Where to Stream 25 Classic Sundance Darlings: ‘Passages,’ ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ and More

On Criterion Channel: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” (1992)

If you’re not heading to Sundance this January, Criterion Channel is spotlighting several past favorites from the leading American independent film festival, established in 1978. “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” debuted a full decade before Sundance began, but obtained greater recognition from a 1992 screening in Park City. From director William Greaves, the unconventional and meta film focuses on Greaves leading a film crew in Central Park as they attempt to figure out what movie they will make, exploring the behind-the-scenes process of creating art from a unique perspective.

If “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm” isn’t your bag, there are plenty of other Sundance films to watch on Criterion, including: “Style Wars,” “Blood Simple,” “In Heaven There Is No Beer,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Streetwise,” “The Times of Harvey Milk,” “Desert Hearts,” “Smooth Talk,” “Working Girls,” “Chameleon Street,” “For All Mankind,” “Christo in Paris,” “Metropolitan,” “Paris Is Burning,” “Trust,” “A Brief History of Time,” “Mississippi Masala,” “Slacker,” “Thank You and Good Night,” My Crasy Life,” “Before the Rain,” “Hoop Dreams,” “The Doom Generation,” “When We Were Kings,” “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” “Old Joy,” and “Hive.”  —WC

On Criterion Channel: “Blood Simple” (1984)

The Coen brothers — they’re Joel and Ethan, in case you didn’t already know — have become so synomous with the “crime gone wrong” genre that it’s impossible to imagine American cinema without their blueprint. That’s partly because 40 years ago, they established it in such coherent terms that it was almost like a whole new approach to storytelling was born overnight.

The series of mishaps that pile up after nefarious private detective Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) arrives at the office of sleazy bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) are disturbing, but they unfold with such nefarious glee that the Coens make the case for the entire mess as one big joke. Marty wants Visser to knock off his wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz), but a series of anarchic circumstances leave pretty much everyone dead, dying, or confused about who they’ve killed. “Blood Simple” imports the ominous air of classic film noir into a sense of near-slapstick glee, right down to its iconic climactic image: A doomstruck figure on the verge of his last breath, gazing up at a single bead of water, mortified that his last sight could be that single drop heading towards his face. It’s that kind of comic dread that has always been at the root of the best Coen brothers movies, and it’s no wonder that the siblings pulled it off for a still-modest $1.5 million budget that they crowdsourced with family and friends. This kind of masterful storytelling requires little more than pure vision to pull off — and a welcome dose of cynical humor that lasts through the ages. —EK

On Paramount+: “Resevoir Dogs” (1992)

One of the most iconic movies of the ’90s, “Reservoir Dogs” caused an immediate stir when it debuted at 1992’s Sundance Film Festival, with many critics panning its violence and profanity. But the film also attracted many admirers, and remains one of Tarantino’s most universally beloved works. Starring an ensemble cast that includes Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Madsen, the clever heist film skips the heist — a jewelry store robbery carried out by a group of professional thieves that fails miserably — entirely, instead cutting between the weeks leading up to the job as the crew gets recruited and the immediate fallout as they stand off with the police while trying to determine which member ratted them out. Featuring the beginnings of Tarantino’s trademark style, uniformly fantastic performances from the cast, and a script that’s simultaneously funny and tragic, “Reservoir Dogs” packs in some of the best thrills you can find in any movie. —WC

On Prime: “Clerks” (1994)

A classic Sundance comedy, “Clerks” was the breakout film for director Kevin Smith, who singlehandedly launched a career of jokey, referential hang-out films off its cult-classic success. But “Clerks” still remains perhaps his best film, a lovable and admirably scrappy story of two slacker convenience store clerks as they muddle through a single day and ponder the aimlessness of their lives. It’s a snapshot of Gen X ’90s apathy that still charms today. —WC

On Criterion Channel: “Hoop Dreams” (1994)

It’s hard to imagine any of the ESPN’s “30 for 30” series that define the modern sports documentary would have existed without Steve James’ seminal “Hoop Dreams,” a five-year undertaking in which the filmmaker tracks the experiences of two African-American teens intent on joining the NBA. But the impact of “Hoop Dreams” goes much further than that. It’s hard to imagine modern documentaries without it, full stop.

