The Netflix catalogue is enriched again, and particularly diverse in the month of December. We've rounded up the best.
From new Paolo Sorrentino, new Jane Campion and the most glittering cast Netflix has ever had with Don't Look Up, to anime masterpieces and British classics.
The new Netflix movies
The Power of the Dog
Jane Campion returns to the cinema after 12 years to adapt Thomas Savage's semi-biographical book about an overbearing ranch owner who wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her son, but with little regard for the well-hidden secrets that will be revealed in the process.
Benedict Cumberbatch is a model of toxic masculinity in the film, a man who hates what he can't control, who interprets self-oppression as power, and who assumes that everyone else will - or at least should - do the same. When he tames the fragile spirit of his daughter-in-law, whose breakdown is so expertly played by Kirsten Dunst, he finds himself confronted by her son, Peter, of Kodi Smit-McPhee fame.
The men are initially presented as two male archetypes in conflict: the macho man versus the anemic boy. Their enclosure is slowly shed, however, and the chemistry of their ever-changing relationship creates a power struggle that makes the third act of the film exciting and unpredictable. Even so, as a anti-western that is, the film is deep down more neat than it should be, and its catharsis is restrained. But there is a biblical grandeur to Power of the Dog enhanced by Ari Wegner's photography and Grant Major's cinematography: their combination enriches the film with textures that reframe every aspect of the story about the role it plays in the war between nature and civilisation.
Cumberbatch is up for an Oscar, but the star of the film is Smit-McPhee. Campion took the Grand Prix for Directing at the Venice Film Festival.
Going up: 1/12
The Hand of God
Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, Il Divo, The Young Pope) makes his most personal film yet. So personal that he speculates he doesn't have it in him to make another one like it. At Hand of God weaves events and images from his life into a fictional plot set in Naples in the 1980s, following Italian teenager Fabieto Scizza (Filippo Scotti) as football legend Diego Maradona prepares to sign with the city's club.
Sorrentino's career is the work of a creator who knows how to a man's life is not divided in a straight line into triumphs and tragedies, and the Hand of God Netflix revisits the summer that taught him that lesson in brutal fashion. The coming-of-age story he crafts here, restrained aesthetically in relation to the baroque standards Sorrentino loves, sketches the world of a teenager lost and redeemed in the same breath.
Remains vivid creator, with a conservative look at the male element and here where mannerisms are often made, but the intimacy of the film imparts a lightness and tenderness to Sorrentino's palette that becomes welcome. The film left the Venice Film Festival with three awards.
Going up: 15/12
Don't Look Up
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Rob Morgan play a trio of scientists who try to warn the world and its leaders about an impending asteroid impact that will end life as we know it. But because the film is directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Vice, The Big Short), they will find only resistance and indifference ahead of them.
McKay won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his first dramatic film, The Big Short, while his next dramatic effort, Vice, was met with divided reactions but was also nominated at the Oscars. If the Don't Look Up is good, it is not excluded that this will also have its chance in the next ceremony.
The cast is unimaginable: Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis, Tomer Sisley and Cate Blanchett.
Going up: 24/12
They are also uploaded to Netflix:
Tokyo Godfathers
Anime masterpiece by Satoshi Kon in the middle of his career. Three homeless people find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve and begin an effort to get it to its parents. What follows is an epic journey from one end of Tokyo to the other as the intrepid trio encounter drag queens, yakuza and underage tramps. A love letter from Satoshi Kon to the subcultures and landmarks of the city. The sweetest addition of the month for Netflix.
Going up: 1/12
The Queen of Spades
A chilling drama that tells the story of Countess Ranevskaya (Edith Evans), an old woman who sold her soul to the devil to always win at cards. Captain Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook), a bitter Russian soldier, becomes obsessed with discovering her secret. As he gets closer to the truth, his quest will take an unforgettable eerie twist.
Alexander Pushkin's melodramatic short story of the same name finds its perfect match in the wild look of Thorold Dickinson.
Going up: 1/12
It Always Rains on Sunday
In a working-class London neighborhood, housewife Rose (Googie Withers) finds herself in a predicament when her old lover Tommy Swann (John McCallum) escapes from prison and ends up in her backyard. Wanting to escape the dullness of her everyday life, Rose remembers the charming man Tommy once was before prison, but when he suspects she's about to turn him in, he threatens to destroy not only her fantasies about him but also the safety of her family.
British classic by Robert Hamer that artfully mixes “realism of the sink” with noir and melodrama.
Going up: 1/12
The Fallen Idol
The son of a diplomat, Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) often spends time alone. To entertain the boy, the butler of the house, Baines (Ralph Richardson), creates adventurous stories about the boy's past, causing Phillipe to idolize him. But when Baines' wife (Sonia Dresdel) dies, the police believe that her husband is behind the event and then Phillipe, who witnessed the incident, will do anything to protect his friend.
Carol Reed's film is a masterful, down-to-earth look at the cruel adult world through the eyes of a child who, inevitably, loses his innocence. Great film for observation, perspective, and the way we interpret not only film plots but each other.
Going up: 1/12
Before the Last Curtain Calls
The Belgian play Gardenia, the subject of the documentary Before the Last Curtain Falls coming to Netflix, begins with a series of images of trans performers and drag queens aged 60 to 70, gathered for the last time, stepping out of their costumes.
The Gardenia became a great success that far exceeded its original intention to play briefly in selected theatres, and thus its stars were able to travel the globe with their swan song, expressing the struggles and triumphs that matured them, in a tour that, according to director Thomas Wallner, «for many of them became the highlight of their lives».
Going up: 17/12
