Criterion Channel rings in the new year with a wide diversity of fresh and old-fashioned delights, some evergreen and others tailored to the spirit of the season. And by “the season”, I clearly mean the theatrical release of ‘Bathroughgirl’. “as we begin with a mini-retro celebrating some of Nicole Kidman’s most scandalous moments, adding the time she urinated on Zac Efron in “The Paperboy. “» I don’t know if anyone wants to catch up on Frank Oz’s bloodless reimagining of “The Stepford Wives,” but any excuse to put “Portrait of a Lady” and “Eyes Wide Shut” back on the service is fine with me.
Switching gears, the Channel’s most stimulating package of the month might have to be the “Surveillance Cinema” series, which spans 70 years — from “Modern Times” to “A Scanner Darkly” — in order to study the changing ways that society has been watching itself at work, home, and everywhere else during the growth of industrialized voyeurism. Other thematic retros include “Love in Disguise,” which looks at the rom-con gems of the Lubitsch era, and a focus on films in which heroic actors were cast as villains (Andy Griffith’s turn in “A Face in the Crowd” being the most iconic example, or at least the most discomforting to watch in January of 2025).
A great look at Beninese filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, a trio of Sean Baker and Cameron Crowe’s early films, a handful of David Bowie’s strangest roles, and Brady Corbet’s circular “A Leader’s Childhood” round out a spoofed list topped by RaMell Ross. ‘Hale County Documentary This Morning, This Evening’, a sample of ‘mundane epic’ that links his magnificent ‘Nickel Boys’ with the global as it is as we see it with the naked eye.
All films available to stream January 1.
The first four “Indiana Jones” movies are coming to Disney+ this month (where were they before?), and while even the staunchest “Crystal Skull” defenders like myself can’t argue that Spielberg’s sequel is the most productive. , 2023’s “Dial of Destiny” made it clearer than ever that the departure beyond Indy was much more powerful than other people need to admit. The Mutt Williams in all of this is unforgivable, yet the rest of the film, especially its ecstatic, propulsive first act, offers a laugh comparable to anything the franchise offered in its heyday. Chances are you’ve been at least a little bit about this movie over the past 17+ years, and there’s no better time than now to revisit what you missed.
Available to stream January 1.
Other highlights:
A quick shout out to Film Movement Plus – no other streamer more consistently streams so many movies I’ve never noticed and am dying to see. Case in point: Matsuo Akinori’s “Asia-Pol,” a 1966 Shaw Brothers spy film released the same year James Bond made his first stop in Japan in the classic—if deliberately racist—”You Only Live Two times”. “. Co-produced through Nikkatsu and supposedly a little more wrought than the 007 adventure it accompanied on screen, the film stars Shaw Brothers mainstay Jimmy Wang Yu as a secret agent whose efforts to recover a fortune in stolen gold they run into a challenge when the yakuza starts hunting him for sport and if that doesn’t live up to my expectations, I guess there will be “Girl’s Blood”, an “erotic action drama” about 4 women who meet each other. they join an underground MMA fighting club. I’m not sure how this premise becomes erotic, but I do know that you may not find the answer to this mystery on any other platform.
Available for streaming January 31.
Other highlights:
As we prepare for another edition of Sundance, there’s no better time than to watch one of the most powerful films from last year’s festival. Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack of a Coup” may not have been an instant sensation, but little by little it has become one of the definitive documentaries of 2024, perhaps surpassed only by the unreleased – and still undistributed – “No Other Land. ”
Here’s what David Opie had to say about the film in his glowing review last January: “The story is not set in stone. It has a rhythm and flow that adjusts depending on who is telling the story, who is listening, and the medium through which the story is told. True consensus is elusive, but Johan Grimonprez has built his career interrogating Hitale in an effort to locate the facts amid the chaos wrought by time and prejudice. And in his new work, the Belgian director uses this rhythm to dizzying effect.
After his Hitchcockian films “Double Take” (2009) and “Shadow World” (2017), an investigation into the multibillion-dollar foreign arms trade, Grimonprez returns to Sundance with “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” a colorful film. Essay that combines jazz and politics to get to the bottom of the machinations of the colonial force in the Congo around 1960.
