Kiyoshi Kurosawa Retrospective Leads This Week's Streaming Slate

The Criterion Channel has launched a retrospective of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films timed to Halloween, giving American subscribers access to some of the Japanese director's most underrated chillers. The lineup spans "Door III," "Cure," both versions of "Serpent's Path," "Eyes of the Spider," "Charisma," "Pulse," "Bright Future," "Penance," "Creepy," "To the Ends of the Earth" and "Cloud." The Film Stage's Nick Newman recently published a pair of interviews with the director to mark the program.

Dave Green's "Coyote vs. Acme," the live-action-animation hybrid Warner Bros. shelved and then revived, is now available on VOD. The Film Stage's Devan S. flagged its credentials from the opening minutes. "One of the script's earliest character introductions is—of all people—Peter Lorre," the review notes. "In this world, he's a scientist at the Acme Corporation (not to be confused with the grocery chain) evading security guards with a variety of nefarious devices like Expanding Boulders and Large Magnets." A second tell: the law firm arguing the titular case is named Avery, Jones, and Maltese. For Devan S., that naming convention "could only come from a creative team with a deep reverence not just for the Looney Tunes, but the medium of animation itself."

Francesco Sossai's "The Last One for the Road," also streaming on the Criterion Channel, follows two rogues in their 50s through the backroads of Veneto, Italy. Doriano, played by Pierpazzo Capovilla, and Carlobianchi, played by Sergio Romano, anchor what The Film Stage's Rory O. calls a "delightful" film with "the unmistakable specificity of a life spent there." Writing for The Film Stage, Rory O. notes that only after the pair stumble into a group of Gen Z students—"the most visible dressed in the headgear of an Egyptian goddess"—late at night along a Venice canal does the film locate its heroes in the present. "If it wasn't for their innate knack for catching last orders, regardless of the watering hole, you'd almost call them men out of time," the reviewer writes.

Brandon Kramer's documentary "Holding Liat," on VOD, opens with a phone call. A voice identified in the subtitles as "Israeli Army liaison" tells a man in his 70s that his daughter Liat has been "abducted by terrorists and kept in the Gaza Strip," alive. Kramer and his brother Lance, who together directed the 2021 Van Jones documentary "The First Step," made the film about their own relatives in Israel—Yehuda and Chaya Atzili, Liat's parents—after Liat and her husband were taken hostage on the morning of October 7, 2023. Reviewing the film at Tribeca for The Film Stage, Savina P. observed that its story of one family "seems the kind of film that would tug at your heartstrings, appealing to every ounce of empathy that's not yet politicized," while questioning whether it might amount to "emotionally coated pro-Israel propaganda."

Adam Meeks' feature debut "Union County," which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, arrives on VOD with Will Poulter and Noah Centineo as brothers in a community hit by the opioid epidemic. In his Sundance review for The Film Stage, Jake Kring-Schreifels wrote that Poulter "tries a disappearing act" as recovering addict Cody Parsons. "He trudges into a courthouse with a scraggy beard, unkempt hair, and slumped shoulders, sanding down his vibrant sheen into a pale matte," Kring-Schreifels wrote. "Nobody around him turns their head, let alone loosens their jaw." The reviewer contrasted the performance with Poulter's attention-grabbing turn in the fourth season of "The Bear," where he "placed the kitchen staff's jaws on the floor with his handsomeness."

Beyond the headline titles, the Criterion Channel has added a deep bench of genre fare, including "Barry Lyndon," "Dead Ringers," "Don't Look Now," "Duel," "Eyes Wide Shut," "Jennifer's Body," "Lolita," "Rosemary's Baby," "The Social Network," "Tenebrae," "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "The Wailing." The Kino Film Collection adds "Kim Novak's Vertigo," while VOD gains "The Uprising."

With the Kurosawa program running through the Halloween season and his latest genre work "Cloud" included in the lineup, the retrospective offers the fullest streaming portrait of the director currently available to U.S. audiences.