‘Black Bear,’ ‘Sharp Stick’ and Extra Streaming Gems

This month’s options for the hidden gems of your subscription streaming companies minimize a large swath of genres and types, together with a piercing psychological thriller, a moody marital drama and a buck-wild intercourse comedy, with a handful of first-rate documentaries to maintain you anchored in actuality.

‘Black Bear’ (2020)

Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.

When Aubrey Plaza arrived on the scene over a decade in the past, her bone-dry wit, acerbic supply and M.V.P. supporting turns in comedian movies and tv steered the second coming of Janeane Garofalo. However her electrifying dramatic work over the previous few years — on “The White Lotus,” in “Emily the Felony” and on this scorching portrait of psychosexual one-upmanship from the author and director Lawrence Michael Levine — suggests one thing nearer to Gena Rowlands. The wildly unpredictable psychological drama begins as a love triangle, with Plaza as an actor-turned-filmmaker on a distant retreat with a married couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, each wonderful). Over the course of a protracted night time, the trio flirt, trace and accuse, rearranging and regrouping their allegiances, till … nicely, then it goes someplace else totally, grippingly blurring the strains between life, artwork and their respective commentaries.

The director Sarah Polley has been working the awards gauntlet for her newest movie “Girls Speaking.” On Twitter, she took a second to winkingly, winningly observe the debt owed her by one in all her opponents, requesting “that Steven Spielberg return my cast from ‘Take This Waltz.’” And “The Fabelmans” co-stars Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen are marvelous in Polley’s sophomore outing, as Margot and Lou, an easy-breezy couple whose comfy marriage is drawn into doubt when Margot is instantly thunderstruck by her attraction to a brand new neighbor (understandably, as he’s performed by Luke Kirby). Polley masterfully takes what may have been a weepy melodrama or a scolding screed and turns it right into a nuanced and probing meditation on what it actually means to be trustworthy.

‘Sharp Stick’ (2022)

Stream it on Hulu.

Lena Dunham’s 2022 was a examine in contrasts, with two night-and-day characteristic movies to ponder: her Amazon unique “Catherine Referred to as Birdy,” which appeared to problem the very notion of who Dunham is and what she does, and the indie comedy-drama “Sharp Stick,” which took these notions into new and provocative territory. Her focus is Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a 26-year-old nanny who, relatively ill-advisedly, discards her virginity with the scuzzy burnout father (Jon Bernthal) who employs her. Dunham’s knack for writing amusingly self-destructive girls and dopey males stays intact, and her personal flip because the mom caught within the center is as thorny and sophisticated because the film surrounding it.

The blended reception that greeted Noah Baumbach’s latest movie adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” served as one other reminder that there appears one thing uniquely difficult about turning the writer’s thematically and traditionally dense works into quicksilver cinema. However in 2012 the director David Cronenberg was as much as the problem with “Cosmopolis,” turning DeLillo’s chronicle of a day within the lifetime of a younger billionaire right into a snapshot of self-destruction within the Occupy period, whereas Robert Pattinson makes a very efficient DeLillo protagonist, all chilly surfaces and questionable motives.

‘The Monster’ (2016)

Stream it on HBO Max.

Bryan Bertino’s tight, compact thriller finds a fiercely impartial tween lady (Ella Ballentine) and her alcoholic mom (Zoe Kazan) on a protracted, powerful drive via the lonely night time — after which stranded of their automobile, wrecked whereas swerving to keep away from a wolf on the highway. However that wolf was making an attempt to flee from one other animal, and the ladies quickly supplant the wolf as its prey. That sounds easy sufficient, however that’s additionally not all Bertino is as much as; the image’s intricate and ingenious flashback construction makes it more and more clear that these two are completely able to being simply as monstrous to one another.

‘The Pez Outlaw’ (2022)

Stream it on Netflix.

Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel’s documentary tells the story of Steve Glew, a collector, vendor and smuggler of Pez sweet dispensers — or, extra precisely, Glew tells the story himself, not solely narrating his story with cheerful comedian vigor, however starring within the documentary’s energetically stylized dramatizations of his varied heists and excessive jinks. That irreverent method is the fitting one for this low-stakes story, which takes the instruments of the more and more ubiquitous Netflix true crime documentary and exposes them as ridiculous.

‘Go away No Hint’ (2022)

Stream it on Hulu.

When the Boy Scouts filed for chapter in February 2020, it was one in all many nationwide tales that rapidly receded to the background within the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. 1000’s of claims of sexual abuse lastly got here to gentle, finally surpassing 82,000 accusers. Irene Taylor’s documentary particulars the historical past of the group, and its sample of defending accused pedophiles in its midst (all of the whereas ostracizing homosexual Scouts and Scoutmasters as risks to youngsters). Taylor assembles an anatomy of a conspiracy, detailing precisely how these secrets and techniques have been saved so protected for therefore lengthy, all whereas monitoring down survivors from across the nation to listen to their tales. It’s a troubling, infuriating piece of labor, assembled with a fragile combination of righteous indignation and mandatory sensitivity.

‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Track’ (2021)

Stream it on Netflix.

Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary will not be, it needs to be famous, a standard biographical portrait of the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and thank goodness, as there have been loads of these. As an alternative, the filmmakers look at the lengthy, unusual, fascinating historical past of the title tune — now simply his most recognizable composition, deployed in media of all types, coated by each artist value their stripe, however initially a forgotten monitor on a poorly promoting album. That odyssey, from ignored to iconic, is an inherently dramatic one, and Gellar and Goldfine carry it to life with panache, all whereas acknowledging that Cohen’s specific ardour made its very inception one thing akin to musical magic.