New Movies to Watch This Week: ‘No Man’s Land,’ ‘The White Tiger,’ International Oscar Submissions

With the Sundance Film Festival less than a week away (and available to anyone in the U.S. willing to buy tickets to a COVID-safe 2021 virtual edition), late January sees more streaming options than virtually any week since the pandemic began. That doesn’t necessarily mean big movies for home viewers, but at least it offers a raft of new options.

For those seeking diversion with familiar faces, genre movies such as “Brothers by Blood” (featuring Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman), “No Man’s Land” (with George Lopez) and “Born a Champion” (starring Sean Patrick Flanery). Jason Segel plays a family friend who helps a couple (played by Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson) through the ugliness of cancer in “Our Friend,” based on a true story. If that sounds too serious, try “Psycho Goreman,” in which resourceful low-budget horror director Steven Kostanski makes a deliberately schlocky family film.

On the foreign language front, Oscar international feature entries “Notturno” (from Italy), “Atlantis” (Ukraine), “You Will Die at Twenty” (Sudan’s first submission) and “Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time” (Hungary) get virtual cinema releases this week. The latter two are among the stronger contenders in the category this year. Audiences can also see 2017 Berlinale prize-winner “Spoor” from Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland, back in the running with a slightly newer film, “Charlatan,” which Strand will release later this year.

Here’s a rundown of those films opening this week that Variety has reviewed, along with information on where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.

New Releases on Demand and in Select Theaters

1982 (Oualid Mouaness)
Distributor: Utopia
Where to Find It: In virtual cinemas and on demand
Despite his unexceptional dialogue, writer-director Mouaness’ debut feature succeeds in accessing emotional truths that leave a lingering bittersweet melancholy. Based on his schoolboy memories of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the film is set on the last day of classes in an elementary school, integrating unremarkable childhood behavior with the ever-growing apprehensions of teachers and administrators as the rumble of war planes makes it impossible to protect the kids from the worsening situation. — Jay Weissberg
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Atlantis (Valentyn Vasyanovych)
Distributor: Grasshopper Film
Where to Find It: In Metrograph’s virtual cinema
A strikingly bleak vision of a near future in which Ukraine has won its war with Russia but been left in ruins, this almost abstract drama nabbed the top prize in Venice’s Horizons section. Its cryptic, rigorously minimalist progress will test the patience of many viewers and present a challenge for commercial placements. Still, this is a strong piece of poetically pure art-house cinema that finally offers a ray of hope for humanity’s future — not just the Ukraine’s, as this largely depoliticized statement is one of universal relevance. — Dennis Harvey
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Brothers by Blood (Jérémie Guez)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: In select theaters, on demand and digital
Small-time Irish crooks Peter and Michael Brooks are not siblings but cousins, although there’s no shame in feeling confused amid this somewhat convoluted Philadelphia-set crime drama. “Brothers by Blood” represents Guez’s oblique, atmospheric take on Pete Dexter’s taut and relatively uncomplicated 1991 novel “Brotherly Love.” Even the casting is unconventional — though Matthias Schoenaerts’ and Joel Kinnaman’s gruff, mumbly performances are the best thing about it, a throwback to an earlier generation of Method actors. — Peter Debruge
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Cowboys (Anna Kerrigan)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Available via Vimeo, followed by VOD and virtual cinemas Feb. 12, “Cowboys” taps directly into the myth of the American male, with his leather boots and blue jeans, square jaw and wide stance, as immortalized in the collective imagination by painter Frederick Remington, director John Ford and decades of Marlboro tobacco advertising. But it does so with a twist: This debut feature explores how that tough-guy archetype impresses itself on a gender-nonconforming child. Who says that cowboys have to be boys? And that girls must stay girls? — Peter Debruge
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Identifying Features (Fernanda Valadez)
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Where to Find It: In virtual cinemas via Kino Marquee
Most of the film’s primary characters are mothers trying to find out what happened to their vanished would-be-émigré offspring, providing Valadez’s feature with a compelling subject and some powerful scenes. But the narrative is also frustratingly cryptic, holding back basic intel that might clarify things (or even this story) for viewers unfamiliar with the issues. A film that straddles the line between artful and arty like this one isn’t designed for a wide public. There are moments that are striking, even if the their impact is muddied by a minimalism that at times feel pretentious. — Dennis Harvey
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My Rembrandt (Oeke Hoogendijk)
Distributor: Strand Releasing
Where to Find It: In select theaters, virtual cinemas and on demand
Rembrandt, who painted images of astonishing dark tactile severity, was the mesmeric psychologist of the Old Masters. When you look at one of his paintings, the face it shows is so specific, so lived-in, so there that we seem to be peering directly into the soul of the person it depicts. “My Rembrandt” is a documentary that revels in the extraordinarily subtle majesty with which Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, who lived from 1606 to 1669, teased out the living essence of those he painted. — Owen Gleiberman
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No Man's Land (Conor Allyn)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: In select theaters, on demand and digital
A nice-enough young man kills a nice boy. One is Mexican, the other white. One will be buried. The other will learn an edifying lesson about bias. Can you guess which is which? The Tex-Mex border drama “No Man’s Land” arrives at a time when the good intentions of white filmmakers are often not good enough to address the grievances of filmgoers of color. Filmmaking brothers Conor and Jake Allyn strive to take on — and humanize — the tensions around migration in a drama that follows its hero on a reverse migration south into Mexico. — Lisa Kennedy
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Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi)
Distributor: Super LTD
Where to Find It: In virtual cinemas, followed by Premium On Demand and Hulu Jan. 29
Applying a minute and painterly eye to ordinary lives encircled by much larger circumstance — be it a motorway as in “Sacro Gra,” or the seaborne migrant crisis as in “Fire at Sea” — has led to Italian-American director Gianfranco Rosi’s most celebrated documentaries. But in “Notturno,” his return to the Venice competition, the approach is stretched a little beyond its elastic limit, proving only a fitful, if often spectacular, match for a thematic backdrop as grand, complex and intractable as [sweeping gesture] Middle East conflict. — Jessica Kiang
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Our Friend (Gabriela Cowperthwaite)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Where to Find It: In select theaters and on demand
The performances by all three leads are top-notch: Casey Affleck goes every bit as deep as he did in “Manchester by the Sea,” Jason Segel taps into his exceptional relatability (including a profoundly sad streak during a suicidal walkabout) and Dakota Johnson has the tough job of dying gracefully. But so much of the unpleasantness has been scrubbed from the picture, until what remains is precisely the kind of dishonest, sanitized no-help-to-anyone TV-movie version of death that inspired writer Matt Teague to set the record straight in the first place. — Peter Debruge
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Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horvát) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Greenwich Entertainment
Where to Find It: In select theaters and virtual cinemas
Slippery, supple and sinuous, Hungarian director Horvát’s deliciously reworked psychological noir is a spiral staircase, polished to a glossy shine, down which unreliable motivations, self-delusions and romantic obsessions tumble in gorgeous 35mm. Pivoting on a terrifically self-possessed performance from lead Natasa Stork — in her debut screen performance — the film eventually even earns the unwieldiness of its title, as symbolic of the kind of hesitance and second-guessing that is part of the delirium of potentially unreciprocated love. — Jessica Kiang
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Psycho Goreman (Steven Kostanski)
Distributor: RLJE Films
Where to Find It: In select theaters, on demand and digital
One of the trends of our time is the way that extreme culture can wind up turning into kiddie culture. “Psycho Goreman” offers a variation on the same phenomenon. In spirit if not in fact, it’s a Troma film — in this case, a gonzo absurdist intergalactic sci-fi horror comedy that flaunts the gory ingenuity of its no-budget analog effects, along with a lot of so-broad-it’s-camp acting. “Psycho Goreman” wants to bring back those heady Troma fumes. But this one, quite knowingly, is like “The Toxic Avenger” remade by the Robert Rodriguez of “Spy Kids.” — Owen Gleiberman
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The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)
Distributor: Distrib Films US
Where to Find It: Available in Film Forum’s virtual cinema
When handsome twentysomething Luc asks his father if he ever wanted to design furniture rather than simply build it, the reply is simple and resigned: “It’s all been done already.” Six decades and 28 features into his career, French writer-director Philippe Garrel seems to be saying something similar with his latest, “The Salt of Tears.” A minor romantic roundelay that deviates little from the essential template of his last three films, it’s very much the work of an artist less preoccupied with innovation than with signature craftsmanship. — Guy Lodge
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Spoor (Agnieszka Holland)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Available on demand
Beneath the lurches in logic, the episodic storyline that never gets going, one discerns the fuzzy outlines of a “vision.” Men are hunters and stalkers. Religion is a lie that pretends to have compassion but doesn’t recognize all of God’s creatures. It’s up to women, who pose as the passive ones, to right the wrongs of the universe with their secretive action. The best thing in “Spoor” is Agniezska Madat’s performance; she makes Duszejko a figure of equal parts love and rage. Yet the movie is the sort of mess that seems to keep starting over. — Owen Gleiberman
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You Will Die at Twenty (Amjad Abu Alala) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Film Movement
Where to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support
The visual assurance of Sudanese director Alala’s accomplished feature debut is its most immediately notable element. Beautifully composed and boasting the kind of sensitivity to light sources and color tonalities usually ascribed to top photographers, the film lovingly depicts the remote east-central region of Sudan as a quasi-magical place of sand, sky and the colors of the Nile. The story, about a young man raised to believe an unfortunate event at his birth has condemned him to die at 20, generally has an equally clear-cut quality, simple in the telling yet matched to the pictorial tenor. — Jay Weissberg
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New Releases Exclusively in Theaters