The movie’s remarkable ability to use intimate stories to explore a vast socioeconomic subject and popular culture as a whole was a major factor in the evolution of the non-fiction form. That’s all the more remarkable given that it was James’ feature-length debut. Aided by Peter Gilbert’s perceptive cinematography and Ben Sidran’s immersive score, the director seems to capture every angle in the lives of Arther Agee and William Gates as they aspire to the careers of NBA greats while dealing with the realities of the educational system and the job market, both of which underserve their needs. The result is an essential portrait of the American dream from the inside out. —EK

On Criterion Channel: “The Doom Generation” (1995)

A landmark of the New Queer Cinema movement, “The Doom Generation” is director Gregg Araki’s wildest, sexiest, most purely enjoyable film. James Duval and Rose McGowan star as two teen lovers whose worlds are rocked when they cross paths with a handsome drifter Xavier (Jonathon Schaech), who kills a convenience store owner and forces all three to go on the run. It’s the wildest road trip film ever made, filled with kinky sex, neo-Nazis, and a Parker Posey supporting performance, and it remains a shocking blast of perfect ’90s sleeze. —WC

On Criterion Channel: “The Blair Witch Project” (1999)

Few movies have been as parodied and intimated in the last 20-plus years as “The Blair Witch Project”; fewer still are as scary. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s endlessly influential exercise in found-footage horror has been hotly debated since before it even premiered — is it real or is it not? — and remains polarizing even now. Lost in that debate is how terrifying it still is. Getting lost in the woods has never looked so scary, especially as seen through a trio of film students’ grainy camcorder; Myrick and Sánchez maximized their notoriously tiny budget by having most of the action occur offscreen and forcing us to mentally fill in the details. That it introduced both found footage and viral marketing to the general public may be a mixed blessing, but don’t hold that against it: “The Blair Witch Project” brings new meaning to the phrase “often imitated, never duplicated.” —MN

On Peacock: “American Psycho” (2000)

Frequently referenced and parodied by those who might not get its satirical messaging, Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ psychological horror novel holds up as a viciously savage look at masculine self-obsession and corroding capitalistic ennui. Christian Bale, in a signature performance, is the narcissistic yuppie investment banker Patrick Bateman, who leads a double life as a vicious serial killer. That, or he’s just deluded, and everything is taking place in his mind. Whatever the answer, it doesn’t change how incredibly funny and genuinely disturbing the film’s look at how cruelty forms from vapidity is, and how unsettlingl and relevant the movie’s vision remains today. —WC

On Criterion Channel: “Old Joy” (2006)

Kelly Reichardt makes small, unassuming films that nonetheless find a way to reveal big truths. “Old Joy,” her sophomore feature, is a particularly small chamber piece, a road film about two friends that doubles as a melancholic look into the passage of time and the drifting of bonds. Will Oldham and Daniel London star as old friends Kurt and Mark, who reunite for a weekend trip that exemplifies how much their lifestyles and worldviews have diverged. It’s a quiet movie that hits your emotions by surprise. —WC

On Hulu: “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006)

The little breakout indie that could, “Little Miss Sunshine” splashed onto the scene at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and sold for a then-record $15 million distribution deal from Fox Searchlight. It’s a moving family drama! It’s a hilarious roadtrip comedy! It’s a film that scored Oscar nominations for both Alan Arkin and 10-year-old newcomer Abigail Breslin!!

