Five International Movies to Stream Now

This month’s picks include a French thriller, a sensuous Spanish drama, an Argentine dark comedy and more.

Moving at breakneck speed from start to finish, this French crime thriller kept me on the edge of my seat for its entire run time. The film plunges us headlong into chaos with the opening: We meet the lawyer Léonard Landry (a riveting Laurent Lafitte) as he’s running between two hearings at court, trying to simultaneously defend two different drug lords, while also making stops at the bathroom to snort cocaine. That goes disastrously, as one might expect. Léonard is sent to rehab, and upon release, he has one week to prepare for a trial that will decide his career fate.

That’s just the beginning of “The Good Lawyer.” Léonard seems cursed with bad luck and lands in deeper trouble with every move, until he’s embroiled in a criminal conspiracy involving a multinational oil company and African rebels. The film’s snappy editing and kinetic camerawork recall the work of the Safdie brothers, and Léonard is not unlike Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems,” a man whose desperation you can smell from a mile away. But in the process, Léonard’s long-dulled skills as an attorney, not to mention his integrity, start to re-emerge. The director Tristan Séguéla ramps up the ethical stakes as the film proceeds, delivering a profound critique of the legal system with an unforgettable adrenaline rush.

Agatha Bock, the nonagenarian woman at the heart of this mesmerizing film portrait, is indomitable. She lives alone on her family’s 54-acre farm in Manitoba, Canada, with few modern amenities: no vehicle, no cellphone, no modern plumbing. Her time is largely spent tending to her vast garden, where she grows verdant fruits and vegetables. “Agatha’s Almanac” is directed by Bock’s niece, Amalie Atkins, who documented her aunt’s life on the farm over six years. The film’s mode matches the Luddite life of its subject; it was shot by the cinematographer Rhayne Vermette on 16 mm celluloid using an old, hand-cranked camera.

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