Hi all. The new direction for this monthly streaming preview was in the works even before Disney Corporation decided torching $5 billion in stock value was worth knuckling under to right-wing bottom feeders who were offended late night host Jimmy Kimmel didn’t openly grovel at the foot of the golden calf altar they’d figuratively erected to honor late hate monger Charlie Kirk.

There will no longer be deep dives into Netflix or Hulu offerings for the month (read: going through the month’s listings and highlighting what looks interesting). But this work-in-progress new direction will allow for sampling highlights from other streaming services as well as Netflix and Hulu. For the broke-asses out there, Kanopy and Tubi have more free selections than what’s highlighted here.

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Kanopy)--Kazuo Hara’s documentary follows the obsessive quest of World War II Japanese veteran Kenzo Okuzaki for accountability regarding the deaths of two privates in his old unit.  In the dying days of that war Okuzaki’s unit, like other Japanese forces on New Guinea, had been cut off from food supplies.  The starving soldiers eventually resorted to cannibalism.  Why were the two privates executed: desertion, cannibalizing unfortunate indigenous New Guineans, or to serve as food for the Japanese officers?  Okuzaki’s willingness to use verbal and even physical abuse to get often reluctant answers out of fellow veterans brings into question the morally ambiguous nature of his quest.

Enigma (2025) (Kanopy)---Performer Amanda Lear and model April Ashley met as showgirls in the Parisian cabaret Le Carrousel in the late 1950s.  After the duo transitioned, their lives took two completely divergent paths.  Lear eventually became the “white queen of disco” in the 1970s but at the cost of cutting off everybody who knew her pre-transition…including her mentor Ashley.  Meanwhile, Ashley would fight for years to be legally recognized as a woman, and eventually became a transgender rights pioneer in Britain.  Zackary Drucker’s documentary recounts the very different lives of these two women. 

The Annihilation Of Fish (Criterion Channel)--Charles Burnett’s (“Killer Of Sheep”) romantic comedy makes its streaming debut more than a quarter century after it was made.  Fish (James Earl Jones) is a Jamaican-American who’s just been released after a decade-long stay in an L.A. mental institution.  While he’s mostly honest and polite, he does get into occasional wrestling matches with a demon only he can see.  Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave) has moved to Los Angeles after the failure of her long imagined romance with famed opera composer Giacomo Puccini.  The two mentally unbalanced people wind up becoming neighboring tenants in Mrs. Muldroone’s (Margot Kidder) boarding house.  An odd friendship and maybe more forms between Fish and Poinsettia.

Christiane F. (Criterion Channel)--In this biodrama set in 1976 West Berlin, 13-year-old David Bowie fan Christiane Felscherinow tires of life in her social housing building.  Thanks to a popular classmate’s help, Christiane gets into the trendy nightclub Sound.  There, she meets the slightly older Detlev, an active illicit drug user.  To stay close to Detlev, the teen slowly graduates from abusing pills to becoming a 14-year-old heroin addict.  To support her addiction, Christiane eventually becomes part of the notorious drugs and prostitution scene at Bahnhof Zoo.  Features music by David Bowie plus an onscreen performance by the late singer.

Milisuthando (Criterion Channel)—This personal documentary gets this month’s Algorithm Sabotage Award.  Milisuthando Bongela may have grown up in apartheid-era South Africa, yet she was unaware of the country’s racist treatment of Black South Africans such as her.  That’s because her childhood was spent in the Republic of Transkei, a supposedly independent homeland for Xhosa-speaking South Africans.  It would not be until her family’s move to a more mixed-race area that Bongela would start to see the truth about her country’s treatment of its Black citizens.  This non-linear cinematic memoir is the filmmaker’s effort to consolidate her mixed feelings about her birth country’s past.

Riot Women (BritBox)--The new drama written by BAFTA-award winner Sally Wainwright (“Happy Valley”) centers on a quintet of menopausal women (a teacher, a cop, a pub landlady, a midwife, and a shoplifter/freeloader) who join together to form a punk rock group to win Hebden Bridge’s local talent contest.  But making this West Yorkshire band work means dealing with such problems as demanding jobs, absent husbands, and disastrous relationships.  Yet these five women will soon find much in their lives to celebrate.

Barbarian (Hulu)--Liked Zach Cregger’s “Weapons?”  Then check out his debut film about a job seeker whose AirBnB rental truly goes sideways thanks to her accidental discovery of a hidden room in the rental.  What she finds there suggests something violent and/or voyeuristic likely happened.

Play Dirty (Amazon Prime)--Director Shane Black (“The Nice Guys”) does his take on Donald E. Westlake’s classic series character Parker with this original story set after the events of “The Hunter” (previously adapted (loosely) to the screen as “Point Blank”).  Parker (Mark Wahlberg) and his crew stumble upon what might be the biggest score of their careers.  But pulling it off means going up against the world’s richest man, a dictator, and the New York mob.

