The Best Movies New to Every Major Streaming Platform in January 2025

“Hale County This Morning, This Evening” (dir. RaMell Ross, 2018)

The Criterion Channel is ringing in the new year with a characteristically wide-ranging array of classic and contemporary delights, some evergreen and some timed to the spirit of the season. And by “the season” I obviously mean “the theatrical run of ‘Babygirl,’” as we kick things off with a mini-retro celebrating some of Nicole Kidman’s more scandalous moments, including the time she peed on Zac Efron in “The Paperboy.” I’m not sure if anyone really needs to catch up with Frank Oz’s bloodless reimagining of “The Stepford Wives,” but any excuse to put “Portrait of a Lady” and “Eyes Wide Shut” back on the service is fine by me.

Switching gears, the Channel’s most stimulating package of the month might have to be the “Surveillance Cinema” series, which spans 70 years — from “Modern Times” to “A Scanner Darkly” — in order to study the changing ways that society has been watching itself at work, home, and everywhere else during the growth of industrialized voyeurism. Other thematic retros include “Love in Disguise,” which looks at the rom-con gems of the Lubitsch era, and a focus on films in which heroic actors were cast as villains (Andy Griffith’s turn in “A Face in the Crowd” being the most iconic example, or at least the most discomforting to watch in January of 2025).

A beautiful spotlight on Beninese filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, a trio of early Sean Baker and Cameron Crowe films, a smattering of David Bowie’s strangest roles, and Brady Corbet’s “The Childhood of a Leader” round out a robust slate that’s capped off by RaMell Ross’ documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” a study in the “epic banal” that tethers his magnificent “Nickel Boys” to the world as we see it with the naked eye.

All films available to stream January 1.

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2008)

The first four “Indiana Jones” movies are coming to Disney+ this month (where were they before?), and while even the most dedicated “Crystal Skull” defenders — like me — can’t argue that Spielberg’s legacy sequel is the best of the series, 2023’s “Dial of Destiny” made it more obvious than ever that Indy’s previous outing was a lot stronger than people care to admit. The Mutt Williams of it all is unforgivable, but the rest of the movie, especially its ecstatically propulsive first act, offers whip-cracking fun on par with anything the franchise served up in its heyday. Odds are that you’ve been at least a little bit wrong about this movie for the last 17 years, and there’s no time like the present to circle back on what you’ve been missing. 

Available to stream January 1.

Other highlights:

– “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1/1)
– “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1/1)
– “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1/1)

“Asia-Pol” (dir. Matsuo Akinori, 1966)

A quick shoutout to Film Movement Plus: No other streamer more consistently programs so many movies that I’ve never seen and am dying to watch. Case in point: Matsuo Akinori’s “Asia-Pol,” a 1966 Shaw Brothers spy film that was released the same year that James Bond first visited Japan in the classic — but wantonly racist — “You Only Live Twice.” Co-produced by Nikkatsu and supposedly a bit more grounded than the 007 adventure that it accompanied to the screen, the movie stars Shaw Brothers mainstay Jimmy Wang Yu as a secret agent whose efforts to retrieve a fortune in stolen gold hit a snag when the yakuza start hunting him for sport. And if that falls short of my expectations, I suppose there’s always “Girl’s Blood,” an “erotic action drama” about four women who join an underground MMA fight club. I’m not entirely sure how that premise turns erotic, but I do know you won’t find the answer to that mystery on any other platform.

Available to stream January 31.

Other highlights:

– “Under the Open Sky” (1/10)
– “Life as a B-Movie: Piero Vivarelli” (1/24)
– “Girl’s Blood” (1/31)

“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” (dir. Johan Grimoprez, 2024)

As we gear up for another edition of Sundance, there’s no better time than to catch up with one of the strongest films from last year’s festival. Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” may not have been an instant sensation, but it gradually emerged as one of the definitive documentaries of 2024, perhaps only second to the unparalleled — and still undistributed — “No Other Land.” 

Here is some of what David Opie had to say about the film in his deeply appreciative review from last January: “History isn’t fixed. It has a rhythm and a flow that shifts according to who’s telling the story, who’s listening, and the medium via which that story is being told. True consensus is ever elusive, yet Johan Grimonprez has built a career on interrogating history in a bid to find truth amidst the chaos wrought by time and bias. And for his latest effort, the Belgian director makes use of that rhythm to dizzying effect. 

Following his Hitchcockian ‘Double Take’ (2009) and ‘Shadow World’ (2017), an investigation into the multi-billion dollar international arms trade, Grimonprez has returned to Sundance with ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,’ a vibrant film essay that marries jazz and politics to unravel colonial machinations of power in the Congo circa 1960.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, but in 150 minutes, Grimonprez forges through huge swathes of time and space to chart how the Belgian monarchy, the U.S. government, and various corporations colluded to assassinate Congo’s premiere prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. As it turns out, they mostly did it with jazz.” 

