Staying home? Good. Looking for something new to watch while you do it? Even better! As the world shifts to accommodate a wide range of in-home viewing options for movie lovers, it’s not just platforms that are expanding, it’s the very type of films they host. There’s more than ever to sift through, and IndieWire is here to help you do just that.
This week’s new releases include streaming originals, fresh VOD offerings, festival favorites, new studio releases now available in the comfort of your own home, and a variety of exciting virtual cinema picks. Browse your options below.
Week of December 14 – December 20
New Films on VOD and Streaming (And in Select Theaters)
As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.
“Another Round” (directed by Thomas Vinterberg)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
“Another Round” wastes no time confronting the danger and allure of alcohol as a singular contradiction: It begins with the joyful beer-swigging exploits of energetic teens, followed by an abrupt cut to black, and a jarring silence pierced by the lonely slosh of a single beverage. From there, Thomas Vinterberg’s absorbing dark comedy turns into a lively and fascinating referendum on booze, with Mads Mikkelsen’s fierce and unsettling performance vibrating at its center. Teaming up for the first time since their similarly unnerving character study “The Hunt” in 2012, the Danish actor and director join forces for a wily character study that enhances the one-note premise through the sheer gusto of its execution. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Education”
“Education” (directed by Steve McQueen)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
In several installments of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology, the racism leveled against London’s West Indian population is an overt threat. In “Education,” it simmers in the shadows until someone dares to call it out. An inspiring slice of kitchen sink drama, McQueen’s illuminating look at a clandestine segregation policy in the London school district of the early ‘70s takes the perspective of an innocent child, and wouldn’t look out of place with the sort of social realist exposés Ken Loach has been making for over 50 years. In this case, however, this minuscule but affecting hourlong story is an extension of the “Small Axe” mission to fill a historical gap deserving of greater scrutiny, and achieves that goal by serving as a kind of education itself. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Fatale” (directed by Deon Taylor)
Distributor: Lionsgate
Where to Find It: Select theaters
For better (and worse, so, so much worse) Deon Taylor attempts to subvert the erotic thriller pattern with his baffling “Fatale,” an erotic thriller that’s convoluted, boring, and maybe worst of all, hideously unsexy. No one comes out happy, especially the audience. Taylor, who reteams with his “The Intruder” star Michael Ealy and screenwriter David Loughrey (who also wrote “Obsessed”!), takes some swings that have to be admired, because the basic ideas are quite good, even as the execution is very bad. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Greenland” (directed by Ric Roman Waugh)
Distributor: STXfilms
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
It’s precisely because Ric Roman Waugh’s mid-budget “Greenland” eschews Hollywood expectations of its “craggy man vs. a planet-destroying comet” premise and drills in on that human-sized helplessness we’ve all come to know so well that its most effective moments remind us why these movies ever resonated with people in the first place. The universe is a cold and indifferent place where inanimate objects will travel hundreds of thousands of lightyears across the stars just to kill you and everyone you love, but the pathetic smallness of our mortal existence — the silly lives we lead and the people we’re lucky enough to share them with — is precisely what makes them so precious. Maybe that sentiment is too facile to put into words, but it’s just facile enough to build a satisfyingly bone-stupid Gerard Butler vehicle around. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Fatale”
Lionsgate
“Hunter Hunter” (directed by Shawn Linden)
Distributor: IFC Midnight
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various VOD and digital platforms
In the world of “Hunter Hunter,” director Shawn Linden’s backwoods horror movie, humans are carrion in the talons of nature. This survivalist thriller set in the Manitoba wilderness packs a gut-twisting punch in its final moments as a family of fur trappers (led by a grizzled Devon Sawa) faces the cruel indifference of the forest. While “Hunter Hunter” initially primes audiences for a man-versus-nature story about humans trying to outdo a cunning wolf, the film spirals into much darker terrain as the sun turns anemic, the body count rises, and hope fizzles out. While the grindhouse levels of shock and gore piled on in the third act may seem out of the cold blue, “Hunter Hunter” carefully lays the groundwork throughout for a brutal tale sure to please genre fans looking for a jolt to cap their 2020. