With the start of December comes the start of the most wonderful season of the year: awards season. As critics groups and film organizations start announcing the best achievements of the year, many of us have to scramble to catch up. Luckily, many of the best films of the year are already available to you through a number of streaming platforms.

If you are in the mood for the best docs of the year, Netflix is typically a great place to start, and its where you can see The Wolfpack, Seymour: An Introduction, Call Me Lucky, Dior and I, Best of Enemies, and Iris. Netflix also has a number of the best underseen foreign language films released this year including Stations of the Cross, La Sapienza, The Princess of France, Güeros, and Amour Fou. Or you could dive into Top-10 worthy Beasts of No Nation, The Duke of Burgundy, Tangerine, Jauja, Girlhood, and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Aside from Netflix, with Amazon Prime Video you can see Ex Machina, While We’re Young and Tom at the Farm. Besides all the wonderful classics on Fandor, you can see new docs The Great Museum, Sembene! and The Pearl Button, as well as top foreign language films Tu Dors Nicole, Blind and Li’l Quinquin. And if you happen to be fully caught up with these awards contenders, here are even more movies and television new to streaming this week for you:

Netflix

A Very Murray Christmas (TV Special, Sofia Coppola)

Netflix has already made great impacts on American television culture—they’ve introduced new original programming, provided original programming from abroad, and have even revitalized canceled programming. Now they are tackling another television tradition: the Christmas special. A Very Murray Christmas is an hour-long comedy with a meta twist and as impressive as you can find for something like this. The special is a fictitious backstage satire of type of variety show Christmas specials that begin to pop up around this time every year. Here, a bad storm in New York City has put Bill Murray’s star-studded guest list in serious doubt. And so Bill Murray does what Bill Murray would do, have a lot of random fun anyway. Directed by Sofia Coppola, it also features George Clooney, Amy Pohler, Michael Cera, Miley Cyrus, Jenny Lewis, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Jason Schwartzman, and more.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Broadchurch (Series, Season 2)
Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990)
Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992)
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Jonathan Demme, 2006)
Stations of the Cross (Dietrich Brüggemann, 2014)
Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004)
Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015)
Two Step (Alex R. Johnson, 2014)
What Maisie Knew (Scott McGehee & David Siegel, 2012)

Fandor

My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981)

Louis Malle’s seminal independent film, My Dinner with Andre is perhaps as famous as an idea of independent film as it is a film itself. Between the famous stumping from the early days of Ebert and Siskel’s “At the Movies” to a number of references and spoofs ever since, most people have some idea of what the film is without having seen it. The film takes place entirely over a dinner conversation between actor and playwright Wallace Shawn and famed New York theater director Andre Gregory. Over the course (pun intended) of nearly two hours, they chat about life and art with a number of great personal stories. Truthfully, it lives up to its intellectual artsy reputation, but is absolutely full of humor and insightful discussion. It is available on Fandor as part of their “Criterion Picks” until December 13.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Children of Paradise (Marcel Carne, 1945)
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
How to Smell a Rose (Les Blank, 2014)
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (Jean-Francois Richet, 2011)
Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (Jean-Francois Richet, 2011)

MUBI

The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010)

One of the great documentaries of the decade, Barnard’s The Arbor is also one of the most unusual. A portrait of the life of English playwright Andrea Dunbar, the film showcases her work through staged audio recordings of Dunbar and her family. There is a disconnect between the recorded audio and lip-synching actors that strangely draws in the audience. It is a presentation choice that is meant to distract, but it also builds the natural disconnect between art and life. Dunbar’s life was a dramatic one—living in poverty, she struggled to raise three children while in abusive relationships and extended stays at a refuge for battered women. The Arbor takes this heavy content unflinchingly and with great realism despite the artificial representation. It is available on MUBI until December 29.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Big Man Japan (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2007)
Brewster’s Millions (Allan Dwan, 1945)
The Gleaners & I (Agnès Varda, 2000)
L for Leisure (Whitney Horn & Lev Kalman, 2014)
Li’l Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

Video On-Demand

Amy (Asif Kapadia, 2015)

Speaking of the best films of the year, Asif Kapadia’s brilliant look at celebrity culture and tragedy, Amy, is now available to rent on a variety of VOD platforms (read our review). The documentarian again uses a pretty strict found footage style to shape the life story of singer Amy Winehouse, who went from humble beginnings in small-town England to otherworldly super-stardom before her untimely death from alcohol poisoning. As the film plainly shows, Winehouse’s life was about as public as one can get, seemingly every moment of her final years documented through a number of sources, and yet the documentary is still incredibly captivating. Without the use of director narration or talking head experts, Kapadia is able to mold a vision of how this tragedy could occur, sadder only because the people who could probably stop it simply didn’t. Perhaps the current Oscar front-runner, Amy will no doubt receive a lot of accolades over the next few months making this a perfect time to seek it out.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Breathe (Mélanie Laurent, 2014)
Life (Anton Corbijn, 2015)
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (Wes Ball, 2015)
Mourning Son (Todd Newman, 2015)
Uncle Nick (Chris Kasick, 2015)

In What Maisie Knew, we witness a custody battle gone sour through the eyes of the innocent center of contention, Maisie, played by the brilliant 7-year-old Onata Aprile. Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan star as Maisie’s bitter, bickering parents, who each remarry, to Alexander Skaarsgard and Joanna Vanderham (respectively). The marriages turn out to be petty ploys in an attempt to win sole custody of the girl, but we discover Maisie’s step parents might be the loving parental figures she’s deserved all along. Aprile is absolutely stunning as Maisie, displaying effortless grace that occasionally outshines her quadruple-aged co-stars.

