A new year has arrived, and while awards season is still at the forefront of everyone's brains, one thing you might miss is how many big movies leave streaming services at the end of January. Of course, there will be plenty of movies added to platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Criterion Channel next year, but for now, we're focusing on the best movies coming out later this month.
This month's film selection includes a subover rock opera, one of the best films of the 2000s, a paranoid thriller about American misdeeds abroad, and a good pre-Oscars in one of Timothée Chalamet's best performances.
These are the best movies coming off streaming in January.
Editor's Pick: Phantom of the Paradise
Photo: 20th Century Fox/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Director: Brian de Palma
Stars: Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper
Leaving Prime video: January 31
Of all the films Brian de Palma has directed in his 60-plus year career, none encapsulate the definition of a cult film like Phantom of Paradise. For starters, it's a disco-rock horror comedy inspired in equal parts by Oscar Wilde's Faust legend. The image of Dorian Grayand Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. Not exactly what one would call a “four-cutter crowd silverer.”
The film follows Winslow (William Finley), a talented songwriter who is betrayed and disfigured through the machinations of Swan (Paul Williams), an insidious music mogul. Because of this, Winslow sets out on a mission to kill the tycoon before he can further tarnish his life's work. What begins as a revenge story transforms into a star-crossed love drama and a parable of the commodification of art by the profit-driven perniciousness of the music industry. It is an exhilarating, strange and totally fascinating film worth experiencing. –Toussaint Egan
The best movies coming out of Netflix
Image: Sony Photos
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton
Leaving Netflix: January 31
Kathryn Bigelow's 2012 film about America's hunt for Osama bin Laden is a thriller paced like a war movie. The film follows Maya (Jessica Chastain), a woman of singular determination, hell-bent on finding bin Laden, no matter the cost, moral or otherwise. The film handles the dark side of American foreign policy with an unwavering eye, portraying everything from subterfuge to torture with the same quiet determination that Chastain brings to the lead performance. It's an absolutely fascinating film, and one of the most unique and heartbreaking films about America's long-running war on terror. –Austen Goslin
The best movies that leave prime videos
Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/MGM
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Michael Stuhlbarg
Leaving Prime video: January 31
No director working today is as good at communicating the strangeness of love and longing as Luca Guadagnino, so it should come as no surprise that his cannibal romance film, bones and everythingIt is as romantic as it is bloody. The film follows Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet), two teenagers in love who are affected by a strange compulsion to consume human flesh, as they travel through the American countryside in the 1980s. Throughout their journey they encounter all kinds of strange characters, some friendly and dangerous, but the film's best asset is Guadagnino's beautiful photography of the undeveloped, open spaces of America, and the incredible performance of the now twice chalamet nominated for an Oscar in The Center of the Movie. –Exhaustion
The best movies coming out of the Criterion channel
Image: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stars: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones
Leaving the criteria channel: January 31
The Coen brothers' 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name not only won the idiosyncratic directing duo an Oscar, but vaulted McCarthy's already elevated reputation to new heights, cementing both the film and its inspiration in the canon of contemporary American fiction. The film stars Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a welder who stumbles upon the scene of a drug deal gone bad and leaving a large sum of money in his wake. Upon stealing the cash, Llewelyn is hunted by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a sociopathic assassin sent to recover the money and murder anyone with knowledge of it. A tense and explosive thriller that reflects on the inherent self-destructive qualities of greed and violence that afflict people as individuals and collectives, There is no country for old people It is a masterpiece. -Tea