the dream of possibility despite not providing any answers to their feeling of being lost. – Soham G.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)

If a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film excised all its action scenes––save a stray explosion or gunshot––while employing a script with a pop John le Carré sensibility, it might resemble something like Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. A hyper-slick, suave spy thriller, it’s mainly relegated to dinner tables and office rooms as stages for rapid-fire, gleefully barbed verbal sparring scripted by David Koepp, returning to the genre after Ethan Hunt’s first outing. Primarily focusing on a trio of couples working in British intelligence, Koepp’s script poses the question: it is possible to have a healthy relationship when there’s no such thing as separating work from life, particularly when your job description is one of a professional liar? – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Directed by Jacques Rivette

One of the great French New Wave directors is getting the spotlight on the Criterion Cahnnel this month, featuring  Le coup du berger (1956), Paris Belongs to Us (1961), L’amour fou (1969), Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), Le Pont du Nord (1981), Love on the Ground (1984), The Gang of Four (1989), La belle noiseuse (1991), Joan the Maid (1994), Up, Down, Fragile (1995), and Va savoir (2001).

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

The Monkey (Osgood Perkins)

There’s no beating around the bush: The Monkey is a vessel for capturing cinematically cool kills. But not just cool kills––cool kills with an eight-figure budget, from the mind of Stephen King, developed by an offbeat team of creatives, and under the direction of an ever-maturing Osgood Perkins, who seems to have relatively strong freedom from the pulpit with his congregation of semi-independent studio backers. When’s the last time you saw a well-funded, artfully crafted, no-frills, self-secure “1,000 Ways to Die” horror comedy? – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

One of Them Days (Lawrence Lamont)

In today’s Hollywood where comedies, when they are made at all, are mostly shunted to straight-to-streaming, Lawrence Lamont’s One of Them Days is a breath of fresh air. While not rewriting the rules, it rather comfortably settles into a structure affectionately calling back staples of the genres from the 90s and the early aughts. Following Keke Palmer and SZA as friends who have one day to get enough money to cover rent, it’s an eminently likable adventure with sight gags that actually work and, most important of all, a central friendship we actually believe thanks to the charisma of the two leads. With it already making three times its budget theatrically, here’s hoping Hollywood finally learns some lessons that audiences are starving for more in the dormant genre. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: Netflix

Paddington in Peru (Dougal Wilson)

Arriving seven years after the first sequel, the already-impossible task of Paddington in Peru––to merely live up to its predecessors––has only become more of an uphill climb after much-frenzied anticipation and backlash. Divorcing director Dougal Wilson’s film from the hype and surprising amount of discourse surrounding it is a harder task than expected in this light. It’s clearly a disappointment compared to the two King-directed efforts, but is not without moments of comic inspiration, enjoyable supporting performances, and well-engineered adventure blockbuster set pieces. For much of the runtime I found myself trying to parse how I would feel on a second viewing, when I’d be less concerned with the fact that it doesn’t live up to Paddington 2. That was right up until it ended on a note that made it clear this film can’t help but live in the shadow of the films which came before. – Alistair R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Starring Penélope Cruz

Coming off one of her most impassioned performances in Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Penélope Cruz enjoys a mini-retrospective on the Criterion Channel starting this month, featuring Belle Époque (1992), Jamón jamón (1992), Open Your Eyes (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), Volver (2006), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), and Nine (2009).

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

The Visitor (Bruce LaBruce)

Pasolini takes aim at the fascistic upper class and turns the use of sex and humiliation as a means of control against its members, but LaBruce brings an effervescence to every bit of the original. Stylistically, The Visitor updates Teorema by making it look ultramodern. Colorist Andrea Gómez drowns the frame in sultry reds and bottomless blues, strobing intercuts a scene time and time again, and the screen is often split in four, each bit with its own angle and color. The multiplication of images, lights, and tints forms a rhythm of its own to guide us through the plot of a porn movie: a mansion, a knock on the door, surprise, sexual appetite, consummation, transformation, end. – Savina P. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

The Criterion Channel

Across 110th Street
Alias Nick Beal
The Angel Levine
Ash Is Purest White
at the bamboo green
Bananas
Before Seriana
The Big Clock
Black Caesar
Black Coal, Thin Ice
Born to Win
Bye Bye Braverman
Casualties of War
Coogan’s Bluff
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Dead Ringers
Dog Day Afternoon
Fast Company
The Fog of War
Full Metal Jacket
In Country
Little Murders
Love on the Ground
Madigan
Naked Acts
Night Has a Thousand Eyes
The Panic in Needle Park
Platoon
Resynator
Rosemary’s Baby
Showgirls
Streetwise
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Three Seasons
Twilight’s Kiss
The Wild Goose Lake
You’re a Big Boy Now

Hulu

The Darjeeling Limited
Oddity
The Royal Tenenbaums

Kino Film Collection

Let the Corpses Tan
Mom and Dad’s Nipple Factory

Max

Y2K

Metrograph at Home

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
eXistenZ
Millennium Actress
Morvern Callar
Party Girl
Spa Night
Three by Penny Lane
Three Starring Steve Buscemi
The Siren

MUBI (free for 30 days)

Benedetta
Bernie
Bug Diner
Eagle vs. Shark
In The Loop
Mainstream

Netflix

The Age of Innocence
For the Love of the Game
Heat

Paramount+ w/Showtime

The Last Stop in Yuma County

Prime Video

The Conversation
The Last Temptation of Christ
Lost in Translation
The Master
Mission: Impossible
They Came Together

VOD

The Colors Within
The Oldest Profession
Opus

The post New to Streaming: Black Bag, The Actor, The Monkey, Jacques Rivette & More first appeared on The Film Stage.