Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services …
Krysten Ritter as back as Marvel’s most dysfunctional superhero-turned-private investigator in the second season of the Netflix original series Jessica Jones and this time she’s taking on her own case: who gave her these powers and what exactly happened when she disappeared for a month? It leans even harder into themes of sexual assault touched on in the first season and the hard-drinking heroine has to confront it head on.
“[T]he P.I. with superpowers remains vulnerable to bullets as well as the consequences of her bad choices,” writes IndieWire TV critic Liz Shannon Miller. “And while the narrative surrounding her takes too long to find cohesion, it still results in a searing, in-depth character study not normally expected from this genre.” The season also follows parallel stories featuring Jessica’s best friend Trish (Rachael Taylor), former child star turned radio talk show host who has her own dark corners in her past, and power lawyer Jeri (Carrie-Anne Moss), who is being squeezed out by her firm. Janet McTeer costars and every episode this season is directed by a woman filmmaker.
All 13 episodes now streaming on Netflix.
Crime drama Collateral, a Netflix-BBC coproduction starring Carey Mulligan, is a four-part crime drama about the murder of a Muslim immigrant and the political and social web around the investigation. John Simm and Nicola Walker co-star in the original production from by Oscar- and Tony-nominated writer David Hare.
“Collateral is a police procedural in the way that The Wire was a police procedural,” praises Uproxx TV critic Alan Sepinwall. “There’s a murder that kicks off the story — the assassination of a pizza deliveryman, of all things — but it’s an excuse for Hare to explore a series of crises he sees afflicting his homeland, particularly in the wake of the Brexit vote and the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping parts of Europe and the United States.” Streaming on Netflix.
Pay-Per-View / Video-On-Demand
The God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) reveals a sense of humor in Thor: Ragnarok (2017, PG-13), one of the most colorful and playful Marvel superhero films to date. With the help of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), he battles the Goddess of Death (Hela) to save Asgard. Also on DVD and at Redbox.
The Disaster Artist (2017, R), the stranger-than-fiction true story of one of the worst movies ever made from director/star James Franco, animated feature The Breadwinner (2017, PG-13), and documentary Faces Places (2017, PG) from 89-year-old filmmaker Agnes Varda and visual artist JR were all nominated for Oscars.
Also new: Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel (2017, PG-13) with Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake, The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017, PG) with Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge, and the animated drama Ethel & Ernest (2016, not rated) from UK.
Available same day as select theaters nationwide are two crime thrillers: Bent (2018, R) with Karl Urban and Sofia Vergara and Juggernaut (2017, not rated) with Jack Kesy and Amanda Crew.
Netflix
Jared Leto is an American soldier who stays in Japan after World War II and joins the Yakuza in The Outsider (2018, not rated), a Netflix original feature co-starring Japanese star Tadanobu Asano and Emile Hirsch.
Gook (2017, not rated), an indie drama about two Korean-American brothers trying to defend their struggling shoe store during the 1992 LA riots, won awards at Sundance and the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Oscar-nominated screenwriter Taylor Sheridan directs Wind River (2017, R), a crime thriller set in the snowy Wyoming mountains with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. Reviewed on Stream On Demand here.
Also new: fact-based drama The Pirates of Somalia (2017, R) with Evan Peters, Al Pacino, and Melanie Griffith, survival horror Aftershock (2012, R) from writer/producer/star Eli Roth, and teen rebel comedy F the Prom (2017, not rated).
Kid stuff: Benji (1974, G) and For the Love of Benji (1977, G), the family adventures featuring the most adorably scruffy dog of the seventies, arrive a week before Netflix delivers its new remake.
Streaming TV: the third and final season of Love, Judd Apatow’s comedy of modern romance starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust, is now available. Also new are the bake-off series Nailed It, BBC’s The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes, and My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Malala Yousafzai.
International TV: a prosecutor recruits a squad of crooks to take down a crime boss in Bad Guys: Vile City (South Korea, with subtitles) and a police detective covers up a murder to protect his family Borderliner: Season 1 (Norway, with subtitles).
Foreign affairs: the short documentary Ladies First (India, 2017, with subtitles) profiles a young woman in a rural village India who became to top female archer in the world at the age of 18.
Stand-up: Gad Elmaleh: American Dream is the first English language special from the French comedian.
Amazon Prime
Kieran Culkin, Martin Starr, and Megan Mullally star in Infinity Baby (2017, not rated), a comedy about genetically-engineered infants who never age.
Tilda Swinton is the distraught mother of a sociopathic child in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012, R), which touches on high school violence with its disturbing (though not necessarily illuminating) story. Timely, but maybe a little too much parental horror movie and not enough engagement with the kids.
