BLACK MOTHER (2019) Stream on Criterion Channel and Topic. The filmmaker Khalik Allah trained his eye on Jamaica in this, his most recent documentary, which he told the British magazine Dazed in 2018 is “intended to show Jamaica from the inside-out.” The film offers an idiosyncratic visual collage of footage from that country — with a focus on its women, and on members of Allah’s family. “In its poetic, elliptical, concise way, this film makes a grand statement: The black mother is the mother of life itself,” Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times. “And the gaze directed at the black faces and bodies in ‘Black Mother’ is not a male gaze, or a documentarian’s gaze. It is a gaze of love.”

THE ART OF SELF DEFENSE (2019) Stream on Hulu; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Jesse Eisenberg plays a nervous, lonely accountant who gets swept under the influence of a local sensei (Alessandro Nivola) in this dark comedy. The absurd results include Eisenberg’s character karate-chopping a rearview mirror off a pickup truck. “The vibe is less ‘Karate Kid’ than ‘Fight Club,’ minus the aggressive stylistic poses and the apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. He called the film, which was written and directed by Riley Stearns, “a wobbly sort-of satire.”