What Maisie Knew is David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s (Bee Season, The Deep End) fifth directorial collaboration. It’s a unique take on a child custody battle, as all the events are viewed through the innocent, un-judging eyes of Maisie. It’s a film for adults, from a child’s perspective.

As I was waiting in a room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco for the trio to arrive for our interview, I thought of Aprile’s fantastic performance. She carries the film with ease, acting with more naturalism than I’ve perhaps ever seen in a child actor. In fact, she never appears to be ‘acting’ at all, even when the camera is inches from her face. She’s quite the child prodigy, acting with skill beyond her years. ‘What is this mini master-actor going to be like off camera?’ I wondered.

Suddenly, Onata burst into the room in a blur, giggling and spinning, smartphone in-hand, and hopped into a chair five times her size. She dressed…like a 7-year-old girl. Brightly colored clothes with cute rubber boots (which I’d later learn were taken from the set of the film). She fervently swiped and tapped at her plaything, just like any other kid in the world would. I don’t know what I expected. Siegel and McGehee followed shortly after and we were off to the races.

Way Too Indie: Onata, you’re really amazing in the movie, congratulations. You look so comfortable onscreen—do you get nervous before takes?
Aprile: No, I was comfortable the whole time.

WTI: What was it like working with your four co-stars?
Aprile: It was really fun. They were especially fun when we were shooting and when we weren’t shooting.
Siegel: (To Onata) As opposed to another time when you didn’t exist? (laughs) You had a lot of fun at the beach with Alex and Joanna, didn’t you?
Aprile: Mmhmm!
Siegel: There was a lot of running around at the beach. (laughs)

WTI: Do you watch a lot of movies, Onata? What are some of your favorites?
Aprile: Yeah. I really like The Grinch and…
Siegel: (To Onata) Have you ever seen Babe? That’s a GOOD one!
Aprile: I like Elouise’s Rawther Unuuuuuusual Halloween! [That’s how she says it!]

WTI: Onata, you have some really cool bedrooms in the movie. Did you get to keep anything from set?
Siegel: (To Onata) You got a few things from the bedroom…
Aprile: Yup!

[Onata then kicked her tiny feet onto the table, showing off the aforementioned boots she obtained from her movie wardrobe. Knowing that she’d had a long day answering the same questions over and over (something I could never have done at her age), I thanked her for her time and let her go do wild kid things. She skipped off (adorably), and I proceeded to ask Siegel and McGehee about working with the gifted girl.]

WTI: There’s a partnership going on between your camera and Onata’s performance. Everything we see is either a shot of Onata or a shot of what she sees. You’re building the character together.
Siegel: Telling a story from a child’s perspective is a really big challenge, and you don’t see it very often, especially when you’re shooting with so little money and so quickly. We were really trying to sculpt what the perspective would actually be for a child—not just literally how they’re framed, but the way the rest of the world is framed. It’s challenging when you don’t have a lot of time—you’re limited to how much you think you can cover. It was a great challenge.

McGehee: It’s what attracted us more than anything, I think. That and Julianne Moore’s interest, since we’ve [always] wanted to work with her.

Siegel: [The child perspective] let us play around with fundamental building blocks of filmmaking in a very different way. All [of] those elemental aspects of shooting a movie—what’s in and out of the frame, what our characters hear, what they don’t hear, how the color, light—all of those aspects of the mise en scene have to work to create a child’s perspective. It’s not a child’s story. It’s a child’s perspective in an adult story. Walking that line of schmaltz versus seriousness…we were allergic to the idea of a custody battle story because it’s too heavy, too maudlin. But, the script had a very light touch [because] of the child’s perspective. We were lucky to get our hands on [it].

WTI: Some of the film’s most memorable moments are quiet scenes of Onata simply being a kid. Can you talk a bit about Onata’s performance? It’s just so effortless.
McGehee: We’re a bit in awe of her. We didn’t really know what we were stepping into. [We agreed] to do a movie that’s got a six-year-old in it, and you expect certain challenges. We talked to all of the adult actors about what it was going to take to get a performance out of a six-year-old—what tricks [they might use] and what their job would be in relation to getting a performance [out of Onata] when they’re not on camera. Onata didn’t require any of those tricks in part because her mother prepared her so well, and mostly because she’s just a special little girl. She showed up understanding what the emotions in the [scenes were], and she was really comfortable in front of the camera, just being another version of herself.

