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With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Black Is King (Beyoncé)

Four years ago, Beyoncé dropped the film version of Lemonade, which brought together directors Kahlil Joseph, Jonas Åkerlund, Mark Romanek, Melina Matsoukas, and more to deliver a visual album that, like many of her works, had an immense cultural impact. She is now returning with Black Is King, a film in production for an entire year that reimagines the tale of The Lion King through the perspective of the Black experience. Now available on Disney+, we imagine it’ll be the most-watched film of the weekend.

Where to Stream: Disney+

Bull (Annie Silverstein)

There’s not much to do around Kristyl’s (Amber Havard) hard...

Throughout his sixteen feature films, prolific Toronto-based, Egyptian-born filmmaker Atom Egoyan has explored obsession, modern technology, fragmented families, the unreliability of memory, and multicultural tensions embodied within Canada. His latest film, Guest of Honour, recalls his earlier films––including Family Viewing, Speaking Parts, The Adjuster, and Exotica––in a story featuring David Thewlis as a food inspector and Laysla De Oliveria as his adult child, wrongfully convicted of a crime she did not commit but agrees to serve the time for, in order to atone for other sins.

An intimate thriller told through the unreliable memories of its protagonist’s daughter, Guest of Honour is now available via Kino Marquee, supporting Virtual Cinemas. We spoke to Egoyan about the inspirations behind hiis latest film, launching at Venice and TIFF last year, and its place in his career spanning three and a half decades since his first feature, 1984’s Next of Kin.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Beach House (Jeffrey A. Brown)

There’s a lot to like about Jeffrey A. Brown’s feature directorial debut The Beach House, from its gorgeous production design to its ruminations on mankind’s fragility when compared with Mother Nature’s hardier offerings (despite our penchant for believing we hold dominion over Her). It’s therefore easy to appreciate the reason Emily (Liana Liberato), Randall (Noah Le Gros), Mitch (Jake Weber), and Jane (Maryanne Nagel) have arrived at a site that may end up being their tomb because we’re quick to ignore the baked-in irony too. This was supposed to be an escape from life’s struggles—a...

Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber have always been kindred spirits, but as of this week, the indie distributors are officially strategic partners, a business relationship that has been in works for the past six months. Richard Lorber’s arthouse distribution company has formed a multi-year alliance with Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo’s Zeitgeist that will see the two companies co-acquire four to five theatrical titles per year that will be marketed and released by Zeitgeist Films, starting with the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival audience award-winner “The Divine Order.” Directed by Petra Volpe, the film tells the story of a young housewife in Switzerland in 1971 who stands up to the closed-minded villagers in her town and overthrows the status quo.

Read More: Beyond A24: How Hip New Distributors Are Targeting Millennial Tastemakers With Bold Films

“We were at Tribeca and covered every film that we could get our eyes on, but we totally missed ‘The Divine Order’ for some reason,” Lorber said. “Nancy and Emily said it was great, we committed to doing it, and two days later it won the audience prize at Tribeca.”

Founded in 1988, Zeitgeist film’s is known for having distributed early films by directors including Todd Hayes (“Poison”), Christopher Nolan (“Following”), Laura Poitras (“The Oath”) and Atom Egoyan (“Speaking Parts”), but has struggled in recent years to adapt to the changing landscape for indie distributors.

“There’s no denying the fact that the business has gotten tougher, and I think over the years Zeitgeist has maintained an almost artisanal approach, which has not always kept pace with some of the other opportunities that have been available, such as the expansion of digital and alternative venues that films can play in,” Lorber said. Going forward, Kino Lorber will become the exclusive distributor of all Zeitgeist films for the home video, educational, and digital media markets, adding Zeitgeist’s roughly 130-film library to its collection of 1,600 titles.

“Once home video sort of ended as a possibility for us, we really had to go into the digital realm, and dealing with five or six films a year, it’s difficult to really bulk up your digital [catalog] to be able to do the sort of deals that Kino Lorber is able to do,” Gerstman said. “It’s been very tough, so these are really great resources for us to be able to have.

Read More: Hybrid Distribution: One-Night-Only Screenings Could Make Your Documentary a Theatrical Hit

Kino Lorber will release two of Zeitgeist’s 2016 films, the biographical documentary “Eva Hesse” and “Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt.” Zeitgeist’s 2001 film “Nowhere in Africa” won the Academy Award for best foreign language film, taking more than $6 million at the U.S. box office. Some of the company’s most successful theatrical releases include “Bill Cunningham: New York,” “The Corporation” and “Aimee & Jaguar.”

