Staying indoors? 6 new films to stream now

Image: courtesy A24 (Waves)

With offices and schools around Shanghai shut and many of us spending a lot more time indoors than usual, finding ways to stay busy is not always easy. Feeling stir-crazy? Queue up these excellent new film releases. 

Little Women

Image: courtesy Sony Pictures

Greta Gerwig has directed only two films that are solely her own but she’s already become a brand. It’s in evidence within the first five minutes of Little Women, a huggably self-deprecating take on the Louisa May Alcott classic. The film sometimes plays like a comedy, one that includes a crumpled cry over a bad haircut and several kitchen interludes that feel like Christmas miracles. It would be a shame to ruin the gift that Gerwig makes of Alcott’s ending; it’s been creatively exploded into a larger catharsis you didn’t even realise you needed. Joshua Rothkopf 

Uncut Gems

Image: courtesy A24

From Josh and Benny Safdie (the indie filmmaking brothers whose New York City movies shudder with attitude), Uncut Gems is an electrifying and abrasive drama. Tenaciously, it follows a week in the 2012 life of a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants Diamond District dealer, Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler, channeling his obnoxiousness into something magically right, even moving). You may be overwhelmed by the Safdies’ spiky sound design – filled with yelling, sports betting, the jewelry shop’s constantly buzzing security door and an overcaffeinated, Tangerine Dream–like synth score – but Howard thrives in this chaos. Joshua Rothkopf

Varda by Agnès

Image: courtesy Janus Films

With a career that spanned the terms of nine French presidents, Agnès Varda charmed, entertained and provoked audiences with her extensive body of work. In this posthumous final release (the iconic filmmaker died in March 2019 at the age of 90), she looks back over her films, photos and art installations. 'Nothing is trite if you film it with love and empathy,' she says near the beginning of Varda by Agnès, sitting onstage at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. These words echo throughout the two-hour film, which blends past and present talking-heads footage with scenes from Varda’s work as she explains her motivations and creative processes. Joseph Walsh

Waves

Image: courtesy A24

With Waves, indie writer-director Trey Edward Shults obliterates a hardworking Florida family before delivering some nearly cosmic forgiveness in the movie’s second half. All of his films feel like personal exorcisms – Shults may best be described as a non-supernatural-horror director – but this one is a true breakthrough. Joshua Rothkopf

Marriage Story

Image: courtesy Netflix

Because it would have been unbearable otherwise, Noah Baumbach begins his churning, deeply felt divorce drama Marriage Story – easily the wisest film of his career – on a note of sweetness. Wedded Brooklyn parents Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) introduce themselves via a double diary of sorts, co-narrating as we watch snippets of their urban life: pizza slices scarfed down, bedtime stories told, subway stops missed. Both of them are unfailingly generous. Each calls the other deeply competitive. Alas, that’s the trait Marriage Story is about. It’s a movie that slowly leeches itself of tenderness, of endearments small and large, climaxing in a ferocious, Bergmanesque verbal showdown that represents a triple triumph for the actors and their director. Joshua Rothkopf

The Two Popes

Image: courtesy Netflix

This entertaining odd-couple bromance, about two men in the running to be the Catholic pope, hits the heights when it just lets its leads, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, lob dialogue back and forth like two tennis greats. Hopkins’s German Pope Benedict XVI, sly but oddly touching behind his crusty exterior, slathers on the topspin; Pryce’s Argentinian Cardinal Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis), guileless, direct and blessed with the common touch, smacks it back across the net. It’s thrilling stuff, with director Fernando Meirelles’s camera close at hand to register every subtle detail. Phil De Semlyen

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