The Tree Of Life (Hulu)---Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning film tells the stories of members of the O’Brien family from the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as the 2010s.  The central story thread takes place in the 1950s Waco suburbs.  The O’Brien family seems to live an idyllic existence, with Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) being a successful engineer, Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) being a well-regarded housewife, and their three healthy sons.  Yet beneath this placid surface lies unspoken tensions whose eruption will leave son Jack (Sean Penn as the adult Jack) traumatized for years.

The New Force (Netflix)--It’s 1958 Sweden and the first ever group of female officers has just graduated from the police academy.  The glory of this big leap in gender equality soon clashes with some annoying realities.  The women’s presence is undercut in various ways by society, the media, and the male cops.  The new cops wind up getting assigned to Klara, Stockholm’s most crime-ridden district, mainly because it’s understaffed.  And their uniform skirts chafe like sandpaper.  

V/H/S Halloween (Shudder)--The 8th installment of this short horror film anthology involves a collection of Halloween-themed videotapes.  Trick-or-treating here turns from an innocuous occasion into bloody struggles for survival.  This anthology’s directorial talent includes a trio of intriguing names.  Bryan M. Ferguson, who’s directed music videos for such artists as Ladytron and Arab Strap, is here with “Diet Phantasma.”  “[REC]” film series co-creator Paco Plaza has “Ut Supra Sic Infra.”  But the unexpected directorial name here is Alex Ross Perry, whose works have ranged from the indie drama “The Color Wheel” to the recent anti-rock doc “Pavements.”  The title of Perry’s film is “Kidprint.”

The Rule Of Jenny Pen (Hulu)--Elderly judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) suffers a stroke in court.  He’s determined to regain his faculties with a short stay at a care home.  However, he soon discovers the residents of the home are being terrorized nightly by a long-term resident named Dave Crealy (John Lithgow).  With his puppet Jenny Pen, Crealy inflicts whatever torment catches his fancy without worrying about staff interference.  How long can Mortensen stand up to Crealy’s attacks?

Boots (Netflix)--This dramedy is based on the Greg Cope White memoir The Pink Marine.  It’s the 1990s, and closeted teen Cameron Cope wants a change from a life of being constantly bullied.  So with best friend Ray McAffey, Cope impulsively joins the Marines.  The experience may turn the gay teen into a new man thanks to his finding unexpected brotherhood with his fellow recruits   But his future will depend on his not getting outed, as this is a time when gay and lesbian soldiers were instantly drummed out of the armed forces if they were discovered.

Karen Pirie Season 2 (Britbox)--This series is based on Val McDermid’s novels about Scottish police detective Karen Pirie, who works out of the Historic Cases Unit (“cold cases” to us Yanks).  The new season adapts the McDermid novel A Darker Domain.  The discovery of a man’s body turns out to be linked to the decades-old unsolved kidnapping of Catriona and Adam Grant.  In 1984, charming oil heiress Catriona Grant and her 2-year-old son Adam were abducted at gunpoint outside a fish and chips shop.  The kidnapping and the ransom notes that followed set off the proverbial media firestorm.  But after the culprits fell silent, the hostages were never seen again.  When Pirie and her team re-open the case, the pressure to finally solve this matter is on from both the media and the victim’s powerful father Sir Broderick Grant.

Chungking Express (Tubi)--Wong Kar Wai’s classic romantic crime dramedy consists of two stories bound by the common plot of a lovesick Hong Kong policeman and his relationship with a woman.  The title comes from the central settings of this diptych.  “Chungking” refers to the Tsim Sha Tsui locale known as Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong’s underbelly of drugs and crime.  Officer He Zhi Wu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is trying to deal with a breakup with his girlfriend by buying pineapple cans expiring a month after their supposed split.  He encounters a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) who has a score to settle in Chungking’s drug underworld.  “Express” refers to the Lan Kwai Fong food stand known as Midnight Express.  It’s a meeting place for Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai, “Infernal Affairs”) and a flight attendant…until she breaks up with him.  While Cop 663 is quietly depressed by the end of that relationship, Midnight Express worker Faye (singer Faye Wong) has fallen for him and comes up with an unusual plan to cheer him up.  The film’s standout sequence has Wong singing a Cantonese version of The Cranberries’ hit “Dreams” while the screen is filled with the cinematography of Christopher Doyle. 

Everybody Loves Me When I’m Dead (Netflix)--In this Thai crime drama, Toh may be a diligent bank employee and a devoted father.  But after his job becomes obsolete, his bills start mounting endlessly, capped  by his daughter’s very expensive tuition fees.  A search for ready cash leads Toh and his equally financially strapped colleague Petch to  a dead person’s unclaimed bank account, one which contains 30 million baht.  The duo thinks their problems are over after they steal the money.  But the stolen money actually belongs to violent criminals who very much want the cash back.

The Diplomat Season 3 (Netflix)--It’s the return of the popular political drama starring Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, the United States’ ambassador to the United Kingdom.  As the new season begins, Wyler has just accused Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) of hatching a terrorist plot.  She also admits to desiring Penn’s job.  But when Wyler’s husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) possibly inadvertently kills the sitting president, Penn becomes the new leader of the currently most powerful nation in the world.  Penn’s old job is now open to Wyler.  Will she take it?  And if so, what new headaches will she encounter?

