Newflix is our weekly look at notable new titles available on online streaming sites.

Actress  (2014)
Directed by Robert Greene
Free for Netflix subscribers on Netflix
Let’s kick off this week’s by-accident-then-on-purpose uber-feminist Newflix! Billed as a documentary, Actress blurs the lines between reality and surreality almost immediately. Its focal point, Brandy Burre—an actress who cut her career short after a two-season run on The Wire to raise her two kids—sits in her children’s playroom, staring at the floor. “I moved to Beacon. I’m not acting. I guess this is my creative outlet now,” she says. She pauses, then says the same lines again—take two. From here, the doc quietly asks profound questions about Brandy, about the roles society asks women to play and the roles they have to give up, about the roles we all play for each other. Actress follows Brandy as she attempts to get back into the biz and struggles through a breakup from her kids’ father, interspersing slice-of-life shots—like one in which Brandy breaks down watching a video of her young daughter celebrating a birthday across the country—with stylized scenes, like a recurring shot of Brandy washing dishes in 1950s-housewife garb. In other hands this might’ve felt on the nose, but in Greene’s, it’s chillingly effective and unforgettable (and Essential Viewing).

My Summer Of Love (2004)
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
Free for HBO subscribers on HBO Go
My Summer Of Love passes by much like summer does: languidly, dreamily, fleetingly. It’s a meandering coming-of-age story, a story about first love, about getting your heart completely crushed, about how it feels—and how it changes you—to discover both the brightest and darkest sides of the people you care about. Summer stars Emily Blunt (before she was Emily Blunt) as Tamsin, a rich English teen living in a massive mansion that’s often deserted, and Mona (Natalie Press), an unflinching country girl who’s both a raw open wound and a closed fist. The two meet and slowly fall for each other, with Mona becoming particularly vulnerable to Tamsin’s charms, in part because she wants desperately to escape from her own bleak life. The ending comes as a shock for both Mona and the audience, a quick, cold slap in the face—summer’s over.

The Piano (1993)
Directed by Jane Campion
Free for HBO subscribers on HBO Go
The Piano is one of the strangest and most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Presenting as a costume drama and period piece, it spirals into a stunning and provocative story of female expression, independence, and passion, thanks to the wild imagination and feminist sensibility of director Jane Campion. The movies stars the wonderful Holly Hunter as Ada, a mute widow who's married off to a stranger (Sam Neill) from New Zealand. She travels there by sea with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), spreading out her few possessions on a stark, lonely beach, where she spends the night before meeting her new husband. When he arrives, he refuses to haul her beloved, unwieldy piano, which she’s used to express herself for years, to his house; another local man, Baines (Harvey Keitel) takes it instead, and soon offers to let Ada play it in exchange for lessons. The two fall into a deep and heady love affair, and, naturally, chaos ensues. The film unfolds like a dark fairy-tale, a fever dream. It’s one of my favorites and worth multiple viewings.

Love And Basketball (2000)
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
Free for HBO subscribers on HBO Go
Love And Basketball is Gina Prince-Bythewood’s first feature, and it shares a lot with her latest, Beyond The Lights: lush romance, a pinch of fantasy, and trenchant commentary on gender. Don’t make me decide which one I like more. Just don’t. Love And Basketball follows Quincy (Omar Epps) and Monica (Sanaa Lathan), next-door neighbors in an L.A. suburb who both dream of basketball stardom. Reaching that dream is considerably easier for Quincy, which Bythewood explores and uses as a point of conflict. But this movie isn’t really about basketball, guys! It’s about one of the most authentic and sexy love stories I’ve ever seen unfold on screen. It’s a testament to Lathan and Epps’ chemistry and Bythewood’s sleek script and directing that this movie is as compelling and memorable as it is (especially to someone who rails against sports on the reg).

Also new to streaming:

Watch out for bears? in Grizzly Man (Free on Crackle)…Scare the shit out of yourself with The Shining (HBO Go)…Chill out in space with Sandra in Gravity (HBO Go)…You don’t own me in First Wives Club (HBO Go)…Run away with Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Warner Archive)…Jodie Foster meets aliens (or does she?) in Contact (HBO Go)…Liam Neeson runs a lot in Taken 3 ($12.99 to buy on Amazon)…Fight crime with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock in The Heat ($2.99 to rent on Amazon)…Rewatch Steve McQueen’s masterful 12 Years A Slave (HBO Go)…Be careful with Owen Wilson in Behind Enemy Lines (HBO Go)….Grow young with Tom Hanks in Big (HBO Go)…Everything’s not all right all right all right in Dallas Buyers Club (HBO Go)…Keanu and Al get kinda crazy in The Devil’s Advocate (HBO Go)…Julianne Moore is Julianne-Moore levels of wonderful in Far From Heaven (HBO Go)…Winona Ryder is committed in Girl, Interrupted (HBO Go)…Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs get it on in How Stella Got Her Groove Back (HBO Go)…Search for hidden treasure in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (HBO Go)…Forest Whitaker wins an Oscar in The Last Kind Of Scotland (HBO Go)…Here’s more Winona in Mermaids (HBO Go)…Watch-a watch-a watch-a watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show (HBO Go)…The Circle has 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes so it must be the best (Netflix)