The rare delight of a movie that gives each character a full arc, it was easy that summer to get wrapped up in this sweet tale from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. For myself, it was a particular thrill to discover that Steve Carell — fresh off the second season of his critically acclaimed but still very under-the-radar “The Office” performance as well as the over-the-top silliness of the previous summer’s “40 Year-Old-Virgin” — could do excellent dramatic work, and could more than hold his own opposite the always-wonderful Toni Collette.The film is full of moving pathos (don’t forget about a stellar breakout role for Paul Dano!) with an all-time great crowdpleaser ending. —ES

On Starz: “Waitress” (2007)

There’s a lot that’s bittersweet about “Waitress” now: that we never got more Adrienne Shelly movies; that the terrifyingly petty, ordinary male abuse which protagonist Jenna (Keri Russell) longs to escape, especially once she realizes she’s pregnant, overlaps at all with the shock of with Shelly’s murder; and, much smaller potatoes, that there haven’t been nearly enough stories that take female friendship as seriously and smartly as this one does. But there’s still so much to love about it, too. “Bake-Off” should be paying this film residuals for the way that “Waitress” uses color, light, and mis-en-scene to turn pie-making into the domestic magic that it is for Jenna, a kind of protective spell she weaves where nothing bad can touch her. Magic is a good word for how Shelly manages the film’s structure and tone, too.

“Waitress” is a pretty simple story with big emotions, told with a camera that finds just the right perspective to make it funny, winsome, and sincere all at once. It’s proof that small-scale filmmaking has nothing to do with how good something can taste. —SS

On Max: “Blue Valentine” (2010)

Director Derek Cianfrance must have mainlined a marathon of John Cassavetes before finally filming “Blue Valentine” after struggling for nearly a decade to get it off the ground. The bruising relationship drama starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a couple whose relationship curdles from idealism to resignation comes close to what that filmmaker was trying to achieve in the 1970s, and that’s partly due to the efforts of its actors: Gosling and Williams lived together during pre-production, surviving on a budget equivalent to their working-class characters while developing their lived-in chemistry. This is a tour through a couple’s dissolution so painful that by the time Cindy (Williams) tells Dean (Gosling), “I’m so out of love with you,” you feel like you’ve lived this washed-up relationship. 

I saw “Blue Valentine” during its wider theatrical release in late 2010 at a small-town North Carolina theater with an ex-boyfriend, then not an ex-boyfriend just yet. We were leaving the theater, and I heard an older woman and her friend behind me say as the credits rolled, “What’s the big deal? I’ve lived that story three times!” That’s maybe what Cianfrance wanted people to walk away feeling. The relationship I was then in had a few more happy years and then some bad ones before finally disintegrating. But I did often turn back to “Blue Valentine” in that time first for reassurance and then, weirdly, as a tool of study for how to get out of my situation. “Blue Valentine” knows there’s no closure to a breakup. —RL 

On AMC+: “Boyhood” (2014)

A long, long time ago, Richard Linklater started production on a movie following the development of a child from the age of seven through the end of his teenage years. If there was ever project that demanded to be informed by the history of its making, “Boyhood” is it. Epic in scope yet unassuming throughout, Linklater’s incredibly involving chronicle marks an unprecedented achievement in fictional storytelling — the closest point of comparison, Michael Apted’s “Up” documentaries, don’t contain the same singularity of vision.

Shot over the course of 39 days spread across more than a decade, “Boyhood” is an entirely fluid work that puts the process of maturity under the microscope and analyzes its nuances with remarkable detail. More than that, it amplifies the elusive qualities that feed into  a single conscious experience: passing moments that might seem meaningful, dramatic, amusing or scary in the moment before fading into our cluttered memory banks. The “story” of “Boyhood” is less relevant than its ability to enthrall us with small asides even as the years keep moving along. Linklater consolidates his fascination with time and existential yearning found in many of his movies, but it’s never forces here. The ultimate triumph of “Boyhood” is that its brilliance creeps up on you. —EK

On Netflix: “Whiplash” (2014)

According to a recent poll, “Whiplash” by Damien Chazelle is the single greatest Sundance film ever made. And while you have to attribute some of that to major recency bias, this musical thriller really is just that exhilarating. Miles Teller and JK Simmons star as a pupil and teacher in a combative, abusive relationship at a prestigious New York music conservatory, one that beats down Teller’s Andrew before he picks himself back up. Phenomenal editing and career-best performances from both actors aid along the white-knuckles tension of the film, which digs ruthlessly into the question of what it takes to be the very best. —WC

On Paramount+: “Tangerine” (2015)

Sean Baker’s audacious farce following a day in the life of two trans girls working the streets of downtown Los Angeles exploded the boundaries of indie film as we knew it. Shot entirely on iPhone (with the help of a then-cutting edge anamorphic adapter), “Tangerine” made waves not only for achieving such lustrous visuals with a minimal setup, but also for the raw intimacy Baker was able to capture thanks to his unobtrusive camera.

