(Photography by Elevation Pictures)

BlackBerry tells the story of Canadian tech founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, an opposites attract duo who turned a tech innovation (the world’s first smartphone) into a billion-dollar phenomenon—and then watched it flame out in equally spectacular fashion. The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last month, and it’s already being hailed as Canada’s answer to The Social Network, a comparison director Matt Johnson takes as a compliment (though he believes the Canadian movie industry needs to stop trying to imitate our southern neighbours). BlackBerry is Johnson’s third feature film—a significant departure from earlier indie fare, but also a deeply personal project. Here he talks about why Canadian filmmakers should channel their inner Balsillie and life lessons from one of his cinematic north stars: Dolly Parton.

As a director, you’re known for experimental indie work, but BlackBerry is more of a classic biopic. Why was this iconic Canadian tech story the right project for you?

I think precisely because of what you’re saying. On its face, the BlackBerry story seems a little dry. People go, “Why would I ever watch a movie about a dead cellphone that I never cared about when it existed?” That skepticism became a bridge toward my more inaccessible style of filmmaking. I’ve always struggled trying to make films for a larger audience because my work is so personal. This film is also ridiculously personal, but that part of it is combined with this broader, real-world story.

You say your style is inaccessible, but BlackBerry doesn’t feel that way.

My previous films are these slightly arcane, hardcore fake documentaries where the audience has to buy into the format to enjoy it. The intention with BlackBerry is to make it seem like you’re in the room with these guys, which is hard to approximate with more traditional camerawork. In some ways, it’s the anti-Spielberg or anti-Fincher or anti-Kubrick approach, where it seems like it’s happening by chance and the footage has been discovered. I like making films that almost disguise themselves as being really low budget, really low effort.

I’m reminded of that Dolly Parton quote: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

That quote has been a central philosophy for me since I was 16 years old. Dolly is a genius, and you can see her influence in artists who were inspired by her, going as far as Kurt Cobain, Andy Warhol, where the brilliance just seems like a fluke but then you scratch the surface a bit, and you realize, “Oh my God…”

You were in your 20s when BlackBerry was in its heyday. Did you own one?

Before we started shooting, I had never even touched a BlackBerry. I did have a good friend who always used to make jokes about BlackBerry’s messaging service that I never really understood. Not to say I was a total luddite, but that entire generation of tech totally missed me.

So what do you mean when you say the story is very personal?

When I was first reading about the story of BlackBerry, what struck me was how much their journey was like my experience making my first film. I also had some success and then watched all of my personal relationships change overnight. I wrote the script with my producing partner, Matt Miller. We used a book called Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, written by two Canadian journalists, as our backbone, which hinted at the tenser aspects of the relationship.

To fill in the details, we spoke to some of the young engineers who worked for the company in the early days—one guy had kept journals and photographs from that time, which was amazing. Then Matt and I transposed many of our own experiences on top of the BlackBerry story. Ultimately, we wanted to make a movie that was about work, what it means to go to work, the meaning you get from it, the justification for working all night on projects that may or may not deliver anything, that lust for power, the need to create things solely to enlarge your status. These are all the dark sides of my own personality dancing together on screen. When you see Mike, Jim and co-founder Doug Fregin, you’re essentially watching me and my life split into three people.

I can see you in Mike, the exacting creative genius, and Doug, the loyal, lovable manchild. But what about Jim Balsillie?

I’ll put it this way: if you were to ask any of my closest friends which of the three was the most like me, they’d all say Jim. In my opinion, Jim Balsillie is portrayed in this movie as being very kind. At no point is he sadistic. Deep down, all he wants is to be the best. Of course, he’s totally misguided. Without a Mike or a Doug, the Jim personality type is heartless. I remember one actor described Jim as a character who consumes without tasting, which I thought was really good. He wants to win only for the sake of winning, so when I say I’m like him, that’s only a piece of me. The Mike in me and the Doug in me also want to win for different reasons.

Director Matt Johnson

In the movie, Jim has one mode of communication: yelling. I can’t imagine that’s you on set.

No, no. I’ve never yelled at anyone in my life. It’s more Jim’s attitude: if it’s going to benefit their company, anything is justified. That’s certainly how I feel as a filmmaker, which is not very Canadian. One of Jim’s central personality traits is that he almost has an Americanness to him.

What means are justified by this movie?

I will give you an example from my last movie, Operation Avalanche, which was supposed to be set in NASA in the 1960s. We couldn’t recreate it because we didn’t have enough money, so we posed as film students making a documentary. We flew to NASA in Texas, shot our whole movie illegally and then released it. We did about 100 versions of that on BlackBerry. When you’re watching the characters drive into the offices and park in the parking lot, that’s really where it all happened.

You cast Jay Baruchel, who most audiences know as a lovable stoner, as Mike Lazaridis. Was that an obvious call?

Jay was an early partner on the film. I knew him because my editor, Curt Lobb, also edited his feature, Random Acts of Violence, so we met as friends. Very quickly, I saw that the real Jay was quite different from the one I had seen in movies. He’s a perfectionist in the best way. He has really high standards, and he seemed to understand the at-all-costs, this-must-be-right attitude that Mike Lazaridis had.

MORE: Q&A: BlackBerry’s Jay Baruchel loves movies, hockey, weed and his now-obsolete phone

BlackBerry premiered to amazing reviews at the Berlin Film Festival in February. People are already calling it Canada’s version of The Social Network. Is that a compliment?

Absolutely, I see that as a huge compliment. The Social Network was revolutionary. It came out in 2010, and people are still talking about it. The comparisons were inevitable, and we leaned into that with the script. I tried to steal as much of that Sorkin style as we could.

You wore a Jays T-shirt to the BlackBerry press event in Berlin. Was that on purpose or did they lose your luggage?

No, no, that’s one of my favourite shirts. I’m very proud to be Canadian—I would say stupidly so. When I was growing up, my dad said, “This is the greatest country in the world. You’re lucky to be here.” I still believe that. I will say that Canada is a joke as a filmmaking country. When people find out BlackBerry is Canadian, they’re shocked, in the same way that they’re shocked that BlackBerry is a Canadian product. There’s a good reason for that. Part of it is that we’re extremely modest—we’re not like Jim Balsillie.

Best advice for aspiring Canadian filmmakers?

I would encourage people to find their own style—especially a visual style—rather than trying to copy the Americans. When that happens, we end up with this sort of ersatz, uncanny valley version of American-style filmmaking, which needs budgets four, five, six times of what we’re dealing with. There’s a saying amongst filmmakers that something seems “Canadian” when there’s just something slightly wrong, like looking at a clone of your mother.

Given the early buzz, what are your hopes for the next few months?

I really have no idea. For me, it still feels like a very small movie about me and my friends, but I guess the Jim Balsillie in me is hoping it plays everywhere.

That Jim Balsillie is already walking the red carpet at the Oscars in 2024!

Right, and then the Canadian in me is saying, “Well, don’t get your hopes up.”

The post BlackBerry director Matt Johnson on creating the buzziest new film in Canadian cinema appeared first on Macleans.ca.

(Photography by Erin Leydon)

Jay Baruchel is everywhere: in slashers, sex farces and sports movies; opposite mythical lizards in Disney’s How to Train Your Dragon franchise; and he’s worked with directors as varied as David Cronenberg, Judd Apatow and even himself. If you’re wondering how an Ottawa-born, Montreal-raised kid with a Gumby body and a voice like a twisted balloon has been working steadily since 1995 (he’s now 40 and busier than ever), the answer is simple: Jay Baruchel loves movies—loves them.

Baruchel loved his BlackBerry, too. He hung on to it until 2019. It makes sense, then, that his next movie is, well, BlackBerry. The film, out this month, chronicles the rise and fall of Research in Motion, the Waterloo moonshot whose founders had the zany idea to merge computers with cellphones. Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, the engineering student turned RIM co-founder who watched his dreams get gobbled up by the iPhone, but not before they made him a billionaire. Playing the more level-headed partner gives Baruchel a chance to showcase his dramatic chops. It also demonstrates why, unlike the now-obsolete gadget, his success continues.

It’s rare for someone who’s made it in Hollywood to be as proudly Canadian as you.

It’s a function of Canadianness to second guess ourselves, but I was raised to believe this is the best country in the world, warts and all. Part of it is that my maternal granddad was a career soldier, and I have cousins and uncles who are, too. I hope that, one day, it’s not so rare for Canadians who love movies to make them here.

What interested you most about the BlackBerry story?

It’s a definitively Canadian story, something we can claim. It’s also a road map to how we got to this—let’s be honest—loathsome modern world we live in. It’s Canadian in another way, too, in that a lot of people don’t realize BlackBerry is Canadian.

Have you heard from any of the real-life RIM figures?

Not yet, even though we shot in Waterloo, where it all happened. I’m interested to see what those guys think—RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie in particular, given his temperament.

. . . which, in the film, is fractious. Yours, however, is collaborative. You act, write screenplays and direct. When did you first have artistic ambitions?

I don’t remember not having them. My first word was a sentence, a slogan from a 1982 commercial: “Come on, Canada! Meet you at the Bay!” When I was seven, my mom filmed me saying, “I want to write stories that scare Stephen King out of his underwear.” At nine, I realized: No, I want to make movies. So, from 1991 on, that’s been my defining ambition. That, and being as good a person as I can be.

Were your parents artistic?

They were huge movie and TV nerds. We didn’t have a ton of money, so we didn’t go to the cinema a lot. But every weekend, my dad would rent two movies. If they were still in the VCR the next morning, I was allowed to watch them. If they were back in the case, my parents had deemed them too racy. And when I watched something with them, it was Film 101. They paused Monty Python and the Holy Grail 100 times to explain to me why what had just happened was funny.

I read somewhere that your father worked as an antiques dealer.

Antiques dealer, hah! That’s the simplest way to describe him. In the 1970s, he was a drug dealer who went to prison. When he got out, he sold antiques as his legit, going-straight job.

Whoa. Was he a drug dealer before or after you were born?

They overlapped.

How did that affect you?

In a profound way. Dad was a hard dude. He lived to get into fist fights, and he always had a buzz on. Most people had no idea. I can’t say, “I am this specific way because of that.” I just know you take that shit with you.

Did that feel scary?

The opposite: safe as hell. It was only after my parents divorced—and Dad was out of the house—that I felt fear for the first time. When I hit 14 or 15, he became a source of embarrassment. But now, I’m super-proud that I have some of Dad in me. If you have the gawky mannerisms I do—and if, like me, you’re a keener who’s always polite—people mistake those things for weakness. I channel my dad in those moments.

Which moments?

Every audition, and every time someone tried to muscle me. My father would’ve burned the whole city down before he let anybody fuck with me.

You’ve played your share of awkward sidekicks, as in Almost Famous and Knocked Up. How did you avoid being pigeonholed?

I’m reverent of the craft, but I’d be lying if I said I think about acting all the time. I think about stories I want to tell, and scenes I want to direct.

Did directing feel like you thought it would?

I was more assured than I thought I would be. As an actor, I’ve suffered far too many directors who were mushing through fog. I never wanted anyone on my set to not know what the hell we were doing.

What’s your director superpower?

I have a vibe: I want filming to feel as close to a backyard game of cops and robbers as possible—like when you were a kid, making up stories with your friends, fully committed. Filmmaking is the greatest job in the world; it should never feel miserable. You know your favourite movie moments? We’re in the business of creating them. What a cool thing.

Clint Eastwood directed you (playing a wannabe boxer) in Million Dollar Baby. What was that like?

I was scared shitless. Eastwood is the only guy I’ve worked with who my granddad would have been remotely impressed by. At that time, I had a masochistic approach to acting. I had to suffer to be good. I’d ask Clint after every take, “Was that all right?” and he’d say, “It was fine.” In my head, I’d hear, “He hates me!”

Well, did he?

Morgan Freeman saw me freaking out and said, “If he doesn’t say anything, it means he likes it.” I can’t overstate what an epiphany that was. As an actor, you’re always trying to get quote-unquote there. Well, there doesn’t actually exist. From that point on, I could show up on set and not torture myself.

Who else taught you something important?

Cameron Crowe on the set of Almost Famous, the first movie I made in the States. He took time out of his day to play frisbee with me in the parking lot. I was an awkward grade 11 kid from Montreal, and he’d talk to me about Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. Now, he’s like an uncle I hear from every year or two. 

Let’s talk about screenwriting. Does that come easily to you?

I’m spoiled because the first thing I got paid to write—Goon—was a thing everyone loved. It just flowed. Evan Goldberg and I came up with the initial idea in about 10 minutes, on a phone call. I wrote the first pass in two weeks. And it was number one in English Canada, nominated for awards. So, in that one case, screenwriting felt exactly how I hoped it would.

We know from Goon that you’re a hockey fanatic. Tell me everything you love about it in one minute.

It’s the most beautiful and most brutal game in the world. You’ve got huge guys moving at very high speeds, yet it all comes down to millimetre shifts in the wrist. And the gap between observation, decision and execution is a second. It’s like watching a comic book come to life.

Alright, you’ve earned another minute.

I’m going to get super hokey: it’s ours. Hockey is one area where Canadians are sure-footed and definitively proud of who we are. We know this is our gift to the world. It’s an art form we’ve created and exported across the world. We’re so scared of becoming anything close to American in terms of ambition or lauding ourselves—except in hockey.

You also host Highly Legal (a podcast about marijuana) and We’re All Gonna Die, (Even Jay Baruchel), a docuseries about existential threats like climate change. Are these projects opportunities to expand your reach?

I’m in my Michael Palin travel-doc era. If, because I swore a bunch in Goon, or had a semen stain on my pants in She’s Out of My League, I can drive audiences toward stuff I care about, that’s a cool thing.

So legalized marijuana is a subject that’s dear to your heart?

Whatever gave you that impression? Yes. I’m normally a rule follower. In my younger days, I found myself consorting with characters I’d never have had anything to do with if I didn’t have to buy weed from them. So, when the clock struck 12:01 on October 17, 2018, I went onto the Ontario Cannabis Store’s website. By 12:02, I was checking out.

Let’s finish with a big question. What have you learned about people or yourself from all those films?

Not much is sacred in the 21st century. Sincere love between people—romantic, familial, platonic—is one sacred thing. The only other, in my heart of hearts, is the relationship between artist and audience. All I want is to fall head over heels in love with the book I’m reading, the movie I’m watching or the song I’m listening to. I want to think I’ve learned everything I can, then have something blow my head wide open. If I can create half of that experience for someone else, that’s a life worth living. I don’t hate-watch or hate-read. What a silly waste of time.

The post Q&A: BlackBerry’s Jay Baruchel loves movies, weed and his now-obsolete phone appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Madison Tevlin stars in the new film ‘Champions’ (Photo courtesy Tevlin)

You may remember Madison Tevlin as the 13-year-old from Toronto who went viral with her heartfelt rendition of John Legend’s “All of Me” back in 2015. Since then, Tevlin has landed a series of entertainment gigs (including her own talk show on CBC) and become a public advocate for people with Down syndrome. And this month, she stars in her first feature film, Champions, a feel-good sports comedy about a team of athletes with intellectual disabilities, and their coach, played by Woody Harrelson. “It’s been crazy and overwhelming,” Tevlin says. Here, the aspiring actress shares her dream co-star and the teacher who changed the trajectory of her career. 

Champions is officially in theatres. What have the last couple of weeks been like? 

They’ve been crazy and overwhelming. Since the movie came out, it’s just been boom, boom, boom: parties, press, red carpet, cameras flashing. The premiere was at a theatre in Lincoln Square in New York City. It was a really good time, and a lot of us hadn’t seen each other since filming the movie in 2021. The after-party was under a tent at a lounge in Columbus Circle. I drank Shirley Temples all night, and the dance floor was non-stop. We danced to “Tubthumping,” which is one of the big songs in the movie, and I requested “Shout” from the movie Animal House, which is one of my all-time favourites. 

Who were you wearing?

My mom was my stylist for the night. I love colour, but she loves all black. We decided on a black blazer but then added glittery sequin detail on the sleeves. Then my mom had the idea to do a big spray-paint-style basketball on the back because Champions is a basketball movie.

RELATED: ‘Women Talking’ star Shayla Brown wants a more inclusive Hollywood

What does your mom think of all of your success?

She is a proud mama—I really love her. She was very supportive when the chance to be in a movie came around. 

How did that happen? Did you audition?

They actually reached out to me through Instagram and asked me to send a tape. At the time, I didn’t think I wanted to do it. I just wanted to be a normal kid and hang out with my friends at school. My mom thought it was a good opportunity, and then one of my teachers was very supportive and confident that I could do it. I’m glad I listened. After doing this movie, I know what I want to do as a career. 

Are you a read-the-reviews kind of person? I ask because critics are raving about your performance as Cosentino.

I don’t really read reviews, but a lot of people have been telling me about them. I played the only girl player on the team, who’s brought in as a secret weapon, and the role felt like it was made for me. She’s a badass chick who puts everybody in their place. She’s also the only female member of the team, so it was fun to be surrounded by all the boys. My favourite scene was where I gave Johnny, another player, a pep talk in the locker room. I get to swear in that scene, which I loved.  

READ: “I was living this double life: law student by day and Survivor contestant by night”

Your co-star is Woody Harrelson. Were you intimidated to work opposite such a big star? 

He was the best to work with. I know Woody’s a big deal with Cheers and everything, but I just treat him like an actor and a normal person. He was really great about giving me pointers on how to become a better actor, and I loved that many of my character’s best lines were delivered at him. My favourite line from the movie was when I said, “You’re no McConaughey,” when asking about his character’s dating life. We still laugh about it when we see each other.

This is not your first brush with celebrity. What can you tell me about becoming a global viral sensation at 13? 

It wasn’t something I was expecting. I’d been working with a vocal coach because I love to sing, and I wanted to get better. I made that video for my family and friends, but also for myself. I wanted to show that just because I have Down syndrome, that doesn’t mean I can’t belt out an amazing song. I posted it around World Down Syndrome Day, and I guess people started sharing it on YouTube. From there, I was asked to be on some Canadian shows like Breakfast Television, and then I was on Good Morning America and a billboard in Times Square. That year, I was also chosen as an ambassador to the Special Olympics, which were in L.A. And then more recently, I got a chance to host my own TV show on CBC—an interview series called Who Do You Think I Am? I interviewed interesting people who are used to being unfairly judged like Annemieke Struyke, who is a female firefighter with alopecia, and Juice Boxx, who is a drag queen. These are people who are used to pushing past stereotypes, which I can relate to. 

MORE: How this choreographer created the creepy monster movement in The Last of Us

Is there a particular stereotype you find most frustrating? 

Sometimes people talk down to me like I’m a little kid because they think I’m not going to understand them. That drives me crazy! They look at me and think they have me all figured out. But just like everyone else, I have lots of different sides. I always say my disability is the least interesting thing about me—I have a lot going on. I love meeting new people and asking questions to get to know them for who they are. I love having big conversations and going to parties. I’m usually the last one to leave. 

#Champions star Madison Tevlin shares her favorite moment from working on the new Focus Features film pic.twitter.com/F2Jcw8BEWh

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 28, 2023

You are also a bit of a TikTok celebrity with over 160,000 followers. What do you like about the platform?  

I’ve always loved TikTok for all the fashion content and dance videos. When I decided to join, I thought it could be a good place to share my message, by sharing my life and answering any questions people might have. For example, I posted a TikTok video about dating because people always ask me if people with Down syndrome can date. Of course they can! I already have my wedding planned. I love that I get messages all the time from people who say I inspire them to embrace their differences. It feels really good to know that there are people who look up to me, and then I also hear from the moms of people with intellectual disabilities, which means a lot. ​

What’s next for you career-wise?

I’ve shot a couple of projects since Champions. The Adventures of Tikki the Wonder Dog, which is an animated movie about diversity and acceptance, and Screams From the Tower, a comedy set in the ’90s that we shot in Chicago. Now I’m back in L.A. and living it up. I moved here after I graduated from high school at Loretto College. Home will always be Toronto, but I think L.A. is the best place for me to work and represent the Down syndrome community. 

After Woody Harrelson, who’s next on your celebrity wish list? 

There are so many. At the top of the list are Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. I met Drew when I went on The Drew Barrymore Show with some of my Champions castmates. It was so cool. She was really nice, and I was totally starstruck. 

The post Canadian YouTuber Madison Tevlin is starring opposite Woody Harrelson. Here’s how it happened appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The film Framing Agnes, a Sundance award winner that screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival this month, features a cast of trans actors who take real case files from a 1958 UCLA sociology study and dramatize them as a talk show, with the study’s head researcher, Harold Garfinkel, as its host. Here, director Chase Joynt and historian Jules Gill-Peterson discuss the art of finding community in telling trans stories.

The transcripts

Fate and a crowbar led to the recovery of the subjects’ transcripts in 2017. Researchers at UCLA had previously delved into Garfinkel’s private archives, but they passed over one drawer that was rusted shut. Armed with the recovered records, Joynt and his friend Kristen Schilt began making connections between the biographical details on the page and trans actors who could bring them to life. For example, the character of Henry—whose corresponding subject is a writer—is portrayed by poet and memoirist Max Wolf Valerio, channelling his lived experience of trans masculinity into the role. “We can’t bring these people back from the dead,” Gill-Peterson says. “But they live on in the way they tell us about what is difficult and joyous about the trans lives we live today.”

MORE: Is it ethical to have kids in the climate crisis?

The interview

While poring over Garfinkel’s research, Joynt found himself more interested in the questions asked of the participants than their answers. “I thought, ‘What would happen if we spent more time thinking about modes of interrogation rather than modes of disclosure?’ ” he says.

Framing’s stripped-down set, tiny table and uncomfortable wooden chairs all strategically convey a sense of alienation. But even in the hot seat, the subjects push back. Joynt describes one moment of onscreen resistance in which Garfinkel interviews Barbara (Jen Richards), telling her he spoke to another troubled and lonely subject. “I’m not troubled,” Barbara responds, defiant.

The recreation

To achieve a vintage look and feel, Joynt’s team focused on ’50s clothing, decor and colour palettes, rather than digging for evidence of what each individual subject looked like. “We have no images of any of our archival subjects,” Joynt says. “I am so happy they aren’t captured in that way.” He says that, in the past and present, invasive and objectifying research has done extraordinary harm to trans and gender-non-conforming people. “That lack of reference is a very small way these real people managed to escape one further clutch of power from the world of social science that they were ensnared in,” Gill-Peterson says.

RELATED: Zarqa Nawaz had a hit show, then a decade-long dry spell. She’s ready for her second act.

The scene

Drawing visual reference from the one-on-one format of The Mike Wallace Interview, Garfinkel (played by Joynt himself) sits across the table from Agnes (Zackary Drucker), a young trans woman seeking the gender-affirming care she needs. The film loops viewers into the development of each character, flipping back and forth between the re-enactments and living-room confessionals with the cast. The re-enactments show how trans people are put under the microscope, while the present-day reflections on trans politics, visibility and representation help viewers to unpack why this is the case. “It allows us to settle into those moments, then snap back out and say, ‘But why are we here?’ ” says Joynt.

This article appears in print in the May 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “The story of us, starring us.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post ‘Framing Agnes’ re-enacts the real lives of trans people in the 1950s appeared first on Macleans.ca.

I grew up in Montreal in the ’80s, without cable TV. My dad and I did everything we could to occasionally pick up the PBS channel from Vermont. This involved a small Brechtian production. We put piles of old Yellow Pages on the radiator to lower and raise the television to a spot where the reception was clearer. Then there was a whole to-do with the antennae, which often involved sticking it out the window and using masking tape to hold it in place. Sometimes it would find a lucky spot where it could sit for a week or two. No one dared touch it.

The rest of the time we watched CBC television. And those shows were part of who we were. The first time we saw Sarah Polley was in the TV series Road to Avonlea, which was based on characters and stories from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books. Polley was playing the lead role, Sara Stanley, a wise, orphaned child who is sent to live in a rural Prince Edward Island town. She is more erudite and sophisticated than the town’s people, and she ends up enrapturing them all. At the time, in the 1980s, there was nothing more wholesome than Montgomery. I read every book of hers I could get my hands on, convinced this was the life I should be living.

My father thought Sarah Polley was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. He couldn’t stop raving about her performance, about how adorable and intelligent she was. He would sit on the edge of the couch, eating leftover spaghetti and grinning at her proudly. He once said, “I think of her as my own little girl.” My father was always bizarrely charmed by child actors. They represented a sort of innocence that he loved.

Child actress Sarah Polley playing flute in her room. (Steve Liss/Getty Images)

In her new memoir, Run Towards the Danger, Polley puts the lie to the notion that she was experiencing anything like the wholesome L.M. Montgomery life I loved. In the book, she writes that she now sees much of Montgomery’s work as creating a nostalgia for a time that never existed. (In one of our conversations for this piece, Polley describes Montgomery as “problematic on so many levels” because of this nostalgia, but acknowledges the fierce grip of her romanticism on lonely children.)

