Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms caters to its own niche of film obsessives.
From the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel to the new frontiers of streaming offered by the likes of the Kino Film Collection and Paramount Plus, IndieWire’s monthly guide highlights the best of what’s coming to every major streamer, with an eye toward exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.
Here’s your guide for September 2024.
“Wolfs” (dir. Jon Watts, 2024)
It might seem obvious that the exclusive new movie co-starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt would be our pick of the month, but the truth is we’re only going with it cause it’s the only movie coming to Apple TV+ in September. Middling reviews aside (sorry Jon Watts, but Steven Soderbergh is a tough act to follow), absolutely nothing does more to deflate excitement for a star-studded movie than shunting it straight to streaming after a one-week theatrical run. This might be a streaming column, but it’s hard to get people excited to watch a film when the trillion-dollar tech company that made it — known for the quality of their products —is happy to treat it like a Netflix Original.
In the sad context of 2024 home video releases, it felt like a major event when “Killers of the Flower Moon” arrived on Apple TV+ after a healthy run in theaters centered it in the zeitgeist where it belonged. By contrast, “Wolfs” is arriving with a whimper. This movie may not deserve any better than that, but it’s possible that some of the movies Apple makes in the future might, and all signs suggest they won’t get it.
Available to stream September 27
“Days of Heaven” (dir. Terrence Malick, 1978)
The Criterion Channel loves Halloween so much that it’s soft-launching into spooky season a month early, as the platform’s September lineup is backstopped by an incredible selection of Giallo movies that range from Mario Bava’s “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” (aka “The Evil Eye”) to Dario Argento’s “Tenebrae,” while naturally highlighting some of the greatest movie titles of all time in between (e.g. “Strip Nude for Your Killer,” “Don’t Torture a Duckling”). And if that’s not enough bonkers Italian hotness for you, subscribers are also being treated to the new restoration of Francis Ford Coppola’s unfairly maligned “One from the Heart” (just in time for his unfairly maligned “Megalopolis”), as well as a Marcello Mastroianni retrospective that spans from 1957’s “White Nights” to 1995’s “One Hundred and One Nights,” and pushes a bit deeper than the obvious throughout (not that there’s anything wrong with watching “La dolce vita” for the 900th time).
In more squarely American territory, Criterion is also serving up a judiciously curated series of courtroom dramas (“The Verdict” will always be essential viewing, and I suppose “Runaway Jury” is a nifty time capsule), along with a blow-out tribute to the best of New Hollywood, featuring a collection of Criterion mainstays like “Five Easy Pieces,” “Mikey and Nicky,” and “Days of Heaven,” which is our pick of the month because it makes for a great banner image. Elsewhere, don’t miss out on the streaming premiere of Bas Devos’ utterly becalming “Here” (not to be confused with the imminent Robert Zemeckis film of the same name), a tribute to “His Three Daughters” director Azazel Jacobs, and a look back at the women screenwriters of the 1930s, which shines a long-overdue spotlight on the likes of “Make Way for Tomorrow” scribe Viña Delmar.
All films available to stream September 1
Other highlights:
-“Bad Press” (9/1)
-“Philadelphia” (9/1)
-“Deep Red” (9/1)“The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” (dir. Joanna Arnow, 2023)
Joanna Arnow’s “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” is a major find on Hulu this month. Here’s what Ryan Lattanzio wrote about the film for our list of the best films that have been released so far this year:
“’I love that you never do anything for me…it’s like I don’t even exist.’ That’s what Ann, a depressed thirty-something New Yorker, tells her older on-and-off BDSM lover in the first scene of writer-director Joanna Arnow’s ‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed,’ in which the filmmaker also stars as Ann. Her heroine is an existentially moribund millennial wasting away in an anonymous-feeling corporate job who passes her time with sexual debasement when not quarreling with her nagging Jewish family.
“This clever and disquieting indie unfolds at a clip somnambulant enough to match its lead’s spiritual stupor, whether she’s spreading her ass for her partners (clients?) or on the phone with her needling mother insisting that, no, she isn’t running out of breath despite trudging up and down the Manhattan streets. (She very much is, and running in place within her life.) Kneejerking viewers might draw a cross between Miranda July mumblecore and Lena Dunham unfilteredness here in terms of Arnow’s willingness to degrade herself on camera, but that’s a comparison the filmmaker would probably be annoyed over and one that elides the movie’s uniquely droll vibe.”
