In the summer, the world is always on the brink at the multiplex. It’s a season of shark attacks and alien invasions, of apocalyptic mayhem, with smoldering metal and men saving the world. This month’s films may loosely fit into this mold, with stories of disaster and high stakes, but they also serve as counterprogramming to a season of blockbusters.
Instead of cars that become transformers, what about a woman who makes love to a car and finds her body transforming into something beyond comprehension? Or, rather than a superhero epic, you’ll find one woman’s crime-fighting, superhuman sense of smell leading her on a twisted journey of self-discovery. In films like these, there’s still a world that needs to be saved, but mostly the Armageddon is internal, and in that way far more profound.
‘Titane’ (2021)
Stream it on Tubi.
After a grisly car accident, a little girl has a metal plate surgically fitted into her head; she grows up to become a serial killer (Agathe Rousselle), whose bloodlust is only matched by her literal lust for cars. Eventually, she goes on the run, disfigures herself and poses as the long-lost son of a fireman chief; also, she becomes pregnant with something alien after having sex with a Cadillac.
When Julia Ducournau’s film premiered at Cannes in 2021, it shocked the festival. Even knowing its premise going in, it shocks. Its transgressive approach mirrors what the director sees as the messy, twisted nature of gender, the body and self-love.
But what that reputation obscures are notions far simpler yet achingly felt: a story of belonging and unconditional love. Beneath the film’s bombast and metallic carnage is a motor of utmost sensitivity and a belief in the transformative power of acceptance.
‘Border’ (2018)
Stream it on Tubi.
Not to be outdone by “Titane” is Ali Abbasi’s own slippery and bizarrely affecting freakout. Tina (Eva Melander) is a Swedish security agent who has been shunned by society because of her appearance but has a supernatural ability to smell out secrets and feelings in others. Her power ultimately gets her involved in a sexual abuse case, right around the time she meets a mysterious man who shares a strangely alluring connection with her.
As if they haven’t been already, things soon get very weird. The film’s twists can be jarring, but their visceral unpredictability are not provocation’s own sake. Instead they add up to those fundamental things: self-discovery, the nature of goodness and the capacity for evil but also for grace. You might say it’s a story about what it means to be human; really, it’s a Rorschach test for Tina, and for us, about what binds or divides all of the living.
‘Melancholia’ (2011)
Life on Earth, Justine tells her sister Claire, is evil. In Lars von Trier’s elegant, piercingly bleak modern masterpiece, a planet is on a course to slingshot around Earth — but also might collide with it. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is terrified of what might happen, but Justine (Kirsten Dunst), severely depressed and having barely stumbled through her recent wedding, is not. For her, the possibility of extinction is a seductive prospect.
The sisters are two people existing in different worlds, if on the same planet: one in the depths of mental illness, the other not. But as Melancholia, the looming planet on a trajectory toward Earth, inches closer, the film bridges the gap between their two experiences: What better way to understand the annihilating force of despair than to be confronted with the specter of planetary destruction?
Rare has there been a film that portrays the empty pasture of depression and hopelessness in such effective and devastating terms.
‘Coherence’ (2013)
You would be hard-pressed to find a more absorbing and tense sci-fi thriller that does so much with so little than in James Ward Byrkit’s “Coherence.”
A group of friends gather for a dinner party on the night a comet is passing over Earth. Soon, surreal things begin happening, and their seemingly pedestrian reality blooms into a terrifying possibility.
The suspense here is excellently constructed in its simplicity. The movie is, in essence, about a group of adults talking in a dining room and repeatedly stepping in and out of a house. But the sense of foreboding, that reality is slipping from their fingers — or, really, multiple realities are collapsing in on their increasingly paranoid minds — is all the more potent. A dozen years since its release, the film reads as a gem of a bygone era of indie filmmaking.
‘Attack the Block’ (2011)
Stream it on PlutoTV.
With its charismatic crew of knucklehead boys, Joe Cornish’s “Attack the Block,” about teenagers fighting off aliens in their housing projects, has the familiar pleasure of youth adventure classics like “The Goonies” or “The Sandlot.” The film, though, is more impressive for how it folds in other genres — horror comedy, alien invasion and a dash of social realism — all via strikingly economical filmmaking terms.
The modest budget (the aliens, pitch-black creatures with glowing teeth, are perfect in their almost kid-drawing simplicity) only aids a winningly entertaining depiction of apocalypse that has just the right touch of the serious. Chasing and killing these bloodthirsty creatures is somehow fun and irreverent, but what other way is there to be when it’s just another terror to living in the projects?
What sticks out the most perhaps is a young John Boyega’s lead performance, a debut with the kind of dramatic magnetism that destined him for big-screen stardom.
The post Five Free Movies to Stream Now appeared first on New York Times.
