Queens of punk, a New Wave mother, and the king of horror rule over May in streaming

By Katie Rife | May 4, 2018 | 5:15pm

Aux Features Film

Queens of punk, a New Wave mother, and the king of horror rule over May in streaming

Illustration: Rebecca Fassola

Welcome to Stream And Stream Again, a monthly column highlighting films and TV series new to streaming catalogs that are of special interest to The A.V. Club’s staff—and hopefully to you, our readers. Here are five new titles streaming this May.

Here To Be Heard: The Story Of The Slits (Hulu, May 1)

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“They were definitely the queens of punk,” Cut producer Dennis Bovell says in the trailer for this new documentary about The Slits, the self-proclaimed “world’s first all-girl punk band.” Much has changed in both the mainstream and counterculture since The Slits emerged from the London punk scene in the late ‘70s, where they were viewed as a novelty at best by many supposedly revolutionary male musicians. The group managed to stake their own claim on musical history, however, documented here in previously unseen performance footage and talking-head interviews with those who knew The Slits and those who were inspired by them. Here To Be Heard was a pet project of Slits vocalist Ari Up, who was working on the doc at the time of her death in 2010; eventually finished by MTV’s True Life producer William E. Badgely, the doc is currently touring theaters and rock clubs around the U.S. and U.K. alongside its streaming debut.

Lady Macbeth (HBO Go/Now, May 3)

Florence Pugh has been scooping up armfuls of “best newcomer” awards for her performance as Katherine, a Victorian noblewoman twisted by her loveless marriage and stifling daily existence into acts of increasing recklessness and cruelty in William Oldroyd’s debut feature Lady Macbeth. After a limited U.S. theatrical release, this chilling, artful film arrived on HBO Go and HBO Now earlier this week, allowing a wider range of audiences to experience its “twisted game of psychosexual chess” culminating in a shocking climax that produced gasps in audiences on the festival circuit.

Faces Places (Netflix, May 5)

89-year-old French filmmaker Agnés Varda, sometimes referred to as the “mother of the French New Wave,” became the oldest Academy Award nominee ever earlier this year for her film Faces Places. The documentary is a “wise and whimsical” travelogue, in the words of our own Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, that documents Varda’s travels across the French countryside with street artist Jean “JR” René. Varda’s wisdom and curiosity bring unusual warmth and charm to her interactions with René, 50 years her junior, as well as with the ordinary citizens whose likenesses René renders supersized in large-scale portraits on abandoned buildings and seaside walls.

Jane (Hulu, May 12)

Speaking of award-winning documentaries about innovative women, Jane (2017), last year’s reverent, intimate archival portrait of pioneering primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, finally makes its way to streaming this month on Hulu. The documentary re-creates Goodall’s early years studying wild chimpanzees in Tanzania using footage newly recovered from the National Geographic archives, along with a score from legendary composer Phillip Glass.

Cat’s Eye / Creepshow / IT / Salem’s Lot (Shudder, May 1)

Stephen King adaptations ruled over the horror genre throughout last year, and horror-specific streaming service Shudder just debuted a collection of minor King classics from the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s to keep the momentum going well into 2018. Included in the collection are the Tobe Hooper-directed vampire miniseries Salem’s Lot (1979), the first in many subsequent King adaptations to air on TV; IT (1990), one of the most famous of same, thanks in large part to Tim Curry’s unnerving Pennywise the Clown; Cat’s Eye (1985), an anthology featuring three King-penned tales of terror; and the classic horror anthology Creepshow (1982), also written by King and featuring his endearingly silly turn as a dimwitted farmer slowly turning into a plant.