There’s a long way to go, but in 150 minutes, Grimonprez traverses immense swaths of time and space to hint at how the Belgian monarchy, the U. S. government, and corporations conspired to assassinate Congo’s first prime minister, Array, Patrice Lumumba. It turns out that the most common thing was that they did it with jazz.
Available for streaming January 10.
Other highlights:
A handful of heavyweight titles are leaving Kino’s Film Collection this month (including Marcel Carné’s “The Port of Shadows,” which I invite you to watch while possible), but subscribers will find it hard to mourn the loss thanks to an influx of new, less canonical but more intriguing additions. Chief among these will be Joanna Hogg’s “Exhibition,” which memorably connects the dots between “The Memory” and the outermost version. experimental paintings that he began to explore in film school. On an equally flexible but decidedly more American note, the Kino Film Collection also houses a huge list of 49 films committed to painting that will premiere at Sundance, a package that includes formative pieces from independent filmmaking such as Todd Haynes. ‘ “Poison”, “Computer Chess” by Andrew Bujalski and “It Felt Like Love” by Eliza Hittman. If you can’t make it to Park City this month or don’t need to shell out a handful of cash to roll the dice on a new discovery, Kino definitely has what you need.
Available until January 9.
Other highlights:
January is a wonderful month for major awards contenders to start hitting streaming, and that’s the case with Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” which generated a wave of buzz at Sundance until it was probably guaranteed a big number of Oscar nominations. Kieran Culkin seems poised to win for his supporting role as Benji, an exposed nerve of a human being whose ability to sense the global so acutely becomes the envy (and agony) of his super-neurotic cousin David (Eisenberg) as the odd couple. Take a tour to Poland to see where your deceased grandmother lived before escaping the Holocaust.
In his review for IndieWire, Siddhant Adlakha wrote that “Eisenberg’s sophomore effort is full of the kind of headaches that American independent filmmakers try to encapsulate in their family reunion stories. ” Instead, Eisenberg will take control of the emotional paradoxes, as the New York cousin duo sign up for an intimate Holocaust excursion in Poland to get closer to their roots after the death of their great-grandfather. mother.
Available for streaming January 16.
Other highlights:
A caustically funny cosmic joke of a film about an insecure actor who finds a miracle cure for his facial disfigurement, only to be upstaged by a stranger who oozes self-confidence despite (still) having the exact same condition the main character had once allowed to hold him back, Aaron Schimberg’s ruthless and Escher-like “A Different Man” might have felt cruel if not for how cleverly it complicates its punchline.
Do we intend to make someone laugh – someone who has been treated like a monster their entire adult life – just because they couldn’t resist the opportunity to shed their skin? Anyone familiar with Schimberg’s “Chained for Life,” which defends the perception of disability as “God’s mistakes,” already knows the answer to this question. Plus, who among us would pass up the opportunity to look like Sebastian Stan?
From this point of view, it is more tempting to interpret “A Different Man” as a dark and damning satire of our social conditioning, which has convinced us to see asymmetry as ugliness and internalize ugliness as inhuman. A more exact distillation of what Schimberg does here, leaving it there would fail to convey all the ambition of a delirious and surreal psycho-thriller that complicates its own identity in each of its turns. Brian De Palma’s introspection and the biting fatalism of the Coen brothers through the prism of his greatest personal obsessions, Schimberg creates a space of mirrors so brilliant and complex that any of his characters are compatible with their own reflections, and surely dead to reduce the film that surrounds them to a mere ethical instruction.
Available to stream January 17.
Other highlights:
An anarchic, liberated, and contagiously alive character study that feels like it was born out of a three-way between “Amélie,” “Oldboy,” and Gaspar Noé before maturing into a force of nature all its own, Pablo Larraín’s “Ema” doesn’t always dance to a clear or recognizable beat, but anybody willing to get on its wavelength will be rewarded with one of the year’s most dynamic and electrifying films. Which isn’t to suggest the movie doesn’t grab you from the moment it starts, only that it keeps you on your toes for a little while before you can figure out the steps, and it never lets you take the lead. Needless to say, we’re a long way from “Maria.”