Available to stream January 10.

Other highlights:

– “Titanic” (1/1)
– “Doom Generation” (1/24)
– “Clear and Present Danger” (1/31)

“Exhibition” (dir. Joanna Hogg, 2013)

A handful of heavyweight titles are leaving the Kino Film Collection this month (including Marcel Carné’s “Port of Shadows,” which I urge you to catch while you still can), but subscribers will be hard-pressed to mourn the loss thanks to an influx of less canonical but more intriguing new additions. Chief among them would have to be Joanna Hogg’s “Exhibition,” which memorably connects the dots between “The Souvenir” and the more outwardly experimental work she first began to explore in film school. On a similarly unbound but decidedly more American note, the Kino Film Collection is also hosting a massive, 49-movie slate dedicated to work that premiered at Sundance, a package that includes formative pieces of indie cinema like Todd Haynes’ “Poison,” Andrew Bujalski’s “Computer Chess,” and Eliza Hittman’s “It Felt Like Love.” If you can’t make it to Park City this month, or don’t want to shell out a fistful of money to roll the dice on a new discovery, Kino definitely has you covered.

Available to stream January 9.

Other highlights:

– “The Disappearance of My Mother” (1/23)
– “Four Adventures of Reinette & Mirabelle” (1/30)
– “Poison” (TBD)

“A Real Pain” (dir. Jesse Eisenberg, 2024)

January is a great month for major awards contenders to start making their way to streaming, and so it goes with Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” which has ridden a wave of Sundance buzz to a host of seemingly guaranteed Oscar nominations. Kieran Culkin is seemingly cruising towards a win for his supporting turn as the mercurial and hyper-sensitive Benji, an exposed nerve of a human being whose ability to feel the world so acutely becomes the envy — and the agony — of his super neurotic cousin David (Eisenberg) as the mismatched pair take a guided trip back to Poland in order to see where their late grandmother lived before she escaped from the Holocaust. 

In his IndieWire review, Siddhant Adlakha wrote that Eisenberg’s “sophomore effort brims with the kind of complications that American indie filmmakers often try to wrap up in neat bows in their tales of family gatherings. Instead, Eisenberg lets emotional paradoxes take control, as the New York cousin duo joins an intimate Holocaust tour in Poland to grow closer to their roots after their grandmother’s passing.”

Available to stream January 16.

Other highlights:

– “Heat” (1/1)
– “Paddington” (1/1)
– “Sleep” (1/21)

“A Different Man” (dir. Aaron Schimberg, 2024)

A caustically funny cosmic joke of a film about an insecure actor who finds a miracle cure for his facial disfigurement, only to be upstaged by a stranger who oozes self-confidence despite (still) having the exact same condition the main character had once allowed to hold him back, Aaron Schimberg’s ruthless and Escher-like “A Different Man” might have felt cruel if not for how cleverly it complicates its punchline. 

Are we supposed to be laughing at someone — someone who’s been treated like a monster for his entire adult life — just because they couldn’t resist the opportunity to shed their skin? Anyone familiar with Schimberg’s “Chained for Life,” which similarly defenestrated the notion of disabilities as “God’s mistakes,” already knows the answer to that question. Besides, who among us would pass up the chance to look like Sebastian Stan? 

In that light, it’s more tempting to interpret “A Different Man” as a dark and damning satire of our social conditioning, which has convinced us to see asymmetry as ugliness, and internalize ugliness as inhuman. But while that might be a more accurate distillation of what Schimberg is doing here, leaving it there would fail to convey the full ambition of a deliriously surreal psycho-thriller that complicates its own identity at every turn. By refracting Brian De Palma’s self-reflexiveness and the Coen brothers’ mordant fatalism through the prism of his most personal obsessions, Schimberg creates a house of mirrors so brilliant and complex that it becomes impossible to match any of his characters to their own reflections, and absolutely useless to reduce the movie around them to the stuff of moral instruction.

Available to stream January 17.

Other highlights:

– “It Follows” (1/1)
– “Paddington” (1/1)
– “Better Off Dead” (1/17)

“Ema” (dir. Pablo Larraín, 2019)

An anarchic, liberated, and contagiously alive character study that feels like it was born out of a three-way between “Amélie,” “Oldboy,” and Gaspar Noé before maturing into a force of nature all its own, Pablo Larraín’s “Ema” doesn’t always dance to a clear or recognizable beat, but anybody willing to get on its wavelength will be rewarded with one of the year’s most dynamic and electrifying films. Which isn’t to suggest the movie doesn’t grab you from the moment it starts, only that it keeps you on your toes for a little while before you can figure out the steps, and it never lets you take the lead. Needless to say, we’re a long way from “Maria.”

