Pelada (Cinetic Filmbuff)
This new documentary is credited to four directors, two of whom -- 20-somethings Gwendolyn Oxenham and Luke Boughen -- are in front of the camera, using the film to suss out what they should do with their lives now that their dreams of pro soccer have evaporated. Their answer: circle the globe and film soccer at its roots in pickup games from Tokyo rooftops to Bolivian prisons to Brazilian favelas. ("Pelada" is Portuguese for "naked," as in, without adornment.) Sports movies can come hustling a load of bullcrap, but this international portrait of a ubiquitous human pastime is pure as the driven snow, and thrilling.
World Cup Soccer in Africa: Who Really Wins? (New Video/iTunes)
Then, of course, the real politics of organized super-sports, as this on-the-fly documentary decries -- that the money spent by South Africa in preparation for the games is an atrocity in a nation and subcontinent where food and potable water is still a daily challenge for most citizens.
Maggie in Wonderland (Doc Alliance)
Another soul-fortifying doc, in the way only documentaries can be, records the workaday life of the titular Kenyan immigrant, an eccentric and indomitable middle-aged woman who more or less embodies the entire social conversation about Them and Us and the shrinking distances between. So, it's also a gently scathing view of fringe existence lived in one of Europe's most self-satisfied welfare states.
Entirely non-fiction, too, except for his face. Fine, if you like this sort of thing.
Wolf (Flix On Demand)
Not a document of anything but its own crash-and-burn production (director: Mike Nichols!), and therefore as fascinating as that one person who shows up at a costume party wearing something absolutely inappropriate... Jack Nicholson dons the face hair, but James Spader has the crotch snuffle down. The Benicio Del Toro Wolfman is a better film, frankly, though they both recall Spanish and Mexican exploitation movies from the '70s. This one is funnier.
Pontypool (The Movie Channel On Demand)
Three people in a cellar radio station in rural Canada, the zombie plague hits, and the very nature of rational thought is explicitly question. Don't miss it (only available until June 11), and watch for the Eugene Ionesco hints.
The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (Starz On Demand)
Like Tim Burton with tattoos on his scrotum, Rob Zombie's dedicated to revivifying every kind of silly pulp he enjoyed as an all-American brat. And so this rashly animated comedy features a masked-Mexican-wrestler superhero saving the world from Dr. Satan when he isn't shooting porn. See, already you know whether you're among the chosen.
Lions Love (The Auteurs/Mubi)
This ambitious service has launched an epic on-demand career-survey of Agnes Varda, rich in masterpieces like Cleo from 9 to 5 (1962) and Vagabond (1985). This 1969 underground time capsule ain't one of them -- rather, it's a freeform anti-movie, shot by a foreigner with a gimlet eye exploring the Hollywood scene in a year so ripe with tumult it's oozing, starring Warhol Factory star Viva as a nude layabout flanked by Jim Morrison, Peter Bogdanovich, Eddie Constantine, avant-gardist Shirley Clarke, the writers of Hair, monster movie historian Carlos Clarens, etc., as well as by Warhol calling from New York and Bobby Kennedy taking a bullet on TV. You hadda be there.