MORE: With ‘Turning Red,’ Domee Shi wants to tell the story of your childhood

Back then, even when she was out of character, Sarah Polley seemed to be living in a kind of idyll. In interviews at the time, she appeared before the cameras, speaking like a polite, poised adult about her role on the show. Polley thinks of these interviews as performances. When I am surprised to hear this, she leaps forward and exclaims her distaste and shock that anyone would be foolish enough to regard the precociousness of child actors as anything other than a performance. “I find it a betrayal,” she says, “that it would be taken at face value, that people are buying it. It’s so insulting. If people cared, they would notice the way I’m behaving is for them and not me.”

Oh dear, I thought. Good thing my father isn’t around to hear that.

Sarah Polley and I were meant to meet in Toronto, but the Omicron variant nixed everyone in the country’s plans. We arranged to speak over Zoom. I sat in front of the computer 10 minutes ahead of time, just staring at my face in anticipation of the call. Then Polley popped on, also early. She has described herself as excessively punctual, and so am I. “I suppose you’ve heard from mutual friends how much I love your writing,” she said near the start of our call. “Yes,” I answered, although I had no idea. She was acting as though we had known each other for years. Then I realized she has been engaging with my thoughts for years. So how could she not feel like an old friend to me, since we had met in our fictions?

Of course, Polley feels like an old friend to many of us. She was the darling of Canadian film and television for decades and went on to become an acclaimed director. Her first film, Away From Her, was nominated for two Oscars, including best adapted screenplay. When it was announced last year that Polley was attached to the adaptation of the Miriam Toews novel Women Talking, a flurry of enthusiasm erupted on social media. There is continual interest in Polley as an artist and public figure.

Polley, however, has spent much of her career ducking from the expectations of the public and media. Along the way, she has grappled with questions about the things that were in her control and the things that weren’t. In her memoir, Polley has crafted six brilliant essays to capture the nuances of her own life story. There is a sense reading the book that Polley wants to get it right, to reclaim the narrative. She knows it is a delicate, tricky thing. We never truly understand our childhoods and who we were as children. But we can revisit those moments, trying to decide over and over again what they mean.

Each essay in the collection reveals something “behind the scenes” about Sarah Polley, something different from what she showed the audience. And each essay challenges what we think we know about her. The first piece centres around her role as Alice in the Stratford Festival’s 1994 production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. She presents a spectacularly vivid view of the backstage at a theatrical production. There is the seasoned Canadian stage actor Douglas Rain dressed as Humpty Dumpty, wearing a giant egg costume with tiny legs jutting out, yelling at other actors for laughing at him. There is a visceral account of the intense stage fright that left Polley in terror during the days leading up to a performance. There is a description of the immediacy of performing to an engaged and rapturous audience. There’s a lovely moment where she shows too much pathos for the White Knight and receives a note from stage management telling her to tone it down.

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The essay also examines Polley’s relationship with Lewis Carroll’s original text. Even at a young age, she understood the text as having problematic undercurrents. It is interesting to read what Polley thinks about Alice in Wonderland because there are so many links between her and the titular character. Like Polley, Alice engages with creatures who all treat her as an adult. They expect her to understand the world on her own. And, like Polley, Alice becomes curious and petulant and righteous as she looks for answers. One of the reasons Polley was so successful as a child actress was that she embodied the Victorian ideal of a child who is at once sophisticated, highly intelligent and delightfully naive.

The most peculiar aspect of Polley’s childhood was the consistent lack of parents. Her parents were both actors themselves, and her mother, Diane Polley, appeared on the Canadian TV drama Street Legal from 1987-90. When Polley was eight, her parents were overjoyed she won the part of Sally Salt in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. They were with her on the set of that film, but she was often on her own while filming Avonlea. “They were almost never there,” she says. “I usually had an on-site guardian.”

Polley takes a breather between acting jobs with mother; Diane; and dad; Michael; at home in North York. (Jim Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images)

Polley’s mother died when Polley was 11. In another essay, she writes that she was only given a week off from the set of Road to Avonlea after this loss, and that she was then asked to perform a scene in which her character describes how she felt about her own mother’s death. Following his wife’s death, Polley’s father was bereft and unable to clean up after himself; they discussed Ulysses and smoked together, but their relationship was more one of peers than parent-child. This lack of adult supervision led Polley to leave home at 14. She and her boyfriend lived in an apartment with no furniture and a mattress on the floor. She joined activist groups, read voraciously and kept working as an actor.

In the ’90s, she was one of the most recognizable actresses in Canadian film. If she was in a movie, it signalled that the movie was going to be cool. She was like the person who makes any party they show up at into a happening. She featured prominently in the brief but glorious period of the Toronto New Wave, in which filmmakers like Patricia Rozema, Atom Egoyan and Don McKellar made low-budget, edgy, absurdist portraits of Canadian identity.

There was something elusive about her. She would occasionally disappear from acting and devote herself to activism. In 1995, she helped organize a protest against Mike Harris’s Conservative government’s austerity measures. With her body crushed in a crowd, yelling out, she lost two teeth. She was trying to see where she fit in the world, to squeeze herself into ordinary human experience and have a meaningful impact on it.

Then she was offered Hollywood fame. She was recruited for the star-making role of a groupie, Penny Lane, in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. “There was a very clear sense with that part that whoever was going to play it was going to be a huge star. Nobody made any secret of that,” Polley tells me.

She went as far as being fitted for costumes, and then she dropped out. “I didn’t design this life,” she says. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t seek out to be a famous actress. This notion of some big career, of being famous—it wasn’t my agenda. I wanted to write. I wanted to go to Oxford. I was interested in politics. And it seemed like something I hadn’t even wanted for myself could potentially take over my entire existence.”

Although she was ambivalent about acting, Polley was increasingly focused on the goal of becoming a director herself. When she was 17 years old, she came across Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace. It was a reimagining of an actual 19th-century Canadian murderess, Grace Marks. Polley tells me she doesn’t remember a thing about that year other than reading Alias Grace.

So the 17-year-old Polley approached Margaret Atwood in her prime and asked for the film rights for Alias Grace. Atwood, sensibly, refused. It took 20 years for Polley to obtain the rights and turn the book into a Netflix series. In an interview in the New York Times, Polley said of Alias Grace, “The idea of having more than one identity, the face you show to the world and the face that’s deep within, captivated me.”

One of the most powerful essays in the memoir is called “The Woman Who Stayed Silent.” It is Polley’s reckoning with the fact that she did not come forward during the Jian Ghomeshi trial. It begins with a post Polley found on Twitter:

“Wonder why Sarah Polley never spoke out about being assaulted by Jian Ghomeshi. #HerToo. She was the woman who stayed silent. Ask her.”

The memoir is Polley’s answer. She lays out every detail of her encounter with Jian Ghomeshi. Once again she was incongruously young. She was 16 years old and Ghomeshi was in his late 20s. Polley describes how she went on a date with Ghomeshi and went back to his house. She says they had sex, and he put his hands around her neck. When she said she didn’t like it and she didn’t want him to do it again, he did it again. She says that her body was contorted in a painful position, and that he ignored her when she said she wanted him to stop. (Ghomeshi did not respond to a request for comment sent to Roqe Media, a digital broadcast network that he co-founded.)

Polley is photographed for Talk magazine on May 27, 1999 in New York City. (Michael Birt/Contour/Getty Images)

Polley chose not to come forward and testify with the three other women who did. As a mother of two young children, she felt she was not in a place in her life where she could withstand the exposure that would come with the trial. The women’s credibility was challenged ruthlessly on the stand. The legal system makes it incredibly difficult for a woman to prove she was sexually assaulted, and forces her instead to be scrutinized and humiliated and accused of the vile crime of perjury herself.

The chapter in Polley’s memoir about Ghomeshi is carefully written, and relentlessly examines and dissects the alleged assault and her own reactions to it. She subjects herself to the same scourge of questions she would have been asked, in all probability, by a trial lawyer. She is her own prosecutor. She is her own jury. She is her own Twitter troll. “It is such a hard time to talk about because I spent so many years finding the exact words I wanted to use and felt comfortable using,” Polley tells me. “What I will say is, for however many years since the trial, I have not carried it lightly. I carry around really heavily not having said anything that may or may not have lent legitimacy.”

Some of the main evidence used to disprove the women’s allegations was their own behaviour following their encounters with Ghomeshi, such as writing him friendly or flirty texts. In the essay, Polley recounts her own similar actions and behaviour toward Ghomeshi after her alleged assault. She describes an interview she did with him in 2012 on his hugely popular radio show Q for her film Take This Waltz. The interview seemed awkward at the time, because Ghomeshi kept circling back to questions about whether monogamy was possible. Polley recalls her squeamish attempts to act normal on the show. “I hate these questions and I am deeply uncomfortable having this conversation with him,” she writes. “But I am good-natured, almost flirty, and happily diminish myself.”

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Polley has spoken about sexual predators in the film industry before. In 2017, she published an essay in the New York Times about her encounter with Harvey Weinstein in a hotel room. Weinstein described having a “close relationship” with a famous actress and said that if he and Polley developed the same kind of relationship, she would have a similar career to the famous actress. Polley let Weinstein know she wasn’t interested. She acted in the manner of the so-called “perfect victim,” one who protests and refuses the perpetrator. But she didn’t have as much to lose as many of the women Weinstein abused. As she wrote in the Times piece, she was no longer interested in acting. But avoiding Jian Ghomeshi in the Canadian media landscape at the time was impossible.

A still from the 1988 film 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,' starring a young Polley (Columbia/Everett Collection/CP)

Polley is worried about being judged for not coming forward previously. She reminds me that the Ghomeshi trial happened before the #MeToo movement. Now, there are a lot more resources for and a much better awareness of trauma and the complicated ways women process and cope with abuse. We didn’t know how to listen to women. We didn’t understand how to believe women. Most of all, we had a major blind spot when it came to the way women reacted to and lived with trauma. I circle back to Polley’s interview with Ghomeshi and ask whether she is worried about people watching this video and looking for her unease and discomfort. “Oh no!” she says. “I want them to see it. I want them to see how awkward I am.”

About 10 years ago, I was having lunch with my friend Marie. She worked at SODEC, a government agency that promotes and funds Quebec-made films. I was looking at my plate, confused by my decision to order escargots as a main course. Marie began telling me about her colleague Harry Gulkin, who we both knew. A director and producer known for his 1975 film Lies My Father Told Me, Gulkin was a short and charismatic man with a shock of white hair that curled wildly above his head.

Marie said Harry was taking time off work to spend with a daughter he had just found out about. She was grown and he had missed out on her youth. He was desperate to spend more time with her and get to know her.

I stared at the escargot dripping with butter at the end of my fork, and asked what Harry’s daughter did for a living.

“Oh, she’s Sarah Polley,” she answered.

“Wait, what? Sarah Polley is Harry’s daughter! That’s totally crazy!”

“Mmmm,” Marie said.

“Marie,” I said, matter-of-factly, before eating my snail, “you do not know how to tell a story.”

But how in the world does one tell such a story? Polley thought up her own unique way, creating a documentary called Stories We Tell that eschews the boundaries of the form.

Nine months prior to Polley’s birth, Diane Polley had taken a role in a Montreal play and was away from the family. Throughout her life, Polley’s siblings would joke that she looked nothing like her father, and that perhaps she was the result of an affair. Polley begins the documentary looking for the answer herself. She interviews her siblings and father. They suspect the handsome leading man in the play is her biological father. When Polley interviews Harry Gulkin, a friend and colleague of Diane’s, thinking he can provide some light on her mother’s time in Montreal, he reveals he had a romance with Diane Polley at the time. To everyone’s surprise, the DNA tests conclude he is her biological father.

Polley created fake Super 8 films of her mother, played by Rebecca Jenkins. The Diane Polley who appears in these half-real films is effervescent, always in motion, always smoking, laughing, talking on the telephone or serving dinner. She is a typical 1980s supermom, devoting herself to work and her family in a frenetic, hysterical existence. I, like many viewers, did not realize at first these were not authentic home videos but dramatizations. This aspect of the film caused people to question whether it was truly a documentary. But what are memories? They change. They become small films we direct and edit and play in the cinema of our minds to determine who we are.

Polley’s approach to her essays is much the same as her documentary. There is a sense that, going into them, she did not know exactly what they would say. But that was the point. While Polley was getting dressed after a swim at a local community centre in 2015, a fire extinguisher fell on her head. She suffered a concussion that rendered her thought process foggy and made it difficult for her to even get out of bed. She travelled to the United States to visit an eccentric doctor with a cult-like following, who instructed her to “run towards the danger.” In other words, if there was a thought or event that seemed difficult to her, she was to encounter it head-on. She was to pursue it instead of retreating from it.

This cured Polley. It helped her confront the things in her life that have haunted her the most. These essays are the result—portraits of a mind trying to make sense of an unusual life, trying to figure out how to believe in your own sense of self and your own desires in a patriarchal world.

AWAY FROM HERE, Director Sarah Polley (right), on set, 2006. (Everett Collection/CP)

This year marks the release of the first film Polley has directed in 10 years, Women Talking, which stars Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand and Claire Foy. The book by Miriam Toews, from which the film was adapted, was inspired by a case of widespread and shocking abuse in a Mennonite community in Bolivia. Between 2005 and 2009, more than 130 women were drugged and raped by men in their colony. The community’s elders and the women’s fathers and husbands dismissed their complaints as “wild female imagination.” Toews’s book examines not the horrific rapes these women suffer, but the aftermath. The women assemble in a barn and talk for three days about how to move forward. Will they be able to be strong enough to flee the community? What will their lives look like? What does it mean to begin their own story? They have no tools to survive. They have only been thwarted. But they feel that if they can articulate what they want—if they can conceive of it, imagine it—they will be able to follow that intellectual idea and find independence.

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Women Talking mirrors Polley’s own exercise. She had to make sense of the pieces and episodes of her life in order to move forward, to know this was the path she willingly chose, and that whatever it is she is doing with her one wild life, it is on her own terms.

She tells me that when she began shooting Women Talking, she felt as though she were suddenly home: “This is where I grew up. There is nowhere I am going to feel more at home than at 4 a.m. in the dark, in a minivan, going to a film set, going home for the holidays. I grew up in this circus. I tried to shift my identity so I wasn’t a circus animal. But part of me grew up there and feels a sense of belonging there. This time I felt a joy I hadn’t noticed before, because I was choosing it.”

A previous version of this story contained several errors. It incorrectly stated that Polley’s parents hadn’t come with her to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen set. We also incorrectly stated that she asked for the rights to Alias Grace when she was 19. In addition, the order of events during Polley’s date with Jian Ghomeshi were incorrectly described, as were some of the comments in her New York Times story about her encounter with Harvey Weinstein. Contrary to our original description, she did speak with him many times following this encounter. Maclean’s regrets the errors.

This article appears in print in the April 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “What Sarah Polley wants you to  know.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post Heather O’Neill on Sarah Polley appeared first on Macleans.ca.

There’s a scene in Turning Red, the upcoming Pixar movie directed by Canadian wunderkind Domee Shi, that had me guffawing in bed. Mei, the 13-year-old protagonist, begins sketching a boy on the pages of her math homework when she realizes she’s drawing the likeness of Devon, a 17-year-old boy who works at the local Daisy Mart in Toronto’s Chinatown, where she lives.

Mei’s right brain takes over, her hand unable to pull away from the paper—Devon’s got chiselled shoulders; Devon winks at her and a heart floats from his eye; he’s embracing her now. Mei realizes what she’s drawing, and she’s giddy. Her eyes grow wide and her cheeks flush red. Then Mei’s mom, Ming, voiced by Canadian actress Sandra Oh, walks into her room. Mei shoves the sketchpad under her bed, but the corner of it pokes out. It’s a matter of seconds before her mom opens the book and sees the drawings inside.

This is my life, I think, recalling a time in high school when my mom went through my backpack and found condoms inside. “I got them for free! At a clinic!” I yelled as she grabbed a handful and threw them in the bin.

Like Mei, whose story is loosely based on Shi’s family, I’m the only daughter of immigrant Asian parents. I grew up in Toronto, in an apartment just walking distance from where Shi lived. I was born two years ahead of her, in 1987, but we lived somewhat parallel lives, taking the TTC to school and asserting our tween independence while trying to pacify our overly concerned mothers.

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Mei, who turns into a giant red panda every time she experiences intense emotion, might feel familiar to millennials who came of age in the early 2000s; it’s a film that brings us back to the days when we belted Britney Spears’s lyrics “Hit me baby one more time” and plastered Justin Timberlake’s bleached, spiky hair-framed face across our bedroom walls.

But there’s another layer to the movie that makes it feel like it’s mine. Shi doesn’t just create a story about parental expectation as it conflicts with the child’s own wants and dreams, a stereotype reverted to by many Western films depicting Chinese families (think Crazy Rich Asians). Instead, by drawing on her own life, and her own relationship with her parents, she portrays a family dynamic that isn’t “Asian,” per se, but ordinary: challenging, rewarding, messy and full of both tenderness and regret.

“Did you ever think that your relationship with your parents would be . . . ” I ask the first time I speak with Shi over Zoom, in late December. “My life’s work?” Shi says, smiling.

***

In many ways, Mei’s mother, Ming, is your typical “tiger mom”: she expects excellence from Mei across academics, extracurriculars and at home; she’s not afraid to tell Mei if she thinks one of her friends is “odd”; and she has no problem showing up at Mei’s school unannounced, regardless of how that might make Mei feel.

Tiger moms, who adopt a style of parenting that’s generally authoritarian—demanding, overprotective, emotionally unsupportive—were first so called by Chinese-American law professor and author Amy Chua, who wrote the 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The expression has since been adopted by the American Psychological Association and referenced widely across North American media and pop culture.

“There’s a sense from the trailer that [Ming] is a tiger mom, but I’m also just like, she’s a pretty nice mom,” says Adrian De Leon, a Filipino professor from Toronto who teaches American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. “There is going to be a lot of temptation, especially from audiences, to try to fit [this movie] into an Orientalist perspective to figure out what is quintessentially Asian about it, when actually what is so quintessentially Asian about the story is that it is so normal.”

Becky Neiman-Cobb, left, and Domee Shi, Oscar winners of the best animated short, "Bao," during the Governors Ball Oscars after-party in Los Angeles, Feb. 24, 2019. (Patrick T. Fallon/The New York Times/Redux)

Shi reflected on the relationship with her own mother, Ningsha, through the eight-minute short Bao; Shi’s directorial debut for Pixar, it won the 2019 Academy Award for best animated short film. The plot line centres on a Chinese mother who grieves her only son’s departure from home. As the mother grapples with the concept of an empty nest, one of her handmade dumplings comes to life and becomes her fantasy son, until he grows up too. In the end, the mother swallows her dumpling so he’ll never have the chance to leave.

Turning Red looks at the parent-child relationship from the kid’s point of view. “When I was younger, I was like, ‘Why are my parents so unfair? Why are they so crazy and overprotective?’ ” Shi says. “It just comes from wanting to protect your kid and the experiences my mom went through when she was younger in coming to a new country, and having this only child who could be taken away at any moment by the forces of the universe.”

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In 1990, when Shi was just one, Ningsha left Chongqing, a city in China’s Sichuan province, to pursue a master’s in humanities at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Shi and her dad, Le, followed a year later and the family lived in St. John’s before moving to Toronto in 1993, when Ningsha was offered a spot in the Ph.D. program in education at the University of Toronto.

Ningsha says Shi was a quiet child who loved eating home-cooked pork, chive and cabbage dumplings, and Sichuan staples like mapo tofu and Chongqing hot pot. She also loved sketching. At night, she’d spend three or four hours lying on her stomach and drawing, with reruns of CSI or The Simpsons on in the background. Le, a landscape painter and fine art teacher, taught Shi basic technique and scale early on “for fun,” he says. When he’d nudge her to go to bed, she’d say “I’m just finishing this one, Dad.”

Ningsha says she was a “strict” mother, ceaselessly concerned about her only daughter’s safety and progress. She needed to be physically close to Shi most of the time, even if that meant transferring Shi from a middle school close to their home in East York to one that was right across the street from her office downtown.

A scene in Turning Red, where Ming shows up at the window outside of Mei’s math class and gets into a fight with the school’s security guard, is based on Shi’s first day of middle school: “[My mother] was hiding behind a tree with sunglasses on when I came out of school with my new friends,” Shi remembers. “I was mortified.”

Shi took it all in stride and never lashed out, even when the pressures of toggling between extracurriculars—like practising the flute for at least seven hours a week (she completed her Grade 10 Royal Conservatory of Music exams), academics, art—and just being a teen began to collide. Shi thought of quitting music “all the time,” she says. And Ningsha could see that her daughter was close to the breaking point, but never said a word. “We don’t talk,” Ningsha says . “We just feel.”

***

Ningsha and Le shuffle around to try and get both their faces in the frame. They’re in the kitchen, talking to me on Zoom from their bungalow in Scarborough, Ont., where the family has lived since 2003.

Le lifts a stack of at least six sketchbooks so I can see them. Ningsha, who has a round face and kind eyes, looks eerily similar to the mother in Bao. Le is quiet, and chooses his words carefully, similar to Mei’s father in Turning Red. As parents, they never pushed Shi toward a specific profession, he says, but he did warn about the financial pitfalls of art as a career: “If you choose art,” he said to her, “that means you’re poor.” So if she was going to do it, she’d better be exceptional.

After high school, Shi pitched Sheridan College’s world-renowned animation program to her parents as the perfect mix of art and commercialism. Nancy Beiman, Shi’s second-year storyboard teacher and a Disney animation vet who has worked on characters like Bugs Bunny, Goofy and Hercules, says that Shi displayed film sensibility early on.

A storyboard is like a comic strip, but for a movie. “You are portraying the performance of the character,” says Beiman. “You are not doing all the animation, you’re only doing the important acting bits—a visual shorthand for a script.”

Shi’s very first assignment was to create a storyboard to match “Hector Protector,” a children’s nursery rhyme. “[Shi] did an arrow shooting off of different parts of the castle, taking off people’s wigs and knocking them off their thrones,” Beiman says. “Whereas a lot of people would stage it flat, she had all sorts of camera angles.”

Shi’s love of reading comics—Garfield, Betty and Veronica and One Piece, a Japanese manga series by Eiichiro Oda—gave her an edge, along with her ability to inject dark elements into what would be considered lighthearted themes. In 2018, she told the Los Angeles Times that Bao’s macabre ending came from “that primal feeling of just wanting to love something so much that you’re willing to destroy it.”

Ayan Sengupta, a television animator and Shi’s former classmate at Sheridan, recalls a third-year group film project for which Shi pitched and boarded the entire film in two days, a process that would normally take over a month. And when they were asked to make a film by themselves as a final project in fourth year, Shi’s boards were the movie: “Like, you could just play her drawings on the screen, and you wouldn’t even have to animate or add colour or anything—the board would look like a film,” he says.

In January, Disney, which owns Pixar, held a virtual press event ahead of Turning Red’s March release. One of the film’s animators, Aaron Hartline, showed a few slides of Shi’s black-and-white hand-drawn boards depicting Panda Mei’s expressions beside stills of Panda Mei from the film: “I myself witnessed how Domee carefully figured out the entire film down to just the right expression,” he said. “So whenever possible, we follow those specific quirky poses and put them into our characters . . . those drawings are gold for the animators to follow.”

***

In 2021, when North Americans once again encountered a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes as a repercussion of the global COVID-19 pandemic, celebrities, artists and activists rallied around the campaign #StopAsianHate, which snowballed on social media. Asians across North America reckoned with the reality that the violence was only one manifestation of anti-Asian racism.

The “model minority” narrative, which surfaced after the Second World War, stemmed from the belief that Asians were the ideal people of colour to emigrate to the United States due to their potential economic success. The outcome has been a prejudice that’s reverberated in everything from the way Asians are hired in the workforce (tokenism) to the way we are portrayed in film and television.

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“So much of racism, especially in the arts, is that stories about us are imagined by other people,” De Leon says,“that we do not have the agency and the capacity to not only imagine stories and be storytellers in our own right, but for that work to be considered on its own terms.”

De Leon refers to Bling Empire, a Netflix series that follows the life and friendships of Kevin Kreider, a Korean-American model who lives in Los Angeles, as one of his favourite “himbo”—slang for an attractive but not necessarily intellectual dude—stories. “There’s a certain power in not having to be this . . . ultra-smart, ultra-wealthy, ultra-hard-working Asian person,” he says. “We do have the right to just lounge around, work out and look hot.”

At the virtual publicity event for Turning Red, Shi was asked about the school security guard in the film, apparently Pixar’s first-ever turban-wearing Sikh character. “There’s quite a prominent Sikh population in Canada . . . the leader of the NDP Party, he’s Sikh,” Shi said. “And growing up, I was exposed to a lot of Sikh people in my classroom . . . the specific Sikh security guard was inspired by [Baltej Singh Dhillon] the first [turban-wearing] Royal [Canadian] Mounted Police officer.”

Sengupta, who is originally from India, is elated to see different Asian cultures interacting in film and television exactly the way they would in a city like Toronto. He believes that Canadians are leading the charge—with shows like Kim’s Convenience and Run the Burbs—in giving audiences a glimpse of the diaspora here, where Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Tamils, Vietnamese and Indonesians are friends, neighbours, classmates and co-workers. “Representation is key,” he says. “The only thing [that] represent[ed] [me] were the brown villains in movies, like Raza in the original Iron Man.”

