New to Streaming: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, The End of Oak Street, The Rivals of the Amziah King, Dry Leaf & More

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bouchra (Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki)

Based on a real-life conversation shared by co-director Meriem Bennani and her own mother, Bouchra (co-directed with Orian Barki and co-written by them and Ayla Mrabet) opens with a phone call. Aicha (Yto Barrada) is checking in on her daughter from Morocco when Bouchra (Bennani) broaches a subject they’ve been avoiding for almost a decade. Stuck creatively, the latter has decided to find emotional catharsis through a script about the complex dynamic shared with her parents and seeks context from the opposite side. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: MUBI

Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

Languorous without becoming laborious, meditative without becoming meandering, abstract without becoming abstruse, Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf is a road movie unlike any other. It follows Irakli (David Koberidze), a father in search of his daughter, a sports photographer whose sudden disappearance is less of an enigma to solve than a vehicle for Koberidze’s imagination to serenely drift. Featuring Giorgi Koberidze’s charming, addictive score and shot on a Sony Ericsson, the fuzzy look of which transforms mundane landscapes into foreign-seeming textural images and hypnotic sequences, Dry Leaf, at 186 minutes, actively heightens our perception to its bucolic territory, its singular wavelength. It’s the kind of film where the destination is less important than the journey, where submission to its logic is more meaningful than a resistance, and where, like a vivid dream, its numinous sensations linger long after viewing. No matter the resolution, Koberidze has established himself as a modern enchanter. – Nirris N.

Where to Stream: MUBI

The End of Oak Street (David Robert Mitchell)

The End of Oak Street opens with a rollicking gusto, Michael Giacchino’s assured heavyweight score ripping us straight from the production cards into a 1982 suburban block party in Flowervale, Michigan, where the styles and aesthetics of the ‘70s still reign supreme in outfits, home decor, cars, you name it. From there, it’s Meet the Platts: Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise’s (Anne Hathaway) marriage is on the rocks, and their teen children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) can tell. But the kids have their own problems, like crushes and Jumanji-pilled bully bike chases. Until the Platts—and everyone else in a two-mile radius—suddenly share the same problem: their neighborhood has been inexplicably transported to the Mesozoic era, otherwise known as the Age of Dinosaurs, in a cross-epochal paranormal event. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Ghost in the Machine (Valerie Veatch)

What exactly is artificial intelligence? Where does it come from? And precisely how powerful is (or will) it become? Valerie Veatch’s documentary Ghost in the Machine digs into these answers and finds things both disturbing and unsurprising. This is a fairly brisk, fairly standard documentation of the evolution of artificial intelligence—effective, dispiriting, and disappointingly mundane. – Dan M. (full review)

The Rivals of Amziah King (Andrew Patterson)

Like the Church potluck to which Amziah King introduces his one-time foster daughter Kateri, The Rivals of Amziah King is a gleeful mashup of genres and tones blending bluegrass music, comedy, revenge, and heist-thriller elements into a tasty homestyle buffet full of eccentric characters and thick Southern accents. It’s a strong follow-up to the promise Andrew Patterson displayed in his resourceful debut feature The Vast of Night––even when this mash-up seems a little uneven and indulgent, with a heavy use of formal techniques, from slow-motion to ironic music. – John F. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun)

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow follow-up Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a wildly entertaining exploration of the slasher film, erotic pleasure, and everything in between. Led by Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, Rory O’Connor said in his Critic’s Pick review from Cannes, “Shot masterfully by their regular cinematographer Eric Yue (Alex G also makes a welcome return as composer), the movie-within-the-movie’s formative kill scene is so mesmerizing that you’ll welcome Schoenbrun’s decision to play it again and again––all the better to get a feel for how Kris’ obsessions have led them to the movie’s climax, and perhaps their own. Yue and Schoenbrun’s approaches also perfectly align when capturing actresses’ faces, often in achingly beautiful close-ups that only occasionally allow for a flicker of menace. ‘There’s a hole at the bottom of the lake,’ Billy explains to Kris in one of those moments, setting off a sequence that is quickly becoming Schoenbrun’s signature—that churning sense of movie spiraling a drain as it drags you down with it.”

Where to Stream: VOD

Tony (Matt Johnson)

To the public, Anthony Bourdain was a carefully constructed persona: the fine-dining chef who waxed poetic about the joys of “regular” food and traveled to far-flung locales that made him want to throttle Henry Kissinger on shows like Parts Unknown. He would be the first to admit he wasn’t perfect, cataloging his faults in bestsellers like Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw while sharing his thoughts on various blogs and social platforms up until his tragic suicide in 2018. With such presence, it would seem like his life was plenty covered; Kitchen Confidential even had a Fox sitcom in 2005 starring a young Bradley Cooper. Matt Johnson’s Tony recognizes this tall order and, like many of the better biopics, chooses to focus on a small, pivotal section of Bourdain’s story: the first couple chapters of Kitchen Confidential. – Devan S. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

Kino Film Collection

Scavenger Hunt

MUBI

9 Lives of a Wet Pussy
Devil in Miss Jones
Exposed
Harlot
Let the Summer Never Come Again
A Woman’s Torment

Prime Video

The Napa Boys

Shudder

Goody Goody

VOD

Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause
Fwends
It Ends
Nimrods