For a generation of baby boomers, the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976, PG) with John Travolta is a touchstone of star-crossed teen romance with a novel medical twist.
Kid stuff: the animated comedy The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (2017, PG) reunites the comic critters to save their park home from developers.
Foreign affairs: sci-fi gang war meets hip hop musical in Tokyo Tribe (Japan, 2015, R, with subtitles) from Japan’s outrageous Sion Sono.
True stories: Take A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) and get a crash course in the great American filmmakers who inspired Scorsese in a three-and-a-half hour tour. The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille (2017) documents the decades-long effort to excavate the set of the 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments buried in the sands of the California desert.
Streaming TV: the Prime Video original con artist series Sneaky Pete: Season 2 with Giovanni Ribisi and cross-border British-French murder mystery The Tunnel: Season 2 with Stephen Dillane and Clémence Poésy are now streaming. Also new: music reality show The Remix: Season 1 from India, where DJs and singers are teamed up to offer a new take on classic Bollywood songs.
Amazon Prime / Hulu
A new quintet of misfit teenagers suit up with alien technology to save the planet in Power Rangers (2017, PG-13), the big screen version of the TV superhero series (Prime Video and Hulu). Needless to say, it did not launch a movie franchise.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is grieving husband and father who goes the air traffic controller responsible for a plane crash in Aftermath (2017, R) (Prime Video and Hulu)
Hulu
Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn are wary partners in Hard Sun: Season 1, a British crime drama set on the verge of the end of the world. Matt Zoller Seitz found the show wanting in his review for Vulture: “The science-fiction-flavored cop thriller Hard Sun squanders one of the most audacious hooks I’ve ever seen in a TV series.”
Hulu gives the BBC shows its stateside debut; all 6 episodes now available.
Fantasia 2000 (1999, G) updates of Disney’s ambitious anthology film seven new animated shorts (plus “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” carried over from the 1940 original).
Crash (2004, R) won three Academy Awards, including Oscars for best picture and original screenplay.
Streaming TV: Sean Bean is a deep cover operative who starts to lose himself in his identities in Legends. Hulu has both seasons of the TNT spy thriller.
HBO Now
Katherine Waterston leads the mission and Michael Fassbender plays two roles in Alien: Covenant (2017, R), the sixth film in the science fiction series. Reviewed on Stream On Demand here.
Ben Affleck directs and stars in Live by Night (2016, R) as a Boston gangster who relocates to Florida during Prohibition.
Available Saturday night is My Cousin Rachel (2017, PG-13), a romantic drama turned Gothic thriller adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel and starring Rachel Weisz.
Showtime Anytime
Bryan Cranston is a suburban husband and father in an extreme mid-life crisis in Wakefield (2017, R), based on a short story by E.L. Doctorow.
FilmStruck / Criterion Channel
It’s cocktail hour on the mystery beat in The Thin Man (1934), a sparkling and snappy adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel with William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. It spawned five sequels and FilmStruck offers them all in The Thin Man Collection, including After the Thin Man (1936) with Jimmy Stewart as a murder suspect. More on Stream On Demand here.
Peter Falk is FilmStruck’s Star of the Week and their collection includes such comedies as Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964) and The In-Laws (1979, PG), plus John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974, R) and Wim Wenders’ transcendent Wings of Desire (Germany, 1987, not rated, with subtitles) with Falk playing himself… sort of.
Also new: the films of German director G.W. Pabst, including his classic silent films Pandora’s Box (Germany, 1929, silent with score) and Diary of a Lost Girl (Germany, 1929, silent with score) with Louise Brooks and his version of The Threepenny Opera (Germany, 1931, with subtitles), and a collection of “Lovers on the Lam” movies, from the film noir classics They Live By Night (1948) and Gun Crazy (1950) to romantic outlaw pictures Breathless (France, 1960, with subtitles) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967, R) to Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973, PG).
New on the Criterion Channel is Alexander Mackendrick’s crime comedy The Ladykillers (1955) with Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom, and Peter Sellers.
Acorn TV
British dramedy Delicious: Series 2 with Dawn French and Emilia Fox is now available and Franco Nero joins the cast.
BritBox
Rowan Atkinson takes his first dramatic role in Maigret: Season 1 as Georges Simenon’s brilliant Chief Inspector. The American premiere in the new British TV show arrives along with Maigret: Seasons 1-2 of the 1990s series with Michael Gambon.
Also new: 300 Years of French and Saunders with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in their first TV comedy special in a decade (it just seems like 300 years).
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