Internet streaming has resurrected well-loved television series, racked up trophies during awards season, and has become a powerhouse in the Sundance acquisition game. Now, HBO Go and HBO Now are entering into a new wrinkle of streaming by releasing The Godfather Epic, a 7-and-a-half hour, chronologically re-sequenced edit of the first two Godfather films. Netflix has dabbled in releasing director’s cuts of films like World War Z and The Act of Killing, but this is on a whole different level, given the size and audacity of the project. Perhaps for some this is a sign of streaming using too much power and actively damaging to the film. There is no doubt, however, that the release proves the flexibility of streaming—The Godfather Epic simply couldn’t have the reach or impact in theaters or on cable television. If you don’t have time for a 424 minutes free this weekend, here are plenty of other great options new to streaming this week:

Netflix

Chelsea Does (Series, Season 1)

It feels like forever ago when Netflix announced a deal with popular comedian and former talk show host Chelsea Handler. While Netflix has featured Handler in a recent comedy special, the ultimate fruit of their partnership in now here. Chelsea Does is a four-part documentary series with the versatile personality taking on a number of topics, including racism and marriage. Handler’s unique voice should certainly work well in this open format and it’ll be interesting to see exactly where it goes. The small number of episodes is an interesting break from the regular cable television model as well, something that Netflix still struggles with at times. In any case, Chelsea Does should be a perfectly bite-sized, inherently bingeable piece of entertainment.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Cartel Land (Matthew Heineman, 2015)
The Cut (Fatih Akin, 2014)
Drone (Tonje Hessen Schei, 2014)
Misunderstood (Asia Argento, 2014)
Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)

Fandor

The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa, 1958)

This week’s “Criterion Picks” cover classic films that received non-direct remakes. As Star Wars: The Force Awakens nears 2 billion dollars worldwide (it will be the third film to do so if it happens), it’s a great time to check out what is known to be a major influence on the popular franchise. Kurosawa has made more legendary films, but considering its connection to Star Wars and George Lucas, it might be his most culturally important. The Hidden Fortress follows two peasants (the inspiration for C-3P0 and R2-D2) who help transport a disguised princess out of a war zone. The film is absolutely full of adventure, action and comedy, making it one of Kurosawa’s most approachable films. Other selections available in “Before the Remake” include The Virgin Spring (influenced The Last House on the Left), The Wages of Fear (influenced Sorcerer), Seven Samurai (influenced The Magnificent Seven), and more. These picks are available until January 31.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Actress (Robert Greene, 2014)
Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta, 2012)
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1960)
Walden (Jonas Mekas, 1969)
Western (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, 2015)

MUBI

The Oath (Laura Poitras, 2010)

Documentarian Laura Poitras jumped into the spotlight with her Oscar winning film Citizenfour, but she had previously made two powerful docs that are now available on MUBI. Following her Oscar nominated look at the war in Iraq, My Country, My Country, The Oath profiles two men with connections to Osama bin Laden who are detained by the U.S. government following 9/11. Poitras’ journalistic eye digs into the rhetoric around al-Qaeda and the war on terror while also existing as a powerful character study. Along with Poitras, the film was produced by Joshua Oppenheimer of The Act of Killing. With that pedigree behind The Oath, it is remarkably under-seen. You can change that for yourself on MUBI until February 19.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Golden Door (Emanuele Crialese, 2006)
It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman, 2013)
Jealousy (Philippe Garrel, 2013)
My Country, My Country (Laura Poitras, 2006)
They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947)

Video On-Demand

Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015)

For obvious reasons, there isn’t a more interesting filmmaker working today than Jafar Panahi. A political activist in his home country of Iran, he received a 20-year ban from making movies by the government in 2010—since then, he has released three films. Already one of the great Iranian filmmakers, Panahi’s legal limitations have given him a career resurgence and a sharper voice. In Taxi, Pahani plays a version of himself that has become a cab driver during his filmmaking banishment. As he picks up and drops off his patrons, a number of political and social topics are explored through their conversations. Its stripped down, docu-drama style was perhaps Panahi’s only option, but the results are no less potent. Taxi (also referred to as Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and Taxi Tehran) is now available to rent or own on iTunes and other VOD platforms.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015)
Mojave (William Monahan, 2015)
Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)
Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray, 2015)
Woodlawn (Andrew Erwin & Jon Erwin, 2015)

America’s drone war is no secret. The media has long been privy to the Air Force’s dirty laundry, and lately movies and TV have caught on as well. What has stayed hazy though are the details, the rules of engagement, the lives of the pilots involved, the kill counts, and who exactly is running the show. Good Kill dares to zoom in on the dark life of a drone pilot and the new, “retaliate first” ethics of war.

Ethan Hawke dons a pair of aviator sunglasses and a flight suit to play Major Tommy Egan, a six tour veteran who has been relegated to flying drone missions from an air-conditioned box outside of Las Vegas. From the start Tommy rallies against being caged on the ground. Being a pilot was his life. It made him happy, and despite the risk, it kept his marriage stable, and him sane. But flying drones has its perks. After landing his UAV Tommy gets to go home to his wife and kids. He gets to barbecue in his Nevada backyard.