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (directed by George C. Wolfe)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” opens with a thundering blues performance and ends with a gut punch. Both moments inject fresh energy and righteous fury into the 1982 August Wilson play that launched his 10-part Pittsburgh Cycle, but in between, the movie hews to more familiar turf. An actor’s showcase for Viola Davis as the show-stopping singer and the late Chadwick Boseman as the scheming trumpeter angling to steal her spotlight, director George C. Wolfe’s reverential adaptation livens up the material with sizzling color and vivid closeups. Save for a few digressions, however, Wolfe and screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson have put the play into the movie, rather than vice versa. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Monster Hunter”
“Monster Hunter” (directed by Paul W.S. Anderson)
Distributor: Sony
Where to Find It: Select theaters
Alas, some hidden worlds should have stayed behind the perception of our senses, and Paul W.S. Anderson — an occasionally form-bending filmmaker who’s never met a beloved franchise that he couldn’t militarize beyond all interest or recognition — sucks any trace of life out of the “Monster Hunter” series the moment his movie exchanges the cartoon sand pirates of its campy prologue in favor of some generic soldier types on our side of the dimensional rift. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Also available this week:
“Breach” (directed by John Suits)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
“Dirty God” (directed by Sacha Polak)
Distributor: Dark Star Pictures
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
“Modern Persuasion” (directed by Alex Appel)
Distributor: Pacific Northwest Pictures
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
“Sister of the Groom” (directed by Amy Miller Gross)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
“Skylin3s” (directed by Liam O’Donnell)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various VOD and digital platforms
“Starfish” (directed by Bill Clark)
Distributor: Freestyle Digital Media
Where to Find It: Various VOD and digital platforms
Films Available via Virtual Cinema
Learn more about virtual cinemas offerings right here.
Also available this week:
“Goodbye, Dragon Inn” (directed by Tsai Ming-liang)
Distributor: Metrograph Pictures
Where to Find It: Available exclusively via Metrograph Digital
“Louis Van Beethoven” (directed by Niki Stein)
Distributor: Film Movement
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
“Museum Town” (directed by Jennifer Trainer)
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
Check out more information about December’s new releases below.
Week of December 7 – December 13
New Films on VOD and Streaming (And in Select Theaters)
As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.
“Alex Wheatle” (directed by Steve McQueen)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Compared to some of the other “Small Axe” entries, “Alex Wheatle” occupies a somewhat awkward position within the film and TV media boundary that the anthology pushes up against: It’s not episodic, but feels more like the first act of a larger story begging for further exploration. Nevertheless, with a complex, ever-evolving turn by newcomer Sheyi Cole at its center, the story it does offer up turns on Steve McQueen’s usual sophisticated narrative techniques and the same striking penchant to render Black British culture in complex lyrical terms. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Assassins” (directed by Ryan White)
Distributor: Greenwich Entertainment
Where to Find It: Select theaters
It’s easy enough to appreciate why Ryan White decided to make a documentary that explains the death of Kim Jong-nam in the most straightforward terms possible; why “Assassins” eschews subplots, color commentary, or even any kind of residual context as it walks us through what happened. Indeed, the story is so outlandish — and the film so dry — that it’s hard not to be impressed by the discipline White showed in refusing to have more fun with it. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Farewell Amor” (directed by Ekwa Msangi)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters and various VOD platforms
In Ekwa Msangi’s feature debut, an immigrant family tries to stitch itself together in New York after decades of separation, with the patriarch Walter (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) an Angolan refugee now comfortably settled in America, and his wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and daughter Sylvia (Jayme Lawson) at his doorstep 17 years later, suddenly adrift in a strange land. Msangi’s drama takes surprisingly structural turns that, even as it lands the movie in feel-good territory that isn’t entirely earned, make for an unexpected and moving slice of immigrant life. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Funny Boy” (directed by Deepa Mehta)
Distributor: ARRAY
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