Played by a feral Mariana Di Girolamo in the kind of unforgettably self-possessed breakthrough performance that could forge her to this role forever, Ema is a Valparaiso Reggaeton dancer who likes to walk the streets at night with a flamethrower strapped to her back. What she and her choreographer husband (Gael García Bernal) have to do with a violent little Colombian boy will take some time to puzzle out, but the pieces are all there at your disposal. Larraín does eventually carve out a clear(ish) plot, but most of “Ema” is about someone who’s lost a valuable part of themselves and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back. It’s thrilling to watch her try.

Available to stream January 1.

Other highlights:

– “Be Pretty and Shut Up” (1/1)
– “Félicité” (1/1)
– “Scum Manifesto” (1/1)

“Close Your Eyes” (dir. Victor Erice, 2023)

Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice has only made three films since debuting with his extraordinary “The Spirit of the Beehive” in 1973, and while all of them have argued for — and served to remind audiences of — cinema’s unique power as a medium, none have done so more powerfully or more plaintively than “Close Your Eyes.” Erice’s latest stunner tells the story of a retired director who becomes re-obsessed with the unfinished movie that ruined his career, and determines to solve the mystery of why his lead actor disappeared in the middle of the shoot. From that simple premise Erice unravels the most nakedly personal film he’s ever made. At times, it feels like the only film he’s ever made. Or maybe all of them at once. 

Sedate but ultimately shattering by dint of its simplicity (and its absolute slam-dunk of a final scene), “Close Your Eyes” is neither an autobiographical cine-memoir à la “The Fabelmans” nor a teary-eyed tribute to the magic of the movies in the vein of “Cinema Paradiso.” Yet, as if by accident and divine purpose all at once, it also manages to become both of those things by the end. Set at the dawn of the streaming age and shot with the funereal sterility that came with it, “Close Your Eyes” openly laments the loss of a more tactile film experience (the kind that included actual film), but only so that it can honor the way certain images take root inside us when seen under the right circumstances.

As he nears the end of a career that has always been fascinated by the liminal space between artifice and reality, however, Erice is somehow able to fulfill cinema’s miraculous promise as a vehicle of eternal return; as a magic trick capable of keeping the past alive long after it’s already died within us. The movies are real, “Close Your Eyes” insists with the intensity of an old master seizing what might be his last chance to say it. How much of ourselves will we lose if we forget how to project them properly?

Available to stream January 17.

Other highlights:

– “Little Odessa” (1/1)
– “Pepe” (1/10)
– “Charli XCX: Alone Together” (1/28)

“Plan 75” (dir. Chie Hayakawa, 2022)

OVID is kicking off with a bang, as — pound-for-pound — the streamer’s January lineup is as strong as any in its history. A trio of classic Japanese ghost stories (highlighted by Kenji Misumi’s “The Ghost of Yotsuya”) join David Easteal’s remarkable “The Plains” (a three-hour film shot almost entirely from the back seat of a car), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s acclaimed “Three Monkeys,” Isabella Eklöf’s Sundance shocker “Holiday,” an urgent plea against fanaticism from the directors of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” and a wild Soviet gem that splits the difference between Andrei Tarkovsky and Douglas Adams (“Kin-dza-dza!”). It’s an embarrassment of riches, but I’ve only chosen to highlight Chie Hayakawa’s “Plan 75” because it’s been haunting me since I first saw it at Cannes almost three years ago.

Inspired by a 2016 incident in which an ex-employee of a Japanese care home for intellectually and mentally disabled people broke into his former place of work and stabbed 19 defenseless patients to death in their beds in what he believed was an act of mercy (both for the victims, and also for the national economy that paid for their care), “Plan 75” is so powerfully sobering and sinisterly benign because it’s willing to accept the killer’s premise. The scariest thing about this low-key Cannes breakout isn’t its familiar depiction of a society that privileges human output over human dignity, but rather its soft dystopian sketch of a society that’s able to soft-shoe around dehumanization and/or sell it as an act of grace.

Set in an alternate present in which age-related hate crimes have motivated the Japanese government to create a social welfare initiative in which citizens above the age of 74 can volunteer for assisted suicide in exchange for $1,000, Hayakawa’s debut hones in on the personal impact of this seemingly opt-in program, as every member of the elderly population who chooses not to kill themselves is suddenly forced to justify their continued existence to everyone they meet. And to themselves. That kind of pressure could force the hand of even the most beloved and well-supported person in their twilight years, let alone a semi-frail and seemingly family-less hotel maid like Michi (Chieko Baisho). From the moment this movie starts, it’s only a matter of time before she numbly begins to fill out the paperwork and prepare herself for cremation.

“Plan 75” isn’t for or against assisted suicide, but it tenderly laments a society in which “death with dignity” is only offered as compensation for a life without it. This is an ultra-delicate whisper of a drama — the kind in which a typical scene might consist of an old woman sitting alone in her apartment for several minutes of haunted silence. And yet the anger that fringes such bittersweet moments gradually accumulates into a palpable and lingering rage at how good we’ve become at branding cruelty as compassion.

