This year, Halloween is just a warm-up for the real fear coming when the polls open on Nov. 8. Luckily, the new offerings on Netflix offer some visions of America at its best, from Richard Linklater and John Hughes’ nostalgia for good times in the hallowed halls of high school to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone’s visions of the American West to glimpses of bizarre pockets of America in Quiz Show and Jesus Camp. On TV, the August doldrums are fully over—Pitch! Atlanta! Easy!—but when it comes to your movie fix, Netflix has got your back. Settle in, turn off Twitter, and escape the political performances of 2016 by tuning in to an America that’s ready for a good time.
Remember when the fun was old-fashioned—when the freshmen were egged, the keggers were wild, and the Aerosmith was always on? Let Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, and Jason London transport you to May 28, 1976, the glorious last day of school at Lee High School in Austin, Texas. Alright, alright, alright.
Timothy Treadwell liked bears. He really, really liked bears. He spent his life with them, chronicling their interactions through video footage—until a grizzly killed and ate Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, in 2003 (more like grisly bear, are we right?). Much of that original footage made it into Werner Herzog’s documentary about Treadwell’s life, death, and ursine analysis.
The slow draw of a pistol. Bronson’s harmonica. The whistle of the railroads. Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western—a tale of vengeance, cold-blooded killers, and a desperate fight for land and water, with a score that cemented Ennio Morricone’s fame—is as epic a vision of America as ever there was.
There’s a conspiracy afoot in the hallowed halls of the National Broadcasting Company, and Rob Morrow is determined to figure it out. With Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro—the literary WASP vs. the guy from Queens—duking it out to be champion of the rigged trivia show Twenty-One, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show is a suspenseful delight, and full of more 1950s-era facts than you’ll ever need.
The Gulf War may be over, but three soldiers aren’t going home until they can do it rich, as George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube set out to steal gold from Saddam Hussein. This is a great heist movie, and it’s also an excellent political satire turn from David O. Russell.
It’s retribution time in Big Whiskey, Wyoming. After two emasculated cowboys disfigure a prostitute, three men go after the $1,000 reward: Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman, and Clint Eastwood, an aging outlaw who comes out of his retirement as a pig farmer to take on one last job. When it comes to rewatching this glorious revisionist Western, as Eastwood says, “We all have it comin’, kid.”
In Dheepan, director Jacques Audiard crafts a tightly wound thriller set in the housing projects of Paris. Sivadhasan, the protagonist, is a former Tamil Tiger who fled civil war in Sri Lanka for France—as is Antonythasan Jesuthasan, the actor who plays him. It’s dark and tense and easily worth two hours of your Netflix time. (It also won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2015.)
Ryan Murphy’s sprawling American Horror Story series stands as a macabre testament to what anthology horror television can be. Hotel may lack mainstays Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy, but for the fifth season, the still-exceptional ensemble cast—including Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Denis O’Hare—inhabit the bizarre Hotel Cortez, owned and operated by a vampiric countess played with camp and aplomb by Lady Gaga.
The CW’s Arrow is sinister, brooding and a big victory for DC, and Season 4 is no different. This time around, the Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) continues to defend his beloved Starling City from the enemies that threaten it, from within and without. Settle in and get ready for more dark superhero melodrama.
Welcome to the Kids On Fire School of Ministry, where it’s up to our young citizens to “take back America for Christ.” In their documentary, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing delve into the evangelical Christian community in America, as Pastor Fischer trains her young charges in the army of God as a counterpoint to radical Islamic madrasas. It’s weird and sobering and a remarkably even-handed look at religion in America.