Intimate and beautifully rendered, “Funny Boy” is a visually lush coming-of-age drama set amidst a vicious ethnic conflict that is regionally specific, but tragically universal. It is the latest feature film from revered Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, who first rose to international renown in 1996 with “Fire,” a groundbreaking lesbian romance that was censored in India after screenings led to violent protests and the destruction of movie theaters. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“I’m Your Woman” (directed by Julia Hart)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
You’ll be halfway through “I’m Your Woman” before its premise is clear, but the mystery is as gripping as its payoff. Director Julia Hart’s fourth feature pairs an engrossing turn from Rachel Brosnahan with a tense ‘70s-set script constructed with jigsaw precision. The full picture may amount to a contrived gangster story, but Hart (who scripted with her partner Jordan Horowitz) approaches that formula from the inside out. By the time you realize the kind of movie you’re watching, it’s already a few steps ahead. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Let Them All Talk” (directed by Steven Soderbergh)
Distributor: HBO Max
Where to Find It: Streaming on HBO Max
With “Let Them All Talk,” Steven Soderbergh has gone from making movies informed by his “let’s just do it and be legends” ethos to making a movie about the futility of perfection, and the consequences of imposing it on an unruly world. If this gentle and luxuriant floating gabfest isn’t the least bit hostile towards David Fincher or anyone else, it’s still a clear shot across the bow at the idea that artists have the final say over how people live with their work. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“The Prom” (directed by Ryan Murphy)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
Aside from its impassioned overtures for LGBTQ+ rights, “The Prom” has all the makings of a classic Hollywood musical: Haughty urbanites descend reluctantly on a small provincial town seeking validation and instead find love, connection, and renewed life’s purpose. It’s like if the strivers from “The Philadelphia Story” went to Allentown to help Peggy Sawyer find her way to “42nd Street.” And it’s exactly the kind of feel-good entertainment we needed this year. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Safety” (directed by Reginald Hudlin)
Distributor: Disney+
Where to Find It: Streaming on Disney+
In the effort to make this an all-ages story of family-based uplift, something gets lost in making it palatable. Set in 2006, “Safety” ends up feeling like a Disney Channel Original Movie that the network might have released around that time. (In case you forget what year this takes place, the “Hey Ya” ringtone and Dem Franchize Boyz/Terror Squad drops are there as reminders.) The romances are perfectly chaste, the laughs come from miscalculated hijinks (in a rush to get ready one morning, wouldn’t you know it, someone puts their pants on backwards), and abstract concepts like Teamwork become more important than actually engaging with real-world concepts. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Songbird” (directed by Adam Mason)
Distributor: STXfilms
Where to Find It: Various VOD platforms
Adam Mason’s schlocky and opportunistic “Songbird” is billed as the first Hollywood feature to be made during quarantine, and this impressively scaled pandemic-themed riff on “The Purge” couldn’t be prouder of itself for that accomplishment. The project announces its own topicality before the studio company logos have even played out during the opening credits, as snippets of news audio bark at us about the death toll of COVID-23 (a mutated coronavirus that’s evolved to attack brain tissue and kill people within 48 hours of infection), and not a single minute of the slapdash movie that follows allows you to forget that it was conceived, pitched, written, shot, edited, and released since lockdown started in March. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“The Stand In” (directed by Jamie Babbit)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters and various VOD and digital platforms
Perhaps it would be hyperbolic to call a film like “The Stand In” one of the biggest disappointments of 2020 — that’s a low bar — but given the windfall of prime material and talent that went into the creation of such a messy, mirthless, and just plain mean final product, there’s no other way to put it. “The Stand In” is both one of the biggest disappointments of 2020 and a feature that may one day be remembered as being emblematic of a year filled with waste and pain. And, like 2020, it had so much promise. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Wander Darkly” (directed by Tara Miele)
Distributor: Lionsgate
Where to Find It: Select theaters and various VOD platforms