Siegel: She could just live the scenario. The other actors would marvel at her. It’s so simple. When you go to acting schools, that’s all they talk about—the simplicity of the present moment, all of those things. But, you watch a child do it, and do it easily, with the ease that Onata does it with, and you’re like…”wow”.

McGehee: Sometimes we would understand that she was in situations children are used to being in, she was just being natural and had forgotten about the machine around her. But sometimes she’d be in a close-up with the camera [inches] from her face, and Julianne Moore or Steve Coogan, or whoever would be obscured by lights, and she’d be acting out the scene with them and they’d all just be really ‘in it’. She’d be giving us an emotional life in a close-up that very few actors can give.

WTI: Can you talk a bit about the adult actors?
Siegel: We were very [excited by] Julianne’s interest in the movie because it was hard to think of anyone that could play [the role of Maisie’s mom] better. Meeting with her and deciding to take a stab at [the film]…that was a big deal. We sort of built the rest of the cast around her. [Steve] Coogan was the first person we thought of for [Maisie’s dad]. His agent had read the script already, so there was a meeting of the minds right there. We had to do a little convincing because it would have been easier to finance the film if we had a bigger star in the role, but we thought he was exactly right. Alexander…was a leap of faith for us because we hadn’t seen that much work from him. He was much gentler in person than what we’d imagined he’d be from watching him act.

McGehee: Joanna Vanderham was the last of the four to join the project. We had difficulty casting that role [because we wanted] to find somebody who could be innocent enough and yet it wouldn’t feel weird when she marries Steve Coogan. [We didn’t want it to] creep you out. We had only seen Joanna on a British television series, and we couldn’t meet her—she was working and we were prepping our film—so we just had one Skype conversation to convince us that she was the girl. That was another leap of faith, but she’s a wonderful actress.

What Maisie Knew is in theaters now. Check out our review of the film from the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is the biggest festival of the year in the Bay Area, and my SFIFF experience got off to a great start. My festival activities began at the gorgeous Fairmont hotel where I conducted an interview with the team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel (Bee Season) directors of SFIFF’s opening night film, What Maisie Knew, and Maisie herself, the adorable 7-year-old Onata Aprile. It was a pleasure to speak with them, and Onata handled the interview with the poise and experience of a pro. Scott and David were fantastic as well, and it was a blast to get to talk to such talented filmmakers. Stay tuned to Way Too Indie for the full interview in the coming weeks.

Next up was the opening night screening of What Maisie Knew at the Castro Theater, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites in the Bay. Before the screening, SFIFF executive director Ted Hope addressed the large audience with a warm and appreciative introduction to the festival. Next, Ted made the surprise announcement that the recipient of the 2013 Peter J. Owens Award for Acting goes to…Han freaking Solo! Harrison Ford will be in esteemed company, with previous recipients like Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Annette Bening, and Kevin Spacey.

The film was followed by a Q&A with my old friends, McGehee, Siegel, and tiny Miss Onata, conducted by SFIFF director of programming, Rachel Rosen. Onata was asked of her four co-stars—Alexander Skarsgard, Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, and Joanna Vanderham—which she liked the best. She paused for a while, not sure of how to answer the question, when Siegel suggested that we all knew it was a “tall Swedish man.” Onata paused for a while longer, and finally answered she liked “all of them.” Priceless.

After the Q&A, the celebration continued down by the water at Temple Night Club. I stuffed my face with delicious mung bean salad, artichoke bites, beer, and gelato. Needless to say, there’s a rumbly in my tumbly, and it’s not a pleasant one…

Anyway, on to my impressions of What Maisie Knew…

What Maisie Knew

The film tells the story from the perspective of Maisie, a six-year-old girl whose parents—now separated—constantly bicker and fight over and around Maisie as if she was some sort of trophy. The parents (Moore and Steve) each find light-haired, young hard-bodies (Skarsgard and Vanderham) and marry them, in hopes of winning sole custody over Maisie in court. As her parents’ war rages on, Maisie finds that her step-parents may be the parents she’s deserved all along.

Aprile positively makes this film. It wouldn’t have worked without her. All of the dramatic material works because she’s so darn cute and lovable. You just can’t help but want her to be happy. When her parents spit and curse around her, she simply observes with a straight face, turns around, and goes to her room to play. Aprile seems more comfortable and natural in her scenes than any of her cast mates, including Moore. It’s incredible to watch. Her chemistry with Skarsgard feels so genuine it’s startling.

The four adults do very good work as well (Moore’s final scene is a showstopper), but Aprile handily outshines them. The story the actors have to work with isn’t particularly interesting, but they do their best. What elevates What Maisie Knew are the excellent performances put forth by the actors and quality camerawork by the co-directors. Above all else, Maisie provides an early look at one of cinema’s future superstars.

RATING: 7