When I ask Shi whether she thinks Mei could be viewed as a model minority, she shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says. “She’s so funny and dorky,” as if to say, can’t Mei be just that?

Spot the Canadiana

(Click through this gallery. Story continues below.)

The maple leaf abounds in Mei’s world. (Check out the “logo” on Ming’s car, in another slide)

Mei attends Lester B. Pearson Middle School, named for Canada’s 14th prime minister. About a dozen Canadian schools (and at least one school board) have the same namesake.

In this scene, Mei is freaked out because she has just changed from girl to panda and back. Ming thinks Mei is going through another big life change. Meanwhile, the bobblehead moose on the dash—repping Canada’s boreal forest—is just chillin’.

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***

Ningsha and Le haven’t seen Turning Red yet, but they both smile when I tell them their daughter credits her relationship with her parents as the throughline of her work.

I ask them to think about how she got there; what defined her as a child. Art, music and friends, they say. “Hard work” is a term Le uses often. Ningsha, on the other hand, has an urge to express regret. She remembers the time in middle school when Shi flunked her Grade 10 flute exam and had to take it a second time. “If she said, ‘I quit,’ I think about how that would have been okay. But she never said, ‘I’ll stop,’ and I never said, ‘You can stop now.’ ”

Turns out Shi always wants to finish what she starts: “I’m a completionist,” she says. “I think my mom is too.” When I ask how her relationship with her mom is reflected in Turning Red, she offers up a spoiler: “The red panda magic is actually something that Mei inherited from her mom, and the way that her mom has handled [it] is very different than how Mei wants to handle it. You see the difference between the two generations and how they deal with all of the messiness that’s inside of them.”

The Shi family is like most; there are things you don’t reveal to each other. At the press event, Shi tells the media there’s definitely a secret notebook somewhere in her room back in Canada, which she hopes her parents never see. In our interview, she tells me about asking a cousin who was visiting her parents in Toronto: “Can you take it and just burn it? Throw it away?”

Over Zoom, Le quickly flips through one of Shi’s sketchbooks and stops to show me a drawing. “Handsome boy,” he points out, as I take in the big, star-like anime eyes. The sketchbooks aren’t secret—her parents have seen them all.

This article appears in print in the March 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “The magic of Domee Shi.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post With ‘Turning Red,’ Domee Shi wants to tell the story of your childhood appeared first on Macleans.ca.

“Johnny Cash was looking for a new beginning. It was 1961 and his career was in a slump. Elvis Presley had crossed over to popular audiences; Cash had faltered.” That’s how Jonathan Holiff frames the state of affairs when the legendary country singer, then 29, and his entourage descended upon Newfoundland for a six-show tour and hunting trip. It was a journey that would in many ways shape the rest of Cash’s career: it cemented a relationship with Saul Holiff, his new manager, and it occasioned the hiring of June Carter.

Holiff made a movie commemorating his dad’s career in 2012, called My Father and the Man in Black. Now he’s working on a follow-up project, When Johnny Cash Got His Moose. He has had plenty of help from Newfoundlanders sharing their memories and photos. Per Holiff, one interview alleges Cash went “busting up the Big Dipper bar in Gander,” leading to an arrest by military police. Holiff’s investigation led him to Margie Perkins Beaver, the widow of Cash’s lead guitarist, Luther Perkins. For all these years, she’d hung on to a letter he wrote about the trip.

Click, hover or tap on the arrows to read the story behind this extraordinary letter.

This article appears in print in the February 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Hunting and gathering.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post This letter tells the story of Johnny Cash’s pivotal 1961 trip to Newfoundland appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Here are four things that I’m going to be watching on Netflix this month (click or tap on the title to take you to the description below). You can also look out for the  emojis.

• Rebelde
• Archive 81
• Munich – The Edge of War
• Ozark: Season 4 Part 1

Date TBA

All of Us Are Dead — NETFLIX SERIES

Yet another show about a virus that turns people into zombies, and the people who barricade themselves inside while trying to find a way to avoid becoming zombies. The place they barricade themselves inside is a school building.

I Am Georgina — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality show about model and social-media influencer Georgina Rodríguez and her partner, football star Cristiano Ronaldo.

Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein — NETFLIX SERIES

This show, whose title translates as “These Black Black Eyes,” is about a young man (Tahir Raj Bhasin) who finds himself fending off the unwanted advances of a young woman (Anchal Singh) who happens to be the daughter of a powerful gangster. Can he break it to her that he’s in love with someone else and still avoid getting killed?

Coming to Netflix January 1, 2022

Chief Daddy 2 – Going for Broke — NETFLIX FILM

Sequel to the 2018 film about the death of a billionaire and the conflicts his inheritance creates among his many relatives, mistresses and servants.

The Hook Up Plan: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES 

Romantic comedy series about Elsa (Zita Hanrot), her two best friends (Sabrina Ouazani and Joséphine Draï) and her search for love.

Coming to Netflix January 2, 2022

Coming to Netflix January 4, 2022

Action Pack — NETFLIX FAMILY 

Grey’s Anatomy  writer Bill Harper created this animated kids’ series about four superpowered children who learn to use their powers at the “Action Academy.” Since the show wants to present good role models, they’ll be taught that violence doesn’t solve problems and villains aren’t all bad.

Coming to Netflix January 5, 2022

Bad Boys for Life

Four to Dinner — NETFLIX FILM

Romantic comedy (“Quattro metà” in the original Italian)  about four single people looking for love. Directed by Alessio Maria Federici.

Rebelde — NETFLIX SERIES

2000s nostalgia is finally starting to displace 1990s nostalgia in the culture; this series is a reboot of a popular Mexican telenovela from the 2000s, itself based on an Argentine soap opera. All three shows are about a prestigious boarding school known as the Elite Way School (EWS), where, as the name implies, the students are mostly rich, but there are a few scholarship students who aren’t, and they’re threatened by a secret society that aims to drive the poor people out of the school. Each version of the show focuses on a group of students who come together in the time-honoured tradition by starting a band; the band from the earlier Mexican version, RBD, became a huge success outside of the show, to the point that one of the actors in the new version had to publicly apologize for saying he didn’t like their music.

Rebelde (Mayra Ortiz/Netflix © 2021)

Coming to Netflix January 6, 2022

The Club: Part 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Period drama about a nightclub in 1950s Istanbul and a woman, previously in prison for murder, who takes a job there to be closer to her adult daughter.

The Wasteland — NETFLIX FILM

Horror film about a family whose secluded pastoral life is interrupted when they are attacked by a monster who is powered by their fear. Directed by David Casademunt; also known as “The Beast.”

Coming to Netflix January 7, 2022

Hype House — NETFLIX SERIES

Another reality show about a bunch of strangers living together in a house. The twist is that all of them are prominent TikTok influencers.

Johnny Test: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Another manifestation of 2000s nostalgia: a reboot of the 2000s animated series about a Calvin-ish kid and his Hobbes-esque talking dog.

Mother/Android — NETFLIX FILM

The new year’s first apocalypse movie (but surely not the last) stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a pregnant woman who will soon be giving birth, and it’s just her bad luck that this happens around the time when the robots have taken over the world and are wiping out humans.

Coming to Netflix January 10, 2022

Terminator: Dark Fate

Undercover: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Bob (Tom Waes), a Belgian cop who started out the series going undercover to expose a drug lord, switches over to going undercover to expose a mole in the police force.

Coming to Netflix January 11, 2022

Dear Mother — NETFLIX FILM

A young man finds he has a mysterious condition where his heart has stopped beating but he isn’t dead yet, and only his mother may know the secret reason for this.

Coming to Netflix January 12, 2022

How I Fell in Love with a Gangster — NETFLIX FILM

A fictionalized version of the rise and fall of Polish gangster Nikodem Skotarczak.

Coming to Netflix January 13, 2022

Brazen — NETFLIX FILM (NEW trailer HERE)

Alyssa Milano stars in an adaptation of the novel “Brazen Virtue” by Nora Roberts, about a crime novelist who has to become a real-life sleuth after her sister is killed.

Chosen — NETFLIX SERIES

Every month there needs to be at least one show about a small town with a secret. This one is about a small Danish town that became famous for being hit by a meteor, and a teenage girl named Emma who discovers that it wasn’t a meteor at all and that there’s a conspiracy to hide the shocking truth.

The Journalist — NETFLIX SERIES

A spinoff of a 2019 movie by the same name, this series is about Anna (Ryoko Yonekura), a newspaper reporter who is considered extremely unconventional, not least for the fact that she still has a job as a newspaper reporter in 2022.

Photocopier — NETFLIX FILM

Sur (Shenina Cinnamon) loses her scholarship after someone leaks an embarrassing selfie, and she’s determined to find out who leaked it, even if it means spying on the phones of her fellow students. Directed by Wregas Bhanuteja, this film earned 17 nominations at the Indonesian Film Festival.

Coming to Netflix January 14, 2022

After Life: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Ricky Gervais’s comedy-drama about a man recovering from his wife’s death.

Archive 81 — NETFLIX SERIES

Inspired by the horror podcast of the same name, this series stars Mamoudou Athie as an archivist who takes on the job of restoring the videotapes of a filmmaker (Dina Shihabi) who disappeared in the 1990s while investigating a cult, known to podcast listeners as “The Cult.” While working on these damaged videotapes, Athie becomes convinced that it’s not too late to save the person who made them. Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell, who created the podcast, are involved as producers, and The Vampire Diaries writer-producer Rebecca Sonnenshine is the showrunner.

Archive 81 (Quantrell D. Colbert/Netflix © 2021)

Blippi: Adventures

Blippi’s School Supply Scavenger Hunt

The House — NETFLIX SERIES

An anthology of three short stop-motion animated films that share the same setting and dark-comedy tone, produced by England’s Nexus Studios and with a voice cast that includes such familiar names as Miranda Richardson and Helena Bonham-Carter.

Riverdance: The Animated Adventure — NETFLIX FAMILY

Can Riverdance, the Irish dance show that took the live theatre world by storm in the 1990s, succeed as an animated movie about two kids who set out on a journey to a magical world where everyone dances like that? The producers of this movie hope so, and they signed up Pierce Brosnan to do two of the voices.

This Is Not a Comedy — NETFLIX FILM

A comedian, looking for a purpose in life, unexpectedly finds it when a friend asks him to donate his sperm so she can get pregnant.

Coming to Netflix January 16, 2022

Blow

Deadly Class: Season 1

Dennis the Menace

Prisoners

Set It Off

Coming to Netflix January 17, 2022

After We Fell

Playing with Fire

Coming to Netflix January 18, 2022

Mighty Express: Train Trouble — NETFLIX FAMILY

Spinoff of the animated series that is like Paw Patrol, except with talking trains.

Coming to Netflix January 19, 2022

El marginal: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The previous seasons of this crime drama have been about cops who infiltrate crime gangs and try to take them down. Expect more of the same, though not necessarily with the same cops in every season.

Heavenly Bites: Mexico — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A six-episode documentary from Vice Studios, taking a long, succulent look at Mexican cooking.

Juanpis González – The Series — NETFLIX SERIES

A special focusing on a rich, racist jerk of a character created by the Colombian standup comic Alejandro Riaño.

Midnight in the Switchgrass

The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary series about English con artist Robert Hendy-Freegard, who conned his victims by claiming to be an undercover cop or spy.

Too Hot to Handle: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

As the pandemic heads into year three, so does this reality series, which asks the still-relevant question: how long can single people give up having sex?

Coming to Netflix January 20, 2022

Midnight Asia: Eat · Dance · Dream — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Each of the six episodes of this documentary series looks at the distinctive nightlife of a major Asian city. The cities featured are Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Taipei, Bangkok and Manila.

The Royal Treatment — NETFLIX FILM

An American hairdresser (Laura Marano) is invited to work at the wedding of a royal prince (Mena Massoud). Will they fall in love despite him being about to marry someone else? It seems likely.

Coming to Netflix January 21, 2022

Munich – The Edge of War — NETFLIX FILM

Netflix will never run out of great English actors to play historical figures. This time the actor is Jeremy Irons and the historical figure is the historically unpopular Neville Chamberlain. The film, based on the novel Munich by Robert Harris, takes place as Adolf Hitler (Ulrich Matthes) is preparing to invade Czechoslovakia, and looks at Chamberlain’s fumbling attempts to avoid war, though the main characters are actually two fictional friends, one English and one German, who take part in negotiating the notorious Munich Agreement.

Munich – The Edge of War (Courtesy of Netflix © 2021)

My Father’s Violin — NETFLIX FILM

Belcim Bilgin and Engin Altan Duzyatan star in a film that, despite its title, is about a woman trying to use a shared love of music to form a bond with her uncle.

Ozark: Season 4 Part 1 — NETFLIX SERIES

Jason Bateman’s attempt to become the new Bryan Cranston, playing a money-launderer who moves his operation and his family to the Lake of the Ozarks, has been nominated for many awards and won several. But like most Netflix shows, it has to end after no more than four seasons. As usual, Netflix is doling out the last season in two batches. Will Bateman and his family survive all the crime and double-crossing intact, or will he get more awards if he dies in the end?

Ozark (Courtesy Of Netflix © 2021)

Summer Heat — NETFLIX SERIES

Escapist series about young and pretty people who get their dream jobs working as the staff of an island resort hotel.

That Girl Lay Lay — NETFLIX FAMILY

Nickelodeon kids’ sitcom about a girl (Gabrielle Nevaeh Green) who accidentally brings her online avatar to life and has to pass her off as a fellow student at her school.

Coming to Netflix January 24, 2022

Three Songs for Benazir — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary short about a man and his new wife living in a displaced-persons camp in Afghanistan.

Coming to Netflix January 25, 2022

Ada Twist, Scientist: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Adaptation of the children’s picture book series abut Ada Twist, who tries to convince a skeptical audience that science is fun.

Neymar: The Perfect Chaos — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The story of Brazilian football superstar Neymar, his life, and his style on and off the field.

Snowpiercer: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES (New Episodes Weekly)

The apocalypse is still going on and the characters are still stuck on a train looking for a safe place in a world that has become an icy wasteland.

Coming to Netflix January 27, 2022

Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island

Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery — NETFLIX SERIES

Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone star as bumbling TV repairmen who stumble across a murder and try to avoid getting, as the title implies, framed.

Wentworth: Season 8

Coming to Netflix January 28, 2022

Angry Birds: Summer Madness — NETFLIX FAMILY

An out-of-season series of 11-minute episodes about a group of not-particularly-angry birds who have fun at their bird-themed summer camp.

Every Breath You Take

Feria: The Darkest Light — NETFLIX SERIES

Carlos Montero and Agustín Martínez created this thriller series where two girls (Ana Tomeno and Carla Campra) find that their parents are missing and also that their parents may have killed 23 people in some kind of bizarre ritual.

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness — NETFLIX SERIES

A spinoff for one of the stars of Netflix’s Queer Eye, based on his podcast of the same name, where he discusses not only his own field of hairdressing, but any subject that interests him; the format has him picking a topic and seeking out expert advice so he (and we) can understand them.

Home Team — NETFLIX FILM

An Adam Sandler production starring his buddy Kevin James and featuring his buddy Rob Schneider. James plays a football player suspended from the NFL, who tries to reconnect with his young son by coaching his ragtag misfit kids’ football team.

In From the Cold — NETFLIX SERIES

Margarita Levieva stars as a single mom who has a secret past as a genetically-engineered Russian super-spy, and must come out of retirement to stop a murderous rampage by another genetically-engineered Russian super-spy.

The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window — NETFLIX SERIES

Kristen Bell stars in a limited series that is the latest take on the “Rear Window” theme, playing a bored woman who spends all day looking out the window at the apartment across the street, where she sees romantic possibilities… but then she thinks she’s seen a murder.

Coming to Netflix January 31, 2022

Horrible Bosses 2

Leaving 1/1, 2022

Mean Girls

Leaving 1/6, 2022

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Parents

Leaving 1/10, 2022

It Chapter Two

Leaving 1/15, 2022

Top Gun

Leaving 1/31, 2022

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Seasons 1-8

Parks and Recreation: Seasons 1-7 

The post Netflix Canada in January 2022: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Corey Lynch has built a blue-and-yellow time machine in his St. John’s basement. It’s a portal to his own past, and maybe yours, too.

Welcome to Megahit Video—the alternative universe where it’s Friday night, Netflix doesn’t exist and you need to pick snacks and negotiate with your family or your friends about what video to watch, then hope all the copies aren’t already rented out. In a literal sense, what Lynch has built is a deeply loving homage to the all but defunct Blockbuster Video chain. But in a truer sense, he has created pure, life-sized nostalgic joy. “I am a lover of things,” he laughs, mentioning his extensive VHS and toy collections as evidence.“I’m generally all-in on the things I love. Now, of course I realize this is the extreme. I won’t also build a toy museum next door.”

It all started with a pandemic renovation project and Lynch’s search for a theme for a new basement wet bar. He’s a lifelong movie buff, so the idea seemed obvious, and his wife was game. “It was craving that sense of nostalgia and making sure I had a place to go where I felt comfortable and warm,” he says. “That was the experience of going to the video store when I was young—it was so exciting.”

READ: Wrestling’s new golden era, packed into a Toronto church basement

Lynch doesn’t consider himself a nostalgic person, simply because he never left behind the things he loves. Megahit is stocked with his own collection of 1,000 VHS tapes, with about 350 on display at any one time, along with dummy movie boxes he crafted in Photoshop. This isn’t a store where you can actually rent movies; it’s a monument to that extinct creature, like a museum exhibit. The attention to detail is what makes it all sing: a big promotional cardboard cutout of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, a “Big Release” wall with 30 (fake) copies of Independence Day, a giant red M&M’s figure holding up a tray of candy, the cobalt blue walls, every item you can see branded within an inch of its life.

Lynch’s favourite detail is the storefront. A contractor friend managed to procure and install a steel and glass commercial door alongside two steel-framed windows, so that when you step outside of Megahit and look back at it from the other side of his basement—Lynch and his family live in his former childhood home—there is the storefront, suspended in time. The windows look out into his daughters’ playroom, but when Lynch films Facebook videos of movie reviews or goofy comedy sketches inside the store, he erases that domestic glimpse with a greenscreen view of colourful St. John’s houses.

READ: Eight blockbuster movie sequels coming out in 2022

And for actually watching movies, it’s all about VHS for Megahit’s proprietor—a little grainy, maybe, with wonky tracking or sound, exactly the way movies feel in his memory. “We are an analogue video store for the digital age,” he likes to say. It’s easy enough to find VCRs these days, but what’s tricky is finding TVs that connect to them, so Lynch has a dongle that connects the VCR to his MacBook so he can stream to his TV inside his Blockbuster “store.” He has four VCRs at the moment, because they are not repairable. “When they go, they go,” he says. “We give them a Viking funeral.” He watches movies, he says, “like I’m 14.” Among his favourites are Big Trouble in Little China, Halloween, Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he considers a “perfect movie” that cannot be improved upon.

Lynch sees Megahit as an immersive experience to be shared with everyone who holds warm memories of those Friday night outings (“members” are welcome to join the fun on its Facebook page). The name obviously invokes Blockbuster, but he deliberately gave it a generic tweak so that it would conjure up everyone’s long-ago local video store.

As a teenager, Lynch picked his way through the construction zone of a new Blockbuster about to open in St. John’s, where he found a manager who hired him on the spot. That high school job felt like he’d landed in Hollywood, with the crowd and energy every Friday night feeling like a nightclub. The video store was the place to be, until one day it wasn’t. Blockbuster had 9,000 stores worldwide at its peak, but by 2018 just one remained, in Bend, Ore. Everyone retreated to their couches and their streaming services where they never had to worry about all the copies being rented. Good thing Corey Lynch, like the hero of many a good caper movie, built us all a time machine.

This article appears in print in the February 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Rewinding with gusto.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post How one Newfoundlander revived Blockbuster in his basement appeared first on Macleans.ca.

(Illustration by Dominic Bugatto)

Big blockbuster productions have been endangered by the rise of streaming and the pandemic, so Hollywood isn’t taking chances on anything new. From Disney hits to period dramas, movie studios in 2022 will have sequels to every kind of movie, and almost nothing else.

Downton Abbey: A New Era (March 18)

The TV series Downton Abbey, about the residents of a posh English home in the early 20th century, was such a hit that the cast and writer reunited for a 2019 film, which took the show’s aristocrats and servants into the late 1920s. Now they’re back for a second movie, which, as the title implies, will bring them closer to the era when everything fell apart for England and the world.

Legally Blonde 3 (May 20)

In 2001, Reese Witherspoon played Elle Woods, a rich girl from California who enrolls in Harvard Law School, and this premise managed to sustain a 2003 sequel, a direct-to-video spinoff and a Broadway musical. Now Witherspoon is returning to the franchise, playing Elle as an experienced lawyer in her 40s who somehow still gets underestimated just because she has blond hair.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (May 27)

Canadian star Keanu Reeves recovers from the pandemic-fuelled underperformance of his last sequel, Bill & Ted Face the Music, by releasing a fourth go-round as a professional killer who kills lots of other, worse killers.

Top Gun: Maverick (May 27) and Mission Impossible 7 (Sept. 30)

Tom Cruise has been a king of sequels ever since he made the sequel to The Hustler. So it’s fitting that he has two movies on this list. First, his early film Top Gun gets its much-delayed follow-up, which asks the question: what does a cocky military pilot from the 1980s do now that everything is done with drones? Then, shortly after his 60th birthday, he’ll be back to the Mission Impossible franchise, which he’s been starring in since 1996.

RELATED: Netflix Canada in December 2021: What’s new this month 

Jurassic World: Dominion (June 10)

Director Colin Trevorrow’s first film since getting fired from a Star Wars sequel is a sequel to his 2015 sequel Jurassic World. One of the producers has already announced that the film is intended to set up future sequels where humans and dinosaurs learn to coexist.

Thor: Love and Thunder (July 8)

In what is known as “Sequel Escalation,” Marvel’s fourth Thor movie will feature two Thors: Chris Hemsworth is back as Thor, god of thunder, but Natalie Portman is returning as Thor’s girlfriend, who somehow also turns into Thor when she picks up his enchanted hammer.

READ: James Bond: The evolution of an iconic franchise—and the coolest secret agent of all time 

Creed 3 (Nov. 23)

Michael B. Jordan became a superstar in 2015 in the spinoff of the Rocky franchise; the first two films had Adonis Creed (Jordan) training for boxing matches under the watchful eye of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky. Stallone won’t be returning for this third installment, making it the first Rocky movie without him, while Jordan is making his directorial debut, which means he’ll get to direct himself in an inspirational training montage and a big final boxing match.

Avatar 2 (Dec. 16)

It’s taken Canadian director James Cameron over a decade to make this film, thanks to his notorious perfectionism about special effects. But he’s finally giving the world—and Disney, which bought the franchise while he was working on it—a sequel to his environmentalist science fiction epic about a future where humans have rendered Earth nearly uninhabitable. We’ll see how audiences respond now that that future is already here.

The post Eight blockbuster movie sequels coming out in 2022 appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Here are four things that I’m going to be watching on Netflix this month (click or tap on the title to take you to the description below). You can also look out for the emojis.

• The Power of the Dog
• Saturday Morning All Star Hits!
• Emily in Paris Season 2
• Don’t Look Up

Coming to Netflix December 1, 2021

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: STONE OCEAN — NETFLIX ANIME

Adaptation of a 2000 story arc of the manga franchise about members of the Joestar family, a long line of supernatural evil fighters.

Kayko and Kokosh — NETFLIX FAMILY

Janusz Christa’s lighthearted comic book of the same name, which debuted in 1972, is the Polish answer to “Asterix,” featuring two medieval warriors – one short and skinny, one fat and tall – who are as close to Asterix and Obelix as you can get without being sued. Now it comes to Netflix as an animated series, with two seasons dropping at the same time.

Lost in Space: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

The final season of the darker-and-edgier reboot of Irwin Allen’s cheesy 1960s classic, which also lasted only three seasons, but with a lot more episodes to rerun.

The Power of the Dog — NETFLIX FILM  

The first feature film in over a decade from legendary writer-director Jane Campion (The Piano) is her attempt at an American Western, with a touch of There Will Be Blood. Benedict Cumberbatch puts on yet another American accent to play the film’s anti-hero, a nasty but rich rancher in 1920s Montana who goes off the rails when his brother (Jesse Plemons) brings home his new bride (Kirsten Dunst) and her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and spends the movie trying to destroy them both. Based on the 1967 novel by the aptly named Thomas Savage.

The Power of the Dog (Kirsty Griffin/Netflix © 2021)

Coyotes ​​ — NETFLIX SERIES

During an outing, the members of a scout group discover a stash of diamonds, and end up on the run from the people who want those diamonds back.

The Flash: Season 8 (new episode)

Jumanji: The Next Level

SINGLE ALL THE WAY — NETFLIX FILM

It’s actually surprising that there hasn’t been a Christmas movie with this title yet. Michael Urie plays the single guy, who is tired of his family trying to find him a boyfriend and pretends to be in a relationship with his best friend.