The apparent influences on Tara Miele’s “Wander Darkly” are easy to spot, from obvious and immediate forbearers that range from Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Science of Sleep,” to shlockier fare like “Stay” and “Ghost.” While Miele’s latest feature offers an ambitious amalgam of other projects, all tucked inside a vaguely secretive package, the unwieldy trauma drama isn’t able to live up to its biggest ideas and even bigger swings. Star Sienna Miller — in the midst of a low-key renaissance after her quietly revelatory performance in last year’s under-seen “American Woman” — soars, but even her grounded turn isn’t enough to bring “Wander Darkly” down to earth. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Wild Mountain Thyme” (directed by John Patrick Shanley)
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Where to Find It: Select theaters and various VOD platforms
There are people who will tell you that John Patrick Shanley’s “Wild Mountain Thyme” traffics in bumper-to-bumper Irish stereotypes, but those people will be a bit off the mark — “stereotypes” is a wildly inadequate word for how this fable-esque romantic comedy renders the quirks and customs of life in the verdant farmlands of Ireland’s County Mayo. This sometimes enchanting (but always demented) soda farl of banter and blarney couldn’t be a broader caricature of Irish culture if it were written by the Keebler elves and directed by a pint of Guinness. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Wolfwalkers” (directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)
Distributor: AppleTV+ and GKIDS
Where to Find It: Streaming on AppleTV+
With “Wolfwalkers” — the final installment of Cartoon Saloon’s informal trilogy of films about Irish folklore — Cartoon Saloon has realized its true potential at last. Far and away the best animated film of the year so far (one worthy of such hosannas no matter how limited the competition has been), this heartfelt tale of love and loss is the most visually enchanting feature its studio has made thus far, as well as the most poignant. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Also available this week:
“Giving Voice” (directed by James D. Stern and Fernando Villena)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
“The Incredible True Story of Rose Island” (directed by Sydney Sibilia)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
“Ip Man: Kung Fu Master” (directed by Li Liming)
Distributor: Magnet Releasing
Where to Find It: Select theaters and various VOD platforms
Films Available via Virtual Cinema
Learn more about virtual cinemas offerings right here.
“Finding Yingying” (directed by Jenny Shi)
Distributor: MTV Documentary Films
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
Unfolding in the present tense as a missing persons case metastasizes into an international tragedy that spans the world’s two dominant superpowers, “Finding Yingying” was shot by someone who naturally hoped to answer all of the questions that might be raised by a case like this. But Jenny Shi’s film is at its most nuanced and unnerving — and also its most frustrating — when it leverages the difficult task of finding Yingying into an exploration of the singularly modern spaces exposed by her loss. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Gunda” (directed by Viktor Kossakovsky)
Distributor: Neon
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
More experience than movie, “Gunda” is a visionary case for veganism in black and white. Russian filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky’s mesmerizing achievement removes humans from the picture to magnify the small moments in the lives of various farm animals, with his eponymous pig at its center. Over the course of 90 hypnotic minutes, his roving camera observes Gunda and her piglets, a handful of chickens, and a smattering of cows simply going about their lives on an unspecified farmland. Kossakovsky’s fascinating non-narrative experiment burrows into the center of his subject’s nervous system, meeting the creatures on their own terms in a remarkable plea for empathy that only implores carnivores to think twice by implication. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Minari” (directed by Lee Isaac Chung)
Distributor: A24
Where to Find It: Available exclusively through Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual cinema
Told with the rugged tenderness of a Flannery O’Connor novel but aptly named for a resilient Korean herb that can grow wherever it’s planted, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical “Minari” is a raw and vividly remembered story of two simultaneous assimilations; it’s the story of a family assimilating into a country, but also the story of a man assimilating into his family. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Also available this week:
“The Last Sermon” (directed by Jack Baxter and Joshua Faudem)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
“The Library That Dolly Built” (directed by Nick Geidner)
Distributor: Abramorama
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
“Through the Night” (directed by Loira Limbal)
Distributor: Long Shot Factory
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
Week of November 30 – December 6
New Films on VOD and Streaming (And in Select Theaters)
As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.
