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 …
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018, TV-MA) is an affectionate portrait of the actor and groundbreaking comedian narrated by Williams himself (created from interview clips) and featuring testimony from family, friends, and fellow professionals, but the highlights of the production are revealing outtakes from films and TV shows and rare performance footage from his stand-up act. On all HBO streaming services.
Set and shot in Seattle, Megan Griffith’s Lucky Them (2013, R) stars Toni Collette (Hereditary) as a music journalist revisiting the legacy of a Kurt Cobain-like rock legend. It’s an indie buddy film and road movie (Thomas Haden Church invites himself along) and a great portrait of urban Seattle, which has never looked this good in the movies. Streaming on Hulu.
An ordinary girl get temporary magical powers in the animated fantasy Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Japan, 2017, PG), adapted from the children’s novel by Mary Stewart and directed by former Studio Ghibli animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent are featured in the English language version now on Netflix. Reviewed on Stream on Demand here.
The fourth and final season of UnREAL, the savage satire of reality TV starring Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer as the manipulative producers of a Bachelor-style show, debuts on Hulu ahead of its expected run on Lifetime.
Disobedience (2018, R) stars Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams as women in love in London’s Orthodox Jewish community but this compassionate drama is less a romance than a drama of family and identity. The English language debut of ward-winning Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman) co-stars Alessandro Nivola and Allan Corduner. On Cable On Demand and VOD, also on DVD and at Redbox.
Pay-Per-View / Video-On-Demand
Wes Anderson returns to stop-motion filmmaking for Isle of Dogs (2018, PG-13), a playful fantasy adventure set in a near-future Japan. Also on disc and at Redbox. Also new:
- comedies I Feel Pretty (2018, PG-13) with Amy Schumer and Super Troopers 2 (2018, R) with Brian Cox and the Broken Lizard comedy troupe;
- action thriller Rampage (2018, PG-13) with Dwayne Johnson and a loyal giant ape buddy;
- Lynne Ramsay’s crime thriller You Were Never Really Here (2017, R) with Joaquin Phoenix.
Available same day as select theaters nationwide is science fiction thriller Occupation (2018, R) from Australia with Temuera Morrison and Jacqueline McKenzie.
Netflix
Emma Watson and Daniel Bruhl star in Colonia (2015, R) as a couple escaping a religious cult-turned-political prisoner camp in Chile during the Pinoche coup.
It’s David Spade versus Nat Faxon in the Netflix Original comedy Father of the Year (2018, not rated).
Streaming TV: Dark Tourist visits the weirdest vacation spots on earth. Also new:
- The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale: Part 2 brings new episodes of the weekly series to Netflix every Sunday;
- strange-but-true interior decorating tours in Amazing Interiors from the UK;
- two new seasons of Last Chance U, the nonfiction sports series about junior college football;
- Jimmy: The True Story of a True Idiot (Japan, with subtitles), a comedy about a buffoon who becomes a comedy superstar in 1980s Japan;
- the second season the blended family dramedy Bonus Family: Season 2 (Sweden, with subtitles).
Kid stuff: the Netflix Original animated film Duck Duck Goose (2018, not rated) features the voices of Jim Gaffigan and Zenadaya. Also new are Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh: Season 4 and Luna Petunia: Return to Amazia: Season 2, both made for very young viewers.
Amazon Prime Video
The offbeat musical comedy Wanderland (2018, not rated) follows one man’s odyssey through Hamptons in the off-season.
Classics: Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980, R), starring Robert De Niro as boxing legend Jake LaMotta, won two Oscars and Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando star in the offbeat western The Missouri Breaks (1976, PG).
Kid stuff: the animated comedy Igor (2008, PG) features the voice of John Cusack as the hunchbacked assistant aspiring to be a mad scientist in his own right.
Foreign affairs: Michel Gondry’s whimsical comedy Mood Indigo (France, 2013, not rated, with subtitles) with Audrey Tautou as a woman with a flower growing in her lungs and crime comedy Mad Love (France, 2015, not rated, with subtitles) about a priest driven to murder.