Available to stream September 13
Other highlights:
See AlsoBFI NETWORK@LFF 2024 cohortThe 5 Best New Movies of September 202416 Best Movies New to Streaming in September: ‘Civil War,’ ‘Wolfs,’ ‘The Boy and the Heron’ and MoreYour guide to 2024 movie release dates– “The Favourite” (9/15)
– “Babes” (9/30)“Synonyms” (dir. Nadav Lapid, 2019)
A singular misadventure about the violence of trying to supplant oneself with another, Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms” is an astonishing, maddening, brilliant, hilarious, obstinate, and altogether essential film. Co-produced by “Toni Erdmann” director Maren Ade, and loosely based on Lapid’s own experience as a young soldier who fled to Paris because he believed that he was born in the Middle East by mistake, the “Policeman” filmmaker’s disorienting third feature tightened his career-long fascination with the impossible knot that ties a person to their country.
First-time actor Tom Mercier delivers a truly unforgettable performance as Yoav, a twentysomething who arrives in Paris with a pledge to never speak another word of Hebrew. Alas, the rich young couple he falls in with doesn’t make it easy for Yoav to sort himself out. In broad strokes, his story becomes the unshakeable one of a man who’s grown tired of carrying the baggage that comes with being an Israeli, and who’s driven to the brink of madness by a world that forcibly identifies people by the place they were born. Bracing as “Synonyms” already was when it first came out, it goes without saying that the film — and the rest of Lapid’s furious work along with it — has somehow become even more urgent over the last 12 months.
Available to stream September 1
Other highlights:
– “Millennium Mambo” (9/1)
– “Rocco and His Brothers” (9/1)
– “A Touch of Sin” (9/1)“Tangerine” (dir. Sean Baker, 2015)
Just in time for the release of Sean Baker’s incredible “Anora,” Magnolia Selects is celebrating the movie that elevated him towards the highest echelons of American indie cinema and kick-started his current hot streak of scrappy, frenetic movies about life in the margins of the richest country on Earth. “Tangerine” is still every inch the bittersweet rush of blood to the head it was when it took Sundance by storm in 2015, and its influence on low-budget digital filmmaking only seems to grow by the day. Here’s what Jude Dry had to say about the film when IndieWire named it one of the 100 best movies of the 2010s:
“An audacious and infinitely re-watchable farce about a day in the life of two trans girls working the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Sean Baker’s ‘Tangerine’ was both an instant classic, and a lightning rod for emerging trans cinema. Baker earned major points for casting actual trans women in the leads — a rarity in 2015 that has since become the norm — and his decision paid off in a big way; Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriquez saturate the film in such delicious specificity that it’s almost enough to make you want to swear off professional actors altogether. Shot entirely on iPhone (with the help of an anamorphic adapter), ‘Tangerine’ made waves when it premiered at Sundance in 2015. And sure, the cinematography is vibrant and alive in a way that no one has been able to replicate on a consumer-grade camera since, but the look of the film was only a means to an end. On the contrary, it’s the raw intimacy of Baker’s approach that made ‘Tangerine’ an instant queer classic.”
Available to stream September 24
Other highlights:
– “About Endlessness” (9/1)
– “Mother” (9/11)
– “I’m Still Here” (9/18)“The Boy and the Heron” (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
How does someone follow one of the greatest and most profoundly summative farewells the movies have ever seen? By definition, they don’t. They retire, or they die. Or they retire and then they die. In some rare cases, it even seems like they die because they retired. And then there’s 82-year-old filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, always in a category of his own, who’s formally or informally quit the business no fewer than seven times over the course of his illustrious career, most recently after the 2013 release of his magnum opus “The Wind Rises.” That film — a fictionalized biopic about aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi — ended with someone concluding “we must live,” in spite of all things. Miyazaki’s new last film (for now) asks how, and then offers its own kind of answer.
The story of an angry and grieving child named Mahito who loses his mother in a 1943 hospital fire and then moves to the Japanese countryside so that his father can marry the boy’s aunt, “The Boy and the Heron” kicks into high gear once an Iago-like bird lures Mahito into a parallel universe with promises of reuniting with his mother. Already one of the most beautiful movies ever drawn, Miyazaki’s film becomes transcendent from that point on, resolving into a dream-like adventure that finds its creator nakedly reflecting on his legacy.
While this dreamlike warble of a swan song may be too pitchy and scattered to hit with the gale-force power that made “The Wind Rises” feel like such a definitive farewell, “The Boy and the Heron” finds Miyazaki so nakedly bidding adieu — to us, and to the crumbling kingdom of dreams and madness that he’ll soon leave behind — that it somehow resolves into an even more fitting goodbye, one graced with the divine awe and heart-stopping wistfulness of watching a true immortal make peace with their own death.
