Now Streaming: ANORA, THE OUTRUN, DEN OF THIEVES: PANTERA, SING SING

As the window between theatrical and home video releases continue to shrink, I find myself increasingly asking: is this movie on a streaming service yet?

When I'm ambitious, I check each of my (too many) streaming service official sites. Othertimes, I turn to my friend Just Watch, a very helpful app. If you don't have that kind of time, here's what I found, with links to our past coverage, where available:

Anora
Now streaming on Hulu in the U.S. (as of yesterday) and Prime Video in Canada (as of today).

Sean Baker's acclaimed sex-worker drama won four Academy Awards for Baker and one for lead actress Mikey Madison, who stars as a pole dancer who accepts a quick marriage proposal, falls deeply in love, and then must go on the run from Russian mobsters.

Our own Kurt Halfyard caught up with it at the Toronto film festival last fall and wrote in part: "The reason for its wild, entertaining, success is more in watching the personal growth of Ani to the more fulsome Anora. Her petulance and loud pursuit of creature comforts, and personal entitlement gradually evolve into self awareness and confidence. She accumulates battle scars, draws new red-lines, fails, regroups from her failures, and well, grows."

The Outrun
Now streaming on Netflix (as of today).

Is there anything Saoirse Ronan can't do? She starred in not one (The Outrun) but two films (the other is Steve McQueen's Blitz) that were put up as FYC contenders by their distributors this awards season; though neither won, both earned many critical plaudits.

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, this drama concerns a woman who returns to her Scottish roots to sort out her troubled past. The film was released by Sony Pictures Classics and none of us had a chance to see it last year; I'm eager to see it.

Den of Thieves: Pantera
Now streaming on Netflix (as of this coming Thursday, March 20).

Somehow, none of us got out to see the sequel to Den of Thieves, which our own J Hurtado described as "a textbook case of the kind of film that gets lost in the January doldrums, and with good reason" back in 2018. His conclusion at the time? "Avoid."

No judgment if this is your thing, though. It's arriving on Netflix this Thursday, where it will surely ascend the Top 10 chart there and please punters everywhere. The very hard working Gerard Butler stars (again).

Sing Sing
Now streaming on Max (as of this coming Friday, March 21).

By all rights, Colman Domingo should have won the Academy Award for Best Actor instead of Adrien Brody, who scowls through his performance in The Brutalist. If you hold a different opinion, I suggest rewatching Domingo's exquisitely nuanced performance in Greg Kwedar's drama about men in a prison theater group.

Our own Mel Valentin agrees: " A narrative speed bump here or there ultimately has little impact on Sing Sing's stirring emotional throughline, of men, all long thought incapable of redemption, let alone rehabilitation, finding both through the performing arts themselves and the bonds the performing arts can create under seemingly impossible conditions."

Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.