‘How to Have Sex,’ ‘Miller’s Girl’ and More Streaming Gems

‘How to Have Sex’ (2024)

Stream it on Mubi.

The title is provocative, but this is no how-to manual; instead, the writer and director Molly Manning Walker tells a contemporary coming-of-age story that will reverberate with viewers of all ages and sexes. Her focus is on Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a 16-year-old British girl on a post-exams holiday in Crete with her friends. They plan to party, drink and hook up, and the latter is of particular import to Tara, who is keen to lose her virginity — less out of desire or romanticism than to simply get it over with. Manning is a cinematographer making her feature directing debut, and she deftly uses compositions, color and sound to convey Tara’s isolation, desperation and disappointment. She gets a big assist from McKenna-Bruce, a charismatic and empathetic lead who can whisper, in a throwaway line or discreet gesture, everything you need to know about this young woman’s past and present.

‘Miller’s Girl’ (2024)

Stream it on Netflix.

The first-time writer and director Jade Halley Bartlett makes occasional rookie errors in this psychosexual drama. But she has a knack with actors, particularly Jenna Ortega, who plays the lead role of a brainy teen seductress with wit and verve. Bartlett photographs Ortega like a movie star, and she comes off like one; she has a particular way of chewing on a line of loaded dialogue, and she and Martin Freeman (as the creative writing professor whose professional interest becomes personal) create a specific, uneasy but undeniable chemistry that smooths over the script’s rougher stretches. The third-act turn into a 21st century “Oleanna” is effective, with Bartlett inventively intermingling her levels of fiction and cleanly visualizing the inevitable he said/she said conflicts. The moment when Ortega decisively takes the upper hand is screen acting of the highest order.

‘Men’ (2022)

Stream it on Max.