Genre: Comedy, Horror
Actor: Carla Jimenez, Chris Elliott, Corey Fogelmanis, DJ Qualls, Elvis Nolasco, Jackson Kelly, Matthew Cardarople, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Sasha Mason, Ted Ferguson, Wyatt Lindner
Director: Justin Harding
If your inner drama queen is craving some stimulation and you’re looking for a movie that guarantees all the feels, we’ve got you covered. Here are the best emotionally and narratively dramatic movies and shoes to stream now.
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Actor: Carla Jimenez, Chris Elliott, Corey Fogelmanis, DJ Qualls, Elvis Nolasco, Jackson Kelly, Matthew Cardarople, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Sasha Mason, Ted Ferguson, Wyatt Lindner
Director: Justin Harding
With the source material being a Pulitzer winning novel, All The Light We Cannot See had high expectations. Plenty of what made the novel great was its straightforward prose, as well as its back-and-forth timeline, where each scene is arranged not by chronological order, but by the thematic logic that informs the characters’ actions. The new Netflix adaptation keeps the novel’s structure, however, the novel’s poetry is lost as the metaphors are shortened to its most cliché versions, and the showrunners couldn’t trust that the viewers would acknowledge the novel’s subtleties. While the cast does what it can, the show just feels like a missed opportunity to tell an excellent story.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Aria Mia Loberti, Hugh Laurie, Lars Eidinger, Louis Hofmann, Mark Ruffalo
With the tried-and-tested music and lyrics of Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, this film adaptation of the Color Purple musical was practically guaranteed to have power in its key moments. And with a cast that includes tremendous vocalists like Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks (both of whom had previously played their respective characters on stage), the film's most important sections possess an energy and soul that allow its protagonist to dream of something beyond her dire personal circumstances. However, after a while, this movie begins to feel like it's only ever made up of isolated scenes without the proper build-up nor the right pacing to earn the movement from one episodic moment to the next. Even with the dynamite chemistry between cast and score, the film's odd staging and blocking constantly get in the way of what should be something incredibly emotional.
Genre: Drama, Music
Actor: Aba Arthur, Adetinpo Thomas, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Charles Green, Chase Steven Anderson, Ciara, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, Danielle Brooks, David Alan Grier, David Vaughn, Deon Cole, Elizabeth Marvel, Emana Rachelle, Fantasia Barrino, H.E.R., Halle Bailey, Jamaal Avery Jr., Jeffrey Marcus, John L. Adams, Jon Batiste, L. Warren Young, Louis Gossett Jr., MaCai Arrington Griffin, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, Raphael Thomas, Stephen Hill, Tamela Mann, Taraji P. Henson, Terrence J. Smith, Tiffany Elle Burgess, Whoopi Goldberg
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Susie Searches begins intriguingly for two reasons: first, there’s the strange disappearance of popular college student Jesse Wilcox (Alex Wolff), and then there’s the fact that that mystery is solved in the film's first 20-ish minutes. With over an hour left of its runtime at this point, Susie Searches seems to suggest Jesse’s disappearance was only a red herring, and that we’re in for something juicier now.
Alas, the rest of the movie — which stars Kiersey Clemons as the titular socially awkward student sleuth who finds Jesse — never lives up to this promise. An encouraging cast list is let down by thin characters; this isn’t true just for the supporting parts played by Rachel Sennott, Jim Gaffigan, Ken Marino, Dolly Wells, and Wolff, but, far more detrimentally to the film, Susie herself. Her motivations are complicated by more than just a desire for the truth, but, despite Clemons’ best efforts, this not-quite Nancy Drew is never all that psychologically compelling or believable. In a film that hinges on big twists revolving around its protagonist, that’s a fatal flaw, because we’re only ever half-invested. Though it may play better with younger audiences, anyone else will likely find its promising cast to be the biggest red herring of all.
