10 out-of-the-box movies you can stream online during lockdown

Amid the extended lockdown, online streaming services are upping their game, offering the kind of blockbuster entertainments we’d normally flock to the multiplex to consume with a box of popcorn and an ice-cold drink. But they only have a handful of those in the tank, and there are still many hours in the day. So, here's a list, compiled by the International New York Times, of a few out-of-the-box selections from your subscription streaming services — the offbeat biopics, quirky comedies, gritty dramas and cuckoo documentaries worth digging around for:  

‘The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete’ | Stream it on: Amazon Prime and Hulu | Mister (Skylan Brooks) and Pete (Ethan Dizon) are two Brooklyn projects kids on their own, their fathers absent and mothers lost to the ravages of addiction. This tough drama from the director George Tillman Jr. (“Soul Food,” “The Hate U Give”) is a portrait of desperation and despair, dramatizing the kind of no-romance poverty that seldom makes it to the screen intact. Credit: IMDb

‘Most Beautiful Island’ | Stream it on: Amazon Prime | Ana Asensio writes, directs and stars in this harrowing but rewarding drama as a young, struggling, undocumented Spanish immigrant in New York City who is offered an opportunity to dig out of her considerable financial hole with one night’s work — an offer that sounds too good to be true, and proves to be exactly that. Credit: IMDb

‘Goldie’ | Stream it on: Netflix | A similar story of tough times in the boroughs, as the title character (Slick Woods), just 18, struggles to keep her family together when her mother is arrested. She’s got outsized dreams, imagining herself as an influencer and performer, but the direness of her situation threatens to crush her spirits, and the picture often plays as a subtle indictment of the limited options available to young Black women like her. Credit: IMDb

‘Straight Up’ | Stream it on: Netflix | When Todd (James Sweeney) and Rory (Katie Findlay) first meet, they bond over a shared love of “Gilmore Girls.” The influence of that show’s rat-tat-tat dialogue, pop-culture savvy and unabashed sentimentality are all over this unconventional romantic comedy. Credit: IMDb

‘Fort Tilden’ | Stream it on: Amazon Prime | The story is deceptively simple: two young Williamsburg women (played with delicious smarm by Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty) try to traverse Brooklyn for a day at the beach. But the writing and directing duo of Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers use that thin setup as a clothesline, upon which they hang scathingly satirical vignettes of borough bohemia. Credit: IMDb

‘My Scientology Movie’ | Stream it on: Hulu | The Church of Scientology is notoriously sensitive about its media portrayals, so British television presenter and filmmaker Louis Theroux probably didn’t expect much in the way of cooperation when he ventured to Los Angeles to make a documentary about their tactics. Instead, he and the director John Dower decide to cast actors for former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun to “direct” in dramatizations of his revelations. Credit: IMDb

‘Knuckleball!’ | Stream it on: HBO Max | Baseball fans looking to fill the summer void will enjoy this informative documentary from the directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg. Their focus is the wildly unpredictable but often effective no-spin pitch of the title, practiced by only a handful of pitchers at any given time, and only two when the film was shot in the 2011 season: Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox and R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets. Credit: IMDb

‘Professor Marston and the Wonder Women’ | Stream it on: Hulu | Disappointed that we’re not getting the “Wonder Woman” sequel we were promised this summer? As an alternative, check out her fascinating and unexpectedly sexy origin story. The life that “Wonder Woman” creator William Marston shared with two women — his wife and their lover — and their mutual experimentation with bondage helped inspire the comic book character, as well as some of her more controversial early imagery. Credit: IMDb

‘Wild Nights With Emily’ | Stream it on: Hulu | Another unexpectedly ribald biopic, this giggly treat from the writer and director Madeleine Olnek stars Molly Shannon as the notoriously reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, here re-imagined as a cheerfully gregarious party girl. Credit: IMDb

‘The Sunset Limited’ | Stream it on: HBO Max | Tommy Lee Jones and “No Country for Old Men” author Cormac McCarthy reunited for this made-for-HBO effort, which the writer adapted from his 2006 play. Jones both directs and plays White, an atheist professor who has just attempted suicide. Samuel L Jackson is the born-again convict who has saved White’s body, and now tries to save his soul. Credit: IMDb