By Jason Bailey
A handful of low-key but formidable dramas dominate this month’s under-the-radar recommendations on your streaming subscription services.
‘Femme’ (2024)
It’s a deceptively simple premise: Drag performer Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is badly beaten in a homophobic attack, only to find the main attacker (George MacKay) cruising for companionship months later. Unrecognized out of drag, Jules decides to entrap and humiliate his attacker, and if you think you know where this is going, you’re in for a surprise. Rather than rehashing the tired, simplistic tropes of the revenge thriller, writing and directing duo Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping explore the emotional complexities of the trap Jules must set — and in doing so, pose compelling questions about Jules’ own sense of self-worth. Stewart-Jarrett is marvelously understated, carefully choosing when to let his character’s carefully cultivated persona slip, while McKay is chillingly convincing in his tricky characterization of a closeted, self-loathing gay man. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ (2023)
Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a new sixth-grade teacher who finds out exactly how fragile her sense of trust and idealism is in this harrowing drama from director Ilker Catak. An atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia pervades this German school, thanks to a rash of petty thefts that have teachers and students alike side-eyeing each other. Carla entraps the seemingly clear culprit, and immediately regrets it. Catak, who wrote the screenplay with Johannes Duncker, squeezes the classroom and faculty spaces like a vice, expertly building operatic tension and discomfort (Marvin Miller’s gripping score does much of the work) out of everyday stress, seemingly careening toward an inevitable, violent conclusion; “I wish it had all worked out differently,” Carla says near the end, and by that point, you’re likely to agree. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘I Smile Back’ (2015)
Sarah Silverman is more than a stand-up supreme and comic personality; she’s also a fine dramatic actress, as evidenced by her turns in “Maestro,” “Take This Waltz” and this indie addiction drama. As Laney, a New Jersey mother and housewife prone to booze, coke and extramarital flings, Silverman uses her unique combination of recklessness and vulnerability to create a character who certainly knows better, and careens into trouble anyway. Silverman can handily carry this kind of dramatic weight; she should have more opportunities to do so. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.)
‘Woodshock’ (2017)
Sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the minds and hands behind the Rodarte fashion label, made their filmmaking debut with this vivid mixture of daydreams and nightmares. Kirsten Dunst stars as a young woman who, adrift after the death of her mother, bides her time working in a marijuana dispensary. Her perpetual state of stoned grief becomes the picture’s evocative aesthetic, resulting in something visually akin to the hallucinogenic experimental cinema of the late 1960s, but with a dash of contemporary cynicism thrown in for good measure. (Stream it on Max.)
‘This Closeness’ (2024)
It would be easy to position Kit Zauhar as the heir apparent to Lena Dunham, another New York-based writer, director and actor who makes microbudget movies about the ennui of disaffected 20-somethings. But Zauhar has a voice and style of her own, on full and engaging display in this, her second feature. She stars as Tessa, renting a spare room for a weekend in Philadelphia with her boyfriend (Zane Pais). Ian Edlund plays their host, whose initially strained interactions with Tessa ascend, over the course of the awkward weekend, into genuine and gentle explorations of intimacy and attraction. It’s modest yet meaningful, full of razor-sharp truths that viewers of all ages and dispositions will recognize. (Stream it on Mubi.)
‘Lousy Carter’ (2024)
Bob Byington makes short, slight movies about prickly protagonists, and his latest is no exception. David Krumholtz (so memorable as Isidor Isaac Rabi in “Oppenheimer”) stars as the title character, a grouchy Austin literature professor so thoroughly disliked that an unexpectedly dire medical diagnosis — he has only six months to live — is mostly met by yawns. Krumholtz works his specific magic with aplomb, making this defiantly repellent character, at the very least, sympathetic, while a score of terrific character actors (including Jocelyn DeBoer, Stephen Root, Martin Starr and Olivia Thirlby) make the most of their brief appearances. But the real find is newcomer Luxy Banner, prickly and perfect as a grad student with no tolerance for Carter’s nonsense. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘The Rider’ (2018)
Before winning the Oscar for “Nomadland” and stepping into the Marvel machine for “The Eternals,” Chloé Zhao wrote and directed this emotionally resonant story of a rodeo champion who must rethink his entire life, and vision of himself, when he’s badly injured by a bucking bronco. Codifying many of Zhao’s formal trademarks, including charismatic nonprofessional actors and gorgeous Western exteriors (the cinematographer is Joshua James Richards), this heartfelt drama seems slender as it gently unspools, yet it lingers long in the memory. (Stream it on Max.)
‘Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films’ (2014)
Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley has made a specialty of celebrating high-energy exploitation movies and their makers; his credits include the Ozploitation ode “Not Quite Hollywood” and “Machete Maidens Unleashed!,” a deep dive into the bargain-basement outsourcing of American action movies of the 1970s to the jungles of the Philippines. But his best effort to date is this rollicking remembrance of Cannon Films, which (under the stewardship of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) cheerfully cranked out scores of action pictures, horror fright-fests and vulgar sex comedies to fill the shelves of video stores and the screens of drive-ins in the 1980s. Much of their output was trash, and Hartley wisely doesn’t pretend otherwise — the worst movies are often the most fun. But he also takes pains to pinpoint their admirable stabs at respectability, and meticulously chronicles their ill-advised attempt to play with the big-budget big boys. It’s a goofy, endlessly entertaining nostalgia trip for ’80s kids. (Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.)
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