Played by a feral Mariana Di Girolamo in the kind of unforgettably self-possessed breakthrough performance that could forge her to this role forever, Ema is a Valparaiso Reggaeton dancer who likes to walk the streets at night with a flamethrower strapped to her back. What she and her choreographer husband (Gael García Bernal) have to do with a violent little Colombian boy will take some time to puzzle out, but the pieces are all there at your disposal. Larraín does eventually carve out a clear(ish) plot, but most of “Ema” is about someone who’s lost a valuable part of themselves and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back. It’s thrilling to watch her try.
Available until January 1.
Other highlights:
Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice has made only three films since he debuted with his feature “The Spirit of the Beehive” in 1973, and all of them have championed – and served as a reminder – of the exclusive strength of cinema as a medium that none did. hence it is harsher or more plaintive than “Close your eyes. ” Erice’s surprising new film tells the story of a retired director who becomes obsessed again with the unfinished film that ruined his career and makes the decision to solve the mystery of the lead actor’s disappearance halfway through the film. From this undeniable premise, Erice shows the most private film he has ever made. Sometimes it seems like the only movie he ever made. Or maybe all at once.
Quiet but ultimately overwhelming in its simplicity (and its absolute slos angelesm-dunk of a final scene), “Close Your Eyes” is neither an autobiographical memoir of Los Angeles “The Fabelmans,” nor a tearful triyet to magic . of films along the lines of “Cinema Paradiso”. However, as if through possibility and through a divine goal at the same time, in the end he also achieves those two things. Set at the dawn of the streaming era and filmed with the original sterility that accompanies it, “Close Your Eyes” blatantly loses the loss of a more tactile cinematic experience (the kind that the genuine film included), but only so that it can honoring the way of making sure that photographs become ingrained in us when we see them in the right circumstances.
As he nears the end of a career that has always been fascinated by the liminal space between artifice and reality, however, Erice is somehow able to fulfill cinema’s miraculous promise as a vehicle of eternal return; as a magic trick capable of keeping the past alive long after it’s already died within us. The movies are real, “Close Your Eyes” insists with the intensity of an old master seizing what might be his last chance to say it. How much of ourselves will we lose if we forget how to project them properly?
Available for streaming January 17.
Other highlights:
OVID is off to a start because, pound for pound, the streamer’s January lineup is like any other in its history. A trio of ancient Japanese ghost stories (highlighted through Kenji Misumi’s “The Ghost of Yotsuya”) is joined by David Easteal’s notable “The Plains” (a three-hour film filmed almost entirely from the backseat of a car), the outstanding “Three Monkeys”, Isabella Eklöf’s shocking film at Sundance “Holiday”, a pressing call against the fanaticism of the directors of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and a wild Soviet gem that makes The difference between Andrei Tarkovsky and Douglas Adams (“Kin-dza-dza!”) is an embarrassing richness, but I chose to highlight Chie Hayakawa’s “Plan 75” because it appeals to me. . It has haunted me since I first saw it in Cannes almost 3 years ago.
Inspired by a 2016 incident in which an ex-employee of a Japanese care home for intellectually and mentally disabled people broke into his former place of work and stabbed 19 defenseless patients to death in their beds in what he believed was an act of mercy (both for the victims, and also for the national economy that paid for their care), “Plan 75” is so powerfully sobering and sinisterly benign because it’s willing to accept the killer’s premise. The scariest thing about this low-key Cannes breakout isn’t its familiar depiction of a society that privileges human output over human dignity, but rather its soft dystopian sketch of a society that’s able to soft-shoe around dehumanization and/or sell it as an act of grace.