40 Acres (Hulu)--Former soldier Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler, “Till”) runs the rural Canadian family farm she inherited from ancestors who fled America in 1875.  But she and her family aren’t enjoying a relatively peaceful agrarian existence.  It’s been 14 years since all animal life on Earth has been wiped out thanks to a fungal pandemic.  Still arable land has now become a precious commodity, and the Freeman family farm has forty acres' worth of it.  As a result, they’re under constant siege from roving bands of cannibal marauders.  But the greatest danger to the Freeman farm’s future might be Hailey’s teen son Emanuel, whose rebelliousness against his mother’s iron rule may very well leave the family farm open to invasion by hostile forces.

Good News (Netflix)--Is it possible to do a comedy spin on a real-life airplane hijacking, one which threw both Koreas, the United States of America, and Japan into political disarray?  Director Byun Sung-hyun (“KIll Boksoon”) shows the answer is yes.  After the leadership of Japan’s Red Army Faction gets captured by the police, the still at large Faction members decide to continue their fight to overthrow a government which had subjected Japan to the evils of “high capitalism.”  In 1970, a team of eight Red Army members hijacks a flight from Tokyo to Itazuke.  Their demand that the plane be re-directed to Pyongyang runs into a slight problem.  A course to Pyongyang can’t be charted without the help of the North Korean government.  But while that angle is being worked out, the decisionmakers entrusted with ending the hostage crisis seem more interested in arguing with each other over turf and letting their flunkies work out the details on rescuing the hostages.

Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV+)--Rebecca Miller’s documentary mini-series recounts the life of famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese.  Given “unrestricted” access to the director’s personal archives, the miniseries uses the filmmaker’s work to trace his life from his early days as a New York University student to the present.  Along the way, the series will also examine the themes that have repeatedly obsessed Scorsese in his work  such as how good and evil fit into human nature.  Expect interviews with such friends and collaborators as Leonardo DiCaprio, Thelma Schoonmaker, and Paul Schrader.

The Twits (Netflix)--Phil Johnston (“Zootopia”) directs this animated musical comedy adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name.  The titular married couple happen to be the meanest, nastiest, and smelliest people in the world.  They’re also the owners of Twitlandia, the most dangerous and most idiotic amusement park in the world.  Normally, this couple and their park could be given a wide berth, but unfortunately they’ve recently gained power in the town.  To save the city, two brave children and a family of magical Muggle-Wumps must outsmart the Twits.

A House Of Dynamite (Netflix)--Academy Award-winner Kathryn Bigelow directs this political thriller which begins when a remote American military outpost detects an incoming nuclear missile launched by an unknown foreign power.  The missile’s target: the city of Chicago…or some other Midwestern city.  How will the White House respond given they have 18 minutes before the missile lands, incomplete or evolving information, and untested protocols for this situation?  The cast includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, and Anthony Ramos.  

Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV+)--Need more Mick Herron after watching “Slow Horses?”  Try this adaptation of Herron’s first novel from the Zoe Boehm series.  A quiet Oxford suburb is the unexpected locale for a house explosion.  In the aftermath, a young girl disappears, and neighbor Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson, “Luther”) becomes obsessed with locating her.  She winds up enlisting the help of struggling private investigator Zoe Boehm (Emma Thompson), and the duo soon find themselves in unexpected deeper waters.  There’s a conspiracy involving the military, one where supposedly dead people are very much still alive and living people soon start turning up dead.

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 (Amazon Prime)--The title is the name of a hotel run by princess of Hell Charlie Morningstar.  It aims to reform sinner demons so they can ascend to Heaven.  That way, Hell’s overpopulation problem is relieved without having the demons killed during Heaven’s annual demon purge.  This season, the hotel has been rebuilt and renovated and is now ready for new guests.  Vox plans to take over Hell by using VoxTek to make the citizens of Hell think Charlie’s a secret dictator.  Those curious about the backstory of Alastor the Radio Demon are about to have some questions answered.  And did we mention Lute the Exorcist might be going down a dark path?

Hedda (Amazon Prime)---Nia DaCosta (“The Marvels”) re-imagines Henrik Ibsen’s classic play “Hedda Gabler” by setting it in 1950s England.  Newlywed Hedda Gabler (Tessa Thompson) convinces her timid but ambitious scholar husband George to throw an expensive and lavish party to celebrate their entrance into high society.  On the guest list is Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), an author of a book exploring sexuality…and George’s key rival for a coveted academic post.  Is it a coincidence that one of the party guests is Professor Greenwood, who will decide whether George or Eileen gets the post?  And is it also a coincidence that Eileen is a former flame of Hedda’s, and she’s supposedly put her wild days of drinking and carousing with Hedda behind her?

The White House Effect (Netflix)--How did the climate crisis go from a commonly understood problem to a source of partisan rancor?  This documentary uses archival footage from the Jimmy Carter to the George H.W. Bush administrations to recount how the first announcement of global warming led to a battle between the pro-polluter Chief of Staff John Sununu on one side and the forward-thinking EPA head Bill Reilly on the other.  The supposedly pro-environment Bush gets caught in the middle of the Sununu-Reilly fight.