As a bonus, be sure to seek out the scrappy but exquisitely revealing new documentary “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron,” also streaming on Max, which painstakingly chronicles the entire production history of “The Boy and the Heron” — it’s the most intimate look into Miyazaki’s process and person that you could ever hope to see.
Available to stream September 6
Other highlights:
– “Drive My Car” (9/2)
– “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron” (9/6)
– “I Saw the TV Glow” (9/20)“Air Doll” (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
The Metrograph might be a small, two-screen theater in lower Manhattan, but its streaming platform continues to prove itself one of the most essential services of its kind as it brings the flagship’s exquisite programming to movie lovers across the country. Metrograph at Home’s September lineup is robust and well-curated enough to compete with the likes of MUBI and the Criterion Channel. The slate ranges from a trio of Béla Tarr classics (including “Sátántangó” and the all too prescient “The Turin Horse”), three gems from beguiling Argentinian director Matías Piñeiro (with his “Twelfth Night” adaptation “Viola” being the standout), two from his fellow countrywoman Lucrecia Martel (“Zama”) and — perhaps best of all — a mini-retro devoted to the great cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, whose work in films like Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Millennium Mambo” has helped to define the cinema’s self-image in the 21st century.
I’ve always been partial to “Air Doll,” an effervescently poignant modern fable about a sex doll who comes to life. The DP’s one and only collaboration with Hirokazu Kore-eda, “Air Doll” mines a rare, music-box beauty from the silliness of its premise, with Bae Doona’s lead performance helping to animate the film’s story into a quietly crushing portrait of modern dislocation.
All films available to stream September 1
“My First Film” (dir. Zia Anger, 2024)
The full breadth of what MUBI offers is on full display this month, as the distributor’s streaming platform is offering subscribers a rare jewel of 21st century arthouse cinema — the extended TV cut of Raúl Ruiz’s beguiling and exquisite “Mysteries of Lisbon” —alongside recent gems like “Riddle of Fire,” mini-retros to complement the company’s latest theatrical releases (don’t miss “Reality+” and “Revenge” from “The Substance” director Coralie Fargeat), and extremely worthwhile straight-to-streaming premieres.
To that last point: A few words from Natalia Winkelman’s review of Zia Anger’s “My First Film”:
“A self-reflexive origin story about creation, growth, and the myth of the lone artist, ‘My First Film’ announces a bold, disruptive new talent in American cinema. But if the film’s release is anything like Zia Anger’s experience in the film world thus far, it will elicit a maddening whimper where it should have made a bang.
“That’s because Anger, who writes and directs with fierce emotion and sincerity, has had terrible luck (if you want to call it that) on the film scene. Despite directing evocative music videos for artists like Mitski and Angel Olsen, Anger has been consistently overlooked by Hollywood, and has struggled to secure financing. Her first feature, shot on a shoestring budget with support from family and friends, was rejected from every film festival.
“A caveat: even Anger looks back on that first film as ‘bad.’ At least she implies as much in ‘My First Film,’ an aching work in which Anger reckons with her uneasy career history by re-enacting her doomed first production. Produced by MUBI, the film takes a complex form that involves time jumps, fractured images, and a fusion of fiction and real memories. Its plot, about a 25-year-old getting an abortion and directing her first feature, is direct, as are its ideas about being a woman in an unkind industry. But as the film unfolds, it evolves into a moving meditation on what it means to make something that never comes into being.”
Available to stream September 6
Other highlights:
– “Mysteries of Lisbon” (9/1)
– “Wildlife” (9/1)
– “Revenge” (9/27)“Rebel Ridge” (dir. Jeremy Saulnier, 2024)
September is usually when Netflix starts kicking things into gear and pivoting from content slop to awards contenders, and that’s true enough in 2024, as the streaming giant is releasing the likes of Azazel Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters” and Josh Greenbaum’s “Will & Harper” later this month (two festival pick-ups that should garner plenty of attention between now and the end of the year). But the unambiguous standout from Netflix’s latest slate doesn’t fall into either of those categories. I’m talking about Jeremy Saulnier’s fist-pumpingly awesome “Rebel Ridge,” which finds the “Blue Ruin” filmmaker in top form with another smart, tense, and muscular thriller — this one about a corrupt Southern police force that forces thewrongguy to forfeit his civil assets (he’s played by “Old” star Aaron Pierre, in what might be the breakout performance of the year). It’s the rare Netflix Original that will grab you by the neck, pull your head away from your phone, and force you to watch it with both eyes.
