11 Movies to Stream in February
One (or more) lesser-known gem for each of the major VOD services.
Over the year and a half of its existence, the Watch List has mostly focused on movies you can pay to see in theaters or rent for on-demand viewing at home. I don’t spend enough time, really, on films that are streaming for “free” on services you may already subscribe to. The good thing is that the first of the month always brings a fresh crop of titles, new and old, as VOD rights “windows” kick in for a set time-period. Since February has a not-unwarranted reputation as a duff month for new releases, here are eleven good movies (okay, ten good movies and one entertainingly terrible one) that have just become available for no-extra-cost streaming on the major platforms. (Most are also available for a rental fee on other services; check with www.justwatch.com.)
On Netflix: “The Founder” (2016, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – This sharp-eyed business amorality tale seems to drop in and out of the Netflix line-up with regularity, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s well worth a look. Michael Keaton, in one of his cagier performances, plays a 1950s restaurant supply salesman named Ray Kroc who’s so taken with a California hamburger stand run by two brothers named McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) that he swipes it out from under them and builds a fast-food empire. With a title that couldn’t be more ironic, the movie walks a satisfying line between admiring Kroc’s cutthroat acumen and acknowledging him as an absolute son of a bitch.
On Amazon Prime: “Knowing” (2009, ⭐ 1/2) – I have a soft spot in my heart for lunatic Nicolas Cage movies, and this one is actively, enjoyably insane. Cage plays a scientist whose son brings home a school time-capsule document that has already predicted a past half-century of disasters and posits an apocalypse on the horizon. It’s like a “National Treasure” movie on acid, with crashing subways and downed airliners serving as entrees for the arrival of the aliens. (Or, wait, are they angels?) A bad-movie rapture, and great fun if you’re in the proper debauched mood.
On Amazon Prime: “Sugar” (2009, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – A Dominican baseball prospect (Algenis Perez Soto) with a fast pitching arm gets a chance at the big leagues across the water in an indie drama of striving and arriving, immigration and exploitation, from writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (“Half Nelson,” “Mississippi Grind”). A Spanish-language “The Natural”? Nope, wiser and sadder than that, and attuned to the colonialism of American sports and the human stories behind the baseball fables we like to tell ourselves.
On Apple TV+: “The Descendants” (2011, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – An Alexander Payne comedy that’s less caustic and more emotionally generous – nicer, if you will – than “Sideways” or “Election,” it casts an emotionally vulnerable George Clooney as a man trying to grapple with his legacy as a father, a husband, and a haole in a Hawaii that’s being chipped away by development. Featuring Shailene Woodley in her breakthrough role, the movie’s a rueful charmer.
On Hulu: “Ruby Sparks” (2012, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – It sounds too damn twee to work: A struggling young novelist (Paul Dano) writes a female character who somehow materializes as a flesh-and-blood girlfriend (Zoe Kazan). But the screenplay is smart about the ways people use fantasy figures and movies use Manic Pixie Dream Girls, and the two leads are adorable together – not surprising, since they’d already been a real-life couple for years (and are still together raising a family in Brooklyn, God love ’em.)
On Hulu: “Happening” (2022, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – One of 2022’s strongest releases, a nerve-wracking French drama of abortion in the year 1963 (i.e., when it was still a capital offense) that took on new relevance with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Audrey Diwan’s film is based on a novel by Annie Ernaux, which in turn is based on events in the writer’s life. Star Anamaria Vartolomei is excellent in the lead, trading in the arrogance of a young woman with a future for the helplessness of a girl trapped in a present imperfect.
On HBO Max: “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – Aliens are attacking and Tom Cruise has to rinse and repeat each day until he gets it right. A cross between “Groundhog Day” and “Independence Day” (which means it probably should be called “April 19th”), it’s a great deal more fun than it could and arguably should have been. A sci-fi/action/war movie made up of equal parts brains and brawn, plus a certifiably nuts plot device, plus Emily Blunt in rip-snorting warrior mode. Ridiculous? You bet, but put over with blockbuster filmmaking chops and sly humor.
On HBO Max: “Force Majeure” (2014, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – If you’ve seen multiple Oscar nominee “Triangle of Sadness” and are wondering where this Ruben Östlund fellow came from, here’s where. (Also: Sweden.) It’s a dryly satiric look at a bourgeois family that comes unglued on a skiing vacation when the father (Johannes Kuhnke) opts to save his own skin during an avalanche. As brutally funny in its own way as “Triangle,” just without the vomit.
On HBO Max: “Swiss Army Man” (2016, ⭐ ⭐) – Similarly, if you want to see what Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – a.k.a. Daniels – were up to before their Oscar front-runner “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” try wrapping your head around this allegorical farce about a castaway (Paul Dano again) and the farting corpse that becomes his best friend and lifeline back to humanity. As the latter, Daniel Radcliffe gives a performance of genuinely brilliant technical control. The movie goes south in the last half-hour, but in my Boston Globe review I said the Daniels were “just getting started,” and I was right.
On Paramount+: “The Peanut Butter Falcon” (2019, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) – A sweet-natured labor of love that snuck under critics’ radar to become an audience word-of-mouth favorite, it stars Shia LeBeouf and Dakota Johnson, but it really stars Zack Gottsagen as a young man with Down syndrome who hits the road with a dream to become a pro wrestler. A crowd pleaser in the best way, with a Huck-and-Jim air of summer on a lazy river.
On the Criterion Channel: “Keane” (2005, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) – Pretty much the opposite of the above, a white-knuckle drama, as low-budget as it gets, about a distraught father seeking his kidnapped daughter in New York City. Or maybe he’s schizophrenic and the daughter never existed? A stunning and disturbing work from gifted writer-director Lodge Kerrigan, with a young Damien Lewis (“Homeland,” “Billions”) giving a ferociously committed performance.
Thoughts? Don’t hesitate to weigh in.
If you enjoyed this edition of Ty Burr’s Watch List, please feel free to pass it along to friends.
If you’re not a paying subscriber and would like to sign up for additional postings and to join the discussions, here’s how.