Hulu
Also new: rural crime thriller Cold in July (2014, R) with Michael C. Hall and Sam Shepard and indie drama Coastlines (2002, R) with Timothy Olyphant and Josh Brolin.
True stories: Hulu Original documentary Ballet Now (2018, not rated) goes behind the scenes as New York City Ballet dancer Tiler Peck curates a dance program that combines ballet, tap, hip-hop, and mime.
Foreign affairs: Kim Jee-won’s action-packed adventure The Good, the Bad, the Weird (South Korea, 2008, R, with subtitles) is a self-proclaimed “Oriental Western.” The trippy Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia, 2015, not rated, with subtitles) charts the meeting of cultures through the story of an Amazon shaman and two western scientists.
More streaming TV: Emmy-nominated FX comedy Better Things: Season 2, created by and starring Pamela Adlon;
- post-apocalypse survival drama The Last Ship: Season 4 from TNT;
- BBC America comedy This Country: Seasons 1 & 2 set in rural England.
HBO Now
Emma Stone and Steve Carell play Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in Battle of the Sexes (2017, PG-13), the story behind the legendary tennis match of the 1970s and a look at a defining public moment in the equal rights movement.
Arriving Saturday night is the Scandinavian murder mystery The Snowman (2017, R), based on the Jo Nesbo novel and starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson.
Showtime Anytime
Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017, R) brings fresh stylistic energy and musical flair to the speed-demon crime picture. Young lead Ansel Elgort is outmatched by costars Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Lily James but the car chases and stunts are a blast.
Reese Witherspoon stars in the romantic comedy Home Again (2017, PG-13) as a single mother who invites a handsome twentysomething (Nat Wolff) and his two brothers to share her vast Los Angeles home.
Also new: espionage thriller The Debt (2011, R) with Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Jessica Chastain and Clint Eastwood’s true crime conspiracy drama Changeling (2008, R) with Angelina Jolie.
FilmStruck
TCM Select Pick of the Week is The Philadelphia Story (1940), starring Katherine Hepburn in her Hollywood comeback just a couple of years after she was branded “box-office poison.” She marched back to the big screen with the screen rights to The Philadelphia Story, the hit play written for her by Philip Barry, and Cary Grant and James Stewart, two of Hollywood’s greatest leading men, on her arms. It’s almost impossible to pull off the play anymore because the parts are so wedded to the performers: the imperious Hepburn as society maven Tracey Lord, cocky Cary Grant pouring on the charm as the ex-husband who still loves her, and Jimmy Stewart as the cynical reporter who falls for her. This is MGM gloss at its most unassuming, with sparkling direction by Hepburn’s good friend George Cukor. The classy hit comedy earned six Oscar nominations and won two, for actor James Stewart and Donald Ogden Stewart’s screenplay. Co-stars Ruth Hussey, John Howard, and Roland Young. Streaming through December 27, 2018
It’s one of the best films from “Director of the Week: George Cukor,” a collection of 19 films including the proto-“Star is Born” comic melodrama What Price Hollywood? (1932) with Constance Bennett, David Copperfield (1935) with Freddie Bartholomew and W.C. Fields, Oscar-winning thriller Gaslight (1944) with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, and Oscar-nominated musical drama A Star is Born (1954) with Judy Garland and James Mason, the grandest of all versions of the evergreen story.
“Star of the Week: Sophia Loren” is celebrated with 12 features, including Two Women (Italy, 1960, with subtitles), which earned Loren an Oscar for best actress, and the classic sex comedies Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Italy, 1963, with subtitles) and Marriage – Italian Style (Italy, 1964, with subtitles) co-starring Marcello Mastroianni, plus a short film and an interview.
Acorn TV
Hidden (Craith in Welsh), from the creators of “Hinterland,” is a gritty new Welsh crime drama starring Sian Reese-William, makes its stateside debut just weeks after showing in the UK. All eight episodes now streaming.
Older shows debuting on Acorn TV include the mystery anthology Agatha Christie Hour (1982) and BAFTA-winning miniseries Anglo Saxon Attitudes (1992).
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