Available to stream January 17.

Other highlights:

– “Rebel” (1/8)
– “The Ghost of Yotsuya” (1/24)
– “The Plans” (1/28)

“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” (dirs. Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham, 2024)

Netflix seems content to let “Squid Game” and “Carry-On” suck up all the view hours this month (or maybe the goal is just to keep the spotlight on “Emilia Pérez,”) as the mega-streamer’s January lineup is mighty light on exclusives. Cameron Diaz will make her return to the screen with “Back in Action,” but the jury’s still out as to whether that will be worth the wait. The one movie we can definitely vouch for already: Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham’s “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” which finds claymation’s favorite inventor — and his loyal, begrudging dog/life partner — confronting an army of rampaging garden gnomes as the devious Feathers McGraw plots his revenge in the background. Stuffed with clever visual gags and building to a finale that evokes everything from “Mission: Impossible” to “Paddington 2” without diluting this franchise’s singular whimsy, the movie more than lives up to the Aardman legacy. 

Available to stream January 3.

Other highlights:

– “Interstellar” (1/1)
– “Hereditary” (1/15)
– “Back in Action” (1/17)

“The Wolf Man” (dir. George Waggner, 1941)

Will Leigh Whannell’s new “Wolf Man” live up to the legacy of the 1941 Lon Chaney classic? I mean… probably not (though Whannell is certainly the right guy to give it a go), but Universal is making sure that people are able to watch the original for comparison, as Peacock’s January slate is top-lined by George Waggner’s gothic horror classic. The new version will almost definitely look good in comparison to Joe Johnston’s 2010 take on the material, a misbegotten Benicio del Toro vehicle that should’ve killed the Dark Universe before it began. There’s not much else in the way of sexy new additions coming to Peacock this month, as it’s all “Traitors” all the time for them at the moment, but here’s all the humanoid wolf content you could ever want.

Available to stream January 1.

Other highlights: 

– “Alien” (1/1)
– “Fargo” (1/1)
– “Nymphomaniac” (1/16)

“A Quiet Place: Day One” (dir. Michael Sarnoski, 2024)

I wasn’t expecting much from a prequel in the “Quiet Place” franchise, as the two John Krasinski-directed installments that put it on the map both felt like the products of a decent but underdeveloped sci-fi premise. Enter: “Pig” director Michael Sarnoski, who leveled up from the indie scene to deliver one of the most gripping and soulful blockbusters of the year.

As Kate Erbland put it in her review: ‘A Quiet Place: Day One” has three superlative stars at its disposal: Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, whose eyes alone can tell a thousand stories, and a pair of astonishing feline performers (Schnitzel and Nico, Schnitzel and Nico!), who together craft a single performance as the world’s bravest movie cat. Filmmaker Michael Sarnoski knows his way around movies built on the emotional bond of man (woman) and beast (weird little furry guy), and he unexpectedly — and mostly satisfyingly — brings that knack to his first major Hollywood foray.”

Available to stream January 1.

Other highlights:

– “Imitation of Life” (1/1)
– “In the Heat of the Night” (1/1)
– “Something Wild” (1/1)

“Red Rooms” (dir. Pascal Plante, 2023)

The under-the-radar horror film of 2024, Pascal Plante’s “Red Rooms” — effectively a gore-free courtroom drama — became a word-of-mouth phenomenon as it began to rattle even the hardiest genre fans. Here’s a taste of what resident horror aficionado Alison Foreman had to say about the film when she ranked it high on her list of last year’s best horror movies:

“The macabre-yet-understated horror movie stares deep into the amoral abyss of publicly won justice through a fictional technothriller that mostly scares by suggestion. Set against a media circus emanating from a courtroom in Montreal, the highly publicized trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) centers on a series of snuff films showing young girls tortured on the dark web.

You never explicitly see those moments of intense violence, although the audio is deeply haunting. And instead of following the prosecutors, defenders, judge, or even Chevalier himself, ‘Red Rooms’ centers the perspectives of two seemingly random attendees. Treating the tragedies of others like a spectator sport is almost always repugnant, but the calculating Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) and Ted Bundy fan girl-type Clémentine (Laurie Babin) approach the perverse pastime from opposite ends of the attention-seeking spectrum. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is complex ethical territory that hasn’t been explored in media nearly as much as its inverse. But Plante’s colorful rendering challenges with methodical precision — never watering down the ink-black essence of the question it considers and instead building to one spine-curling scene so all-consumingly upsetting, it feels like a shot taken straight.”

Available to stream January 14.

Other highlights: 

– “Irreversible: The Straight Cut” (1/1)
– “The Others” (1/1)
– “The Thing”