The Whole Truth — NETFLIX FILM

A brother and sister uncover a shocking family secret after they find a secret entrance in their grandparents’ home.

Coming to Netflix December 3, 2021

Cobalt Blue — NETFLIX FILM

Sachin Kundalkar directed this adaptation of his own novel about a brother and sister (Neelay Mehendale and Anjali Sivaraman) who both fall in love with a strange man who is staying at their home, a triangle that leads to the uncovering of a shocking family secret.

Coming Out Colton — NETFLIX SERIES

Colton Underwood was on The Bachelor in 2019 and came out as gay in 2021, and now he has his own reality show that tries to look in-depth at the experience of coming out.

Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous: Season 4 — NETFLIX FAMILY

This family-friendly animated spinoff of the movie franchise is, you may be surprised to hear, about a bunch of people running away from dinosaurs.

Money Heist: Part 5 Vol 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

The end of one of Netflix’s biggest hit series, which tells intense, multi-season stories about the attempt to pull off “the perfect heist.” In this case, they’ve spent quite a long time trying to rob a bank.

Mixtape — NETFLIX FILM

A look back at Y2K, the global disaster that didn’t happen, from the point of view of the era when a disaster actually happened. As 1999 comes to a close and the world braces itself for Y2K, a plucky orphan (Gemma Brooke Allen) sets out to find all the songs on a broken mixtape her parents left her.

Money Heist: From Tokyo to Berlin: Volume 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A making-of documentary about the “Money Heist” series and the international phenomenon it became.

Coming to Netflix December 5, 2021

JAPAN SINKS: People of Hope: Season 1 (episode 8)

Coming to Netflix December 6, 2021

David and the Elves — NETFLIX FILM

It isn’t Christmas unless there’s at least one movie where someone rediscovers the true spirit of Christmas. In this film, it’s a cynical elf (Jakub Zajac) and a kid (Cyprian Grabowski) he meets after quitting his job with Santa.

Voir — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

David Fincher co-produced this collection of “visual essays” where creators take a deep dive into their favourite films. It’s the kind of thing you used to see as DVD bonus features, back when Netflix was mostly a DVD rental company.

Coming to Netflix December 7, 2021

Centaurworld: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Fish-out-of-water animated comedy/adventure about a horse (voiced by Kimiko Glenn) who finds herself stuck in a world of half-horse half-human creatures. And since she’s not Canadian, she isn’t used to them because she never grew up watching Newton on “The Mighty Hercules.”

Go Dog Go: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Edu-tainment animated series about two dogs who run around and do stuff and learn lessons in a world where all cities have names that are dog puns, like “Pawston” and “Chew York City.”

Nicole Byer: BBW (Big Beautiful Weirdo) — NETFLIX COMEDY

The Emmy-nominated comedian and host of Netflix’s “Nailed It!” gets her first full-length Netflix comedy special, where she discusses her life and the pandemic era.

Coming to Netflix December 8, 2021

Carolin Kebekus: The Last Christmas Special — NETFLIX COMEDY

A Christmas-specific comedy set from the German comedian (yes, they exist).

Titans: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

The angsty adaptation of the “Teen Titans” comic brings in a mysterious antagonist known only as “Red Hood,” whose identity isn’t so mysterious if you’ve read the DC comics storyline this is based on.

Coming to Netflix December 9, 2021

Asakusa Kid — NETFLIX FILM

An established comedian’s career begins to decline at the same time his young protégé’s career is taking off.

Bonus Family: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

Swedish comedy/drama about a married couple who are both recently divorced.

The Family That Sings Together: The Camargos — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A reality show for Brazilian sertanejo star Zezé Di Camargo and his daughter Wanessa Camargo, who is also a successful singer, hence the title.

The Flash: Season 8 (new episode)

The Grudge

Coming to Netflix December 10, 2021

Anonymously Yours — NETFLIX FILM

The latest take on the “Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail” plot: two people bicker in real life, unaware that they’re falling in love with each other as anonymous text-message correspondents.

Aranyak — NETFLIX SERIES

A small-town cop must team up with a big-city detective to solve a crime, which seems to confirm the local myth that there’s a bloodthirsty monster lurking in the forest.

Back to the Outback — NETFLIX FILM

In this animated feature, a group of animals make a daring escape from the zoo and try to go back to the… er… the place the title says.

How To Ruin Christmas: The Funeral — NETFLIX SERIES

It isn’t Christmas without movies about disastrous family gatherings. This is a sequel to last year’s How to Ruin Christmas, and the protagonist finds Christmas extra-ruined when an unexpected death leads to a funeral right around Christmastime.

Twentysomethings: Austin (formerly Roaring Twenties) — NETFLIX SERIES

The original title, “Roaring Twenties,” may have been too vague about what this reality series is about; as the new title makes clear, it’s about a group of people in their twenties hanging out and trying to find romance in Austin, Texas.

Saturday Morning All Star Hits! — NETFLIX SERIES 

It really is a shame Netflix couldn’t make an exception to their rule that shows don’t release on Saturdays. This adult animated comedy, created by Kyle Mooney (Saturday Night Live) and Ben Jones, is a tribute to the cheesy Saturday morning cartoon shows of the 1980s and early ’90s. In live-action segments, Mooney plays various characters (including twin brothers) who link together animated parodies of  everything we hold dear about cartoons of the era: cheap animation, celebrities playing themselves, and of course, lots and lots of valuable life lessons.

Saturday Morning All Star Hits! (Courtesy of Netflix © 2021)

Still Out of My League — NETFLIX FILM

Sequel to last year’s Out of My League, about Marta (Ludovica Francesconi), a young woman who is happy despite having a terminal illness, and who sets out to find love (the love she found in the last movie is over, otherwise there wouldn’t be a sequel).

Two — NETFLIX FILM

Two people wake up and discover that someone has sewed them together at the abdomen. This is a horror film, though the same premise could be a wacky comedy.

The Unforgivable — NETFLIX FILM

Not to be confused with Netflix’s “The Club,” about a woman who is released from prison after serving time for murder and tries to reconnect with her daughter, this film is about a woman who is released from prison after serving time for murder and tries to reconnect with her younger sister.

Coming to Netflix December 11, 2021

The Hungry and the Hairy — NETFLIX SERIES

Kim Tae-ho produced this series about two friends taking a motorcycle sightseeing trip across Korea. The official description does not specify which one is hungry and which one is hairy.

Coming to Netflix December 12, 2021

JAPAN SINKS: People of Hope: Season 1 (episode 9)

Just Mercy

Coming to Netflix December 14, 2021

The Future Diary — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality-show reboot of a popular series from 1998, whose premise is that two strangers are asked to improvise a romantic relationship based only on a rough outline of the story (the so-called future diary). Then we see if their fictional romance becomes real as they act it out.

Russell Howard: Lubricant — NETFLIX COMEDY

Two-part standup comedy special, focusing mostly on life during lockdown.

StarBeam: Beaming in the New Year — NETFLIX FAMILY

A rather premature New Year’s special for the animated children’s series about a girl who turns into a nonviolent superhero.

Coming to Netflix December 15, 2021

Elite Short Stories: Phillipe Caye Felipe — NETFLIX SERIES

In between seasons of the thriller series Elite, we get these mini-episodes about characters who go to the elite (hence the title) school the show revolves around.

The Hand of God — NETFLIX FILM

Paolo Sorrentino (The Young Pope) wrote and directed this semi-autobiographical film that takes place in his native Naples in the 1980s; it’s about Filippo (Fabietto Schisa), who wants to be a football star but – even the official description doesn’t try to hide it – will likely end up as a filmmaker instead.

Selling Tampa — NETFLIX SERIES

A reality series about a Black-owned, all-female real estate agency in Tampa. Yes, it’s a reality series about realty. A realtyality series?

Masha and the Bear: Nursery Rhymes: Season 1 Part 2

Masha and the Bear: Season 5

Sleepless in Seattle

Superstore: Season 6

Taxi Driver

Coming to Netflix December 16, 2021

A California Christmas: City Lights — NETFLIX FILM

It’s not Christmas without sequels to last year’s Christmas movies. In 2020’s A California Christmas, plucky farm girl Callie (Lauren Swickard, who also wrote the script) found love with San Francisco city slicker Joseph (Josh Swickard, Lauren’s real-life husband). This year, they leave the farm and move to San Francisco, where they will presumably find love all over again.

A Naija Christmas — NETFLIX FILM

It’s not Christmas without movies where someone makes a Christmas wish. In director Kunle Afolayan’s film, the wish is backed up by a financial incentive, as the mother of three adult sons offers a prize to whichever one of them can give her what she asks for.

Aggretsuko: Season 4 — NETFLIX ANIME

Animated series about a twentysomething who has the typical problems of an urban white-collar worker, except that she’s a talking panda.

Puff: Wonders of the Reef — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Disney has sort of been hogging the “aren’t animals cute” genre ever since they bought National Geographic, but Netflix will try to give them a run for their money with director Nick Robinson’s documentary about an adorable pufferfish looking for a home. Narrated by Rose Byrne.

The Flash: Season 8 (new episode)

Coming to Netflix December 17, 2021

Fast & Furious Spy Racers: Season 6: Homecoming — NETFLIX FAMILY

In final season for the animated spinoff of the indefatigable Fast and Furious series, our heroes drive their very fast cars around the entire globe, a feat not accomplished in animated television since the animated spinoff of The Dukes of Hazzard.

The Witcher: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Henry Cavill returns for a second series of the sword-and-sorcery drama that has become one of Netflix’s breakout hits and made everyone forget Game of Thrones.

Coming to Netflix December 18, 2021

The Boss Baby

Bulgasal: Immortal Souls — NETFLIX SERIES

The protagonist of this fantasy series is 600 years old thanks to an ancient curse and, tired of living forever, sets out to get their soul back so they can finally die.

Gemini Man

Coming to Netflix December 19, 2021

What Happened in Oslo — NETFLIX SERIES

Norwegian crime series set in 1993 and using the historic Israel/Palestine Oslo Accords as a backdrop. Not to be confused with Oslo, the HBO film from earlier this year, which also took place in 1993 during the negotiation of the Accords.

Coming to Netflix December 20, 2021

Elite Short Stories: Samuel Omar — NETFLIX SERIES

Another mini-episode about characters from Elite.

Coming to Netflix December 21, 2021

Jim Gaffigan: Comedy Monster — NETFLIX COMEDY

The prolific comedian returns for a comedy special about how bad 2021 was, not to be confused with the specials about how bad 2020 was, or upcoming specials about 2022.

Grumpy Christmas — NETFLIX FILM

It’s not Christmas without a movie about a bickering family. In this film, a sequel to 2016’s Un Padre No Tan Padre, Don Servando, the grumpy old grandpa from the first movie, gets into a spat with a grumpy old aunt about how the family should celebrate Christmas.

Coming to Netflix December 22, 2021

Emily in Paris: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES 

Darren Star (Beverly Hills 90210, Sex and the City) proved he hadn’t lost his touch for escapism with this series about an American (Lily Collins) in an American creator’s idea of what Paris is like. The first season was one of the biggest successes of the pandemic era, and Emily is surely not out of clothes to wear and romantic complications to get into. By the way, it’s pronounced “Emily in Paree,” making the pronunciation the most authentically French thing in the show.

Emily in Paris (Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix © 2021)

Little Women (2019)

Coming to Netflix December 23, 2021

Elite Short Stories: Patrick — NETFLIX SERIES

A Christmas-themed, but still dark, mini-episode about an Elite character.

Coming to Netflix December 24, 2021

1000 Miles from Christmas — NETFLIX FILM

It’s not Christmas without a movie where someone starts out disliking Christmas but learns to love it. Or a movie where a city slicker goes to a small town for Christmas and finds love. Lucky us, this movie is both of those at once: Tamar Novas plays a city slicker who hates Christmas until his boss sends him to a small Spanish town on a work assignment.

Don’t Look Up — NETFLIX FILM 

Writer-director Adam McKay, who started out as a director of light comedies (Anchorman), has moved into darker comedies in recent years. This film is a comedy about nothing less than the apocalypse: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play two astronomers who discover that a comet is heading for Earth, and embark on a press tour to try and get the world to take the threat seriously, only to discover that nobody cares. Filming of the movie was delayed for several months due to the pandemic, so McKay’s originally-intended allegory for climate change might now include other disasters. The starry cast includes appearances from Meryl Streep, Tyler Perry, Matthew Perry (no relation), Chris Evans and Cate Blanchett.

Don’t Look Up (Niko Tavernise/Netflix © 2021)

Minnal Murali — NETFLIX FILM

A humble (but brave) little tailor (Tovino Thomas) is struck by lightning and gets super powers.

The Silent Sea — NETFLIX SERIES

Three astronauts Gong Yoo, Bae Doona and Lee Joon try to recover something important from an abandoned research building on the moon in this thriller series, directed by   Choi Hang-yon.

STAND BY ME Doraemon 2 — NETFLIX FILM

A sequel to the film Stand By Me Doraemon, adapted from the manga series Doraemon, about the wacky adventures of a guy and a time-traveling robot cat.

Coming to Netflix December 25, 2021

Single’s Inferno — NETFLIX SERIES

Yet another reality dating show: twenty single people are marooned on a desert island where the only way out is to fall in love and go on a date.

Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material — NETFLIX COMEDY

Stand-up comedy special full of self-proclaimed dark jokes.

Stories of a Generation – with Pope Francis — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Yes, Netflix can sign up anyone, even the Pope. This is based on Pope Francis’s book “Sharing the Wisdom of Time,” and is about the elderly sharing their wisdom with the young: the filmmakers are under 30, and they interview Francis and other men and women over 70 to get the benefit of their life experience.

Coming to Netflix December 26, 2021

Lulli — NETFLIX FILM

A non-comedic take on the premise of What Women Want, where a medical student (Larissa Manoela) discovers that she is able to hear other people’s thoughts after an accident.

Coming to Netflix December 28, 2021

Word Party Presents: Math! — NETFLIX FAMILY

Cute little animated animals continue to believe that they can make learning fun for kids. This time they’re singing about how to recognize numbers and patterns.

Coming to Netflix December 29, 2021

Anxious People — NETFLIX SERIES

Rashomon-style comedy-drama about a robbery gone wrong: eight people held hostage by an inept crook have different memories of what happened. This being a TV series from 2021, their flashbacks tease a larger mystery which you’ll have to watch to the end to solve.

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

“Crime Scene” is a series of documentaries about the locations of famous crimes; this focuses on the “Times Square Killer” of the 1970s and ‘80s, and looks at Times Square, and New York City as a whole, in this turbulent era.

Coming to Netflix December 30, 2021

Kitz — NETFLIX SERIES

A young woman (Sofie Eifertinger) insinuates her way into a group of wealthy teenagers, who don’t know that she blames one of them for her brother’s death.

Hilda and the Mountain King — NETFLIX FILM

A special feature-length installment of the animated adaptation of Luke Pearson’s graphic novel series about Hilda, a plucky Scandinavian girl who lives in a world where all Scandinavian myths are real. In this story, she gets turned into a troll and has to figure out how to un-troll-ify herself.

Coming to Netflix December 31, 2021

Cobra Kai: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The “Karate Kid” sequel series continues to be one of the most successful reboot in this golden age of nostalgia reboots.

The Lost Daughter — NETFLIX FILM

A woman meets a younger woman who reminds her of the lost daughter of the title.

Queer Eye: Season 6 — NETFLIX SERIES

Speaking of nostalgic reboots, the revival of the 2000s makeover series is one of at least two Netflix reality shows going to Austin, Texas this month.

Stay Close — NETFLIX SERIES

Miniseries adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel, one of a series of Coben adaptations Netflix is producing under an exclusive contract with the prolific crime novelist.

Seal Team — NETFLIX FILM

Thankfully, this is not another movie about Navy SEALS, it’s an animated movie about a squad of actual seals who team up to stop a gang of actual sharks.

Leaving 12/13, 2021

Halt and Catch Fire: Seasons 1-4

Leaving 12/14, 2021

Saint Seiya: Seasons 1-6

Leaving 12/30, 2021

Suits: Seasons 1-9

Leaving 12/31, 2021

Family Guy: Season 12

Modern Family: Seasons 1-9

New Girl: Seasons 1-7

Sons of Anarchy: Seasons 1-7

The post Netflix Canada in December 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The film adaptation of Catherine Hernandez’s 2017 novel, Scarborough, premiered at TIFF and was a runner-up for the People’s Choice Award. It follows three children whose lives intersect in a low-income neighbourhood. Amil Niazi spoke with co-director Shasha Nakhai about filming during the pandemic, working with child actors and bringing Hernandez’s vision to the screen.

The scene

Bing is a talented young singer who is struggling with his sexuality and nervous about opening up to his conservative Filipino family. In this pivotal scene, he finally gains the confidence to perform in front of his entire school. Nakhai says it was shot to feel dreamlike, reflecting what this moment meant for ­Hernandez. “It’s kind of like a dream of Catherine’s,” says Nakhai. “It’s what she wishes she had, coming out.”

RELATED: In a comedy about queer South Asian identity, a yogurt pot can be more than a pot of yogurt 

The pandemic

COVID-19 shut down production on the film in March 2020, just as they were filming this scene. “Two days before the shoot, we had to cancel everything because of the lockdown,” Nakhai says. “For a while we were just at peace with the fact that we might never finish, because this [scene] is a talent show with lots of people in it.” Even more crucially, the young stars of the film were growing so fast that it put continuity at risk. “Liam’s voice changed a lot,” says Nakhai of actor Liam Diaz, who plays Bing. Luckily, the crew managed to record Diaz’s voice before production shut down.

Hernandez on set with Diaz (Courtesy of Kenya-Jade Pinto/Compy Films)

The writer

Hernandez, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, became a key part of the filming process. “At first, we were afraid to have her on set because it’s so personal to her. These characters are living and breathing in her mind,” says Nakhai. But the process was collaborative, with Hernandez—who is also a playwright with plenty of theatre and dance experience—choreographing the dance sequence in the talent show and helping to coach Diaz’s singing performance.

Cinematographer Morgana McKenzie films Anna Claire B (Courtesy of Kenya-Jade Pinto/Compy Films)

The neighbourhood

The novel connected with many people because of its tender insights into an often maligned area of Toronto, and the film aims to do something similar. It was shot at about 15 Scarborough locations, most in the Kingston-Galloway—Orton area. In fact, the talent show scene took place at the school where the book is set, and many of the families whose children attend the school became extras during the filming.

The post A tender moment of truth in the coming-of-age film ‘Scarborough’ appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The film Spencer labels itself, “A fable from a true tragedy.” It focuses on Diana, Princess of Wales, during three days when the royal family gathers for the Christmas holidays in 1991 at the Queen’s private estate of Sandringham. That holiday is one of Elizabeth II’s favourites, as it’s one of the few times in the year when much of her extended family is together. 

Nothing of note happens during those three days, but trouble is certainly brewing. Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles is cracking under the pressure of time—which exposed how ill-suited they were for each other—as well as adultery (committed by both Charles and Diana) and the constant grinding attention of the media and populus. And the impact of those strains is the focus of this feature film. 

Spencer is a gorgeously surreal drama. Director Pablo Larraín (Jackie) distills the concept of a biopic down to its essence: the main character. The film’s focus is Diana’s world view, dropping the viewer into her hallucinations and sudden mood swings, with a soundtrack of discordant music emphasizing the unsettled atmosphere at Sandringham. The bones for a great film are there: Its cinematography is spectacular, while the direction and production design are clever. But somehow the result is weirdly boring and unsatisfying. 

RELATED: Meghan and Harry’s interview: A royals expert on what we did and didn’t learn

Actress Kristen Stewart is a doe-eyed yet troubled Diana. She’s got the eyes and the voice perfect, as well as the way Diana walked. But her acting feels overwrought and unconvincing. I kept waiting for something deeper than repeated close-ups of her distressed face and clenched fists amid bouts of bulimia and the appearances of a ghostly Anne Boleyn, played by Amy Manson, who is an unsubtle warning of what could await Diana. There is little tension or sense of expectation; the film’s denouement is markedly underwhelming. And even Larraín couldn’t avoid adopting a classic trope: breaking a necklace so that the individual pearls drop and clang with cinematic drama. In reality, pearls are individually knotted onto a string for even cheap, mass-produced necklaces.  

RELATED The Crown is fiction coated by veneer of truth—and Season 4 is the best one yet

Aside from her own mental struggles, the only major foil for Diana is Major Alistair Gregory, played by the wonderful Timothy Spall. He’s supposedly the new equerry for the Queen Mother, then 91, yet is omnipresent at the Queen’s own home, including supervising dinners and security on the estate (umm, that’s not a job for the Queen Mother’s military aide). His real duty appears to be evaluating and “handling” Diana, which, it must be pointed out, he doesn’t seem to do successfully. 

In the film, Diana’s adult confidants are a male chef and her dresser, Maggie, played by Sally Hawkins. The scenes of just the two women—one an aristocrat searching for herself; the other a servant filled with quiet confidence and joie de vivre—are the highlights of the film. Their relationship overcomes class differences to become a true friendship. Alas, those moments aren’t long in this 111-minute movie, in which Larraín devotes more screen time to the happenings of the grand house’s kitchen and its staff. 

Perhaps to keep audiences off balance, Spencer plunges into its fable without any setup, assuming audiences know the basics of the “true tragedy,” which for many comes from watching four seasons of yet another fictional spin on real life, The Crown, on Netflix. That series’ take, in a nutshell, is that the lovely, caring Diana has been ground down by years of ill treatment by her philandering husband and his family, becoming bulimic and self-harming and close to cracking under the pressures of being a member of the House of Windsor. 

RELATED: Diana, Princess of Wales: 1961-1997

The reality is far more nuanced. In the months leading up to Spencer’s holiday setting, Diana was secretly helping Andrew Morton write a tell-all book about her life that was part catharsis and part revenge aimed at her husband. The result, Diana: Her True Story—which revealed her eating disorders and suicide attempts as well as confirmed that Charles had returned to his old love, Camilla Parker Bowles—was a bomb lobbed directly at the heir to the throne. Even now, the “story of Diana” that most believe to be true comes from Morton’s account. 

In Spencer, most of the royals are consigned to silent tertiary roles, to the point that at first I thought that Gregory the equerry was Prince Philip. And William and Harry appear isolated at Sandringham, deprived of the company of any other young people, such as their cousins, Peter and Zara Phillips (Princess Anne’s children), who would have been there. Surprisingly, Charles doesn’t play the villain but appears trapped, like Diana, in this ancient institution seemingly run by the willpower of servants and staff. And in the end of this film—spoiler alert—it’s Charles who gives Diana her freedom. 

(Courtesy of Neon)

The film’s clothes are definitely taken from the unstylish range of the real Diana’s wardrobe: she wore a version of the veiled black hat and red coat to church on Christmas Day two years later than her counterpart in the film; the dull yellow tricorn hat and sailor suit of Spencer was a transformation of a cheery red version she wore to the Royal Naval College Dartmouth in 1989; and the fussily ornate evening gown is a reference to a 1986 ballerina-inspired design by the Emanuels, who made her wedding dress. (And yes, Diana wore a necklace of humongous pearls to that 1986 event.)

RELATED: Joe Biden has tea with the Queen: Six takeaways from a closely watched visit

There are odd ambiguities. Diana enters Sandringham complaining loudly of its cold, yet is often seen in filmy blouses and unseasonal clothing (in one scene, she wears what looks like a summer outfit, complete with white shoes, to a family photo session). She muses about having “her face on a coin” when she becomes queen, even though in reality that honour would belong to her husband as monarch. Park House, the rambling mansion on the Sandringham estate where Diana spent her early childhood wasn’t an abandoned ruin—a symbol of her idealized past and destroyed present—but had in fact been transformed into a charitable hotel for disabled people. 

For those wondering about the title, Spencer, it’s her family name. Lady Diana Spencer was born into one of Britain’s most famous and powerful families, especially when compared to the comparatively upstart German lineage of the Windsors. After Park House, Diana and her family moved into their stately home, Althorp, which dates back to 1508 and rivals royal palaces and castles with its walls of Old Masters and corridors stuffed with treasures. The implication that runs through Spencer is clear: Diana can only survive if she returns to the confidence and happiness of her pre-marriage life.  

Of course, that didn’t happen. In the end, there is an unspoken irony to Spencer. In the film, Diana tries to keep William away from the stuffy royal history and traditions embodied at Sandringham. In reality, William has made no secret of his love of Sandringham: he lived full-time on the estate for several years while his family was young and returned to live there again during much of the pandemic. William talks often of his mother and the influence she had on his life, but he’s also a Windsor, and one increasingly in sync with his father, Charles, when it comes to the future of the monarchy. 

The post The new Diana film ‘Spencer’ may be gorgeous but it lacks tension appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Here are four things that I’m going to be watching on Netflix this month (click or tap on the title to take you to the description below). You can also look out for the emojis.

• The Harder They Fall
• Red Notice
• Tiger King 2
• tick, tick…BOOM!

Date TBA

Decoupled — NETFLIX SERIES

R. Madhavan and Surveen Chawla play a couple who find that the process of getting divorced can be almost as complicated as staying married.

