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

Wild Tales (2015)
Directed by Damián Szifrón
$3.99 to rent on Amazon
Wild Tales is an utterly delightful and deranged piece of filmmaking, one of my favorites from last year. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Szifrón’s Argentinian anthology comprises six unrelated shorts that demonstrate just how thin the veneer is that separates civilized society from total fucking chaos. It is, appropriately, a wild and completely unpredictable ride: Szifrón takes each of these short stories of revenge and justice and rage to their illogical extremes, reminding us at once of the absurdity and tenuousness of the civilization we’ve built for ourselves, and of just how close we are to our animal brethren—in other words, how little control we have over it all. It’s one of the most original and most deeply hilarious movies I’ve seen in years, one that forces us to laugh (quite cathartically) at the folly of our existence. 

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (2015)
Directed by David and Nathan Zellner
$3.99 to rent on Amazon
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is very loosely based on a true story about a woman who mistook a fictional story for a true story. Got it? K, good. David and Nathan Zellner’s film follows Rinko Kikuchi as Kumiko, a lonely young woman who’s obsessed with a VHS copy of the Coen brothers’ Fargo she found on a beach. She’s particularly taken with the scene that sees Steve Buscemi stuffing his suitcase full of cash in the snow, and, taking the Coens’ “THIS IS A TRUE STORY” title card at face value, flies to Minneapolis and begins searching for the money. This premise isn’t as far-fetched or distant from our own lives as it may seem: As Scott Tobias wrote in his review of the film, “The Zellners are tapping into the allure of movies, that fundamental desire we have to escape our humdrum lives and give ourselves over to the more exciting ones playing out onscreen.”

Ballet 422 (2015)
Directed by Jody Lee Lipes
Free for Netflix subscribers on Netflix streaming
What's fascinating about Jody Lee Lipes’ doc Ballet 422 is that it both removes much of the mystique surrounding ballet as an art form while maintaining the unknowability of its subjects. Rather than approach ballet as works of art, the doc shows ballet as work—hours and hours of grueling practice and collaboration between dancers, choreographers, lighting and costume professionals. The film follows fledgling New York City Ballet dancer Justin Peck, who, thanks to higher-ups’ recognition of his talent during a workshop, has been given a rare chance to choreograph a piece (the NYCB's 422nd). Peck seems appropriately sobered by the opportunity, stoic and focused as he works to create his first original piece from the ground up. It’s an absorbing doc, and all the more so for Lipes’ unconventional choices, like not showing the final number at Peck’s show, and instead playing rehearsal footage that reminds the audience just what went into the production. As our own Noel Murray put it, “Ballet 422 reflects Peck’s stoicism, trying hard not to make too big a deal out of something that’s at once so esoteric and so arduous.”

What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)
Directed by Liz Garbus
Free for Netflix subscribers on Netflix streaming
What Happened, Miss Simone? premieres on Netflix today, so I haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching it. Directed by Academy Award-nominee Liz Garbus, the film is an authorized look at singer and activist Nina Simone, one that’s, by all accounts, at turns heartbreaking (chronicling Simone’s “mental, physical, and spiritual” struggles) and awe-inducing (extensive clips of her performing and engaged in civil-rights work). The doc premiered at Sundance to much acclaim; our own Noel Murray wrote: “Garbus covers Simone’s entire life story—from her upbringing in rural North Carolina to her late-in-life comeback—and focuses especially on her tumultuous marriage and violent mood-swings. The bio-doc format is far too staid for such a radical, volatile performer, but again, it’s hard to be too down on any movie that features so many long scenes of Simone on stage, either rallying her fans or provoking them with angry stares, before launching into some of the best American popular music of the 1960s.” In a more recent review, The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote that the film is “an often electric, bracingly urgent documentary” that “came across as a good, smart movie [in January]; now, in June—after nine black churchgoers were murdered by a suspect who claims to be a white supremacist—it feels like something altogether different.”

Also new to streaming:
Beyond The Lights is so great everyone must watch it immediately (Netflix)…It won’t take you two days to watch 48 Hrs (Amazon Prime July 1)…Good news: The Bad News Bears is available for streaming! (Amazon Prime July 1)…Everybody is attractive in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (Amazon Prime July 1)…Walter Matthau is back in this section again with The Odd Couple (Amazon Prime July 1)…Watch Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb or: don’t, it’s your life (Amazon Prime July 1)…Make it a Dirty Dancing/Flashdance double feature (Amazon Prime July 1)…Amour Fou is a “darkly humorous postmodern take on love, life, and death” ($3.99 to rent on Amazon)…Zavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways chronicles a 10-year relationship (Fandor)…The future is bleak in Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous (Netflix)