The 9 Best New Titles Coming to Netflix This Month
It would appear that we're at a tipping point for the streaming service: this month, for the first time, there are nearly as many good new Netflix Originals (and new seasons of existing ones) as there are standout arrivals of other shows and movies. The steady drip of Netflix's in-house material has officially turned into a gusher---but between that flood and the usual new crop of acquisitions, we've sifted through to find the best use of your time this coming month.
Sixteen Candles (1984)
Let's get it out of the way up front: in exchange student Long Duk Dong, this John Hughes coming-of-age comedy features one of the worst Asian caricatures of the 1980s. (And in a decade that gave us The Golden Child, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Karate Kid, that's saying something.) That notable blemish aside, though, the first true Brat Pack movie stars Molly Ringwald—along with fellow Hughes mainstays Anthony Michael Hall and John Cusack—in a tale of high-school angst just about everyone can relate to.
Bring It On (2000)
Applying the Bad News Bears formula to nerdier pursuits has been a thing for a while now—but before Pitch Perfect, before Drumline, before even Dodgeball, there was this movie about a cheerleading squad of also-rans. Early performances from Eliza Dushku and Gabrielle Union helped buoy the feature debut of director Peyton Reed, who we now know as the guy who made Ant-Man but back then was just beginning to show his [puts on sunglasses] rah talent.
The Nutty Professor (1996)
Eddie Murphy has always been comfortable playing multiple roles in a single movie, but this update of the Jerry Lewis 1963 cult classic saw him outdo himself—six times over. Not only does his bumbling protagonist Sherman Klump transform into smooth-talker Buddy Love, but Murphy plays four other members of the Klump family, making for dinner-table scenes that are as technically astonishing as they are fart-obsessed.
To Catch a Thief (1955)
While Cary Grant's banter with Grace Kelly never crackles quite as much as it did with Katherine Hepburn (or Audrey Hepburn, for that matter) their chemistry still adds texture to one of Alfred Hitchcock's more madcap movies. A retired cat burglar and a "restless, thrill-hunting American heiress" in the French Riviera—what's not to like?
The Replacements (2000)
So there's a football strike, see, and Gene Hackman has to recruit a bunch of washed-up players in order to...you know what? It doesn't matter. What does matter is that it's a solid, if unremarkable, sports comedy in the vein of Major League and *Wildcats. *with Keanu Reeves as the not-quite-inspirational quarterback and a bunch of funny people as everyone else.
Grace and Frankie (Season 2)
Last year's debut season was one of the great surprises of Netflix's original programming, and the show's return finds Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin back in Odd Couple form as friends-turned-roommates-after-their-husbands-fell-in-love Grace and Frankie. Weed smoking, casual sex, and vibrator jokes—it's all the fun of a teen sex farce, just two generations up the family tree.
Chelsea
In Chelsea Handler's second original series for the streaming service, she eschews the roving-reporter treatment for more a roving-talk-show-host treatment. She'll be taping talk shows in front of a live studio audience in various nations around the world, and those live-taped episodes—three of them a week—will start streaming about 12 hours later. We'd tell you more, but no one's seen anything yet.
Lady Dynamite
Maria Bamford fans will love this autobiographical series that tells the story of her mental breakdown and subsequent creative evolution. If to you she's just "that woman from the Target ads," then maybe Ana Gasteyer, Andy Daly, Sarah Silverman, Bridget Everette, and Jason Mantzoukas will draw you in. Don't worry, Raffi will make everything better.
Bloodline (Season 2)
The family-dysfunction drama is back—so if slowly unfolding dark tales of trauma and redemption are your thing, you are in *luck. *And if not, hey, Coach Taylor is here. And Ben Mendelsohn killed it last year, so there's that too.