Happiness Ever After — NETFLIX FILM

A sequel to the popular 2016 film Happiness is a Four-Letter Word,  picking up on what happened to the three main characters (played by Khanyi Mbau, Mmabatho Montsho, and Renate Stuurman) after they found happiness.

Coming to Netflix November 1, 2021

The Claus Family — NETFLIX FILM

Dutch-Belgian film about a kid who hates Christmas but discovers that his grandfather is Santa Claus. Will he help his ailing grandpa make his deliveries? Will he learn to like Christmas? Does it even count as a spoiler if you answer those questions?

Coming to Netflix November 2, 2021

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

It’s not as sensational as the title sounds; this animated film features the voices of real Second World War veterans who recall a secret POW camp where captured Germans were interrogated on U.S. soil.

Ridley Jones: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated preschooler series about a girl who protects museum artifacts and wears a cool hat and is named Jones, but is no relation to Indiana Jones… at least not yet.

Coming to Netflix November 3, 2021

 The Harder They Fall — NETFLIX FILM 

The Western is one of the few genres Netflix hasn’t fully embraced. This film, the first feature-length effort by co-writer and director Jeymes “The Bullitts” Samuel, aims to change that by doing a Western about the Black cowboys you rarely saw in traditional Hollywood Westerns: Jonathan Majors plays the legendary cowboy Nat Love, who organizes a gang to help him get revenge on outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). Jay-Z is one of the producers and Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) co-wrote the script.

The Harder They Fall (David Lee/Netflix © 2021)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Lords of Scam — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

How to get rich by pretending to fight climate change: this French documentary covers a group of people who defrauded the European Union’s carbon credit system and almost got away with it.

National Lampoon’s Animal House

Richard Jewell

Scent of a Woman

Coming to Netflix November 4, 2021

Catching Killers — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Criminal Minds may be off the air, but this series will attempt to give us insight into the minds of real-life serial killers, through interviews with the people who caught them.

Coming to Netflix November 5, 2021

A Cop Movie — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In addition to a documentary about dysfunctional policing, director Alonso Ruizpalacios’s film is a meta-documentary about the differences between being a cop and being an actor who plays a cop – but also about the element of acting and performance that goes into police work.

Big Mouth: Season 5 — NETFLIX SERIES

This animated comedy has a difficult-to-explain premise about two teenagers (voiced by co-creator Nick Kroll and John Mulaney) and the “hormone monsters” who follow them around and encourage their awkward sexual desires. This season, they’ve added “love bugs” and “hate worms,” sort of like the good angels and bad angels on people’s shoulders, except they’re insects.

The Club — NETFLIX SERIES

Period drama about political unrest and social change in 1950s Istanbul, told from the point of view of Matilda (Gökçe Bahadir), who has just gotten out of prison and takes a job at a nightclub in order to be near the daughter she hasn’t seen for 17 years.

Glória — NETFLIX SERIES

Period drama about political unrest and social change in 1960s Lisbon, told from the point of view of João (Miguel Nunes), who joins the Cold War-era radio service Radio Free Europe but is actually on a secret mission to sabotage it.

Love Hard — NETFLIX FILM

You can tell we’re getting closer to Christmas because Netflix is releasing a romantic comedy about a busy working woman and “hopeless romantic” (Nina Dobrev) who flies across the country for the holidays in the hopes of finding true love. In this case, she flies to meet the man she’s been corresponding with online, only to find out that it was actually another main using his account.

Meenakshi Sundareshwar — NETFLIX FILM

Romantic comedy starring Abhimanyu Dassani and Sanya Malhotra as a couple trying to make their marriage work even after they’re forced to live in different cities for work reasons.

Narcos: Mexico: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

In some ways, this is season 6 of the crime drama about the drug trade, but the first three seasons took place in Colombia and the next three seasons took place in Mexico. Proving that you can survive for more than three seasons on Netflix if you change the title to make it look completely new.

The Unlikely Murderer — NETFLIX SERIES

Period drama about 1986 Stockholm, a fictionalized story about Stig Engström (Robert Gustafsson) and how he managed to avoid being arrested for the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

We Couldn’t Become Adults — NETFLIX FILM

Makoto (Mirai Moriyama) tries to recall how his life went wrong, and flashes back to the 1990s, when he found and lost Kaori (Sairi Itoh), the woman he can’t get over. Directed by Yoshihiro Mori.

Yara — NETFLIX FILM

Marco Tullio Giordana’s film tells the fictionalized real-life story of a prosecutor who becomes obsessed with trying to solve the case of Yara, a 13 year-old girl who has been abducted.

Zero to Hero — NETFLIX FILM

Another fictionalized real-life story, about Paralympic Games champion So Wa Wai (played by Choi Tin-nok as a child and Fung Ho-yeung as a teenager) and his demanding mother (Sandra Ng Kwan-yue).

Coming to Netflix November 6, 2021

Arcane — NETFLIX SERIES (New Episodes Weekly)

Animated spinoff of the “League of Legends” video franchise, which tells the origin stories of characters from the games. The voice cast is headed by Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell.

Coming to Netflix November 7, 2021

Father Christmas is Back — NETFLIX FILM

It’s not a Christmas movie unless someone shows up at someone else’s house unexpectedly, so naturally this movie is about four sisters, whose last name actually is “Christmas,” whose estranged father crashes their family reunion. The father is played by John Cleese, so it’s probably a comedy.

Coming to Netflix November 9, 2021

Swap Shop — NETFLIX SERIES

A TV spinoff of the long-running Tennessee radio show “Swap Shop,” this reality show focuses on nine couples who listen to the show religiously and follows their quest for the best deals on everything from comics to classic cars.

Your Life Is a Joke — NETFLIX COMEDY

Combination of reality show and stand-up special, where we see stand-up comic Oliver Polak hang out with the episode’s celebrity guest, and then roasting them in a stand-up set based on the time they spent together.

Coming to Netflix November 10, 2021

Animal — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In each of these eight episodes, a documentary crew follows a different animal family (such as kangaroos, octopi and lions), and each episode is narrated by a different celebrity, including Bryan Cranston, Rashida Jones and Pedro “The Mandalorian” Pascal.

Everybody Loves Raymond: Seasons 1-5

Gentefied: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In the new season of the comedy-drama about taco-shop owner “Pop” (Joaquín Cosío) and his three grandchildren, the characters must try to prevent Pop from being deported.

Passing — NETFLIX FILM

English actress Rebecca Hall makes her debut as writer-director with this adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about two biracial women (Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga), one of whom chooses to pass for white and keep her ancestry a secret from her husband.

Coming to Netflix November 11, 2021

Love Never Lies — NETFLIX SERIES

A reality show format in which couples have to take a lie detector test, and are punished for telling lies and rewarded for being honest with each other.

 Red Notice — NETFLIX FILM 

Dwayne Johnson is rapidly becoming the king of escapist entertainment in a world that craves escapism. In his latest film, he takes some time off from car chases and boat chases to chase a sexy art thief, played by Gal Gadot. Johnson is a cop who can only catch Gadot by teaming up with a different sexy art thief, played by Ryan Reynolds. This frothy concoction was whipped up by writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story).

Red Notice (Frank Masi/Netflix © 2021)

Coming to Netflix November 15, 2021

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Indecent Proposal

Lies and Deceit — NETFLIX SERIES

Not to be confused with the earlier Netflix release “Lies and Deception,” this suspense series (based on a book by Harry and Jack Williams) stars Laura Munar as a woman who accuses a surgeon (Javier Rey) of raping her.

Snowbound for Christmas

Coming to Netflix November 16, 2021

Johnny Test’s Ultimate Meatloaf Quest — NETFLIX FAMILY

In this interactive special based on the Canadian/American cartoon series about a boy and his talking dog, the boy and dog go on a quest for a meatloaf that doesn’t taste terrible, and we vote on the best way for them to find it..

StoryBots: Laugh, Learn, Sing — NETFLIX FAMILY

The long-running educational children’s series uses music and singing to help kids learn the alphabet. They probably won’t be allowed to use that Three Stooges “Swinging the Alphabet” song, though.

Coming to Netflix November 17, 2021

Christmas Flow — NETFLIX SERIES

A rapper (Tayc) and a reporter (Shirine Boutella) fall in love around Christmas time, which, by show business law, means that their odd-couple romance is guaranteed to be a success in the end.

The Queen of Flow: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Not to be confused with “Christmas Flow.” In the new season of this Telenovela, Yeimy (Carolina Ramírez) tries to give up on revenge and concentrate on her music, but some of the people she got revenge on are still around to get revenge on her.

Riverdale: Season 6 — NETFLIX SERIES

The dark ‘n’ gritty reboot of Archie Comics has been on the air so long that an entire generation may never remember a time when they weren’t dark ‘n’ gritty.

Tear Along the Dotted Line — NETFLIX SERIES

Created by Italian cartoonist Michele Reche, this animated comedy is about a cartoonist who confesses his problems and insecurities to a talking armadillo. All the characters are voiced by Reche, except for the armadillo.

Tiger King 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 

After the breakout success of the original Tiger King crime documentary during the early days of the pandemic, was there really anything left to say about the ultra-controversial zookeeper Joe Exotic? Netflix sure hopes so, because they need another breakout hit a year and a half into the pandemic. They are, however, not saying much about what will happen, merely promising us that there will be more “twists and turns” to the story of Joe and his nemesis Carole Baskin.

Coming to Netflix November 18, 2021

Carlos Ballarta: False Prophet — NETFLIX COMEDY

After taking on domestic life in 2018’s Furia Ñera, the comedian’s new special gives us his views on Latin American culture and religion.

Dogs in Space — NETFLIX FAMILY

This animated series is about genetically-altered dogs who are sent into space. It’s the most honest title since Snakes on a Plane. 

Lead Me Home — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

This documentary seeks to expose the bad and worsening conditions for homeless people in California.

The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star — NETFLIX FILM

Netflix’s 2018 Christmas comedy The Princess Switch had a simple “Prince and the Pauper” plot where Vanessa Hudgens plays a princess who switches places with a commoner who looks exactly ike her. Thanks to “sequel escalation,” there are now three characters who look like Vanessa Hudgens, and somehow they all have to use their uncanny resemblance to recover a stolen artifact.

Coming to Netflix November 19, 2021

Blown Away: Christmas — NETFLIX SERIES

A special Christmas edition of the Canadian reality competition series about glassblowing.

Cowboy Bebop — NETFLIX SERIES

An American live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese animated series about intergalactic bounty hunters. John Cho plays the lead bounty hunter who, it must be said, is not named Cowboy Bebop.

Dhamaka — NETFLIX FILM

This thriller, a remake of a Korean film, stars Kartik Aaryan as a washed-up journalist who tries to revive his career by making a deal with a terrorist for the exclusive coverage rights to his crimes.

Extinct — NETFLIX FAMILY

In an animated series that tries to make dystopia entertaining for kids, two lead characters get a glimpse of the future and find out that their species will go extinct if the world continues on its current path.

For Life: Season 2

Hellbound — NETFLIX SERIES

Live-action adaptation of an animated web series about a world where people are punished for their sins by monsters who drag them down to hell, and a cult that forms around the these creatures.

Love Me Instead — NETFLIX FILM

A corrections officer (Sarp Akkaya) takes a prisoner (Songül Öden) to visit the family he hasn’t seen in 14 years, but the reunion turns out to be bittersweet when a family secret is revealed. Directed by Mehmet Ada Öztekin.

The Mind, Explained: Season 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Narrator Emma Stone and the gang from Vox Media continue to try to help us understand how the human mind works, and why it sometimes doesn’t work for us.

Procession — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

This documentary about the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandals focuses on six victims who have turned to creating their own films to help them express how they feel about the experience.

 tick, tick…BOOM! — NETFLIX FILM 

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first film as director is, not surprisingly, a musical; it’s an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by the late Jonathan Larson (Rent), starring Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson, a musical theatre composer on the verge of turning 30 and wondering if he will ever be successful; the story gains extra poignancy because the real Larson died just before Rent brought him his breakout success. Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) wrote the screenplay.

Tick, Tock… Boom! (Macall Polay/Netflix © 2021)

Coming to Netflix November 20, 2021

New World — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality shows and islands just seem to go hand in hand; this format has six celebrities living on an island where the only money is a “virtual currency”; the contestants must do everything they can to get as much of it as they can, in the hope of trading it in for real money when they’re let off the island.

Coming to Netflix November 22, 2021

Jack Reacher

Outlaws — NETFLIX FILM

Not to be confused with Netflix’s upcoming film The Out-Law, this film is about a shy teenager who falls in with a bad crowd.

Coming to Netflix November 23, 2021

Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Part 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Kevin Smith’s nostalgic continuation of the 1980s “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” series has heroes and villains making unlikely alliances to save the entire Universe, of which some of them (though not all) are Masters.

Reasonable Doubt: A Tale of Two Kidnappings — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary series where, just like in a fictional crime series, a small offense (a fender bender) leads to the discovery of a major crime.

Waffles + Mochi’s Holiday Feast — NETFLIX FAMILY

In the special edition of Michelle Obama’s cooking series for kids, the title characters invent a holiday called “Freezie Day” and then have to travel around the world looking for food to serve at a Freezie Day party.

Coming to Netflix November 24, 2021

A Boy Called Christmas — NETFLIX FILM

Henry Lawfull plays Nikolas, a boy who sets out on a journey to find his mysterious father and discovers that one or both of them might be the legendary Father Christmas. Not to be confused with The Claus Family, about a boy whose father may be Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, which is about a father whose last name is actually Christmas.

Bruised — NETFLIX FILM

Halle Berry made her directorial debut with this movie, screened at Toronto International Film Festival last September, where she plays a retired Mixed Martial Arts fighter who accepts a challenge to fight the reigning MMA champion.

Robin Robin — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated short film about a bird who is raised by mice, and has trouble fitting in among the other mice who, for example, don’t have wings.

Selling Sunset: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

A rare (for Netflix) fourth season for the reality show about real estate agents trying to sell properties in the increasingly-unaffordable Los Angeles.

True Story — NETFLIX SERIES

In this limited series, Kevin Hart plays a comedian whose life takes an unfunny turn when he makes an unfortunate visit to his older brother (Wesley Snipes).

Coming to Netflix November 25, 2021

Charlie’s Angels

F is for Family: Season 5 — NETFLIX SERIES

The final season of the animated period comedy about Frank Murphy (voiced by series co-creator Bill Burr) and his dysfunctional family life in the 1970s.

Super Crooks — NETFLIX SERIES

Anime series based on the 2012 comic book by Mark Millar and Leinil Francis Yu, about a supervillain who puts together a team of superpowered crooks (hence the title) for one big heist that cannot possibly fail.

Coming to Netflix November 26, 2021

A Castle For Christmas — NETFLIX FILM

Brooke Shields plays a famous author who goes to Scotland to buy a castle whose owner (Cary Elwes) doesn’t want to sell. And you know the rules: if a high-powered professional woman travels somewhere in a Christmas movie, she is doomed to fall in love and live happily ever after.

Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary about a woman who mysteriously vanished in 1989 and her brother’s quest, decades later, to prove she had been murdered and find her body.

Green Snake — NETFLIX FILM

Animated film based on the folk tale “The Legend of the White Snake.” A sequel, White Snake 2: The Tribulation of the Green Snake, has already been released, but for some reason, White Snake has been renamed Green Snake for the English-speaking market.

Light the Night — NETFLIX SERIES

Ruby Lin stars in this period drama as Rose, the Madam of a popular social club in 1980s Taipei.

School of Chocolate — NETFLIX SERIES

Yet another new baking competition show, where chocolatier Amaury Guichon drives eight contestants to outdo themselves at making yummy chocolate desserts. The winner will get what Netflix describes only as “a career-changing opportunity,” which possibly means the opportunity to get rich by pitching a baking competition show to Netflix.

Spoiled Brats — NETFLIX FILM

Gérard Jugnot plays a rich man who pretends he’s lost all his money to force his spoiled kids to get a little less spoiled.

Coming to Netflix November 28, 2021

Elves — NETFLIX SERIES

In a possible exception to the rule that travel in a Christmas story always turns out for the best, this series is about a family that takes a Christmas trip to a Danish island that turns out to be populated by elves – not the nice and sanitized North Pole versions, but rough, tough, mean supernatural creatures who don’t take kindly to human strangers.

Coming to Netflix November 29, 2021

14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

This documentary chronicles mountaineer Nims Purja’s “Project Possible 14/7,” his attempt to scale the fourteen highest peaks in the world in seven months.

The Way Back

Coming to Netflix November 30, 2021

The Cable Guy

Charlie’s Colorforms City: — NETFLIX FAMILY

This month brings three special batches of episodes from the animated edu-tainment series: “Classic Tales With a Twist” (classic stories retold with an emphasis on teaching children about shapes), “Snowy Stories” (episodes about winter and snow), and “The Lost Valentine’s Musical” (which may involve singing).

Coming Home in the Dark

More the Merrier — NETFLIX FILM

Multi-plot comedy about a large cast of characters who have different experiences of “sexual self-discovery” in one eventful night.

My Christmas Inn

The Summit of the Gods — NETFLIX FILM

Based on Jiro Taniguchi’s manga, itself based on a novel by Baku Yumemakura, this animated film is about two young men who decide to scale Mount Everest in search of a missing climber.

Vikings: Season 4

Leaving 11/16, 2021

Longmire: Seasons 1-3

Leaving 11/20, 2021

The Hangover

The Hangover: Part II

The Hangover: Part III

Leaving 11/29, 2021

Man Down: Seasons 1-4

Leaving 11/30, 2021

Rake: Seasons 1-4

TURN: Washington’s Spies: Seasons 1-4

The post Netflix Canada in November 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

This story was originally published in print in February 2020.

During a trip to Jamaica when I was 11, my father took me to lunch one day with my aunts and uncles. As often happens when two or more members of my family get together, the playful teasing began.

“Fariegn couldn’t betta dan yaad!” my father’s siblings joked. That day, the ribbing centred around my father’s decision to leave Jamaica for Canada, and how what his new home lacked in tropical sunscapes, it made up for in frigid snowstorms. My Uncle Al, always a gentle soul, chimed in: “Canada nice, yes, but you see how much tings Jamaica create and inspire?” I knew there was jerk chicken. Reggae music. Bob Marley even! “And nuh figet James Bond!” my Aunt Janey said.

“James Bond? Who’s that?” I asked. With that question, I learned all about my aunt’s favourite film character—a roguish and debonair spy known the world over who was created right there in Jamaica.

RELATED: James Bond: The evolution of an iconic franchise—and the coolest secret agent of all time 

Sir Ian Fleming, a British naval intelligence officer turned novelist, found his way to Jamaica in the 1940s. Goldeneye, Fleming’s estate on the island’s northern coast, was a site of inspiration (he wrote all 13 Bond books in his bedroom there) and escapism (he hosted famous friends such as Britain’s prime minister Sir Anthony Eden, Katharine Hepburn and Truman Capote). Years after Fleming’s death in 1964, Goldeneye was sold to Bob Marley, who then sold it to music industry titan Chris Blackwell, whose mother Blanche was a close confidante of Fleming’s.

Fleming’s legacy lives on in Jamaica, in national namesakes such as James Bond Beach and the Ian Fleming International Airport. From Bond’s favourite breakfast of scrambled eggs and Blue Mountain coffee, to the settings of Bond novels Dr. No, Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun, to the actual shooting location of numerous Bond films, Jamaica has been immortalized as a silent character within the Bond universe. Even as we look to the future of the Bond franchise and the casting of Lashana Lynch—a British actress with Jamaican roots—as Bond’s co-00 agent, the connections between the island and James Bond remain.

However, that silence gives me pause. As a Jamaican-Canadian, I’m always sensitive to the ways my land of heritage is regarded. What stereotypes (both negative and positive) need to be challenged? Is Jamaica’s attachment to Bond reciprocal, or are other parties taking more from the island than they give?

Goldeneye, in Jamaica (Dorling Kindersley/Alamy)

It’s said that thanks in major part to Fleming, Goldeneye and the author’s slate of notable guests, Jamaica has been branded a world-class tourism gem. In 2018, the island earned US$3.3 billion from 4.32 million visitors, and that number is only set to increase as Jamaica undergoes further resort construction projects in 2020 and beyond. Goldeneye still plays a role in Jamaica’s tourism landscape—under Chris Blackwell’s ownership, it has developed into one of the island’s premiere luxury resorts, providing that same escapism that Fleming sought in the ’40s. I think about my family and friends in Jamaica who are able to put themselves through school and raise families through work in the tourism industry, and I am glad for them.

READ: Lashana Lynch in ‘No Time to Die’ is a sign the 007 franchise has turned a new page 

But I also recognize a dissonance in crafting a narrative of Jamaica as a hidden paradise where visitors can escape their stresses and problems. The reality for many Jamaicans is one that doesn’t often afford the ability to drop one’s struggles at the door of a fancy resort for a week or two, and a constant romanticization of Jamaican life glosses over these realities in a frustrating way. Did Fleming recognize and reckon with how his idealistic Jamaican experience juxtaposed with those of born-and-bred Jamaicans (and not just the monied ones like his friend Blanche Blackwell)? Or did he only see the island as a personal paradise, a retreat from the U.K. winters and a haven that allowed him the mental relief to create one of the world’s most iconic characters?

It looks like the current iteration of Goldeneye has taken that question into consideration. In a 2018 interview with the Telegraph, Chris Blackwell said, “People come to Jamaica, go to their hotel, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, never leave. We encourage our guests to see people and places. It’s bad for our balance sheet—but it’s important to get out, to understand that where you are is a community, not just a destination.”

The timing of Fleming’s love affair with Jamaica is also interesting. He was most active on the island in the years leading up to its independence from Britain, passing away shortly after the island gained independence in 1962. In a New York Times article from 2008, David G. Allan posited that Fleming’s witness of an evolving nation and his reverence for colonial Jamaica affected the writer’s literature, and Bond became the mouthpiece for his own feelings. In his final Bond novel, The Man With the Golden Gun, Fleming reminisces through Bond about his “many assignments in Jamaica and many adventures on the island…the oldest and most romantic of former British possessions.” With my proximity to Jamaica complicated by family history and immigration, the questions of who Jamaica “belongs” to and who tells its stories are ones that weigh heavily on my mind.

RELATED: The James Bond film franchise is actually a family business. Meet the Broccolis. 

My hope is that the exposure Jamaica has received through Fleming and Bond may help nurture similar exposure for Jamaican creatives themselves. Imagine a budding novelist on staff at a resort like Goldeneye—perhaps they will craft the next great literary and cinematic franchise with Jamaica as their inspiration, giving Fleming’s silent character the voice it deserves.

This article appears in print in the Maclean’s James Bond special collector’s edition, with the headline, “Fantasy island.” 

The post James Bond’s fantasy-driven history with Jamaica appeared first on Macleans.ca.

This story originally published in print in February 2020. 

Bond. James Bond. He was born in Jamaica, in a house named Goldeneye on a cliff overlooking a bucolic private beach. That three-bedroom bungalow is where Ian Fleming wrote Dr. No in 1958, and another 11 novels that would turn 007 into a magic number. And the beach is where the first actor to play Bond spied the first Bond girl, as Sean Connery poked his head through the bushes and watched Ursula Andress emerge from the sea in a white bikini, a knife slung from her waist, singing the calypso strains of Under the Mango Tree. It was a simpler, dumber time. Louche playboys were cool. Ogling was just a heightened form of espionage. And in a barely post-colonial world, where privilege was still synonymous with pleasure, Bond offered a risqué escape from the Cold War. One of his biggest fans was President John F. Kennedy, who watched From Russia With Love at a private screening in the White House, weeks before his assassination.

Now Goldeneye has expanded to become a luxury resort. The name of 007’s creator has migrated to the Ian Fleming International Airport 10 minutes down the road. And Bond movies are bigger than ever. After 57 years, they constitute one of the longest-running film franchises in history, with a lifetime haul of more than US$8 billion at the box office, the third largest after the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars empires—though the comparison hardly seems fair, considering they enlist entire teams of sci-fi superheroes armed to the gills with sci-fi powers and special effects, while James is still a one-man band who drives to work behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. He’ll gun a motorcycle up a staircase, or sled an airplane down a ski hill, but he’s all about keeping it physical.

This spring heralds a significant milestone for 007. In the first week of April, Universal and MGM will release No Time to Die, the 25th movie in the official canon of Bond movies generated by Britain’s Eon Productions (which doesn’t include 1967’s Casino Royale spoof starring David Niven as “Sir James Bond” and Connery’s 1983 outlier, Never Say Never Again). Despite the title of the new film, after threatening to walk away more than once, Daniel Craig has sworn that No Time to Die will be his final Bond performance. It’s the most expensive film in the history of the franchise, with an estimated budget of US$250 million. It may also be the most concerted effort yet to drag cinema’s most iconic alpha male kicking and screaming into a world of gender fluidity, obscene wealth, viral racism and catastrophic climate change. It would be enough to drive Ian Fleming’s Bond to drink.

READ: The James Bond film franchise is actually a family business. Meet the Broccolis.