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Some films keep entertaining us even as the final credits roll. Here are some hidden treats at the end of 16 movies...

We've talked in the past about the current trend for stings at the end of movie credits - we once put together a list of 50 of our favourites. But that's not what this article is about. Instead, inspired by a quite wonderful scene midway through the credits of The Boxtrolls, we've been hunting around for extra goodies that you may have missed in other films. Some of these are just lines of text, others are far more substantial. But also, none of them are new or extended scenes - at least in the strictest sense.

There are inevitable spoilers for one or two things ahead, but we've tried to keep the headers as spoiler-free as possible so you can skip to the next entry if you want to. Let's start with The Boxtrolls,...

The Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin zombie drama Maggie, Dustin Hoffman drama Boychoir, Kristen Wiig comedy Welcome To Me and Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary have landed world premieres, Tiff gala and special presentation slots.

Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.

Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelengths, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.

Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.

Galas

Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp

The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp

Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp

The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp

Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp

Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP

Ruth & Alex...

The Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin zombie drama Maggie, Kristen Wiig comedy Welcome To Me and Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary have landed world premieres, Tiff gala and special presentation slots.

Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.

Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelength, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.

Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.

Galas

Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp

The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp

Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp

The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp

Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp

Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP

Ruth & Alex (Us), Richard Loncraine Wp

Special...

The luxurious banquet hall in Toronto’s Royal York hotel was electric with excitement as Tiff senior programmers including Steve Gravestock and Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo announced the robust lineup of Canadian films (several world preems) at this year’s Tiff plus the 40+ short titles (out of an astounding 840 short films — an increase of over 200 titles from last year) that will screen at the prestigious festival. With features populating almost every section at the fest, among the headliner items from English Canada, Cairo Time‘s Ruba Nadda returns to the fest with October Gale, while also world preeming is Bang Bang Baby — Jeffrey St. Jules marks his feature film debut with a film that is equal parts Rocky Horror Picture Show and early Cronenberg. Starring Jane Levy of the recent About Alex, it revolves around a small-town teenager in the ’60s whose dream of becoming a famous singer is dashed...

New work by Sturla Gunnarsson, Denys Arcand, Ruba Nadda and Xavier Dolan are among the selection set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) next month.

“These are filmmakers at the top of their craft, bringing fresh perspectives to traditional genres like comedies and less traditionally Canadian genres, such as musicals,” said Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) senior programmer Steve Gravestock. “This year’s slate truly showcases the diversity of talent in our country, featuring films from coast to coast.”

“We are inspired by the number of exceptional debut features from Canadian directors, reflecting the depth of talent in this country,” said Tiff’s Canadian features programmer Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo.

“Extremely exciting is also the fact that female-driven narratives play a significant part in this year’s programming, highlighting the strong, rich tapestry of our storytelling.”

The Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film is up for grabs, as is the...

Cannes – Friday May 16th

The first title out of the gate at this morning’s 8:30 a.m. showing was the first of three Canadian films in the Main Competition. Snatched up earlier by the A24 folks, starring Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson and Mireille Enos, The Captive landed mostly 2 star notes with our panel, unfortunately making Atom Egoyan’s kidnapping thriller the first misfire of the fest. Winner of the Grand Prix and the International Critic’s Prize by the F.I.P.R.E.S.C.I.for The Sweet Hereafter in 1997, the Canuck has been at the fest’s Directors’ Fortnight for Speaking Parts (1989) and The Adjuster (1991) and found a home in the official selections for six features: Exotica (1994), Felicia’s Journey (1993), Ararat (2002 – Out of Comp), Where the Truth Lies (2005) and 2008′s Adoration.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s over three hour dialogue driven drama occupied a one time showing 3:00 p.

Cannes -- It's hard to know where to start when analyzing what went wrong with a film as preposterous and phony as Atom Egoyan's "The Captive," a kidnapping drama that kicked off the first Friday of this year's Cannes Film Festival. Egoyan is a frustrating filmmaker these days. In the early part of his career, his work was distinguished by a chilly, clinical style and a fascination with perspective. "Next Of Kin," "Family Viewing," and "Speaking Parts" all displayed enormous promise, and he hit his stride with films like "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter." Lately, though, his films feel half-baked, increasingly distanced from any recognizable human behavior, and with "Devil's Knot," his dramatic take on the story of the West Memphis Three, it felt to me like he'd gone completely off the rails as a storyteller. I couldn't even figure out what point he thought he was making with...