Available to stream on September 6
Other highlights:
– “His Three Daughters” (9/20)
– “Rez Ball” (9/27)
– “Will & Harper” (9/27)“Youth (Spring)” (dir. Wang Bing, 2023)
With the second and third installments of Wang Bing’s “Youth” trilogy now traveling the festival circuit, OVID is giving subscribers a golden chance to get back in on the ground floor with the exclusive streaming premiere of the triptych’s first chapter, “Youth (Spring”). And while an 11-hour observational documentary about Chinese textile workers might sound like the kind of thing that you can enter at any point, to see this project in full is to appreciate the true sweep of its portraiture. Here’s some of what critic Ben Croll wrote about “Youth (Spring)” when it premiered at Cannes last year:
“A formally austere direct-cinema tour through Middle Kingdom sweatshops, this dense slice-of-life offers notes on a theme, lamenting stifled promise while considering the ways such youthful vigor can withstand, overcome or wholly be crushed by the grinding gears of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. ‘Youth (Spring)’ opens in a dingy alley in the industrial hub of Zhili City and stays there all the way through, devoting uninterrupted attention to the cramped and cruddy workshops that fill a street all too ironically called Happiness Road. After spending five years quietly observing the area’s various businesses, Wang demarcates each discrete space with supertitles that land like grim punchlines given the complete absence of appreciable difference. That monotony in interior design takes on more sinister implications given the workers’ ostensible ‘freedom’ — nearly all of them economic migrants from the nearby Anhui province, the various youths flock to Happiness Road to work as free agents, ‘free’ to change workshops at will, and are paid for items produced instead of a fixed wage.
“Though bleak, this panel is not just a garden of earthly despair. As in previous films, Wang’s impassive handheld camera waits for life to reveal itself, and for light to shine through the cracks in these concrete tombs. Like a Brueghel or a Bosch, ‘Youth (Spring)’ is less an individual portrait than a bustling portrayal of types — lovesick fools and weary old souls, agitators and wallflowers, peacocks and young parents-to-be, all united and made equal by the same shared and endless labor and the same cramped living quarters.”
Available to stream September 20
Other highlights:
– “A-ha: The Movie” (9/6)
– “The Strangler” (9/18)
– “Vortex” (9/28)“Apartment 7A” (dir. Natalie Erika James, 2024)
Paramount Plus is bringing a few modern classics to its streaming platform this September (including Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.,” which IndieWire recently crowned the best film of the aughts), but this column wouldn’t really be serving its purpose if I failed to highlight the big-ticket exclusive for the month: A straight-to-streaming “Rosemary’s Baby” prequel called “Apartment 7A.” Producer John Krasinski might be a slight step down from Robert Evans, but Dianne Wiest is about as perfect a Ruth Gordon replacement as you could hope for, and Julia Garner feels like someone who could credibly live in the same building as Mia Farrow circa 1968, so, uh… I guess you could be excited for this if you want? The Devil wouldn’t have it any other way.
Available to stream September 27
Other highlights:
– “A.I.” (9/1)
– “No Country for Old Men” (9/1)
– “The Virgin Suicides” (9/1)“Paddington 2” (dir. Paul King, 2018)
When in doubt, watch “Paddington 2.” Also when not in doubt.
Available to stream September 26.
“Oddity” (dir. Damian McCarthy, 2024)
“In a Violent Nature” might be the highest-profile streaming premiere coming to Shudder this month, but don’t overlook Damian McCarthy’s even scarier “Oddity,” which developed a cult following of its own during its theatrical run this summer. Here’s an excerpt from Alison Foreman’s glowing review from SXSW:
“Featuring a steely blind psychic (Carolyn Bracken) as its supernatural star and a menacing wooden mannequin as its scary centerpiece, this mostly single-location thriller begins at a remote Irish estate, where a woman is visited by a one-eyed stranger who tries to get into her house by insisting that he wants to protect her from a man who’s already broken into her house, and is still inside somewhere. Made in an almost-but-not-quite vaudevillian style that feels spiritually akin to ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,’ Damian McCarthy’s ‘Oddity is a richly imagined three-ring circus of genre concepts — somersaulting between chilly Irish folktale, winking creature feature, bare-bones home invasion horror, affectionate ‘Needful Things’ homage, and a tense but darkly funny drama between grieving in-laws. It also has one of the best jump-scares this critic has seen in some time.”
Available to stream September 27
Other highlights:
– “Candyman” (9/1)
– “In a Violent Nature” (9/13)