Another novelty at the time? Casting actual trans women in the roles, which stood in stark contrast to the industry standard at the time (including a certain studio film that earned a cis actor an Oscar nomination that very same year.) Both fresh discoveries, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriquez saturate “Tangerine” in such brash naturalism, it’s enough to make one swear off experienced actors altogether. All that would have been enough to make “Tangerine” an instant queer classic, but the film offered something else even the most authentic trans films struggle to achieve: a boldly joyous comedy about trans life. It’s the rare film that changes not just filmmaking, but the futures people imagine for themselves. —JD

On Max: “Cameraperson” (2016)

At a time when the documentary community was deep in a prolonged and overdue discussion about how to represent their subjects on screen, filmmaker and cinematographer Kirsten Johnson opted to look in the mirror instead. “Cameraperson,” Johnson’s magnum opus, is the work of someone who’s swan-diving into her seemingly bottomless archives in order to re-examine her 25 years behind the camera. While Johnson made this film out of an intense personal need — triggered by a subject, who out of fear for her safety pulled the plug on a film Johnson was making — the world of nonfiction cinema owes her a debt of gratitude for such an honest act of introspection. 

What emerges from the repurposed footage, which is taken from a wide array of the unused footage that Johnson has shot over the years, is less an academic exercise and more a deeply personal memoir that’s been salvaged off the cutting room floor. While Johnson seldom appears on screen, her perspective assumes a physical presence of some kind, and — through her lens — viewers soon become as emotionally tethered to the woman behind the camera as we do any of the fascinating people who move into its field of vision. While Johnson’s formalism might sound distancing (the footage isn’t framed with title cards or any other kind of hard context), the lack of information focuses our attention on the act of capturing these images more than it does the images themselves, which allows “Cameraperson” to become a vital act of self-portraiture, as well as one of the decade’s most engrossing films. —CO

On Netflix: “Call Me By Your Name” (2017)

How did Luca Guadagnino make a movie that looks, sounds, and feels like nostalgic summer love? Who knew it looked like the golden light of an Italian villa, or the smiling eyes of a father witnessing his child’s first heartache? Or that it sounded like shutters clattering in the wind, the heavy slam of a wooden door, or a spoon’s clumsy tap tap tap on a soft-boiled egg? And most of us certainly didn’t know know love felt like rolling casually into a fountain, or the gooey inside of a peach.

It’s hard to know where to focus in “Call Me by Your Name,” between each gorgeous frame of the Italian delights and its impossibly good-looking young lovers. Armie Hammer is an ’80s Adonis in his short shorts and billowing Oxford shirts, towering awkwardly over the androgynous beauty of the soon-to-be-everywhere Timothée Chalamet. Their bodies, which Guadagnino graciously (but tastefully) puts on display, skip and tousle across the screen. Though some will lament the spareness of the their more intimate acts, this film is so gorgeous that to see anything else would have yielded sensory overload. —JD 

“Eighth Grade” (

This is a story I feel comfortable sharing because I’ve a) shared it with the person it’s about and b) also shared it with just about every other person I’ve spoken to about Bo Burnham’s absolute gem of a first feature in the five years since it debuted at Sundance. My first thought about “Eighth Grade”? Who the heck is internet man comedian Bo Burnham to tell a story about an awkward teenage girl? What a delight to be proven wrong.