“Ammonite” (directed by Francis Lee)
Distributor: Neon
Where to Find It: PVOD
A film about the kind of people who spend their lives searching out the giant ribbed and spiraled fossils of the extinct underwater mollusks and the kind of people trapped in shells of their own making. In Francis Lee’s “Ammonite,” those people are one and the same, care of fictitious spins on Mary (Kate Winslet) and her geologist friend Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan). The result is a chilly, detached romance between the two women that never catches fire, a film about restrained people that itself is so buttoned-up as to be impenetrable. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Black Bear” (directed by Lawrence Michael Levine)
Distributor: Momentum Pictures
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various digital and VOD platforms
There is indeed an actual, living, occasionally roaring black bear that appears in Lawrence Michael Levine’s razor-sharp “Black Bear,” but that’s one of the few hard-and-fast elements of the filmmaker’s nifty deconstruction of both the wider current culture and the microcosm of indie filmmaking. That the film — the first of Levine’s to premiere at Sundance — was programmed in the festival’s forward-thinking NEXT section should suggest to audiences that the film is more than the psychosexual drama hinted at in its official description. Well, it is, but it’s also so much more. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Dear Santa” (directed by Dana Nachman)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various digital and VOD platforms
Dana Nachman’s “Dear Santa” does everything in its power to complicate what should’ve been the easiest slam dunk in documentary history. A chintzy and inexplicably scattershot look at the nice people who made Operation Santa possible during the 2019 holiday season, the latest film from the director of “Batkid Begins” struggles to balance sentiment and logistics from the moment it starts, and it’s only during the home stretch — when we finally get to see the look that Operation Santa can put on someone’s face — that the gift of giving shines through. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Freaky” (directed by Christopher Landon)
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Where to Find It: PVOD
A blood-spattered twist on the “Freaky Friday” mythos that dares ask, “Hey, what if you were a nice high school kid who ended up switching bodies with a psychotic serial killer who looks like Vince Vaughn?,” the film is bolstered by go-for-broke performances from Vaughn and Kathryn Newton, as well as Christoper Landon’s sharp humor (and sharper kills). Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Godmothered” (directed by Sharon Maguire)
Distributor: Disney+
Where to Find It: Streaming on Disney+
Built on a cute idea — hey, what about exploring the wide world of fairy godmothers? — that also builds in some nifty ideas about what fairy tales actually represent in this current day and age and then wraps all that up in a glittery holiday package, “Godmothered” has all the pieces for at least an amiable enough production. Instead, the result is a paradoxical combination of sweet messages and dull execution, good-hearted ideas and bizarre subplots, a dull affair that very clearly sprang from a good place. Plus, a lot of songs from “The Sound of Music,” because … why not? Read IndieWire’s full review.
