As we are often reminded, there are so many great streaming services out there which cater to a variety of different interests. One particular site that hasn’t been mentioned in this weekend streaming series is SundanceNow Doc Club, which offers hundred of documentaries, including exclusives and hard-to-see films. One of the best attractions to their site are the collections they offer, including picks from guest curators like Anthony Bourdain, Dan Savage and Susan Sarandon, to collections by theme (“Black Lives on Film,” “Artists at Work”) and spotlights on documentary legends. This week features prolific documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who picked 12 of his personal favorites. The collection includes recent Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras, Wim Wenders’s dance doc Pina, classic European art doc The Sorrow and the Pity, Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, Errol Morris’s seminal crime doc The Thin Blue Line, and more. If you are crazy about documentaries or want to broaden your film watching horizons, you should sign up for a free trial at SundanceNow Doc Club now. For other documentary (and non-documentary) picks fresh on streaming services this week, check out the recommendations below.

Netflix

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

You are likely to see Christian Petzold’s German drama Phoenix pop up at Way Too Indie a few times over the next few weeks, as it is one of our favorite films of the year. Nina Hoss turns in a phenomenal performance as a Holocaust survivor who undergoes major facial reconstructive surgery and returns home unrecognizable. She finds her husband, a sleazy night club musician, who uses her as a stand-in for his (thought to be dead) wife as a scheme to collect on her inheritance. Phoenix is riveting, expertly acted and directed, with one of the best endings of the year. The taught and tense dramatic thriller is also a unique post-WWII Holocaust story, which is refreshing for the stuffed genre. To get all the hype coming from awards season, you can now check out Phoenix on Netflix.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Dinosaur 13 (Todd Douglas Miller, 2014)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid, 2014)
Phineas and Ferb (series, Season 4)
The Ridiculous 6 (Frank Coraci, 2015)
Xenia (Panos H. Koutras, 2014)

Fandor

Almost There (Dan Rybicky & Aaron Wickenden, 2014)

You may remember a few weeks back when the weekend streaming feature included a story about a partnership between Fandor and documentary production stalwart Kartemquin Films. Among the fruits of that deal is Kartemquin’s most recent film, the unusual artist profile doc Almost There. In the film, filmmakers Rybicky and Wickenden befriend a lonely elderly man named Peter Anton, who happens to be a prolific, but completely undiscovered underground artist. For years, Anton has painted hundreds of photographs (many of which are self-portraits) and assembled these remarkable scrapbooks from his life history. As Anton lives in a decrepit house with little support, the filmmakers intercede in his life—but ultimately discover a secret that dynamically changes their relationship. Almost There begins as a rather standard, breezy artist bio-doc before changing into a very complicated and sad story.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984)
Fifi Howls from Happiness (Mitra Farahani, 2013)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2015)
Stinking Heaven (Nathan Silver, 2015)
The Vanishing (George Sluzier, 1988)

MUBI

War Work (Michael Nyman, 2015)

Not long after releasing Paul Thomas Anderson’s music documentary Junun, MUBI has come back with their next streaming exclusive, though this one has decidedly less fanfare. Directed by composer Michael Nyman, War Work is a 65-minute avant-garde film that edits silent-era archive footage together with classical music. Though it doesn’t have much of a specific through-line, the film (as the title suggests) is mostly a montage of different individuals’ work during wartime—from plane makers to doll makers. War Work isn’t an educational or historical document, however, as the scope of footage used and Nyman’s editing give the piece a poetic and sometimes brutal point-of-view. The footage is coupled with eight pieces of music, which was played as live accompaniment for the film at a series of events in 2014. War Work won’t be for everyone, but its exclusive push from MUBI highlights the streaming service’s intent to bring a wide variety of films that you can’t see anywhere else, no matter how esoteric. If you want to see War Work, you have until January 10.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat, 2013)
Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker & Pierre Lhomme, 1963)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner, 1928)
The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010)
Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

Video On-Demand

Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015)