Could this be a return to form for Atom Egoyan? Following the announcement of its official selection for this year’s Cannes film festival, the first trailer for Egoyan’s The Captive is online, and it looks like a tense, psychological thriller.

Since hitting his stride in the 90s with a series of multi-faceted, insightful dramas—Speaking Parts, The Adjuster, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey, Ararat—Egoyan has hit a slump in regard to critical acclaim for his more recent work. But hopefully “The Captive” will put the major Canadian filmmaker—and former Cannes winner—back on the map. The plot, which involves the disappearance of a little girl and her subsequent re-surfacing eight years later on an unknown web-feed, seems like a good fit for the veteran director.

The film also stars Ryan Reynolds, Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Scott Speedman, and Egoyan preferred actor, Bruce Greenwood.

Source:...

#68. Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot

Gist: What will certainly be served up by Egoyan as atmospherically cold, in 1993, in the small town and religious community of West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys – Stevie Branch (Jurgensmeyer), Christopher Byers (Spink), and Michael Moore (Boardman Jr.) – go missing from their neighborhood. After an extensive search, their bound and beaten bodies are found the next day. The community and the police department are convinced that the murders are the work of a satanic cult due to the violent and sexual natures of the crime. A month later, three teenagers – Damien Echols (Hamrick), Jason Baldwin (Meriwether), and Jessie Misskelley Jr. (Higgins) – are arrested after Misskelley confesses after several hours of interrogation. They are taken to trial where Baldwin and Misskelley are sentenced to life and Echols to death all while still claiming they’re innocent.

Prediction: Completed quite a while back, all signs point...

While the concept of the glamorous female escort is ever present in popular culture, the image of her male counterpart - a male escort who caters to women - has been pretty much nonexistent until recent years.

With the exception of the Richard Gere smash American Gigolo, one would be hard pressed to name a single film that deals with the subject of men who provide services of romance and companionship to women; unless it takes the form of some random comedy films--Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, The Wedding Date, and Loverboy with Patrick Dempsey--or underground indie flicks such as Atom Egoyan's Speaking Parts, Just a Gigolo with David Bowie and The Man from Elysian Fields with Andy Garcia.

Ah, but as Dylan said "The Times They Are A Changin"; and in this age of Magic Mike and 50 Shades of Gray, it seems the time is right for...

Although Canada was long ignored as a film producing country, it has produced the English-speaking world’s two greatest filmmakers after 1990. If one of these is David Cronenberg, the other is Atom Egoyan, who, like David Lynch, is an artist whose work is compelling but also bewildering. If Lynch’s films attain their effects partly through Angelo Badalamenti’s music, Egoyan has had an equally important collaboration with composer Mychael Danna. The difference is perhaps that while much of Lynch’s cinema is surreal in some sense, many of Egoyan’s films – the earlier ones – are dominated by the absurd. If the ‘surreal’ is more striking, flamboyant and/or wildly comic, the ‘absurd’ is wrier. Both strive for truths that go beyond the ‘real’ but while the ‘surreal’ seeks out metaphysical and/or social truths the ‘absurd’ attempts to find truths of a personal and/or psychological nature.

Although Egoyan...

Before the one-two punch of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter in 1995 and 1997 brought him wider recognition, Canada-based director Atom Egoyan was the premier chronicler of life in the video age, eking out small, hypnotic films (Family Viewing, Speaking Parts) about technology’s role in altering human relationships. The Sweet Hereafter was his first adapted screenplay, and it signaled a broader agenda in the subsequent decade, including another literary adaptation (Felicia’s Journey), a deeply personal, prismatic look at Armenian genocide (Ararat), and an awkward Martin & Lewis shadow history (Where The Truth Lies). Though this later period has its ...

• Spend a little time in any film-related academic setting, and Atom Egoyan's name is sure to come up. The Candadian-Armenian helmer has been praised in academia circles for his the intertexualities (and often inter- sexualities) since his 1989 feature, Speaking Parts, in which acting is confused with reality and fantasy is confused with love.  Egoyan has since made more noise with The Sweet Hereafter, which was nominated for two Oscars in 1998, and Where the Truth Lies, starring Keven Bacon and Colin Firth, which placed the director in the Hollywood scene.  Again and again the topic of technology pops up in Egoyan's films (as seen in his most recent feature, Adoration), another reason why present-day professors are in love with this helmer.  And now, according to THR, he will return to that topic as writer and director of his next feature, Seven Wonders, giving professors something to get their bowties in a tangle about.

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