“I’m Your Woman” (directed by Julia Hart)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Select theaters, streaming on Amazon Prime Video on December 11
You’ll be halfway through “I’m Your Woman” before its premise is clear, but the mystery is as gripping as its payoff. Director Julia Hart’s fourth feature pairs an engrossing turn from Rachel Brosnahan with a tense ‘70s-set script constructed with jigsaw precision. The full picture may amount to a contrived gangster story, but Hart (who scripted with her partner Jordan Horowitz) approaches that formula from the inside out. By the time you realize the kind of movie you’re watching, it’s already a few steps ahead. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Luxor” (directed by Zeina Durra)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Various digital and VOD platforms
British aid worker Hana (Andrea Riseborough) is on leave and a little bit lost in Egypt, a place she once left behind. She’s perpetually in a state of psychological deja vu, which becomes quite literal when she bumps into her ex. Zeina Durra’s “Luxor” powerfully evokes that indefinable ache of revisiting a lost love that probably has a frankensteined German word for it. Here, it mostly finds its expression visually, and in Riseborough’s searching face, in a measured nostalgia trip that brings to mind a more melancholy “Before Sunset.” Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Mank” (directed by David Fincher)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
Though forged in a meticulous 1930s backdrop that merges historical detail with the style and tone of that era, “Mank” is hardly a playful throwback. David Fincher has made a cerebral psychodrama that rewards the engaged cinephile audience in its crosshairs, but even when cold to the touch, the movie delivers a complex and insightful look at American power structures and the potential for a creative spark to rankle their foundations. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Sound of Metal” (directed by Darius Marder)
Distributor: Amazon Prime Video
Where to Find It: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Riz Ahmed is the sort of frantic screen actor who always looks like he might jut out of the frame, and in “Sound of Metal,” he’s trapped. As Ruben, the heavy-metal drummer going deaf at the center of the mesmerizing debut from writer-director Darius Marder, Ahmed conveys the complex frustrations of losing touch with the world around him no matter how much he fights to hold onto it. This devastating conundrum relies on the best use of sound design in recent memory, as Marder immerses viewers within the confines of Ruben’s deteriorating relationship to the world around him, and he sorts through the wreckage to construct a new one. Ahmed’s brilliant performance coasts on a complex soundscape that resonates even in total silence. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Also available this week:
“All My Life” (directed by Marc Meyers)
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Where to Find It: Select theaters
“Anything for Jackson” (directed by Justin G. Dyck)
Distributor: Shudder
Where to Find It: Streaming on Shudder
“Love, Weddings, and Other Disasters” (directed by Dennis Dugan)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various VOD platforms
“Wander” (directed by April Mullen)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various digital and VOD platforms
“What Lies Below” (directed by Braden R. Duemmler)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Various digital and VOD platforms
Films Available via Virtual Cinema
Learn more about virtual cinemas offerings right here.
“76 Days” (directed by Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and anonymous)
Distributor: MTV Documentary Films
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
The remarkable documentary “76 Days” offers a bracingly immediate view from the frontlines of history — at the trauma and disequilibrium of being ambushed by a crisis dire enough to define its century. Discretely shot across four Wuhan hospitals without government approval, this fly-in-the-trenches look inside the outbreak is scattered and structureless in a way that makes it seem as if it’s simply taking notes for the history books of the future. But if Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and their anonymous co-director’s film is more valuable as a time capsule than it is as a piece of cinéma vérité, it still puts a human face on an epochal horror that some people have refused to acknowledge even as it rages around them. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Mayor” (directed by David Osit)
Distributor: Film Movement
Where to Find It: Choose your local cinema through the film’s virtual cinema page
There have been countless documentaries made about the West Bank experience, from “5 Broken Cameras” to “The Settlers,” and they often involve the travails of ordinary life existing side by side with military persecution. “Mayor” offers a striking new perspective on that struggle, with a personal on-the-ground quality matched by grand tonal ambitions that makes it the best of its subgenre. It might not change anyone’s mind about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but “Mayor” presents a fresh window into the challenges of leadership on the latter half of that equation. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Nomadland” (directed by Chloé Zhao)
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Where to Find It: Available exclusively through Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual cinema
“Nomadland” is the kind of movie that could go very wrong. With Frances McDormand as its star alongside a cast real-life nomads, in lesser hands it might look like cheap wish fulfillment or showboating at its most gratuitous. Instead, director Chloé Zhao works magic with McDormand’s face and the real world around it, delivering a profound rumination on the impulse to leave society in the dust. Zhao previously directed “The Rider” and “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” dramas that dove into marginalized experiences with indigenous non-actors in South Dakota. “Nomadland” imports that fixation with sweeping natural scenery to a much larger tapestry and a different side of American life. Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century,” the movie follows McDormand as Fern, a soft-spoken widow in her early 60s who hits the road in her van, and just keeps moving. The movie hovers with her, at times so enmeshed in her travels that it practically becomes a documentary. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Check out more information about new releases on the next page.
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