11 Movies to Stream in February

One (or more) lesser-known gem for each of the major VOD services.

Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan in “Ruby Sparks”

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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