Everything changes though when Tommy’s unit, complete with idealist rookie Suarez (Zoe Kravitz), is handpicked to fly special drone missions for the CIA. The ever-present risk of collateral damage is magnified tenfold by the agencies strike first policy, and it isn’t long before Tommy is sinking into the bottle and losing sleep over pulling the trigger. As the operations get more and more ethically blurry, Tommy and Suarez begin to push back against the invisible hand that guides them.

Good Kill, for most of its run time, is as morally pragmatic as a film like this—with such an obvious message—needs to be. The questioning of the government’s drone program is worn openly; characters repeatedly find themselves in debates about the killing of civilians and the creation of extremists. These debates seem to do little for the plot or character, except to show who stands where—as though the soldiers’ banter during their missions wasn’t enough. But Good Kill stays on target. First and foremost it is a film about a man, Tommy, struggling with alcoholism, with keeping his family together, and with the ambiguous necessity of killing innocent people to save American lives.

As Tommy, Hawke is at his brooding best. He’s a man running out of fight, struggling to breathe under the weight on his conscience. It’s a performance that could have been one note, but Hawke manages to make Tommy a fully rounded character (unlike his pure-gruff barkeeper in last year’s Predestination). For all his silence Tommy is still simmering beneath the surface, nursing his dreams of taking flight once again, and still holding onto a happiness he once had.

Written and directed by regular Ethan Hawke collaborator Andrew Niccol (Gattaca and Lord of War when he’s good, In Time and The Host when he’s not), Good Kill is a well crafted drama that functions best when the pilots are hunched before their dazzling array of monitors. The script mines true tension from Tommy, Suarez, and their Colonel (a fine Bruce Greenwood) as they question the orders voiced by an absent Langley, knowing all the while that they will ultimately comply. At home though, as Tommy and his wife Molly (January Jones) try to recapture the spark of their early marriage, and Suarez manages her own romantic feelings, the film falters and the tension crumbles, at least until Tommy can once again take the pilot’s chair. One constant is that the film is richly lensed by Amir Mokri. Everything is sun-baked; the deserts of the war-torn Middle East and dusty Nevada are shot to mirror each other ominously, the view from above suddenly terrifying.

Good Kill is at its best when it is unflinching; while Tommy pushes back against “taking pot shots” at people from the sky, it becomes more and more clear that there isn’t another solution on the table. The war on terror has become a vicious cycle with no end in sight. The only question is who will fight that war. Despite being set five years ago, Good Kill is an urgent film that doesn’t look to serve up answers, but instead to incite debate.

The fact that armed drones have changed the face of warfare might not be common knowledge, but drones have wormed their way into pop culture and the general American consciousness; the grainy eagle-eye view popularized by video games, the bulbous head unmistakable, and the panic inducing concept of the Amazon drone. The point is, drones are here to stay, and Tonje Hessen Schei’s new documentary Drone seeks to explore the consequences of fighting a war from 10,000 miles away.

At its heart, Drone is centered in two places: with former drone operator Brandon Bryant as he speaks out against the US governments abuse of power, and human rights lawyers Shahzad Akbar and Clive Stafford Smith as they push to get media attention for victims of drone strikes in the Pakistani province of Waziristan. Spliced into these narratives are dozens of experts, from former military advisors to those who produce drones for the government. The portrait painted over the 79 minute doc (two breezier versions exist: a 58 minute cut, and a 10 minute one) is a tragic and complex one, rooted in the inherent value of human life and how it should be judged in a time of war. The ideas and questions asked are, ultimately, necessary, and have, for the most part, been ignored and swept under the rug—all of which makes Drone feel like a let down.

Schei has worked with humanitarian issues in the past, even directing a film festival based around the subject, and she sticks with it here. The film is pragmatic and refuses to shy away from the toughest questions concerning drones, while never forgetting the tragedy that sparked the war on terror. The trouble is that Drone never quite focuses anywhere. The film stops and starts at random, shifting between Bryant doing a press tour to Akbar and Smith petitioning the high court of Pakistan without any connective tissue. It’s as though Schei had too much to talk about (and all of it should be talked about), but couldn’t quite make it all fit without just tossing it in the bag at random; all of it interesting on its own, but jarred wildly by the constant gear shifts. Neither of the two main threads have much of a narrative either until the final minutes of the film, which keeps the film from becoming grounded or tense in an important way.

Drone is a movie that should be watched, and the conversations therein discussed. It is a well-intentioned film, and it’s packed with the horrific truths of America’s human rights abuses. But there’s a sense that Drone was built around the passion of its ideas (though it shouldn’t be faulted for that), not with any calculated structure or intentional direction. The result is a scatterbrained and tension-less film that still must be watched and talked about.