The best movies to stream this weekend from 'Ashes of Time Redux' to 'Torn'

This week, streamers go east with The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift landing on Prime Video, and our pick of the week being the wild and hallucinatory Ashes of Time Redux by celebrated Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee’s Academy Award-winning Brokeback Mountain lands on Netflix.

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Pick of the week: Ashes of Time Redux - MUBI

Hong Kong master Wong Kar-wai’s sumptuous adaptation of the novel Legend of the Condor Heroes — Ashes of Time — is a wuxia film that stands apart from its contemporaries. In 2008, Wong recut the film for future DVD and cinema releases, and that lead to the ‘Redux’ version available in Western markets today.

While not without its problems (such as some strange cropping and grading) it's an overlooked oddity in the director's filmography, the filmmaker more known for his melancholic romances like Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, than his experimental genre work.

A major part of Ashes of Time’s appeal is its striking, impressionistic style, drifting through a somewhat vague plot with intentionally hazy editing and vivid, dreamlike action sequences. Gorgeously shot by Christopher Doyle, every image pops off the screen, though perhaps less so in the ‘Redux’ cut that is the only one available to Western markets.

Though the plot is hazy, it also displays evocative work from an incredible strong cast: including Leslie Chung, Brigitte Lin (who would go on to star in Chungking Express) Tony Leung Ka-fai (colloqually referred to as ‘Big Tony’) and Wong’s frequent collaborators Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. (A fun thing to note: During the film's long-delayed production, Wong produced a parody of the same novel titled The Eagle Shooting Heroes, made with the same cast as Ashes of Time.)

Also on MUBI: My Life as a Courgette

Torn - Disney+

American mountaineer Alex Lowe died aged 40 in 1999 on Shishapangma mountain in Tibet. Over 20 years later his son Max Lowe directs the documentary Torn, about his father and his family in the wake of his passing. It leads with a push and pull between Alex’s love of climbing and love of his family, showing archive footage of him talking about them, contrasted against him whooping as he swings from a harness on a climb, something reaffirmed by one of the sons noting “I know he loved his family, but also, he chose to be there”.

Read more: Everything new on Disney+ in February

The film’s first interviewee is his middle brother Sam, while his other brother and mother appear on camera shortly before. Anecdotes about people’s impressions of Alex are backed up by charming home video, and that conflict between Alex’s obsession with the immensely risky endeavour climbing and his obligations as a parent, exploring his imperfections and issues with balancing the two.

Watch a trailer for Torn

Lowe’s piece continues to dig into his unique family dynamic too, as Conrad Anker, a survivor of the same mountaineering accident that took Alex’s life, eventually married his widow and raised Max and his brothers. Though it’s somewhat generic in its presentation — from the music to the arrangement of its interviews and access to archive — Torn is also immensely personal, and fascinating in its angle into the compulsions of alpinists.

Also new on Disney+: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Kingsman: The Golden Circle

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift - Prime Video

Arriving on Prime Video alongside the first six Fast films, Justin Lin’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is simultaneously the last film of its kind in the outsized franchise, as well as a sign of things to come. After John Singleton’s underrated 2 Fast 2 Furious introduced a whole new cast of characters as it followed the first film’s Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) into a new case, Tokyo Drift introduces a whole new cast yet again, shifting from LA streets to the streets of Tokyo.

Read more: Everything new on Prime Video in February

Sean Boswell is a high schooler (who looks about 35) sent by his mother to live with his father in Tokyo after getting in trouble for street racing. Stuck in an unfamiliar city with nothing but his wits and the worst southern accent in recent memory thanks to actor Lucas Black, Sean falls in with a new crowd of street racers. He befriends the cool drift racer and hustler Han (Sung Kang, who would become a fan favourite) and Twinkie (rapper Bow Wow, of all people).

Watch: Sung Kang looks back at Tokyo Drift

Tokyo Drift takes some cues from the classic manga and anime series Initial D, in their mutual interest in Tokyo’s drift racing scene, even sharing an advisor in real-life Drift King Keiichi Tsuchiya, who popularised the racing style. While the Fast & Furious series’ dedication to absurd escalation is still delightful, it's hard not to pine for the franchise’s simpler times, when street racing was as high as the stakes got.

And Tokyo Drift has some of the best races in the series, including an outrageous shot of the flashy kit cars drifting through the famously busy Shibuya Crossing (a shot Lin nearly got arrested for making). Lin deserves extra credit for the furiosity and ingenuity of those races, as well as his inclusion of one of the catchiest tie-in songs of all time, courtesy of the Teriyaki Boyz.

Also on Prime Video: The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious; Fast Five

Brokeback Mountain - Netflix

A neo-western that’s practically a household name by this point, Ang Lee’s adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain unfolds a love story between cowboys Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) over a course of decades.

Beginning in Wyoming in 1963, the two form an intense romantic bond after sleeping together while working as shepherds on the eponymous Brokeback Mountain, before going their separate ways. Fate keeps drawing them back to each other however, and Lee and sceenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry expand it into a tragedy that feels of epic scope as well as intimate.

Also new on Netflix: The Hunt, The Photograph