Flavorwire

Welcome to Flavorpill’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. July brought some great new titles on Netflix, and almost all of this week’s titles come from that batch — including films from Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Mark Wahlberg, Holly Hunter, and Woody Allen, plus documentaries, foreign oddities, and more. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now.

12 Monkeys

Terry Gilliam’s cockeyed vision of a dystopian future and a present careening towards insanity is that rarest of cinematic beasts: a science fiction film of ideas, where plotting and logic and characterization are more important than special effects and production design. Which is not to say that the film is free of those elements — it has a distinctive look and style, and effectively uses both CGI and traditional opticals to bring that world seamlessly to life. But it’s not about that stuff; it’s about an ordinary man and his desperate journey, his encounters with madness, and his (perhaps futile) attempts to prevent a catastrophe. And it is about the paradoxes of time travel, which continue to provide fruitful stories for thoughtful filmmakers. Riveting, essential viewing, with career-best work from Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.