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Thriller
Actor: Aaron Costa Ganis, Alex Moffat, Alex Wolff, Ana Cruz Kayne, Ana Kayne, Chris Sheffield, David Walton, Dolly Wells, Ellie Reine, Geoffrey Owens, Isaac Powell, Jammie Patton, Jared Gilman, Jim Gaffigan, Juliette Goglia, Kat Foster, Ken Marino, Kiersey Clemons, Mellanie Hubert, Neal Bledsoe, Rachel Sennott
Director: Sophie Kargman
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction
Actor: Amanda Tavarez, Ayo Edebiri, Carlos Jacott, Chris Witaske, Diana Garle, Eddie Cahill, Hannah Pearl Utt, Harris Yulin, James Healy Jr., Jennifer Bassey, Maddison Bullock, Mary-Louise Parker, Mike Benitez, Rick Moose, Roberto Escobar, Steven Maier
Director: Bernardo Britto
Genre: Horror
Actor: Adam Mucci, Alex Alomar Akpobome, Alex Morf, Ayden Gavin, Elvis Nolasco, Jermaine Rivers, Jerrika Hinton, Kristolyn Lloyd
Director: Brandon Espy
As far as romance movies go, Dating Santa is surprisingly free of the usual artificial conflicts that plague the genre. The central couple meet early on and stay in close proximity to each other throughout—meaning they get to skip past the cliche of the courtship phase and converse maturely as adults about turning a new leaf relatively later in life. What ends up straining the film's story, unfortunately, is the much more lighthearted storyline about trying to convince a little girl that this new man in her mother's life is Santa. It's a cute idea that just gets too hard to sustain over time, especially since the daughter proves herself intelligent and perceptive, but still somehow willing to believe so many obvious deceptions.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Ana Serradilla, David Chocarro, Olivia Duflos
Director: Jose Sierra
Just in time for Halloween, Netflix has shelled out for a new, high production value doc about demonic possession. It has all the right ingredients: a true story (that of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, also known as the "Devil Made Me Do It" case of 1981), some convincing re-enactments, the air of exclusivity (use of real archives), but it still feels like a let-down to the true horror buffs who'd tune in expecting something fresh. After all, Netflix has been in the game for a while and it's not a good look to settle for something as mediocre. For The Devil on Trial, it seems like the execs have just upped the budget on a regular cable-TV-haunted-house after hours special and then patted themselves on the back. Even the interviews featured are full of cliches, which strips down the horrifying potential of authenticity.
Genre: Documentary
Actor: Arne Cheyenne Johnson, Lorraine Warren, Tony Spera, Victor Serfaty
Director: Chris Holt
Sweetwater has a precious story in its hands, along with a sparkling cast of tried-and-true actors and a generous budget that allows them to go all in with the movie’s 1950s setting. But the parts are far greater than the sum here, because all together, Sweetwater is a mess. It promises to be a biopic about Clifton but fractures into many other things. During its duller parts, it’s a white savior story about basketball owners, and during its more vibrant parts, it’s a snapshot of the Harlem Globetrotters during their humble beginnings. The basketball matches themselves are playful and exciting to watch, but for every game, there is an overdramatic scene that cranks up the notch on sappy music and predictable dialogues. Often, it also feels like director Martin Guigui went to the Green Book School of Anti-prejudice, given his extremely elementary portrayal of racism and his preference for the white characters over the Black characters. Sweetwater isn’t watchable, but it’s a shame that the star of the film had to share the spotlight with less interesting personalities.
Genre: Drama, History
Actor: Ashani Roberts, Billy Malone, Ca'Ron Jaden Coleman, Cary Elwes, Dahlia Waingort, Delijah McAlpin, Eric Etebari, Eric Roberts, Ernest Harden Jr., Everett Osborne, Gary Clark Jr., Jason Sklar, Jeremy Piven, Jim Caviezel, Jim Meskimen, Kevin Pollak, Mike Starr, Paul Hipp, Preston Galli, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Ri'chard, Wayne Federman
Director: Martin Guigui
Paraphrasing their words, the show is about taking the K-pop method of creating stars and trying to replicate it outside of Korea to create a “sensational, iconic, global girl group.” And there are good things about it in the early going. For one, the evaluators sound levelheaded, which might seem like the bare minimum, but you know how these things really go. The documentary-esque aspects are nice enough when the show is grounded in its audition/training purpose and in getting to know our contestants. But I could do without a survival competition style reality show again, especially ones that seem to just use the format for the sake of using it, a.k.a., "entertainment."
