This weekend is all about auteurs, both rising and long-standing, from Cronenberg to Hart, Davies to Williams, Ahn to Okuno.
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As theaters begin showing signs of life and streaming and VOD options stay hefty, there are more movies (and platforms to watch them on) than ever to sift through, and IndieWire is here to help you do just that each week.
While the box office might still be (rightly) buzzing about the high-flying, high-octane, high-pressure hit that is “Top Gun: Maverick,” this week’s pack of new releases offer plenty of their own special charms. Mostly, it’s a week all about auteurs, from the proven qualities like David Cronenberg and Terence Davies (who both arrive at the multiplex with bonafide IndieWire Critic’s Pick designations), to rising stars like Andrew Ahn, Julia Hart, and Chloe Okuno.
Each film is now available in a theater near you or in the comfort of your own home (or, in some cases, both, the convenience of it all). Browse your options below.
Week of May 30 – June 5
New Films in Theaters
As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.
“Benediction” (directed by Terence Davies) — IndieWire Critic’s Pick
Distributor: Roadside Attractions
Where to Find It: Select theaters
With “Benediction” — another spectacular and terribly sad biopic about a poet cursed with the ability to express a private agony they could never escape — Terence Davies has once again made a film that feels like the work of someone flaying their soul onscreen. Last time it was Emily Dickinson who provided the prism through which Davies could refract his own wants and wounds, and here it’s the English poet Siegfried Sassoon, an openly but resentfully gay man desperate for a peace of mind he only knew how to look for in other people.
Davies has more in common with Sassoon than Dickinson — their lives even overlapped for a time — but viewers don’t have to know a single thing about the director’s work to sense his wounds bleeding through Sassoon’s aching story. This is a film that trembles with a need for redemption that never comes, and the urgency of that search is palpable enough that you can feel it first-hand, even if “Benediction” is never particularly clear about the nature of the redemption it’s hoping to find. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Crimes of the Future”
screenshot/NEON
“Crimes of the Future” (directed by David Cronenberg) — IndieWire Critic’s Pick
Distributor: Neon
Where to Find It: Select theaters
Whether you have the stomach to survive “Crimes of the Future” would seem to be a more complicated matter. At a time when holy shit, you have to see thisinsanity has become the fastest shortcut for arthouse fare to get around the always-suffocating layers of superhero movie hype, it was inevitable that Cronenberg’s first movie since “Maps to the Stars” would be positioned as some kind of sick endurance test that found him revisiting the familiar preoccupations of body horror classics like “Dead Ringers” and “The Fly” so that he could combine all of their gnarliest moments into a career-spanning orgy of squelching latex.
The tone of the press coverage leading up to the film’s Cannes premiere was basically “any upstart auteur can fuck a car, but only OG daddy Cronenberg can make love to it.” The director himself even suggested that people would start walking out within the first five minutes. What Cronenberg neglected to specify is that those imagined audience members — as implausible as the crowds who supposedly fled in panic when the Lumière brothers aimed a train at them — would be stampeding up the aisles in response to tragedy, and not gore. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Neptune Frost” (directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman)
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Where to Find It: Select theaters
If the noblest aim of the artist is to become a vessel for divine connection to creative source, then Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman are truly touched. The sheer amount of hypnotic imagery and music on display in “Neptune Frost,” the film chapter in the multifaceted project “MartyrLoserKing” which includes three albums and a graphic novel, is bursting with enough life and ingenuity to fill a solo exhibition.
In this fantastical Afrofuturist universe, characters with names like Memory and Psychology traipse amongst whimsical sculptural sets, draped in art-piece costumes and makeup so eye-popping it makes the looks on “Euphoria” seem conventional. The music is alive and thrumming, tapped into a twin spirit of joy and protest. While these elements never fully cohere to form a discernible narrative in “Neptune Frost,” there is fun to be had in surrendering to the fluidity of its ingenuity. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Neptune Frost”
Kino Lorber, exclusive to IndieWire
“The Phantom of the Open” (directed by Craig Roberts)
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Where to Find It: Select theaters
A light and lyrical feel-good tale about Mancunian golf legend Maurice G. Flitcroft — the shipyard crane operator who improbably managed to enter himself into the 1976 British Open and then, even more improbably, became an international folk hero for his resilience in the face of humiliating scores — “The Phantom of the Open” is exactly what you might expect from an underdog sports film scripted by “Paddington 2” writer Simon Farnaby (and based on the book that he and Scott Murray published about Flintcroft in 2010). It’s charming as hell, it has precious little patience for English classicism, and it hinges on a child-like outsider whose supernatural guilelessness has a tendency to steamroll over the cynics and gits who get in his way. It even co-stars Sally Hawkins, as all “Paddington” movies have, and all other movies should. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Poser” (directed by Ori Segev and Noah Dixon)
Distributor: Oscilloscope
Where to Find It: Select theaters
Lennon looks the part: teal-tinted hair, cool tattoos, a punky sartorial sense, big headphones. As she sulks around the edges of a gallery opening on the arty side of Columbus, Ohio, she seems to fit in, until you notice… Why isn’t Lennon talking to anyone else? How come no one has said hello to her? And why is she recording the incredibly basic party chatter around her instead of actually partaking in it?