No Time to Die’s generic title has a retro echo, riffing on a declension that includes You Only Live Twice (1967), Live and Let Die (1973), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Die Another Day (2002). But the movie appears to be straining for relevance so hard that it’s not clear if the No Time to Die refers to its hero or the planet. Its villain, played by a disfigured Rami Malek, is plotting to kill off the world’s oceans with a form of lethal algae (as if they’re not dying fast enough as it is). Craig, meanwhile, is driving a sleek, eco-conscious hunk of luxury—Aston Martin’s all-electric V12 Rapide E, one of a limited edition of 155 four-door coupes priced at over $400,000 apiece. But the headlights flip into Gatling guns. No matter what tech Q throws at him, James remains the ultimate Analog Man.

The British press, meanwhile, have reported that the film’s producers eliminated plastic water bottles on set and banned the phrase “Bond girl.” And it seems every woman who crosses his path in No Time to Die is fiercely independent. Léa Seydoux’s sultry Dr. Madeleine Swann—who rode off into romantic bliss with Bond at the end of Spectre (2015)—is back, and the trailer shows him seething with rage over her “betrayal.” While the story is not based on any of the novels, it rewires the DNA of the Bond Universe to bring back Christoph Waltz as the cackling incarnation of Blofeld, Bond’s deceased arch-enemy. The script has 007 pulled out of a quiet retirement in Jamaica and forced to team up with a formidable Black female agent (Lashana Lynch), who is clearly nobody’s Bond girl. “I didn’t want someone who was slick,” Lynch told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted someone who was rough around the edges and who has a past and a history and has issues with her weight and maybe questions what’s going on with her boyfriend.” With Naomie Harris returning for her third film as Moneypenny, that puts two Black British actresses from Jamaican families in lead roles. In a shoot that ranged from the U.K.’s Pinewood Studios to locations in London, Italy and Norway, 007 returns to Jamaica for the first time since 1973’s Live and Let Die, in which it played a fictional country.

The production is rife with firsts. An anomaly in a realm of digital blockbusters, it was shot on film and is the first Bond movie to use large-format 65mm Panavision and IMAX cameras. It’s the first to cast a Cuban woman in a lead role, with Craig recruiting Ana de Armas, his co-star in Knives Out. It’s also the first directed by an American or someone of Asian heritage—filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation) is both. And Fleabag sensation Phoebe Waller-Bridge, brought on by Craig to tweak the script, is the first female screenwriter on a Bond film since 1963 (Johanna Harwood had credits on Dr. No and From Russia With Love). Craig, however, was furious when a Sunday Times reporter asked if Waller-Bridge was hired to make Bond more representative of the times. “Look, we’re having a conversation about Phoebe’s gender here, which is f–king ridiculous,” he said. “She’s a great writer.” And Waller-Bridge swiftly dismissed those who question Bond’s relevance because of how he treats women. “That’s bollocks,” she said. “He’s absolutely relevant now. The important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character.”

READ: In a comedy about queer South Asian identity, a yogurt pot can be more than a pot of yogurt

What’s more significant about No Time to Die than all its firsts is that Craig’s fifth Bond movie will be his last. He’s the third-longest-serving 007 after Roger Moore and Connery, who both made seven films. And he has done more than anyone to transform the franchise, while refusing to get swallowed up by it. Connery fell into the role with an aplomb that made him an instant star, and then never escaped it. But he set the template for all his successors. Moore refashioned the character as a suave lounge act that devolved into camp and farce. Pierce Brosnan soldiered through his tour of duty, enduring the most pedestrian phase of the franchise. It was like watching a competent cover band do Bond. But Craig attacked the property like a punk on a mission, as if torn between redeeming and incinerating his mandate. Aside from the visceral force that he brought to the character, he applied a laser intelligence to the franchise both on camera and behind it, raising its pedigree with serious talents like Sam Mendes (Skyfall).

From the beginning, Craig didn’t inhabit the role so much as infiltrate it. Burrowing into Fleming’s novels, he set out to restore the character’s core of inner turmoil and professional cruelty. And he’s been chafing against the tropes and gimmickry of the formula ever since he ordered a vodka martini in Casino Royale and, asked if it should be shaken or stirred, snapped, “Do I look like I give a damn?” But no matter how hard he tries to exert control over the franchise, Craig’s frustration with it only seems to intensify. He’s still an aging mortal overwhelmed by a machine of movie-making that outlasts anyone who steps behind the wheel. In that sense, he operates like a double agent, toggling between hero and anti-hero in a dystopian franchise that he tries to subvert at every turn. His resentment and impatience are palpable, in and out of character. Even his charm is weaponized with cold-blooded intention. Whether or not Craig is the best Bond of all time, he’s certainly the most ruthless, and the most vulnerable. He’s the spy who is forever coming in from the cold.

On the press tour for Spectre, when a journalist from Time Out asked if he would make another Bond film, Craig replied: “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists . . . All I want to do is move on . . . If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money.” Craig’s efforts to make Bond real have taken their toll. He lost two front teeth in a fight scene on the set of Casino Royale, had surgery to repair a shoulder separation incurred in Quantum of Solace, and underwent knee surgery after tearing his meniscus during a brawl in Spectre. But you still get the sense that he’s a character actor trapped in the body of an action hero. And when he’s not being Bond, he delights in stunts of a different kind, shape-shifting his persona from Joe Bang, the nut-job safe-cracker in Logan Lucky, to Benoit Blanc, the debonair detective in Knives Out, whose southern accent is so arch that you wonder if it’s the character, not the actor, who’s faking it.

READ: Three new books to read in October

But being a Bond, like being a Beatle, doesn’t wear off. No matter what twists Daniel Craig’s career takes, it’s what he will be remembered for. It’s the reason that, like Connery and Moore, he’ll likely get a knighthood for his service as a cultural agent for Queen and country. And whoever inherits the role—Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Richard Madden and Benedict Cumberbatch are among the plausible candidates—will be judged by an impossible standard. When Craig was cast, there was outrage that he was blond. The next 007 might be Black or Asian . . . but perhaps not female, an idea with advocates that range from Idris Elba to Pierce Brosnan—but which irritates Craig’s wife, Rachel Weisz, who told the Telegraph, “Women should get their own stories.” Weisz said that Fleming worked hard to create a character that is “particularly male and relates in a particular way to women.” In other words, a female Bond wouldn’t be Bond. For the royal family of movie franchises, male progeniture is part of 007’s DNA—and a legacy that is firmly rooted in a seismic moment of pop culture almost six decades ago.

It was the year the Rolling Stones played their first gig and Marilyn Monroe took her last breath. The year Nelson Mandela began a 27-year stint behind bars and John F. Kennedy vowed to put a man on the moon. The Cuban Missile Crisis was about to push the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. And on Oct. 5, 1962, Bond made his screen debut in Dr. No, the same day the Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do.

The two milestones are not unrelated. Both Bond and the bands that would spearhead the British Invasion emerged at the dawn of the swinging sixties, and put a spin on pop culture that is still reverberating. Both took the male fashions of the day—cool irony, deadpan wit and brazen promiscuity—in opposite directions. With his licence to kill, and seduce, the clean-cut 007 was a paragon of retro style from the start, a macho smoothie forged in the ’50s by author Ian Fleming and left in the dust of the sexual revolution. While the Beatles, the Stones and David Bowie would melt down the masculine mystique in a river of drugs and androgyny, James Bond would remain crisp, suave and insensitive, a playboy predator fuelled by vodka martinis and room-service champagne.

READ: Netflix Canada in October 2021: What’s new this month

“My dear girl,” Sean Connery’s 007 told Bond girl Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, “there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Pérignon ’53 above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.” As a pop reference, it must have seemed terribly au courant at the time, but was rendered instantly square: Goldfinger came out in 1964, seven months after the Beatles electrified a generation on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Bond fashions have come and gone over the years as six actors have tried on the role. From Connery to Craig, the arc of the character has swung from droll menace to camp swagger and back again. His pose has softened and hardened with the times, along with the women. The first generation of Bond girls were Barbie playmates, pure sex objects. As feminism nipped at Bond’s heels, the women mutated into dominatrix ninjas, while Bond, always the central sex object, morphed from Connery’s furry man of leisure to Craig’s hard-bodied, hard-working, brutally efficient thug. But the beauty of Bond is that he’s a classical icon: obdurate, invincible and immune to any style but his own. Each casting syncs the character to the culture, yet the basic formula for the films has retained an uncanny consistency.

For a generation raised on comic books and black-and-white TV, discovering Bond was like discovering sex. Until then, we had doted on men in capes, tights, masks, leather chaps and coonskin caps—a carnival of superhero drag that included Superman, Batman, Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett, Zorro and the Lone Ranger. Then along came this guy in a suit. His idea of camouflage was to throw on a tuxedo. A secret agent without a secret identity, he was our first grown-up icon of male fantasy. Since then, comic-book superheroes have conquered Hollywood, but Bond, classic and straight-up, remains cinema’s most durable action hero, sex symbol and brand.

READ: Simu Liu is on the cusp of superstardom. But that isn’t his end game.

Dr. No didn’t just launch film’s longest-running franchise. Even more remarkable, it has remained a family business for almost six decades, controlled by London’s Eon Productions, which was founded in 1961 by American producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and his Canadian partner, Harry Saltzman. Now that the founders are both deceased, the movies are produced by Cubby’s daughter, Barbara Broccoli, and his stepson, Michael G. Wilson.

In half a century, budgets have skyrocketed, digital effects have upstaged stunts, and Commander James Bond has outgrown the Cold War to battle new breeds of international terror. But the formula remains unchanged from the one laid down in Dr. No right from the opening frames: the prematurely digital 007 logo, the gun-barrel view of Bond firing through the fourth wall, the descending curtain of blood, and the pop-art credits playing over dancing female silhouettes—clothed for the first and only time.

Under the hood, nearly all the familiar elements were in place: the casino table, the coastal car chase, and all that lounging around in swimsuits and bathrobes, flashing equal opportunity expanses of skin. When Ursula Andress stepped out of the sea at Goldeneye, she set the bar for all the Bond girls to come, while Miss Moneypenny—portrayed by Canadian actress Lois Maxwell in 14 movies—held down the MI6 fort as 007’s frustrated office wife. Dr. No also established the arc for the basic Bond mission: travel to an exotic clime, invade the sliding-door fortress of a sadist bent on world domination, become both his tortured prisoner and pampered guest, engage the soft-spoken lunatic in sophisticated repartee, and escape with the girl after foiling the villain’s doomsday scheme at the last possible moment.

Many consider 1963’s ‘From Russia With Love’ the best Bond movie of all (Everett Collection)

Sean Connery, who set the style for 007, is still widely regarded as the definitive Bond. But he wasn’t the first choice. That would be Broccoli’s friend Cary Grant, who was passed over because he wouldn’t sign on for more than one film. Other debonair rejects included James Mason, David Niven and Rex Harrison. “I wanted a ballsy guy,” said Broccoli. “Put a bit of veneer over that tough Scottish hide and you’ve got Fleming’s Bond instead of all the mincing poofs we had applying for the job.” Connery had been a milkman, labourer, artist’s model, coffin polisher and bodybuilder—placing third in a Mr. Universe contest. Before being cast as 007 at 32, he had been honing his acting chops for a decade in stage, screen and TV work, including the title role in a 1961 CBC production of Macbeth directed by Paul Almond. And like Commander Bond, he’d even spent some time in the Royal Navy, with tattoos to prove it.

It was Terence Young, Dr. No’s Cambridge-educated director, who groomed the six-foot-two working-class Scot, teaching him how to dress, how to walk and how to open a bottle of champagne. “All the little touches, that’s the way Terence was,” recalled Eunice Gayson, who played Sylvia Trench, the first Bond girl to appear on screen. “He had style, he had élan. In those days Sean was very raw. Terence took him to his tailor and to his hairdresser and really gave Sean the confidence to be James Bond.” The hairdresser, however, would be working with a toupée: already balding, Connery wore a rug from the start.

With the first shot of Connery introducing himself at a gambling table in Dr. No with a cigarette—“Bond,” he said, snapping his lighter shut to mark the pause, “James Bond”—no one has owned those words with such dry authority. Young recalled that Connery first spoke the line all at once and it wasn’t funny. With the pause, “suddenly it was a laugh.” From the start, the movies injected a sense of humour that Fleming’s hard-boiled prose did not allow. Young, who went on to direct From Russia With Love and Thunderball, felt it was essential to lighten the mood because the films were so risqué for the times. Flying into Jamaica to shoot Dr. No, he remembers telling Connery, “For Chrissakes we have to make this picture a little bit amusing, if for no other reason that it’s the only way we’re going to get away with murder. A lot of things in this picture—the sex, the violence and so on—if they’re played straight, we’re never going to get past the censors.”

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Dr. No was filmed on a budget of $1 million, meagre for a movie that had to convey an air of opulence. Like every Bond movie that came after, it combined interiors filmed at Britain’s Pinewood Studios with stunning locations—including Jamaica’s north coast, not far from Goldeneye, the beach house where Fleming wrote all the Bond novels. Jamaica had just won independence from Britain, and the film is infused with the pre-reggae rhythms of a culture about to make its own indelible mark on pop culture. Dr. No became an early source of national pride, ironic considering its hero was an anachronism from a colonial past that Jamaica was shaking off. The movie’s location manager, meanwhile, was none other than founder of Island Records Chris Blackwell, who would produce Bob Marley. Blackwell, who bought Goldeneye from Marley after Fleming’s death, was to the Bond manor born. His mother, Blanche, was Fleming’s mistress and muse, and she’s been credited with inspiring both Dr. No’s Honeychile Rider and Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore.

For the second movie, 1963’s From Russia With Love, the budget was doubled, with locations that included Istanbul, Venice and Scotland. Many consider it the best Bond movie of all, an opinion shared by Connery and Craig. It had a sense of gritty realism we wouldn’t glimpse again until Craig smacked the franchise back down to earth in 2006 with Casino Royale. Bond’s brutal fight scene with blond Euro-thug Red Grant in a cramped train compartment on the Orient Express remains a masterpiece of hand-to-hand combat. It took three weeks to film and was performed mostly without stunt doubles. (Fights on trains would become a staple of the franchise, with Roger Moore battling a goon with a mechanical claw in Live and Let Die and one with steel teeth in The Spy Who Loved Me.) The movie’s climactic helicopter chase was as dangerous as it looked. An inexperienced pilot flew perilously close to Connery, almost taking his head off, and another chopper, carrying director Terence Young, crashed over water. Young finished the day’s shoot with his arm in a sling.

As the Cold War heated up, both Dr. No and From Russia With Love neutered the political resonance of Fleming’s fiction by changing the enemy from SMERSH, the Soviet spy agency in the books, to SPECTRE, the private criminal empire run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, which Fleming didn’t create until Thunderball, the eighth novel. In Bond’s universe, reality is not permitted to disrupt fantasy. The only political frontier of strategic importance is the edge of the towel covering Bond’s butt on the massage table. Even in From Russia With Love, the authentic detail of its locations was undercut by casting. Bond’s Turkish cohort was played by Pedro Armendáriz, a Mexican veteran of John Ford westerns, who could not mask his accent. Neither could  John Kitzmiller, the African-American actor who portrayed  Bond’s Caribbean sidekick in Dr. No.

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From Russia With Love introduced some classic Bond tropes. Welsh actor Desmond Llewelyn made his debut as Q, the MI6 weapons expert who would outfit 007 with gadgets in 17 films. Bond may have been frozen in the 1950s as a male model of conspicuous consumption, but no man is complete without state-of-the-art toys. Q began modestly, giving James a trick attaché case armed with a canister of tear gas. SPECTRE had its own, more sinister devices, such as Red Grant’s wristwatch garrote and Rosa Klebb’s poisoned toe spikes. For luxury spy gear, however, the pièce de résistance was Bond’s Bentley convertible equipped with . . . a large car phone. What’s wonderful about space-age gadgets is how quickly they become absurd artifacts of vintage futurism. As the spy-toy arms race escalated, by 1965 Thunderball had Bond soaring over London with a jetpack strapped to his back. (By 1973’s Live and Let Die, Q was dropped entirely because Broccoli felt the gadgets were getting out of control, but he was brought back by popular demand.)

Beginning every film with a pre-title action sequence was another tradition introduced by From Russia With Love. Over the years, as the action preludes got more extravagant and the titles became more slinky and seductive, whenever a Bond film failed to live up to the hype, it was often said its best moments were over by the end of the opening credits.

With Goldfinger (1964), those credits were accompanied for the first time by a title song, the legendary anthem belted out by Shirley Bassey. She recorded it while watching the credits roll, and as they kept running she held the final note until she almost passed out. The song was a massive hit and so was the picture, which became the fastest-grossing movie of all time until then. Goldfinger introduced Bond’s finest car, the Silver Birch Aston Martin DB5. With the car, the song and the gold-plated poster girl, 007 attained an apotheosis of pop-culture cool that he would never reach again. Fleming, who died shortly before the film’s release, would never see it.

Moore debuted as Bond in ‘Live and Let Die’, with Yaphet Kotto as Dr. Kananga (Everett Collection)

Goldfinger introduced director Guy Hamilton, who brought a more comic touch to the franchise, and went on to shoot three more Bond films: Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man With the Golden Gun (1974). It’s also the only film from the Connery era that does not feature SPECTRE. And unlike most Bond movies, this is one movie that doesn’t incorporate a glamorous travelogue, aside from a sojourn in Switzerland. Much of it takes place in the United States, where Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) plots to infiltrate Fort Knox, but the U.S. scenes were shot in Britain. In Fleming’s novel, Goldfinger plots to steal the gold, but in the movie he tries to contaminate it with a dirty bomb, to goose the gold standard—foreshadowing the monetary terrorism of 2006’s Casino Royale.

Bond villains are often upstaged by henchmen, and that was the case with Goldfinger’s mute thug, Oddjob—played by Olympic wrestler and weightlifter Harold Sakata—who used his bowler hat as a lethal Frisbee. The filmmakers tried to cast Orson Welles as Goldfinger, but wouldn’t meet his price. Lowering their sights, they ended up with Fröbe, who spoke little English, delivered his lines in German and was dubbed by another actor. Having been a pre-war member of the Nazi party, Fröbe became nervous about a scene where his character unleashed nerve gas. In fact, Goldfinger was banned in Israel, then released after it was revealed that Fröbe had risked his life to hide Jews from the Gestapo.

In the Bond business, there’s no greater buzzkill than the real world, which is why SPECTRE was the perfect enemy. Before al-Qaeda, no one took the real-life spectre of a global terrorist conspiracy seriously. Although the plots of Bond films are routinely wired with doomsday scenarios of nuclear missiles being sunk, stolen, deflected and misdirected, that was just the sideshow. Viewers embraced Bond movies as vicarious tourism, a chance to join James in a cinematic Club Med. And, alpine ski jaunts notwithstanding, his destination of choice has always been the sea, from the Côte d’Azur to the Caribbean. Fleming, after all, wrote the novels beside a Jamaican beach.

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Thunderball (1965) is the most aquatic of the movies. Shot in and around the turquoise waters of the Bahamas, with enough underwater scenes to turn the screen into a glass-bottomed boat, it sold more tickets than any other movie in the series. By then, it was clear Bond was selling a lifestyle and pioneering a kind of product placement that is now ubiquitous. Stocked with luxury brands, from Rolex to Revlon, Aston Martin to Calvin Klein, the Bond film became Hollywood’s answer to the glossy fashion magazine. The man who wore the watch, drove the car and filled the well-tailored suit was as much a model as an actor. And for Connery, the role had begun to wear thin. Even before shooting Thunderball, he admitted: “My only grumble about the Bond films is that they don’t tax one as an actor. All one needs is the constitution of a rugby player to get through 18 weeks of swimming, slugging and necking . . . I’d like to see someone else tackle Bond.” He swore the next movie would be his last, but shot three more.

You Only Live Twice (1967) was the first Bond film to almost completely discard the Fleming novel. Ironically, the screenplay was written by the author’s close friend, celebrated children’s author Roald Dahl, a novice screenwriter who called it “Ian Fleming’s worst book.” By the time the producers were shooting the movie, set largely in Japan, they were already seeking a replacement for their disenchanted star.

George Lazenby, Connery’s successor, signed on for seven movies but quit the role after just one, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). Adapted from Fleming’s 10th novel, it’s a curious anomaly in the catalogue. Tricked out in a ridiculous wardrobe of ruffled shirts, a beige leisure suit, a cravat and a kilt, Lazenby came across as a bored action mannequin going through the motions. This is the movie where Bond gets married, with tragic consequences, to a contessa played with sly complexity by Diana Rigg, the only Bond girl ever to possess more authority and depth than Bond. While Rigg acted circles around Lazenby, a miscast Telly Savalas blundered through a gloating parody of Blofeld. Bond is upstaged at every turn—by a Fellini-esque cult of mind-controlled beauties in an Alpine chalet; a ski chase that’s buried in an avalanche; and an ailing Louis Armstrong crooning We Have All the Time in the World. And Lazenby served as proof that, without an actor to brand the role with his own personality, Bond is an empty shell. Timothy Dalton, the other “temp” Bond, was a far better actor, and darkened 007 with some gravitas. But Dalton never seemed to own the character, or convey the required relish for decadent pleasure. Liking the job is part of the mission.

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Connery was talked into making one last picture for the Eon franchise, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). “I was really bribed back into it,” said the actor, who was paid a record salary of US$1.25 million (nearly US$8 million in 2020 dollars), plus 12.5 per cent of the gross. Like Elvis, Connery’s swan song ended in a Vegas setting, driving a silly lunar rover in a slapstick chase scene through the desert. Quite the comedown from the Aston Martin.

‘Moonraker’ brought Moore’s Bond
to space (Everett Collection)

After Connery turned down US$5 million to make Live and Let Die (1973), he gave his blessing to Roger Moore, who could not have been more different. Famous from TV’s The Saint, the 45-year-old Moore was soft-edged and elegant, with an air of rom-com affectation. Lacking the working-class grit of Connery or Craig, his Bond was more prone to snobbery than to cruelty. Moore made his Live and Let Die entrance as a flustered womanizer in a bedroom farce. After M surprised him at home with an early morning visit, he showed off his first gadget—a high-tech cappuccino machine. Serving coffee, and chasing after his boss with a sugar bowl, Bond is reduced to a servile secret service man. The next gadget is a magnetic Rolex that can divert a bullet, which he used to unzip the dress of a girl he has stashed in the closet.

Based on Fleming’s second novel, Live and Let Die cooks up a white gumbo of colonial blaxploitation, Mardi Gras and voodoo. Paul McCartney’s title song plays as the opening credits roll, and a montage shows a nude African woman in flames whose eyes bug out as her face turns into a skull. Filmed in Harlem, Louisiana and Jamaica (cast as a fictional Caribbean island), Live and Let Die brought Bond back to Jamaica for the first time since a tarantula shared his bed in Dr. No. The movie is crawling with snakes, crocodiles, sharks and retro clichés such as tying a white damsel to stakes in the jungle. You half expect a cannibal pot to materialize.

Moore considered The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) the best of his seven Bond movies. Directed by Alfie’s Lewis Gilbert, it’s the most spectacular, beginning from the pre-title scene of 007 flying off a mountaintop on skis and opening a Union Jack parachute—an uncut stunt filmed on Baffin Island’s Mount Asgard. The action, which involves a missing nuclear sub, ranges from Egypt’s pyramids to the ocean lair of a Captain Nemo-like villain, with Bond taking an underwater spin in an amphibious Lotus Esprit.

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But during Moore’s tenure, as the franchise exhausted the Fleming oeuvre, the movies began to founder as they became bloated with techno spectacle and cynical self-parody. The cartoonish Moonraker (1979), which tried to capitalize on space operas like Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was the last of Fleming’s novels to be adapted, and bore scant resemblance to the book. Like Connery, Moore began to talk of stepping down years before he eventually did.

For Your Eyes Only (1981), based on some of Fleming’s short stories, was the first Bond movie without M; Bernard Lee, who had played the pipe-smoking chief of MI6 in 11 films, died early in the shoot. Moore said it would be his swan song, then went on to make Octopussy in 1983, a year that saw a battle of the Bonds. The 52-year-old Connery was lured back by a rival production company to star in Never Say Never Again, another version of Fleming’s Thunderball, which had been tied up in years of legal wrangling over rights. It opened to generally favourable reviews and healthy revenues, although its box office failed to eclipse Octopussy, which had opened a few months earlier.

Brosnan in ‘Die Another Day’ (Everett Collection)

At 57, Moore took his final bow with A View to a Kill (1985), a movie he dissed almost as much as the critics did, admitting he had spent too long at the party. After the Timothy Dalton interlude of The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), contract disputes stalled the franchise for six years before another dashing TV star, Remington Steele’s Pierce Brosnan, finally kicked it back to life with GoldenEye.

Whenever a new 007 is minted, the first movie has to be an attention-getter. But by 1995, the new Bond was being launched into a movie culture of blockbuster spectacles enhanced by computer-generated imagery. The high-tech dream fetishized in Bond movies was taking over filmmaking itself. GoldenEye was the first Bond movie to use digital effects, yet physical stunts have always been a trademark staple. Directed by New Zealand’s Martin Campbell, the movie opened with a record-breaking bungee dive off Switzerland’s vast Verzasca Dam followed by a blazing firefight with a double-digit body count and a jump from a motorcycle to a plane in flight.

