New movies to stream this week

“Queer contemporary outlaw Western” may be a mouthful, but “Cowboys” - the story of a Montana father who takes off on a horse for the Canadian border with his trans son when the child’s mother refuses to accept the boy’s authentic self - goes down sweetly. That’s mostly thanks to Steve Zahn, who took the best actor prize at last year’s Tribeca Film Fest for his portrayal of Troy, a goofy, grown-up kid with a mood disorder who almost instantly accepts things when his tween Josie decides to become Joe. (Young actor Sasha Knight also took a prize at L.A. Outfest, in a debut performance that is affectingly natural and unforced.) Writer-director Anna Kerrigan’s gentle little film switches up stereotypes by not making the Dad the heavy, but “Cowboys” doesn’t exactly demonize Joe’s mother (Jillian Bell) either - at least not terribly, or for terribly long. “Cowboys,” which also features Ann Dowd as the detective pursuing Troy and Joe - acting accolades all around - isn’t a heavy-handed message movie. It takes things easy. It’s a character-driven tale about characters who are all complicated, as Troy puts it, and compelling to watch. Unrated. Available at angelikaanywhere.com. 83 minutes. - - In “Spoor,” a fable-like murder mystery about our mistreatment of animals from filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka) is considered to be something of an eccentric in her Polish village on the Czech border. A retired construction engineer who works part-time as an English teacher, she insists on being called by her last name, dabbles in astrology and doesn’t eat meat, in a town where many, if not most, are hunters. After her two beloved dogs disappear and a neighbor - a poacher - is found dead two months later, surrounded by the hoofprints of roe deer, other corpses, all hunters, start turning up with regularity, also near hoofprints. (Duszejko’s theory is that they’re being killed by vengeful animals.) The suspense-goosing score is all staccato strings, but there’s never that much uncertainty about what’s going on. Best known for the Oscar-nominated “Europa, Europa,” about a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany who conceals his Jewishness, Holland adapted the screenplay for “Spoor” from a book by Olga Tokarczuk (who shares a screenwriting credit). There’s mention here of a “holocaust” too, but in the context of animals. “Spoor” doesn’t make much of a secret about its politics, or the whodunit. Its pleasures lie not in the unknown, but in style, mood, atmosphere. Unrated. Available on various streaming platforms. Contains violence, bloody images, coarse language, sexuality, brief nudity and drug use. In Polish and some English with subtitles. 128 minutes. - - ALSO STREAMING: Lebanon’s official Oscar submission, “1982” was inspired by the director Oualid Mouaness’s boyhood memories of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Set in an elite private school in Beirut, the film “builds no significant sense of peril,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, “even as the bombing becomes closer and more frequent; all it does, really, is to serve notice as to what we know is coming, as well as to spotlight a privileged lifestyle that one infers will not last long in such a setting.” Unrated. Available on various streaming platforms. In Arabic and English with subtitles. 100 minutes. - - Actor Michael Dorn, best known for creating the character of Worf in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” stars in “Agent: Revelation,” a sci-fi thriller about a man with super powers (writerdirector Derek Ting) who is taken under the wing of a secret operative (Dorn) to train to fight aliens. Unrated. Available on various streaming platforms. 87 minutes. - - “Born a Champion” is a martial arts action film starring Sean Patrick Flanery and Dennis Quaid in the story of a Marineturned-jujitsu fighter (Flanery) seeking revenge for a loss in an old fight. R. Available on various streaming platforms. Contains strong language throughout. 112 minutes.