Cut to a title card that, amusingly and painfully, lets us in on the surface truth of Lennon’s existence: The film is called “Poser,” and that is exactly what Lennon is. While the elevator pitch of Ori Segev and Noah Dixon’s prickly feature directorial debut is simple enough — it’s “Single White Female” set in the vibrant Columbus indie scene, with a generous dash of podcast humor — the film’s fascinating setting and a pair of breakout lead performances set it a cut above other films like it. Spiky, funny, feverish, and more than a little nail-biting, “Poser” is an auspicious debut and proof that this seemingly well-tapped sub-genre isn’t done chilling audiences just yet. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Watcher”
IFC Films, exclusive to IndieWire
“Watcher” (directed by Chloe Okuno)
Distributor: IFC Midnight
Where to Find It: Select theaters
Chloe Okuno could have struck gold when production of “Watcher” was relocated from New York to Bucharest, Romania. The Eastern European city’s mix of bleak, brutalist architecture and baroque government buildings only add to the isolation that the film’s protagonist, Julia (Maika Monroe), feels as she tags along when her half-Romanian husband is transferred there for work. Add to that a stark language barrier and a neighbor who may or may not be spying on her from across the street, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a taut paranoid thriller.
When writing the script along with Zack Ford, Okuno was inspired by filmmakers like Roman Polanski and Sofia Coppola, both masters at depicting what it’s like to be an outsider in a foreign place. But instead of leaning into the ambiguous tensions and uncanny experiences, “Watcher” fails to live up to its inspirations, ending up a heavy-handed, predictable trip through genre tropes with a rather lifeless cast at its core. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Also available this week:
“Frank & Penelope” (directed by Sean Patrick Flanery)
Distributor: Redbud Studios
Where to Find It: Select theaters
“The Overnight” (directed by Kevin Rhoades and Bobby Francavillo)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Select theaters, plus various VOD and digital platforms
“The Passenger” (directed by Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez)
Distributor: Dark Star Pictures, Bloody Disgusting
Where to Find It: Select theaters
“Small Town Wisconsin” (directed by Niels Mueller)
Distributor: Quiver Distribution
Where to Find It: Select theaters
“White Elephant” (directed by Jesse V. Johnson)
Distributor: RLJE Films
Where to Find It: Select theaters and streaming on AMC+
New Films on VOD and Streaming, Including Premium Platforms and Virtual Cinema
“Fire Island” (directed by Andrew Ahn) — IndieWire Critic’s Pick
Distributor: Hulu
Where to Find It: Streaming on Hulu
A true ensemble piece, the movie is filled with the joy and camaraderie of that cheesiest of queer epithets — chosen family. But under the Day-Glo sheen of the carless beach town filled with glistening shirtless queers, it all feels genuinely dreamy. (Or maybe it’s the Ketamine.) Directed by Andrew Ahn (“Spa Night,” “Driveways”) and starring “Saturday Night Live” darling Bowen Yang opposite Joel Kim Booster, “Fire Island” marries the promise of the queer comedy boom with the artistic arrival of Asian American cinema. Gorgeously intersectional, subtly political, and a damn good time — it’s a guaranteed instant classic. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Hollywood Stargirl”
Disney+
“Hollywood Stargirl” (directed by Julia Hart)
Distributor: Disney+
Where to Find It: Streaming on Disney+
Don’t let the name fool you: Stargirl isn’t looking to break into the Hollywood stratosphere. Mostly, she’s looking for some friends beyond her harried mom and adorable pet rat Cinnamon. For a gal as charming as Stargirl, as good-hearted and caring as she is, that shouldn’t be too much to ask, right? In the world of “Hollywood Stargirl,” a brightly lit and candy-colored place that verges on the fairy tale — if only because everyone who populates it is also charming, good-hearted, and caring — it’s not, with some caveats, the kind happily wrapped up in a fanciful package.
Filmmaker Julia Hart follows her first “Stargirl” feature film — a 2020 Disney+ outing based on Jerry Spinelli’s bestselling YA novel of the same name — with a suitably quirky and sweet sequel that builds on the Stargirl mythos with nothing but good intentions. Picking up soon after the events of the first “Stargirl” concluded (quick catch-up: Stargirl, played in both films by Grace VanderWaal, is an offbeat sweetheart who encourages people to embrace their true selves, a concept that went a bit topside in her former American high school, a place where individuality goes to die), “Hollywood Stargirl” finds our heroine again setting out on a new adventure. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Check out more films to watch on the next page.
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