Best Films to Stream This Week in the UK
From unmissable dramas to newly restored classics, including a gambling granny comedy and a French New Wave masterpiece
Going to the cinema might not be an option right now, but there are still plenty of great films to enjoy from the comfort of your own home. As always, we’ve assembled the best of what’s streaming across a multitude of platforms and gathered them here to make choosing the perfect film as easy as possible. Whatever you’re in the mood for, WeLoveCinema has you covered…
[New to Streaming]
To the Ends of the Earth
Where to watch it: MUBI
Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kirosawa, best known for his horror movies, changes lanes for this meditative travelogue about a TV host, played by Atsuko Maeda, who embarks on a life-altering trip around Uzbekistan. Part drama, part travelogue, it’s an unusually observed portrait of a mid-twenties crisis, with shades of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. A beguiling gem (read our full review).
Lucky Grandma
Where to watch it: Various streaming services
This slick and blackly comic crime film stars the legendary Tsai Chin as a gambling, chain-smoking grandma who’s forced to fend off an army of gangsters after she steals a bag full of cash. At eighty-five years old, Chin is a luminous screen presence, the film – packed with deadpan wit and inventive visuals – reminiscent of the works of auteur Wes Anderson (read our full review).
Eastern
Where to watch it: Curzon Home Cinema
A young girl is forced to honour the terms of a blood feud in first-time director Piotr Adamski’s weirdo crime-thriller, set in Poland, which also bears comparison to the early works of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos. Riffing on – and subverting – western movie tropes (“Eastern,” geddit?), it’s a gripping debut that’s afraid to mix violence with social commentary and questions about family and legacy (read our full review).
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
Where to watch it: Apple TV+
After his Encounters at the End of the World and Into the Inferno, Werner Herzog continues his run of documentaries about the natural world with this typically existential meditation on the night sky: namely the ways in which comets and meteorites have helped to shape our world. The result is a mesmeric combination of Herzog’s cosmic narration, stunning imagery, and mind-blowing science (read our full review).
Billie
Where to watch it: Curzon Home Cinema
The life and legacy of inimitable jazz legend Billie Holiday is laid out in this enlightening documentary, based around a cache of fascinating and revealing audio tapes. As directed by James Erskine, Billie makes a case for the singer as a subject of abuse, blending accounts of her turbulent history with scenes of stunning voice work. If you’re not familiar with Holiday’s story or sound, it’s a great place to begin.
Breathless
Where to watch it: Various streaming services
Jean-Luc Godard’s endlessly influential classic of the French New Wave is back with a brand new 4K restoration, in time for its 60th anniversary. Playfully embracing and then subverting American movies, Breathless changed the medium of film forever, showing how something aimless and imperfect, with an emphasis on characters merely hanging out, might pave the way for the future of cinema. Six decades after its initial release, it still hasn’t lost any of its cool (read our full review).
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[Still Streaming…]
About Endlessness
Where to watch it: Curzon Home Cinema
Acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson brings us his final film with the aptly named About Endlessness, yet another filmic tapestry featuring his iconic, white-faced humans. In just 78 minutes, the absurdist auteur takes us through scenes of Soviet despair to moments of gravity-defying joy, all the time his brilliantly intricate compositions posing questions about what it means to be alive. A miraculous sign-off from a master filmmaker (read our full review).
Luxor
Where to watch it: Various streaming services
The great (and often under-appreciated) Andrea Riseborough stars in this slow-moving, enigmatic sort-of romantic drama, revealing a quieter side to her usually frantic on-screen persona. As helmed by writer-director Zeina Durra, she plays a British aid worker who travels to the city of Luxor in Egypt. The result is a curious and thought-provoking travelogue that will leave you obsessing over its intimately observed details (read our full review).
Love Child
Where to watch it: Curzon Home Cinema
Filmed over the course of a six year period, this moving, life-affirming documentary hones in on an Iranian family – Leila, Sahand, and their young son Mani – as they seek asylum while situated in Istanbul, Turkey. Forced to flee Iran because of an illegal relationship (they were married to other people before meeting and had Mani out of wedlock), directors Eva Mulvad and Lea Glob evoke great empathy in their portrait of adrift refugees – though this is no miserable account. In fact, this family are defined by their relentless belief that things will work out in the end (read our full review).
Shirley
Where to watch it: Curzon Home Cinema
Elisabeth Moss continues her run of fabulous performances, playing real life horror writer Shirley Jackson in this not-quite-biopic. As helmed by the artistically-minded Madeline’s Madeline filmmaker Josephine Decker, Shirley is a surreal and feverish ride into the writing process that takes well-worn material in a bold new direction, centered on a fabricated story about a young couple who move in with Jackson to disturbing ends (read our full review).
This post was categorised in Archive.