Of the two Marvel Studios films released this year, there is no doubt that Ant-Man had fewer expectations. It may also have been the more wholly satisfying film. In the film, ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is hired by scientist Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to steal a prototype suit that allows its wearer to shink to the size of an ant while increasing strength. With a story and screenplay that passed through the hands of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd, Ant-Man has a wonderful comedic voice and fun heist plot—director controversy be damned. Peyton Reed may not be the beloved cult figure, but he is an accomplished comedy director, and he brings a personal style to the smaller-scale superhero epic. Audience response and ticket sales were good enough for Marvel to announce an originally unplanned sequel and more Ant-Man ties within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Dixieland (Hank Bedford, 2015)
One Eyed Girl (Nick Matthews, 2014)
Pawn Sacrifice (Edward Zwick, 2014)
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (Christopher Landon, 2015)
The Transporter Refueled (Camille Delamarre, 2015)

In 2004, Catherine Breillat suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, triggering a stroke that paralyzed half of her body. She eventually recovered, and after getting back to filmmaking she met Christophe Rocancourt, a notorious con artist. Breillat wanted Rocancourt to star in the lead role of her new film, and in the development process Rocancourt convinced Breillat to give him over 700,000 Euros. Rocancourt was eventually convicted for scamming the filmmaker out of her savings, and Breillat wrote about her experiences in a novel. Now Breillat has adapted her book into Abuse of Weakness, a film that dives into the complex relationship between herself and the man who swindled her.

But don’t take the film as entirely autobiographical; Breillat clarifies from the beginning that Abuse of Weakness is more of a quasi-fiction than a straight retelling of what happened. Taking Breillat’s place is Maud (Isabelle Huppert) who, as the film opens, has a stroke while in bed. Breillat’s camera is unforgiving as it shows Maud try to regain the ability to speak, walk and even laugh. It’s a brief but powerful segment in the film, made all the more effective by Huppert throwing herself completely into the role.

Eventually Maud recovers, relying on a cane to get around. While watching TV one night she comes upon an interview with Vilko (Kool Shen), a former con man promoting a book about his past crimes. Maud is immediately taken by his charisma and masculinity, and in the next scene she’s having him over at her place. Maud offers Vilko the lead role in her new film, and he accepts, telling her she’ll be seeing a lot more of him from now on.

Maud & Vilko’s relationship starts out strangely. Vilko turns up the charm considerably, while Maud playfully rejects his attempts to woo her. At one point he drops a large bag full of money in front of her, bragging about his government connections. Maud reacts with total indifference, causing Vilko to storm out. “To punish you, I won’t come for a month,” he says before leaving. Maud only pretends to not care about Vilko, but it’s clear she’s taken with him. It doesn’t take long before Vilko comes to her complaining of money troubles, and without any hesitation Maud starts writing out checks for her new friend.

Breillat prefers to dwell more on questions instead of providing any solutions. She doesn’t explain why Maud would hand over her savings to Vilko so easily, and nothing is revealed about Vilko’s reasons beyond his need for money. There are plenty of elements one can take as hints or suggestions for Maud’s behaviour. She’s only seen with co-workers or Vilko, implying a lack of any social life; her relationship with her family appears a distant one; and while Maud & Vilko’s relationship isn’t sexual, there are undercurrents of a master/slave situation going on between them. The lack of clear motivations shows how smart of a filmmaker Breillat is; the film is much more fascinating and watchable this way, with the psychological questions providing much of the film’s fuel.

The other major driving force belongs to Huppert and Shen’s performances. Huppert, one of the truly great French actresses, is startlingly convincing as Maud. Huppert commits herself physically to the role, and through her performance never makes Maud look like a victim. She complicates things further, much to the film’s benefit. Shen doesn’t meet the same standard as his superb co-star, but he does a great job as Vilko nonetheless. The two actors have great chemistry together, their unique interplay never making a single moment in the film ring false.

Early on in the film, someone asks Vilko how he was able to scam so many people out of money. His answer is simple: greed. People’s desire for more was the weakness Vilko could take advantage of. As Abuse of Weakness shows, it’s not nearly that simple with Maud. Time and time again she shows little concern with money. Vilko tells her about a restaurant she should invest in, promising her a big return. She looks bored during his pitch, telling him she doesn’t want to own a restaurant. So if greed doesn’t make Maud give away her money, what does? At the end of the film, as Maud’s family learns about what happened, they ask her the kind of pointed questions driving the film. Was she aware of what she was doing? Why did she hand the money away? Did she not know who she was giving her money to? Maud can only sum it up in one statement: “It was me, and it wasn’t me.” The line is one of the few times where it feels like Breillat is speaking directly to the audience. Perhaps Breillat still doesn’t know why she did it. It’s a paradoxical statement, but as Abuse of Weakness shows, it’s a contradiction well worth exploring.