The funny, frank film is so deeply rooted in the feminine adolescent experience that it feels as if Burnham must have raided a sky-high pile of girls’ diaries to write it. But he didn’t (well, as far as we know), instead offering up something even richer: this is a specific, deeply felt story, but it’s also universal. That stings as much as it soothes. Burnham, it turns out, isn’t just uniquely qualified to craft a story about the pains and pleasures of a life spent on the ‘net, he’s also so hip to its intricacies that he can translate that insight to a story about, yes, an awkward teenage girl. From the moment the film starts, from the very second we see the bright little face of breakout star Elsie Fisher, it’s clear that Burnham is mining some very real territory. 

Fisher’s Kayla isn’t a social media star — she’s not even a regular old middle school popular kid — but she’s intent on finding connection any place that will have her. As we watch her stumble her way through her eponymous eighth grade year (the worst, right?), it’s impossible not to cheer for her, to not see ourselves in her, and to not walk away from this very special film wanting to do the scariest thing of all: look for a connection with others. That’s a story for anyone to tell. —KE

On Netflix: “The Farewell” (2019)

Writer/director Lulu Wang spins the somber, silly story of her grandmother’s fatal cancer diagnosis into an unforgettable tragicomedy with “The Farewell”: a beautifully specific portrait of anticipatory grief set against an American’s return to China. Awkwafina stars as a young woman helping her parents in an ill-fated attempt to keep her grandmother Nai Nai (the dazzling Zhao Shu-zhen) from learning that she only has a few months left to live. Wang made her directorial debut with “Posthumous,” but received heightened acclaim for “The Farewell,” winning Best Feature at the Indie Spirits alongside Shu-zhen who took home Best Supporting Actress. Awkwafina also won Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy at the 2020 Golden Globes. —AF

On Peacock: “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (2020)

In lesser hands, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” might be the earnest story of a teenage girl looking for an abortion, and not the wrenching, high-stakes survival story that Eliza Hittman has made. Fulfilling the potential of “It Felt Like Love” and “Beach Rats,” the director’s third feature blends the social-realist intensity of a Dardenne brothers movie with the fragility of its young protagonist’s journey to create one of the most thrilling coming-of-age stories in recent memory.

At its center, breakout star Sidney Flanigan pulsates with the frantic uncertainty of a young woman attempting to escape the inevitable hardships that await her at every turn. Sneaking off to New York from Pennsylvania in the hopes that her parents won’t know, the character wrestles with the looming terror of her endgame even as she remains committed to seeing it through. It’s an exhausting ride to follow her on that journey and its many Kafkaesque turns, but the centerpiece of the movie comes down a single tearful admission that transcends the specifics of the plot to become a devastating plea for empathy. And wow, does it sting. —EK

On Max: “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” (2021)

The internet is a hard subject to successfully depict onscreen, but “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” finds something both beautiful and disturbing about the experience of being online, and especially growing-up online. The sort-of-horror film stars first-timer Anna Cobb as Casey, a teenager participating in an odd creepypasta-esque online challenge called the “World’s Fair.” As they upload increasingly disturbing videos, Casey is contacted by a stranger known as MLB (Michael J. Rogers), and a tentative, uneasy bond between the two form via video calls and chat messages.

Jane Schoenbrun’s directorial debut is steeped in the language of Youtube and chat rooms — various real cult online personalities make appearances in the grainy World’s Fair videos — and the wistful music of lo-fi music icon Alex G, but the film’s exploration of the internet digs at something deeper than aesthetic authenticity. Tinged with queer and trans subtext about freeing yourself from physical restrictions, “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” captures the terror of releasing a part of yourself into the online void, and how you never quite know the people who choose to respond. —WC

On Hulu: “Summer of Soul” (2021)

A pulsating panorama of “Black, beautiful, proud” people, “Summer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” is a joyous and welcome addition to the documentary subgenre of rock festivals. But this one, which marks the directorial debut of The Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, comes with a most unfortunate history: Its film reels were buried in a basement for 50 years, largely unseen, until now.

Seething through the entire documentary, against the backdrop of a racially turbulent 1960s, is an insistence on a new kind of racial pride and unity across the diaspora, which infuses “Summer” with an honesty and realism. It’s explained that attendees distrusted the NYPD to the point of hiring the Black Panthers to safeguard the festival, anticipating Black Lives Matter events decades down the line.

