Top 5 films: best of what's new to streaming

Jonathan Velasquez and Mercedes Maxwell in Marfa Girl 2.

UN BEAU MARIAGE (95 minutes) M

The 1982 second instalment in Eric Rohmer’s "Comedies and Proverbs" series was his first film from the perspective of a modern woman: a naive yet formidable art student (Beatrice Romand), who resolves to get married while neglecting to inform her husband-to-be (Andre Dussollier). The touch is light but the implications multiply. MUBI

MARFA GIRL 2 (75 minutes) R

Larry Clark (Kids) ranks among the most neglected living American filmmakers. Set largely on a single patch of land in west Texas, this recent low-budget sequel to his 2012 Marfa Girl combines ecstasy, mundanity and grim melodrama in its portrayal of sex and its consequences for a group of characters who have barely arrived at adulthood. Google Play, YouTube

DAMN YANKEES! (111 minutes) G

An ageing baseball fan (Robert Shafer) makes a deal with the devil (Ray Walston) and transforms into a gifted young player (Tab Hunter) in this 1958 musical co-directed by Abbott and Stanley Donen, based on Abbott’s hit Broadway show. It takes a while to get going, but Gwen Verdon makes it all worthwhile as an immortal yet klutzy femme fatale. Google Play, YouTube

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION (115 minutes) Unrated

Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1964 second feature follows a middle-class youth (Francesco Barilli) as he flirts with political radicalism and plunges into a full-blown affair with his aunt (Adriana Asti). Made when Bertolucci was just 22, this is an archetypal young man’s film: passionate, eclectic, chronicling a search for identity that belongs to the director as much as the hero. Amazon Prime

BAD INFLUENCE (103 minutes) M

This somewhat homoerotic 1990 thriller from director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) harks back to Hitchcock and foreshadows Fight Club, but has a flavour very much of its era, springing from the Brat Pack pairing of James Spader as a downtrodden yuppie and Rob Lowe as the new friend who takes him for a walk on the wild side. Stan

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