Dench as the character M in 1995 (Everett Collection)

The story, the first not based on Fleming’s fiction, finds Bond in a changed world. The end of the Cold War is celebrated by a title sequence of silhouetted nudes hanging off giant hammers, sickles and toppled Soviet statuary. Taking over the role of M, a crisp and caustic Judi Dench informs 007 that he’s “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.” Making M a matriarch and casting Dench was an inspired move. A superb actor with wit and gravitas, she is a walking time bomb in her own right, fused by a new polarity of sexual and global politics. Driving home the point that the world has changed, the climax has Bond bashing through St. Petersburg in a tank—on location in the city formerly known as Leningrad.

At the same time, GoldenEye milked nostalgia for the old Bond with a greatest-hits collection of classic scenarios: the Côte d’Azur casino, the Turkish bath, the bunker fortress, the doomsday countdown—and the silver Aston Martin, which Bond guns around the hairpin cliffs of Monte Carlo, doubling the clutch in pursuit of a woman in a red Ferrari who, as Fleming would say, “drives like a man.” But Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) was not your father’s Bond girl; she crushed men with her thighs until they were gasping for air.

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Pierce Brosnan, stepping into the role at age 42, was a trim, economical 007 who kept his head down, wore the suits well, and made a virtue of neutrality and nuance. The Irish-born actor made for a less mannered Bond than Moore’s self-conscious thespian, who always looked most at home in a silk bathrobe, emanating noblesse oblige. But the smouldering Brosnan didn’t give off much attitude of any kind, which posed a problem. As the movies escalated in scale, they began to overwhelm his character, now orphaned both from Fleming’s fiction and his world. Dwarfed by fireballs and smothered in product placements, Bond was reduced to the obedient steward of a corporate franchise that had lost the plot. Brosnan was doing the job with executive precision, but didn’t look like he was having a whole lot of fun. And what could be more un-Bond-like than that?

Craig in ‘Casino Royale’ (Everett Collection)

Then Daniel Craig arrived as an unlikely saviour in 2006’s Casino Royale. He looked like a character actor, not a movie star. He had the face of a dock worker looking for a fight after the pubs had closed. And his casting ignited a firestorm among Bond fans. They said he was too blond, too brutish, not classically handsome. Craig, who took on the role at 38—the first Bond who hadn’t been born when the series started—didn’t just prove himself. He took violent possession of the character, and reminded us that the most glamorous action hero in the history of cinema was a polished thug. After 45 years, Casino Royale remade 007 from scratch. It resurrected Fleming’s first Bond novel, which had never been properly adapted, only plundered for a 1954 CBS episode about a CIA spy called “Jimmy” Bond, and the 1967 spoof with David Niven. Transposed to a post-9/11 era, the book became fodder for an origin story that rebooted both the character and the franchise.

With Martin Campbell back in the director’s chair, the producers turned to Oscar-winning Canadian Paul Haggis to write the script. When they approached him, “I thought they were out of their f–king minds,” Haggis said at the time. “Why would they want me? I thought I’d either reinvigorate this franchise or destroy it forever. So it’s a crapshoot. I approached it like everything else and asked questions of the protagonist. Like, what’s with Bond and women?”

Craig asked the same questions. Scuffing the polish off the icon to reveal an animal instinct, he portrayed Bond as a raw predator, a hothead whose feelings still ran dangerously close to the surface. He was a spy impersonating a playboy, but hadn’t taken the role to heart; his heart was still breakable. After 44 years, it was as if 007’s emotions were finally making their screen debut. Dench’s M came into her own as a severe matriarch. And as his minder Vesper Lynd, Eva Green was not just another duplicitous Bond girl, but a tragic love interest who got under his skin.

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The violence in Casino Royale was more visceral than any Bond film before, beginning with the black-and-white prelude of James driving a man’s head into a bathroom sink. In an era of fast-cut digital chaos, the movie reminded us that nothing pumps up the adrenalin like spectacular stunt work unfolding in real time. The foot chase in Madagascar, featuring freerunner Sébastien Foucan, introduced Craig as an intensely athletic Bond; no lazing around the spa for him. When he was tortured, it wasn’t with the slow tease of a laser beam burning a path to his groin, as in Goldfinger. Stripped naked and tied to a chair, his genitals are pounded with a knotted rope. Even the plot has a sordid touch. The villain with a bleeding eye (Mads Mikkelsen) isn’t bent on world domination; he’s a seedy banker for terrorists trying to pay off a bad debt. And with serious actors like Mikkelsen, Dench and Craig given a licence to act, Casino Royale conveys at least the illusion of substance.

While subverting the Bond formula, the film took care not to destroy it, a fine line in a franchise that is as protective of its brand as Disney. Standards of nudity and profanity have changed radically in 50 years, but not in the Bond films. Take the scene in Casino Royale where Bond is asked if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, and responds, “Do I look like I give a damn?” With the film’s rating, “I could have said, ‘Do I look like I give a f–k?’ and we could have got it past the censors,” Craig said. “But it just didn’t feel right. It was profanity for profanity’s sake. The fact is, there’s no profanity in Bond.”

Craig’s second film, Quantum of Solace (2008), was less impressive. Directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball), it was more of a flat-out action movie. Perhaps sated by Casino Royale’s marathon poker scenes, Bond doesn’t even set foot inside a casino; not once does he introduce himself as “Bond . . . James Bond.” The screenplay, co-written by Haggis, is a revenge drama with some barbs of wit, but no cheesy double entendres. The dialogue is sparse and the action hectic, with a fast-cutting style more typical of The Bourne Identity. Yet Craig conveys physical menace with the smallest gestures—flipping open a cellphone or grabbing a set of keys off a dresser.

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In 2012, after Craig co-starred with the Queen in a 007 stunt for the opening of London’s Olympics, came the royal flush of Skyfall, directed by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty), who cast an echelon of Oscar-winning actors, including Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney—and Judi Dench in an expanded role as M. It was Craig who hand-picked Mendes. “It’s a very showbizzy story,” he told Esquire. “I was at Hugh Jackman’s house in New York. It was a soiree, and Sam was there. I’d had a few too many drinks and I went, ‘How do you fancy directing a Bond?’ And he kind of went, ‘Yeah!’ And it snowballed from there.”

Craig and Ola Rapace (right) both did their own stunt work on top of a moving train for a fight scene in ‘Skyfall’ (Collection Christophel/Alamy)

Mendes also recruited ace cinematographer Roger Deakins (who in 2017 would win his first Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 after 13 nominations). All Bond movies revel in eye candy, but none has been so profoundly gorgeous as Skyfall, which unfolds as a suite of moody compositions, from liquid neon vistas of Shanghai to the moors of Scotland. The plot involves a disastrous mission in Istanbul, after which Bond goes missing and is presumed dead, while the identities of MI6 spies are leaked on the internet. When Bond resurfaces, his loyalty to M is challenged with secrets from her past, and her tragic death seals the story with a surge of high tragedy that goes far beyond the Bond formula. As for Craig, the way he described his character, he could be talking about Hamlet—suffering from a “combination of lassitude, boredom, depression [and] difficulty with what he’s chosen to do for a living.” The actor, however, finally settles into his career choice as if to the manor born.

With Skyfall, we may have reached Peak Bond, with an Oscar-winning title song by Adele crowning the occasion. Three years later, Spectre slipped back into formula with bouts of cartoonish extravagance, but under Mendes’ direction, the level of artistry and acting remained high. In a magisterial opening sequence, Bond leaps across the rooftops of Mexico City, while a Day of the Dead parade fills the streets below, with Craig displaying breathtaking agility in buttoned suit and tie that somehow never get dishevelled. And an epic fistfight in a railway car—the one that earned him his knee surgery—is brutally convincing.

But the film’s most luxurious moments are its character pieces—the slow seduction of Léa Seydoux, who parlays the sly enigma of Dr. Madeleine Swann from damsel in distress to femme fatale, and the slow boil of Fiennes, who deepens his role as the new M with a dramatic severity that never flinches for a second. He’s joined by yet another Oscar winner with a more cavalier style, Christoph Waltz, who’s cast as an evil mastermind plotting to overrun the world with an Orwellian surveillance system. With his usual appetite for comic mugging, he, well, waltzes through the movie as if the scenery has never tasted so good. His character is revealed to be a resurrection of the classic Bond villain Blofeld—the original Joker—in a cat’s cradle of a script that tries to tie a bow on Spectre’s tangled strands of franchise genealogy. As actors come and go, there’s obvious merit in stitching some narrative continuity from one movie to the next, if only to hold the Bond Universe together. But in the end, despite all the preposterous plotting and stunts, any good Bond film hangs from one thread: the guy who convinces us he’s 007.

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Every generation gets the Bond it deserves. Connery was the rogue who got away with murder in an age when sex was harmless, smoking was de rigueur and air travel was romantic, especially while smoking. Moore was Disco Bond, a suave cynic who escorted 007 into an ’80s wasteland where both movies and music were overproduced. Brosnan was Gentleman Bond, trying to keep his cool amid the rising din of blockbuster mayhem. Craig is Existential Bond, who channelled the frustration of tackling the role into the character. Each of his predecessors became trapped and typecast. But Craig, like Bond himself, was determined not to be held hostage.

Since James Bond first appeared on screen in Dr. No, he has notched his bedpost with countless kills and sexual conquests. Hardly a Love Me Do kind of guy, he’s the original unrepentant rock star, more in the vein of that other jet-set Lothario with a franchise of the same vintage, the Stones’ Mick Jagger. Forever on the road, Bond cruises the colonies and stays in the best hotels, burning through women and booze. Satisfaction eludes him. But unlike an aging rocker, 007 is always replaced by a newer model. And as long as the revenue rolls in, he’s not about to fade away any time soon.

This article appears in print in the Maclean’s James Bond special collector’s edition, with the headline, “Bond everlasting.” 

The post James Bond: The evolution of an iconic franchise—and the coolest secret agent of all time appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Here are five things that I’m going to be watching on Netflix this month (click or tap on the title to take you to the description below): a broadway show about Princess Diana called Diana, The Musical, a Nigerian film adaptation of a novel called Swallow, an animated series called Inside Job that tries to turn the concept of the “Deep State” into office comedy, Army of Thieves, a spinoff for one of the supporting players from zombie movie Army of the Dead, and Ava DuVernay’s latest Netflix production, Colin in Black, which takes a look at the life of athlete and activist Colin Kaepernick.

Date TBA

A World Without — NETFLIX FILM

Nia Dinata directed this film about three teenage girls who join The Light, a self-improvement organization that promises to give its members their perfect lives.

An Astrological Guide for Broken Hearts — NETFLIX SERIES

Adaptation of Silvia Zucca’s romantic novel about a woman, frustrated with her life, who decides to use astrology as her guide.

Call My Agent: Bollywood — NETFLIX SERIES

Indian version  of the French series “Dix Pour Cent” (available on Netflix, also under the title “Call My Agent”) about the serio-comic tribulations of four talent agents at a top entertainment-industry agency.

Encounters: Season 1

Inspector Koo — NETFLIX SERIES

An ex-cop (Lee Young-ae) deals with her personal issues while pursuing a private investigation into a suspected serial killer.

The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary series about a serial killer in early 2000s Seoul.

Coming to Netflix October 1, 2021

A Sinister Sect: Colonia Dignidad — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary series about a German colony established in Chile in 1961, with connections to Naziism, accusations of abuse and torture, and eventually, connections to the Pinochet government. The series interviews survivors about the colony and its leader, Paul Schäfer.

Diana: The Musical — NETFLIX SPECIAL
Broadway is finally reopening, and what better way to welcome back live theatre than a filmed version of a musical (about the life of Princess Diana) that hasn’t opened yet, discouraging us from trying to go see it live? Still, the show was recorded during 2020 when Broadway was still closed and they weren’t able to use an audience, so the special may remind us why theatre needs to be watched with other people around.
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Forever Rich — NETFLIX FILM

Netflix’s first original film from Holland, a suspense thriller despite what the story description might imply, stars Jonas Smulders as an up-and-coming rapper who fears his reputation has been ruined when viral video footage emerges of him getting mugged.

The Guilty — NETFLIX FILM

A big-name creative team put together this remake of the 2018 Danish thriller: Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directed, Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) wrote the script, and Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a 911 operator who becomes obsessed with investigating a mysterious emergency call.

MAID — NETFLIX SERIES

Based on Stephanie Land’s nonfiction book “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” this limited series features Margaret Qualley as a single mother who becomes a maid to make a better life for herself and her daughter.

Paik’s Spirit — NETFLIX SERIES

Celebrity chef Baek Jong Won hosts a combination food and talk show where celebrities stop by to talk about their favourite examples of Korean food and drink.

Scaredy Cats — NETFLIX FAMILY

A family-friendly take on Halloween programming, about three girls who find out they have the power to turn into cats, and try to use that power to foil the evil schemes of two wicked witches.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light — NETFLIX ANIME

The final episodes of this adaptation of Nakaba Suzuki’s manga, about a band of knights patterned after the titular sins.

Swallow — NETFLIX FILM

This is the first of a series of three Netflix film adaptations of novels by Sefi Atta, the Nigerian writer whose many awards include the PEN International David TK Wong Prize. Atta wrote the screenplay in collaboration with the director, Kunle Afolayan; like the novel of the same name, Swallow takes place in the 1980s and focuses on Tolani (played by the singer Niyola), a young woman who takes a job as a secretary in a Lagos bank, and whose problems eventually lead her to become a reluctant drug smuggler along with her friend rose (played by Grace Agu).
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Coming to Netflix October 3, 2021

After

Scissor Seven: Season 3 — NETFLIX ANIME

Animated comedy about a guy who is both a professional killer and a professional barber.

Upcoming Summer — NETFLIX FILM

Teen movie about two people who become friends during the fallout from a lie that backfired.

Coming to Netflix October 4, 2021

Blue’s Clues & You!: Season 1

On My Block: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix’s realistic take on the teen comedy/drama genre (created by Lauren Iungerich, Eddie Gonzalez, and Jeremy Haft), about four friends who attend a Los Angeles high school, picks up two years after the last season ended.

Coming to Netflix October 5, 2021

Escape The Undertaker — NETFLIX FILM

An interactive special from the WWE, this film lets us vote on the next scene in the story of a WWE tag team trying to escape the villainous Undertaker. Unlike regular wrestling, this is, of course, completely scripted.

The Great Canadian Baking Show: Season 4

Coming to Netflix October 6, 2021

Bad Sport  — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Each of these six episodes is a documentary about a famous scandal involving sports stars, some of them directly related to the sport, like point-shaving and fixing games, and some of them about athletes who got involved in crime.

Baking Impossible — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix will never run out of baking competition series as long as there is food on this earth. This one features teams of “bakineers” – one baker plus one engineer – who have to create food that tastes good and can also do things like float on water or survive explosions.

The Five Juanas — NETFLIX SERIES

Five women discover that they all have the same birthmark, and discover that the reason behind the birthmark is sinister and linked to an equally sinister politician.

Love Is Blind: Brazil — NETFLIX SERIES (new episodes weekly)

The Brazilian version of the international dating-show format, whose gimmick (created before the pandemic but permanently associated with it) is that none of the contestants can meet each other in person.

There’s Someone Inside Your House — NETFLIX FILM

Shawn Levy (“Stranger Things”) is one of the producers of this attempt to revive another 1980s staple, the slasher film; based on the novel by Stephanie Perkins, it’s about a killer who murders high school students while exposing the misdeeds for which they’re being punished.

Coming to Netflix October 7, 2021

The Billion Dollar Code — NETFLIX SERIES

This German series is about two computer pioneers who take Google to court, charging that they were the creators of their algorithm.

Knocked Up

Sexy Beasts: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Another dating series which succeeds by having the goofiest gimmick of them all: everyone has to disguise their appearance by dressing up as an animal, a monster, or whatever else the makeup and costume people thought of.

​​The Way of the Househusband: Season 1 Part 2 — NETFLIX ANIME

A legendary Yakuza gangster becomes a supportive househusband while his wife goes to work.

Coming to Netflix October 8, 2021

A Tale Dark & Grimm — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated series, from the books by Adam Gidwitz, where Hänsel and Gretel escape their rotten parents and run away through other Grimm fairy tales, looking for a less depressing story to live in.

Family Business: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

French series about a family-owned butcher shop that reinvents itself as a legalized marijuana store.

Grudge / Kin — NETFLIX FILM

A policeman’s promotion is threatened due to a violent accident that he suspects may be part of a scheme against him and his colleagues.

Honey Boy

House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In Delhi in 2018, an entire family was found dead (most of them by hanging), eleven people in all. It was ruled a suicide, and this documentary will examine what happened.

LOL Surprise: The Movie

My Brother, My Sister — NETFLIX FILM

Two very different siblings must learn to get along with each other after their father’s will forces them to move in together to collect their inheritance.

Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle — NETFLIX FAMILY

In the 23rd Pokémon movie, the characters meet a human boy who was raised by a Pokémon and considers himself to be a Pokémon too.

Pretty Smart — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix has not completely given up on the four-camera studio sitcom. This one stars Emily Osment as a very smart person who moves in with her not-so-smart sister who also lives with three not-so-smart roommates, making it an inversion of “The Big Bang Theory.”

Coming to Netflix October 9, 2021

Blue Period — NETFLIX ANIME

A teenager finds a purpose in life when he is inspired to take up painting. Based on the manga by Tsubasa Yamaguchi.

Coming to Netflix October 11, 2021

The Baby-Sitters Club: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

In the modernized adaptation of the Ann M. Martin’s famous book series, the club founders have found themselves so successful that they add two new girls to their booming babysitting business.

The King’s Affection — NETFLIX SERIES

A crown prince is killed and his twin sister is forced to pretend to be him, but pretending to be a boy may complicate her attempts to find love.

Coming to Netflix October 12, 2021

Bright: Samurai Soul — NETFLIX ANIME

Another odd-couple adventure series, in which a human warrior and an orc who have to team up with rescue a cute elf.

Convergence: Courage in a Crisis — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

We’re far enough into the pandemic that inspirational documentaries have started to be produced about it; this one looks at the people who try to do something about the rampant inequality that the pandemic has exacerbated.

Making Malinche: A Documentary by Nacho Cano — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In another Netflix adjunct to live theatre, musician Nacho Cano produced this documentary about the making of his new musical Malinche, about Hernán Cortés and La Malinche.

Mighty Express: Season 5 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Netflix has at least two long-running kids’ shows about vehicles that talk. This is the one about talking trains.

The Movies That Made Us: Season 3 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

1980s movies are now extremely old, and you know what that means: nostalgic documentaries. Each episode looks at the making of a classic comedy, action or horror film. The films featured in this batch are Aliens, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Coming to America, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Robocop and, skipping ahead a couple of decades, Elf and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Coming to Netflix October 13, 2021

The Blacklist: Season 8

Fever Dream / Distancia de Rescate — NETFLIX FILM

Adaptation of Samanta Schweblin’s 2014 psychological horror novel about a dying woman and a boy sitting by her hospital bed, whose fates may be intertwined by something known as “the worms.”

Hiacynt — NETFLIX FILM

Also known as “Operation Hyacinth,” this drama is set in 1980s Poland and is about a killer targeting the gay community, and how the government uses the investigation as a pretext for surveillance of gay men.

Reflection of You — NETFLIX SERIES

The story of a successful woman who seems to have it all, and another, younger woman who reminds her of the person she used to be before she became successful.

Violet Evergarden the Movie

Coming to Netflix October 14, 2021

Another Life: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Katee Sackhoff stars in this series about all the gruesome things that can happen when extraterrestrials finally make contact with us.

Kim’s Convenience: Season 5

One Night in Paris — NETFLIX FILM

A comedy special mixing standup comedy and sketches, in which French comedians try to find humour in pandemic life.

Coming to Netflix October 15, 2021

CoComelon: Season 4

Deep Impact

The Forgotten Battle — NETFLIX FILM

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. directed this film about the Battle of the Scheldt, an important World War II battle that nobody talks about any more. It was led by the First Canadian Army, but even Canadians don’t make movies about it, and the main characters in the movie are Dutch, British and German.

The Four of Us — NETFLIX FILM

Thriller about people who attempt partner swapping, which either leads to hilarious hijinks if it’s a comedy, or a tense standoff if it’s a thriller.

Karma’s World — NETFLIX FAMILY 

Rapper Chris “Ludacris” Bridges produced this series about Karma (based on Bridges’s daughter), a musically gifted 10 year-old girl who discovers the power of music and rhyme to make people’s lives better. The series features 40 11-minute animated episodes.

Little Things: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

English-language comedy series starring Mithila Palkar and Dhruv Sehgal as a young couple navigating different ways of maintaining a relationship: last season had them in a distance relationship, and this season sees them trying to figure out where they stand after reuniting.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It

My Best Friend’s Wedding

My Name — NETFLIX SERIES

A woman joins the police as part of a scheme to get revenge for her father’s murder.

PAW Patrol: Season 8

Sharkdog’s Fintastic Halloween — NETFLIX FAMILY 

Halloween special for the animated series about a pet who is not quite a dog but not entirely a shark.

The Trip — NETFLIX FILM

Thriller set in a remote cabin (one of the top spots for a thriller, even surpassing trains) where a husband and wife are plotting to murder one another until a third party steps in and tries to murder them both.

You: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) has managed to hold viewer interest for two seasons as a charming serial killer, but can he pull the same trick now that he and Love (Victoria Pedretti) are married parents living in a fashionable suburb?

Coming to Netflix October 16, 2021

The General’s Daughter

Misfit: The Series — NETFLIX FAMILY

A group of “misfits” rebels when the headmaster at their school refuses to let them produce a musical.

Super 8

Coming to Netflix October 17, 2021

Hellboy

Coming to Netflix October 19, 2021

In for a Murder / W jak morderstwo — NETFLIX FILM

A woman who reads a lot of crime stories begins to suspect that there has been a murder in her town, and unlike most of us who get ideas based on fiction, she’ll probably be proven right.

Coming to Netflix October 20, 2021

Found — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary about three people who go to China to find the parents who put them up for adoption.

Gabby’s Dollhouse: Season 3 — NETFLIX FAMILY 

Preschooler show about a girl whose dolls come to life and teach us delightful lessons.

Night Teeth — NETFLIX FILM

A chauffeur (Jorge Lendenborg Jr.) realizes he’s on the worst freelance assignment of his life after he discovers that the two women who hired him are vampires.

Sinister

Stuck Together — NETFLIX FILM

The pandemic has been going on long enough that there are movies about what it was like during the early 2020 lockdowns. This one is about a Paris apartment building where the residents try to figure out ways to keep themselves connected while being stuck in their apartments.

Coming to Netflix October 21, 2021

Flip a Coin -ONE OK ROCK Documentary — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

And here’s another production about Act One of the pandemic, a documentary about the Japanese rock group ONE OK ROCK and how they responded to the cancellation of live tours by trying to put together a spectacular online concert for streaming.

Go! Go! Cory Carson: Season 6 — NETFLIX FAMILY

It was noted earlier that Netflix has a long-running animated series about talking trains. This is not that. This is their long-running animated series about talking cars.

Insiders — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix’s official press release describes this only as “an innovative new reality show.” Maybe the innovation is not telling anybody what it’s about?

Komi Can’t Communicate — NETFLIX ANIME

Adaptation of Tomohito Oda’s manga about a girl with social anxiety and the classmate who sets out to help her make no fewer than 100 friends.

Life’s a Glitch with Julien Bam — NETFLIX SERIES

The latest in the line of online influencers to get their own series is the German influencer Julien Bam, but with the sci-fi twist that he and his co-host, Joon Kim, are trying to make it back to our reality after being transported to another dimension.

Sex, Love & goop — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix courageously takes a step into the infomercial genre: we meet couples who are having intimacy issues, and host Gwyneth Paltrow discovers that the answers to their problems just happen to have something to do with “Goop,” the lifestyle brand she created and owns.

Coming to Netflix October 22, 2021

Adventure Beast — NETFLIX SERIES

An edu-taining enviro-series with Bradley Trevor Grieve, the Australian author and wildlife preservation advocate.

​​Dynasty: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The remake of this Aaron Spelling series has already run twice as long as the remake of Dallas, the show the original Dynasty was ripping off. So even if it doesn’t make it beyond this season, it’s already won.

Inside Job — NETFLIX SERIES

An animated series that tries to turn the concept of the “Deep State” into office comedy, telling the story of people who work at Cognito Inc., the organization that knows all the top-secret information that “they” don’t want us to know, and deal with the frustrations of having to keep huge secrets all the time. Gravity Falls writers Shion Takeuchi and Alex Hirsch are the creators.

Little Big Mouth — NETFLIX FILM

After being thrown out by his rock group, a guitarist moves in with a single mom and her father and son.

Locke & Key: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Based on the comic book series, Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Meredith Averill developed this show about three kids named “Locke” who live in a spooky house where magical keys open the door to horrific secrets, and yes, the characters were named “Locke” so they could have a punny title.