Set in an alternate present in which age-related hate crimes have motivated the Japanese government to create a social welfare initiative in which citizens above the age of 74 can volunteer for assisted suicide in exchange for $1,000, Hayakawa’s debut hones in on the personal impact of this seemingly opt-in program, as every member of the elderly population who chooses not to kill themselves is suddenly forced to justify their continued existence to everyone they meet. And to themselves. That kind of pressure could force the hand of even the most beloved and well-supported person in their twilight years, let alone a semi-frail and seemingly family-less hotel maid like Michi (Chieko Baisho). From the moment this movie starts, it’s only a matter of time before she numbly begins to fill out the paperwork and prepare herself for cremation.
“Plan 75” isn’t for or against assisted suicide, but it tenderly laments a society in which “death with dignity” is only offered as compensation for a life without it. This is an ultra-delicate whisper of a drama — the kind in which a typical scene might consist of an old woman sitting alone in her apartment for several minutes of haunted silence. And yet the anger that fringes such bittersweet moments gradually accumulates into a palpable and lingering rage at how good we’ve become at branding cruelty as compassion.
Available to stream January 17.
Other highlights:
Netflix produces content for “Squid Game” and “Carry-On” to take up all of the viewing hours this month (or perhaps the purpose is simply to stay on “Emilia Pérez”), as the mega-streamer’s January lineup is powerful. . Focus on exclusives. Cameron Diaz will make her return to the screen with “Back in Action,” but the jury is still out on whether it’s worth it. The only film that we can already attest to: “Wallace
Available to stream January 3.
Other highlights:
Will Leigh Whannell’s new ‘Wolf Man’ live up to the legacy of Lon Chaney’s 1941 vintage? I mean. . . probably not (although Whannell is indeed the right user to test), but Universal is making sure that other people can see the original for comparison, as Peacock’s January list is guided by vintage gothic horror via George Waggner. The new edition will look wonderful compared to the 2010 edition of Joe Johnston, a Benicio del Toro vehicle who has killed the Dark Universe before it began. There’s not much else in the way of sexy new things coming to Peacock this month, as it’s all “traitors” all the time to them right now, however, here are all the wolf content humanoids you might want.
Available to stream January 1.
I didn’t expect much from a prequel to the “Quiet Place” franchise, as the two installments made by John Krasinski that put it on the map seemed like products of a decent but underdeveloped sci-fi premise. Enter “Pig” director Michael Sarnoski, who left the indie scene to deliver one of the most captivating and emotional blockbusters of the year.
As Kate Erbland says in her review: “A Quiet Place: Day One” has at its disposal 3 superlative stars: Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, whose eyes can tell a thousand stories on their own, and two incredible feline artists (Schnitzel and Nico, Schnitzel and Nico!), who in combination create a single function as the world’s bravest cinematic cat. Filmmaker Michael Sarnoski is no stranger to films based on the emotional connection between man (the woguy) and the beast (a strange little furry guy) and, and above all satisfying, he brings that ability to his first major foray into Hollywood.
Available until January 1.
Other highlights:
Pascal Plante’s under-the-radar 2024 horror film “Red Rooms,” a bloodless legal drama, has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon as it began to shake even the most die-hard fans of the genre. Here’s a sample of what resident horror enthusiast Alison Foreman had to say about the film when she ranked it most sensibly on her list of last year’s most productive horror films:
“The macabre but understated horror film delves deep into the avian amoral of a publicly won justice through a fictional techno-thriller that is commonly terrifying through suggestion. Set in a media circus emanating from a courtroom of Montreal, the high-profile trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) revolves around a series of snuff films showing young women being tortured on the dark web.
You never explicitly see those moments of intense violence, although the audio is deeply haunting. And instead of following the prosecutors, defenders, judge, or even Chevalier himself, ‘Red Rooms’ centers the perspectives of two seemingly random attendees. Treating the tragedies of others like a spectator sport is almost always repugnant, but the calculating Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) and Ted Bundy fan girl-type Clémentine (Laurie Babin) approach the perverse pastime from opposite ends of the attention-seeking spectrum. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is complex ethical territory that hasn’t been explored in media nearly as much as its inverse. But Plante’s colorful rendering challenges with methodical precision — never watering down the ink-black essence of the question it considers and instead building to one spine-curling scene so all-consumingly upsetting, it feels like a shot taken straight.”
Available for streaming on January 14.
Other highlights: