Continuing last week’s theme of finding free streaming options amid the onslaught of newer, pricier platforms, I found myself returning to an old, underestimated standby. Like the BBC iPlayer, the treasures of which I unpacked a few months ago, Channel 4’s All 4 outlet tends to be taken a bit for granted: a catch-up service that outwardly seems more useful than exciting. It moved up a level in October, however, with the addition of the Film4 channel to its online bouquet.
As a free-to-air TV channel, of course, Film4 has long been a friend to discerning cinema fans, though it’s often difficult to keep track of its best programming: many of its most essential or unusual film selections tend to screen in the middle of the day or well past most sensible people’s bedtimes. The streaming version – tucked away in All 4’s slightly cluttered interface, though the simpler URL film4.com will take you there – has a small but thoughtfully chosen selection of films both widely known and undeservedly obscure. As with the iPlayer, they’re available to stream for variable lengths of time: up to four weeks in some cases, though most of today’s standout picks have a fortnight left on them.
As you’d expect, a fair portion of the films are from Film4’s own production label. It’s no surprise to see a triple bill of Danny Boyle films, for example, in case the runny cheese of this year’s Yesterday has you hankering for a reminder of Trainspotting’s youthful edge. Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast is another worthy in-house selection, as is British playwright debbie tucker green’s fine film debut, the needling, subtly uncanny marital drama Second Coming. Away from Film4’s own, Park Chan-wook’s lavishly kinked-out Sarah Waters adaptation The Handmaiden is a welcome sight on any streaming menu, though not one you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
The less expected surprises on the current menu include Jordana Spiro’s Night Comes On, a standout from 2017’s Sundance festival that never got a UK cinema release. Its story of an African American teenager, fresh out of juvenile detention, determined to exact revenge on her father for murdering her mother, has hard, honest social texture to balance out its genre allusions, and a galvanising debut performance by the tremendously named Dominique Fishback.
Also streaming is Rafiki, Kenyan film-maker Wanuri Kahiu’s tender lesbian coming-of-age drama, painted in vibrant pastels. A pioneering work of LGBT cinema in its home country, where it was banned by censors, it’s gentle, feelgood viewing by any other standards. Khalik Allah’s Black Mother is a stimulating, sharply sensual documentary ode to Jamaican identities past and present, home and abroad, assembled with intuitive, rhythmic visual poetry; little wonder that Allah worked as a cinematographer on Beyoncé’s Lemonade project. Another adventurous left-field selection: American animator Dash Shaw’s delightful My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, a short, cockeyed teen comedy that breaks off into loopy allegory, its ragged edges held together by peppy comic-book visuals.
Finally, while we’re on All 4, after the success of streaming last year’s Channel 4 Indian film season, they’re doing the same this year. The first four titles in the 2019 season will be available to stream from Wednesday next week: Veere Di Wedding, a rare Bollywood foray into the female buddy-film genre; Satyakam, a 1969 epic chronicling the final days of the British Raj; Nachom-ia Kumpasar, a showbiz romance set against the Goa jazz scene; and Manmarziyaan, a contemporary love triangle from the ever-interesting film-maker Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur). Others will be added in the coming weeks, including the restored, underseen Satyajit Ray film Kapurush – it’s good to see All 4 focused on keeping its film library as diverse as it is free.
New to streaming & DVD this week
Diego
(Altitude, 12)
Asif Kapadia returns to the icon-centred documentary form that earned him awards for Amy and Senna. As a living-legend portrait, this study of the Argentinian footballer doesn’t have quite the same emotional pull, but it’s assembled with absorbing flair.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan: The Complete Films
(Drakes Avenue, 15)
The most serious cinephile gift of the season: a Blu-ray box set comprising all eight of the Turkish slow-cinema master’s feature films, bedecked with extras including assorted making-of documentaries and an early, rarely seen short.
The Palm Beach Story
(Sony, E)
A joyous addition to the Criterion Collection: Preston Sturges’s vintage screwball romcom still fizzes with energy, its sun-warmed, Floridian tangle of marital and economic troubles lifted by Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea’s star chemistry and delicious ping-pong dialogue.
Gwen
(RLJ, 15)
Vividly set in the wind-whipped hills of 19th-century Snowdonia, William McGregor’s auspicious debut is rich in gothic atmospherics, though its story of an all-female farmstead battling dark forces isn’t quite the supernatural folk horror it appears to be.