The Human Factor (Dror Moreh)
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Where to Find It: In select theaters and drive-ins
There’s a certain group of documentary-loving policy wonks who’ll be clamoring for “The Human Factor,” with its nostalgic spotlight on a time when the U.S. understood the value of international diplomacy (how quaint that now sounds!). For Moreh, making a film about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations was a natural follow-up to his well-received “The Gatekeepers,” in which Israeli security agents spoke of their work. His latest documentary, while potentially more sellable, is far more problematic, on multiple fronts. — Jay Weissberg
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Exclusive to Hulu

In & of Itself (Frank Oz)
Where to Find It: Hulu
Not all the tricks of Derek DelGaudio’s one-man magic show translate to the screen, nor do they need to, since DelGaudio has shrewdly constructed the experience around the theme of identity, revealing deeply personal elements of his own history in such a way as to prime audiences to look inward as well. The result is a kind of epiphany that leaves them with a feeling of discovery rather than deception. A magic show that can send attendees back into the world with a re-centered sense of self is no small accomplishment. — Peter Debruge
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Exclusive to Netflix

The White Tiger (Ramin Bahrani)
Where to Find It: Netflix
“The White Tiger,” written and directed by Ramin Bahrani, is a movie that clearly owes a major debt — maybe its very existence — to “Slumdog Millionaire.” Yet Bahrani (“99 Homes,” “Goodbye Solo”), adapting a novel by Aravind Adiga, is no feel-good fantasist. “The White Tiger” taps engagingly into the rags-to-riches, Horatio-Alger-on-the-Ganges mythology that made “Slumdog Millionaire” a global sensation, but the movie also recognizes the earlier film as a fairy tale, positioning itself in key ways as the anti-“Slumdog.” — Owen Gleiberman
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