Genre: Documentary
Actor: Daniela Avanzini, Lara Rajagopalan, Manon Bannerman, Megan Skiendiel, Sophia Laforteza
Director: Nadia Hallgren
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Arica Himmel, Bonnie Mbuli, Dax Rey, Giancarlo Esposito, Ivan Mbakop, Paula Malcomson, Skeet Ulrich, Zackary Momoh
If you don’t like cheesy Koreanovelas to begin with, there’s no real reason to seek this out. You’re getting an over the top telenovela from the performances, to the wishing on a star and playful coincidences and all the forced meet-cutes. Lee Mi-jin (Jung Eun-ji) is sympathetic in her unenviable position receiving conditional kindness from her parents. And of course, the premise itself is just ridiculous enough to maybe stick around for. But what should be a simple story gets out of hand quickly, with an absolutely wack 60+ minute runtime per episode. While it can be a decent comfort show for the giggles, there’s no cheese you can get here that you can’t get anywhere else for better if you kept looking.
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Baek Seo Hoo, Choi Jin-hyuk, Jeong Seok-yong, Jung Eun-ji, Jung Young-ju, Kim Ah-young, Lee Jung-eun, Yoon Byung-hee
Director: Lee Hyung-min
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Actor: Brady Gentry, David Koechner, Joe Chrest, Jordan Doww, Marissa Reyes, Melanie Booth, Pablo Castelblanco, Pete Zias, Rachel Walters, Robyn Lively, Sibyl Gregory Wulf, Tatiana Harman
Director: Colby Holt, Sam Probst
With political intrigue, deceit, and romance, Captivating the King has all the elements we’re familiar with in Korean sageuk romances. It’s easy to appreciate the impeccable production design and every time Jo Jung-suk pulls at the heartstrings through the Grand Prince Jinhan’s tears, but the series starts incredibly slowly. Apparently, before Hee-soo can captivate said king, the first few episodes must delve into every single detail that made the prince into a king. This does help set up the political landscape Yi In has to operate in, but it keeps its viewers waiting too long for the undercover love story implied by the premise.
Genre: Drama, War & Politics
Actor: Cho Jung-seok, Cho Seong-ha, Lee Sin-young, Park Ye-yeong, Shin Se-kyung
Director: Cho Nam-guk
The most obvious cultural reference point for Barracuda Queens is The Bling Ring: both tell the based-on-real-life stories of a group of (mostly) wealthy young women who rob rich people’s houses. But where Sofia Coppola’s movie was rooted in a very specific era and explored the fascinating generational and psychological quirks that drove its disaffected teen burglars to do what they did, this Swedish Netflix series, at least in the first four episodes viewed for this review, makes only a half-hearted effort to evoke its ‘90s setting and takes a much soapier, less forensic approach to its story.
Here, the young women’s gateway into crime is the sky-high bill they rack up after a debauched weekend away. In need of cash to pay it off quickly, they convince themselves that they’re only robbing their wealthy neighbors to solve that problem, but other motivations soon arise. The women — who are mostly university-age, but seem closer to the protagonists of a teen drama — eventually begin to target people they have petty grievances with (like a love interest who spurns the ringleader after a one-night stand) as well as those who have wronged them more seriously (including a rapist, who gets off bizarrely lightly). The adrenaline rush of it all proves addictive for the gang, too. What’s more, for Mia (Tea Stjärne), the only member of the group not from a wealthy background, there’s also a Robin Hood-ish appeal to the burglaries, although this aspect regrettably takes something of a backseat to the girls’ escapades in the show.
Between the gang’s crime spree and their unbelievably dysfunctional home lives, there’s enough broad drama here to keep Netflix’s autoplay function in good use. Even if it doesn’t provide keen insight, sharp nuance, or a remotely realistic plot, the show does go beyond a surface-level approach by exploring something of the girls’ inner lives, the class dynamics of their friendship group, and the shallowness of their parents’ milieu. At three hours total — and with an opening scene that teases a dramatic rise-and-fall story ahead — it all makes for a very bingeable, if ultimately forgettable, watch.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Alva Bratt, Carsten Bjornlund, Izabella Scorupco, Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Max Ulveson, Sandra Strandberg Zubovic, Sarah Gustafsson, Tea Stjärne, Tindra Monsen