Questlove and editor Joshua L. Pearson lace together footage of stage performances with history lessons (Motown, gospel music, the evolution of Black style, the concept of a common struggle among Black people worldwide), tying it all together with endearing recollections of the single day in 1969 by those who were there. The result fans the flames of Black consciousness. It’s a demonstrated feeling of pride that represents Black salvation, most movingly evident when Nina Simone, the “High Priestess of Soul,” takes the stage and performs “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” — a love letter to the next generation and a kind of how-to manual. —TO

On Netflix: “Descendant” (2022)

How should we remember the dead? It’s an ever-present question for the many Black folks living in Africatown, Alabama, where the last slave ship made landfall, as remembering is what they do best. Their shared memory stretches back to at least 1860 — more than five decades after the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was signed into law — when two rich white men from Mobile made a bet.

Despite the law, these men believed they could sail to Africa, capture the people they found there, and bring them back as slaves without being caught. They ultimately returned with 100 captives and sank the ship, named the Clotilda, in an effort to destroy any evidence of the grave crime they committed. But people are not so easy to erase.

An unblinking documentary investigation that combines local stories with “Erin Brockovich” flair, Margaret Brown’s imperative “Descendant” is compelled by Africatown’s collective determination to rectify that attempt at erasure. The filmmaker’s 2018 arrival in Africatown coincides with a first-of-its-kind, nationwide partnership to search the waters surrounding Mobile for the wreck of the Clotilda, but her focus extends far beyond the ship. The passionate descendants of those Africans still live in the area, and they’ve been itching not just to find the ship, but to seek justice for its final voyage. Is one possible without the other? Can history be reclaimed without a plank of soggy wood to pin it on? Brown’s lucid and piercing film watches along as the people of Africatown look to their ancestors for answers, their search itself emerging as a revolutionary act. —RD

On Mubi: “Passages” (2023)

Not long into Ira Sachs’ “Passages” — sometime all too shortly after a restless, self-involved filmmaker (Franz Rogowski) leaves his much softer husband (Ben Whishaw) for the earthy and new woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos) he meets at a dance club after a stressful day of shooting — Tomas launches into a post-coital chat by telling Agathe that he’s fallen in love with her. “I bet you say that a lot,” she replies, bluntly sniffing out his bullshit in a way that suggests this Parisian school teacher doesn’t understand how far most artists would go to convince their audience of an emotional truth. “I say it when I mean it,” Tomas counters. “You say it when it works for you,” Agathe volleys back. They’re both right, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that they’re saying exactly the same thing.
 
A signature new drama from a director whose best work (“Keep the Lights On,” “Love Is Strange”) is at once both generously tender in its brutality and unsparingly brutal in its tenderness, the raw and resonant “Passages” is the kind of fuck around and find out love triangle that rings true because we aspire to its sexier moments but see ourselves in its most selfish ones. –DE

On Prime: “A Thousand And One” (2023)

There are two bruising lines that bookend first-time feature director A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One,” a vivid portrait of Harlem life from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s.

“There’s more to life than fucked-up beginnings,” Inez, a woman living life in New York on her own terms and brilliantly played by R&B super-artist/actress Teyana Taylor, tells her young son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola). She has kidnapped him out of the foster care system, which has kept them separated after her stint in Rikers Island beginning in 1993, and now hopes to give him a better life. But at the end of the movie, after a decades-spanning, bittersweet bond forms and fizzles between them and shattering revelations are had, she tells the older Terry (Josiah Cross), “I fucked up. Life goes on. So what?”

A searing protest against the inhumanity of gentrification in a city whose policies and policing are already so punitive towards poor Black families, “A Thousand and One” serves as a sobering reminder of how fucked-up beginnings can hopefully bring about better endings. Cross is crucial to the success of the film’s unforgettable final scenes, but it’s Taylor who anchors Rockwell’s direction and screenplay with her powerhouse performance. Taylor has worked with the likes of Tyler Perry in comedies, but her turn here — as fiercely committed to the character as Inez is to Terry — signals a major dramatic talent. —RL