Maya and the Three — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated series about Maya (voiced by Zoe Saldaña), a 15 year-old princess who goes on a nine-episode quest to save the world from vengeful gods.  Created by Jorge Gutierrez (“El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera”).

More than Blue: The Series — NETFLIX SERIES

TV series version of the successful 2018 Taiwanese film (itself a reboot of a 2009 Korean film) about two young people who bond over their mutual lack of family (he was abandoned, she was orphaned).

Roaring Twenties — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A reality show, recorded in Austin, Texas, that attempts to spin a series out of the two meanings of “twenties” – the people are in their twenties, and they’re living in the twenties.

Coming to Netflix October 26, 2021

Sex: Unzipped — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix enters into another beloved genre, the “obscene puppets” genre, in this comedy special where puppets try their hand (so to speak) at sex education. Includes a special guest appearance by, inevitably, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Coming to Netflix October 27, 2021

Hypnotic — NETFLIX FILM

A woman tries to improve her mental health by going to a hypnotist. If this were a comedy, that would lead to hilarious consequences, but it isn’t a comedy, it’s a thriller, so the hypnotist is probably up to no good.

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight Part 2 — NETFLIX FILM

A sequel to last year’s slasher film Nobody Sleeps in the Woods, which picks up the story of the girl who survived at the end of the last one.

Sintonia: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

The soapy adventures of São Paulo teenagers Rita, Nando and Doni.

This Is Us: Season 5

Coming to Netflix October 28, 2021

Luis Miguel – The Series: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

The very long documentary series about the life of the Mexican pop star; the third season focuses on the late ‘90s, when he was in his late twenties and dating Mariah Carey.

The Motive — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In 1986 Jerusalem, a teenage boy killed his family, and as the title implies, the documentary is about trying to figure out why he would have done such a thing.

Coming to Netflix October 29, 2021

Army of Thieves — NETFLIX FILM

Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead  did well enough for Netflix that he’s produced this prequel film. It’s a spinoff for one of the supporting players from the original movie, looking at safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) back in the days when he was just getting his safecracking career off the ground and there were zombies around, but not quite as many as in Army of the Dead.
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Colin in Black & White — NETFLIX SERIES

Ava DuVernay’s latest Netflix production takes a look at the life of athlete and activist Colin Kaepernick, who co-produced. It’s not a documentary; Kaepernick narrates the show, but it’s about a younger version of him, played by Jaden Michael, with Mary-Louise Parker and Nick Offerman as his adoptive parents. The aim is to use a familiar TV genre – the nostalgic look at a famous person’s childhood – as a vehicle to examine how and why he felt the need to become an activist.
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Dear Mother — NETFLIX FILM

A man discovers that his heart has stopped beating, and yet he is otherwise alive and well. Directed by Laurent Lafitte, who also plays the lead.

Mythomaniac: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Comedy-drama series about a woman who pretends to be terminally ill.

The Time It Takes — NETFLIX SERIES

Lina (Nadia de Santiago) tries to move on and start a new life, but she can’t forget Nico (Álvaro Cervantes).

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Leaving Netflix

Leaving 10/4, 2021

Scandal: Seasons 1-7

Leaving 10/19, 2021

Scary Movie 2
Scary Movie 3
Scary Movie 4
Scary Movie 5

Leaving 10/31, 2021

Argo

The post Netflix Canada in October 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

This story originally published in print in February 2020. 

When Danny Boyle was announced in May 2018 as the director of the 25th James Bond film, it seemed something had really changed with the franchise’s attitude to directors. Not only had producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli hired a second consecutive Academy Award winner (after Sam Mendes on Skyfall and Spectre), but they were allowing Boyle to bring along his regular writer, John Hodge. It looked like the beginning of an era of auteur Bond directors . . . until a few months later, Hodge’s script was rejected, Boyle quit and Cary Fukunaga was brought in to replace him on the film that became No Time to Die. “The producers wanted to go in a different direction,” was how Boyle summed up the situation to Radio Times.

READ: A graphic history of James Bond — kisses, kills and box-office earnings

Sam Mendes notwithstanding, the James Bond movies are producer-driven and the directors are hired hands. Broccoli and Wilson choose the lead, the director and the locations: Mark O’Connell, author of the book Catching Bullets: Memories of a Bond Fan, says they try to figure out “where the new global threats are, [and] where is pictorially fascinating but also logistical for production.” Now that they’re out of Ian Fleming novels to adapt, the producers create the stories, too. According to a rare 2015 New York Times interview with the press-shy team, the creative process for every movie begins with the two of them trying to decide on a premise and a villain that can embody some topical issue or prevalent fear.

Broccoli and Wilson’s hands-on approach was almost literally inherited: they are the daughter and stepson, respectively, of Albert R. Broccoli (universally known as “Cubby”), who produced or co-produced every official Bond movie from Dr. No in 1962 through Licence to Kill in 1989. Long before he died, Broccoli was preparing his heirs to take over, with Barbara working her way up to associate producer and Michael co-writing the scripts for all the movies in the 1980s. In a very mild irony, the franchise about a man who will never, ever have children is also the most successful family business in modern film.

Stepson Michael and daughter Barbara with Craig (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Since becoming full-fledged producers, the Broccolis have kept as much control over the franchise as possible. While the studio, MGM, has influence over the final product, Broccoli and Wilson can often overrule or out-argue studio executives. All four of the Pierce Brosnan films were big box-office hits, but the Broccolis chose not to have him back for Casino Royale and managed to convince reluctant executives that the series needed to be completely rebooted. Enter Daniel Craig. Director Roger Spottiswoode, who worked for the Broccolis on their second production, 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, told the Los Angeles Times: “Barbara and Michael have infinitely more to do with it than any studio. MGM would come up with some new idea and Barbara would say, ‘That’s not right for Bond.’ ” In the book Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films, director Michael Apted (The World Is Not Enough) recalls that he wanted Bond to talk to a woman about his past, but Broccoli and Wilson vetoed it, saying that Bond “never reveals anything about himself.”

Their obsession with what’s right for Bond was inherited from Cubby Broccoli, along with 50 per cent of the movie rights to James Bond and all his adventures (the novels Casino Royale and Thunderball used to be owned by other producers, but the Broccolis got them back). Cubby, an American who mostly worked in England, was fascinated with the idea of turning Ian Fleming’s character into a multi-film series. This preoccupation distinguished him from his one-time co-producer, the Canadian Harry Saltzman, who left the franchise and sold his half of it after 1974’s The Man With the Golden Gun (MGM now owns his share, making them co-owners with the Broccolis). Saltzman produced serious films on the side, like The Ipcress File (starring Michael Caine as a very unglamorous spy) and Orson Welles’s Shakespeare adaptation Chimes at Midnight. But after the Bond movies became successful, Broccoli only produced two movies that weren’t about Bond, and one of them was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on a novel by . . . Ian Fleming.

READ: Pierce Brosnan on how he’d envision a new James Bond

Broccoli’s ambition was not to move beyond Bond, but rather to keep Bond going forever. When he died in 1996, shortly after GoldenEye launched Pierce Brosnan, he had kept the franchise viable through five different Bonds, the rise of feminism, the end of the Cold War and enormous competition—including rival Bond movies like Never Say Never Again. His strategy was to protect the essence of the character while adjusting the movies to keep up with recent trends, like sending 007 into outer space after Star Wars came out. His heirs, similarly, have responded to the demands of a modern audience for more serialized storytelling and continuity between films, making Quantum of Solace a direct continuation of Craig’s first movie, and using Spectre to explain that the stories of all Craig’s movies were linked, just like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What none of the Broccolis will go for, however, is a superstar director. Albert Broccoli gave all the ’80s films to his former editor, John Glen, who was no one’s idea of an exciting director, but who knew what the boss wanted. The team will sometimes hire a director with an international reputation, like Mendes, Fukunaga (True Detective), or Lewis Gilbert (who directed You Only Live Twice after making the swinging London drama Alfie), but they have never hired anyone who has such a distinctive style that he or she might produce something radically different from the previous movies. Steven Spielberg said many times that his dream was to direct a Bond movie, and after the success of Jaws, he called Cubby Broccoli and asked to be hired—Broccoli turned him down. (The Indiana Jones series became the vehicle for all the ideas Spielberg might have brought to the Bond franchise.) Quentin Tarantino repeatedly said that he wanted to make a Bond movie, but he was never considered. When Die Another Day was about to come out, Brosnan gave an interview to Premiere magazine where he slammed his soon-to-be ex-producers for turning down big-name directors: “John Woo would love to have done one. Ang Lee would have loved to have done one. Barbara and Michael . . . ah, it’s an old story.”

One factor in this is that Broccoli and Wilson have their preferred collaborators, like Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have worked on every Bond script since 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, while superstar directors usually bring all their own people. But money may also be an issue. After Skyfall became the highest-grossing Bond film of all time, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that Craig still wasn’t getting a piece of the profits at that point: “The Broccolis famously do not offer backend to talent.” That helps explain why Spielberg recently said that, even if the Broccolis wanted him, “they can’t afford me.” This frugality is another tradition they inherited from their father, who would sometimes consider hiring a major female star, only to go for someone less expensive in the end: Faye Dunaway was rumoured for the title role in Octopussy, which wound up going to the far less well-known Maud Adams.

No one knows yet whether Bond will continue as a family business when one or both producers are ready to step down: Wilson is 78 this year (though he has two sons who are working on the Bond movies), while Barbara Broccoli, in the tradition of Harry Saltzman, has been branching out into other interests, producing London theatre and the occasional serious film like 2017’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. “It may be time for a new ownership of the Bond series and a fresh approach,” says Graham Rye, editor of 007 Magazine. He thinks it’s possible that a U.S. studio might someday buy out the Broccolis. “If that happens, we could see a major shift up in gear with a more regular release pattern, which I’m sure would please the many Bond fans worldwide.”

And yet one of the secrets to the longevity of Bond may be that the producers don’t handle the franchise the way a major studio would. O’Connell points to the Broccolis’ resistance to making more movies or spinoff content: “Bond is and always should be an event, not a vending machine,” is how he explains their thinking, which may have been vindicated after Disney devalued Star Wars by pumping out too many films. For studio executives, Bond is business; for the directors who want to make a Bond movie and can’t, Bond is a missed opportunity. But for Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, Bond is a legacy, and no one else can tell them how to keep it alive. At least not yet.

The post The James Bond film franchise is actually a family business. Meet the Broccolis. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Disney

Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles (Friday, September 3)

An unusual thing about this concert film is that the pop star’s new album, also entitled “Happier Than Ever,” is not on a Disney-owned label. But the promotional concert film attempts to take advantage of Disney’s multimedia power by combining live-action and animated segments: Robert Rodriguez is the director of the live-action segments, featuring Eilish performing at the Hollywood Bowl (with musical guests including L.A.’s superstar symphony conductor Gustavo Dudamel) and giving the viewers a guided tour of Los Angeles; Patrick Osborne (who worked on such Disney films as “Paperman”) directed the animated segments.

Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. (starting Wednesday, September 8)

When Disney bought Fox, they had a whole library of content at their disposal that they could mine for remakes and reboots. One of the first Fox properties they managed to reboot was Doogie Howser, M.D., the Steven Bochco/David E. Kelley series that made Neil Patrick Harris a star. The new show takes the same basic premise: the title character (played by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a child prodigy who graduates from medical school and becomes a full-fledged surgeon at the age of 16, and must balance the life-or-death pressures of a medical career with the normal pressures of being a teenager. However, like Disney’s “High School Musical” series, the show isn’t technically a reboot, because it takes place in a universe where Doogie Howser is a TV show, and the main character is nicknamed “Doogie” because her life so closely resembles that kid from TV. Which at least sets up the possibility of a Neil Patrick Harris cameo somewhere down the line; after all, Disney now owns How I Met Your Mother too.

Pixar

Dug Days (Friday, September 10)

Every so often Disney will look at a popular Pixar movie and ask whether they have any characters they could spin off into some streaming content. This month it’s the talking dog from the movie Up, who will get his own series of animated shorts. However, because these spinoffs can’t depart very far from the world of the original movie, the entire series takes place in the backyard where the dog lives, and deals with the stuff that he observes. But at least, unlike other backyard dogs, he can say what he thinks about it.

Star Wars

Star Wars: Visions (Wednesday, September 22)

Another series of spinoff shorts, this time showcasing the world of Japanese animation: seven different animation studios were each asked to produce a Star Wars short, reimagining some aspect of the franchise in their own distinctive style. As Disney points out in its press release, the original movie was openly influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, but this is a chance to see a different set of influences at work as the creators examine the cultural links between the world of anime and the world of Lucasfilm. The studios involved are Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio (Twin Engine), Studio Colorido (Twin Engine), TRIGGER, Kinema Citrus, Science Saru, and Production I.G.

Star

Reservation Dogs (starting Wednesday, September 1)

This is another Hulu production being shown in Canada on Disney+’s “adult” channel. It features Disney synergy in that it is co-created by Taika Waititi (Thor); the show, featuring a mostly-Indigenous cast and crew, is about four four teenagers (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Paulina Alexis and Lane Factor) who turn to crime to fund their dream of getting out of their small Oklahoma town and moving to California; the title of the show is the title they give their gang, but they may have to rethink their plans when they encounter a competing gang of juvenile delinquents.

The D’Amelio Show (starting Wednesday, September 8)

Two years ago, no one had heard of Charli D’Amelio. Then in 2019 she began posting videos of herself dancing on TikTok, and became one of the most-followed people on social media anywhere. She then moved with her family to L.A. so she could pursue a show business career, and the new reality show follows Charli as she adjusts to her newfound stardom and tries to prove she can be famous for more than just being famous; it also looks at her sister, also a rising social-media star, and their parents, as they figure out how to raise kids who are household names.

The post What’s coming to Disney+ Canada in September 2021 appeared first on Macleans.ca.

What you should watch

Q-Force (September 2):

Netflix’s latest adult animated series is notable partly for the big names attached: Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) is a co-creator and voices the lead character, while prestige-comedy machine Michael Schur is another executive producer. The show is also notable for walking a difficult line in modern comedy: the main character is a spy who, after coming out as gay, is kicked over to an all-LGBTQ team of spies, and the show will try to get laughs from stereotypes while also trying to question or subvert them. Whether the show succeeds or fails may depend on whether they can pull off that balancing act. The voice cast also includes Gary Cole (Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law) as Hayes’s boss.

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (September 6):

Netflix has billed this as a “near real-time” documentary series, which means that the episodes will be released shortly after the events take place. The subject is the brave new world of privately-owned space shuttle launches: the Inspiration4 mission, spearheaded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, has been hyped as the first-ever space mission where none of the crew members are working for the government. The series will premiere with two episodes about the preparations, followed by another two episodes on September 13; after the shuttle launches on Wednesday, September 15, director Jason Hehir and his crew will have to produce a final episode within the next couple of weeks. Which makes this another in the tiny but growing number of Netflix shows that don’t release all the episodes at once.

On the Verge (September 7):

Movie star Julie Delpy (the Before trilogy) co-created and co-stars in this 12-episode comedy/drama series that attempts to present a panoramic view of life in modern-day Los Angeles, focusing on four women from different walks of life (played by Delpy, Sarah Jones, Alexia Landeau and Elisabeth Shue) as they deal with work and personal problems. The show was announced in early 2020 and became one of the first series to film entirely under COVID protocols: in an interview with Variety, Delpy revealed that almost all the casting was done through Zoom, and due to travel restrictions, the cast was restricted to people who lived in California, and everyone was tested three times a day. Unlike other shows conceived before the pandemic, Delpy says that she tried to weave some hints of it into the scripts: now the title has an extra meaning because the characters are unaware that their world is “on the verge” of a very big change.

Attack of the Hollywood Clichés! (September 28):

It was only a matter of time before the popularity of TV Tropes and CinemaSins led to other media analyzing the familiar devices of mainstream entertainment in that same detail. Created by Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror) and hosted by Rob Lowe, the show will interview actors, writers and even “academics” about things we see again and again in our favourite movies, like the “meet cute” where the hero and heroine meet in a hilariously awkward way, or the stock scream that sound effects editors slip into every movie as a sort of running gag. Will this be enough to sustain an entire special as opposed to a wiki page or a 20-minute YouTube video? If not, well, “padding” (material that lengthens a work that doesn’t have enough story) and “follow the leader” (an attempt to copy a successful franchise or creation) are also familiar TV Tropes categories.

Date TBA

Baki Hanma — NETFLIX ANIME

Legendary animation studio TMS produced the animation for this concluding chapter of this manga adaptation, about a man (the title character) who trains to be the best martial-arts fighter in the world, and must defeat his own father to gain that title officially.

Bangkok Breaking — NETFLIX SERIES

Prabda Yoon created this suspense series about an emergency worker and a journalist who stumble across a conspiracy that will take them at least six episodes to expose.

Crime Stories: India Detectives — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A camera crew follows Bengaluru cops on four different investigations, hoping to create a more serious and in-depth look at police work than we’re used to seeing on Cops.

Kota Factory: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Continuing their pursuit of a coveted IIT seat, Vaibhav and his friends try not to let academic pressure — or adolescent angst — get the best of them.

Coming to Netflix September 1, 2021

How to Be a Cowboy — NETFLIX SERIES

Dale Brisby, a self-proclaimed cowboy and bull rider, has a YouTube series called “Rodeo Times” where he rides bulls and teaches us what it means to be a cowboy. He will continue doing this in his own Netflix series, where he teaches lessons in cowboydom to his guests at “Radiator Ranch.”

Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

From director Brian Knappenberger (We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists) a sadly very relevant five-part series about how the September 9/11, 2001 terrorist attacks happened and how they (and the response to them) changed the world.

Coming to Netflix September 2, 2021

Afterlife of the Party — NETFLIX FILM

Victoria Justice plays a self-absorbed party girl who dies and comes back as an angel. Directed by Stephen Herek (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure).

Q-Force — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Double Jeopardy

Dumb and Dumber To

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Coming to Netflix September 3, 2021

Dive Club — NETFLIX FAMILY

The title of this Australian series might make it sound seamy, but it’s just about a bunch of teenagers who use their underwater diving skills to investigate a mystery which, due to the demands of modern storytelling, will take them all twelve episodes to solve.

Money Heist Part 5: Volume 1 — NETFLIX SERIES

One of Netflix’s biggest hits, the crime caper series created by Álex Pina (the English title describes the premise more directly than the original Spanish title, “The House of Paper”), is preparing to wrap up. The new batch of five episodes (there will be one final batch later this year) continues the story of an attempt to rob the Bank of Spain, which has been ongoing since 2019 and still isn’t going very well for them.

Sharkdog — NETFLIX FAMILY

Jacinth Tan created this animated kids’ show about a kid named Max who owns a pet who is half-shark, half-dog, and less violent than either species.

Worth — NETFLIX FILM

Michael Keaton plays a lawyer who has to ask the question “What is life worth?” (the title of the nonfiction book this film is based on) when he fights to get compensation for victims of the September 11 attacks and their families.

Coming to Netflix September 6, 2021

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

See introduction for details

Coming to Netflix September 7, 2021

Kid Cosmic: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated series from Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls) about a kid on his friends on a quest to collect the “Stones of Power,” which are in no way related to the Infinity Stones.

Octonauts: Above & Beyond — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated kids’ show about a bunch of talking animals who are like the Paw Patrol, only they solve problems under the sea instead of on land.

On the Verge — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Untold: Breaking Point — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The last in the “Untold” series of five in-depth sports documentary films, focusing on the life of tennis star Mardy Fish.

Coming to Netflix September 8, 2021

The Circle: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES (NEW EPISODES WEEKLY)

More adventures from the reality show that premiered just before lockdown but will always be associated with it, since the premise is that contestants are trapped in their apartments and can only communicate with each other via social media.

The Guide to the Perfect Family

Into the Night: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

A post-apocalyptic series from Belgium about what happens in a world where exposure to sunlight becomes deadly. Last year, the survivors were hiding from sunlight on a plane. This year, they’re hiding from sunlight in an underground bunker.

JJ+E — NETFLIX FILM

Netflix likes its teen romantic dramas; this one is about two Swedish teenagers who fall in love even though they’re from different social classes.

Coming to Netflix September 9, 2021

Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Marcus A. Clarke (The WIZRD) directed this documentary (co-produced by Kenya Barris) about the three-year relationship between these two legendary figures, and how their friendship fell apart through their disagreements about the Nation of Islam.

Homeland: Season 8

L.A.’s Finest: Season 2

The Women and the Murderer — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Mona Achache and Patricia Tourancheau directed this documentary about the 1990s French serial killer Guy Georges, and how the mother of one of his victims helped bring him down.

Coming to Netflix September 10, 2021

Firedrake the Silver Dragon — NETFLIX FAMILY

In a twist on the usual fantasy plot, we follow a dragon trying to escape from rampaging humans.

Kate — NETFLIX FILM

In another version of the plot of D.O.A., a professional killer discovers that she’s been given poison that will kill her in 24 hours, and sets out to find and kill the person who murdered her.

Lucifer: The Final Season — NETFLIX SERIES

The end of the series about the Prince of Darkness helping the Los Angeles Police Department solve crimes, which proved popular despite a premise that sounds like “God Cop” from 30 Rock.

Metal Shop Masters — NETFLIX SERIES

Jo Koy hosts this reality competition series where seven professional welders are asked to use their metal-shop skills to make things that their customers wouldn’t normally ask them to make.

Prey — NETFLIX FILM

Five friends go out hunting in the wilderness but – and you might have seen this coming – they themselves end up being hunted by a murderous maniac. Written and directed by Thomas Sieben.

Leaving: Interstellar

Coming to Netflix September 11, 2021

Child’s Play

Coming to Netflix September 12, 2021

The Wolf of Wall Street

Coming to Netflix September 13, 2021

Code 8

Coming to Netflix September 14, 2021

A StoryBots Space Adventure — NETFLIX FAMILY

In between episodes of “Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space,” we get this joint spinoff of that show and Netflix’s educational “Storybots” show, where the characters from the latter show ask the former for information about outer space.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father: Season 5 — NETFLIX SERIES

The final installment of the popular odd-couple travel series starring a comedian and his grumpy father. This year they’re traveling in the era of COVID, so they’re staying in the UK, both of which should give the elder Mr. Whitehall plenty of things to be grumpy about.

The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality travel show about the best vacation homes to rent if you can afford to rent one.

You vs. Wild: Out Cold — NETFLIX FAMILY

Adventurer Edward “Bear” Gryllis stars in this show that strains the definition of “reality TV,” where he is dropped into scary scenarios and we vote on what he should do next. This time, we have to vote on what he should do when he’s been in a plane crash (probably not really) and has amnesia (probably not really).

Leaving: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Coming to Netflix September 15, 2021

Castle and Castle: Season 2

Coming to America

Nailed It!: Season 6 — NETFLIX SERIES

Some reality competition shows are about people who are good at something. Others, like this baking competition, feature people who aren’t good at what they’re being asked to do. From the number of seasons, you can probably guess which kind of show the world loves more.

Nightbooks — NETFLIX FILM

A modern-day take on “Scheherazade” where a boy (Winslow Fegley) is captured by a witch (Krysten Ritter) who only allows him to live as long as he keeps her entertained with scary stories.

Saved by the Bell: Seasons 1-9

Schumacher — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Biographical documentary about German race-car driving star Michael Schumacher.

Stardust

Too Hot To Handle Latino — NETFLIX SERIES (NEW EPISODES WEEKLY)

The Spanish-language version of Netflix’s reality competition format, where contestants are thrown together in a sexy location and must abstain from having sex with each other in order to win.

Coming to Netflix September 16, 2021

Final Space: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Astronaut Gary Goodspeed and his alien friend Mooncake (both voiced by series creator Olan Rogers) are on the run from the bad guy in the strange world known as Final Space, in this Adult Swim animated series.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe — NETFLIX FAMILY

Wait, didn’t Netflix already premiere this? No, that was Kevin Smith’s nostalgic continuation of the original animated series. This is Netflix’s new, redesigned CGI animated reboot. In other words, they have one He-Man cartoon for adults who watched the original show, and another for their children who didn’t watch the original.

Murdoch Mysteries: Season 14

My Heroes Were Cowboys — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

This documentary is about Robin Wiltshire, an immigrant from Australia to America who became a professional horse trainer out of love for classic American Westerns.

Zombieland: Double Tap

Coming to Netflix September 17, 2021

Ankahi Kahaniya — NETFLIX FILM

Anthology film with three different stories about the difficulty of forming romantic connections in modern urban life, including one story about a person who falls for a mannequin. The directors are Abhishek Chaubey, Saket Chaudhary and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari.

Chicago Party Aunt — NETFLIX SERIES

Animated series based on the Twitter account of the same name, about a hard-drinking party animal in her 40s (voiced by Lauren Ash) and her friends and family.

The Father Who Moves Mountains — NETFLIX FILM

Daniel Sandu wrote and directed this inspirational drama about a man who tries to rescue his son, who is lost in the frozen mountains.

Sex Education: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

The continued adventures of students who run an amateur sex-therapy business at their school.

Squid Game — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality competition at its simplest: a bunch of people must play a humiliating and dangerous game; whoever wins will get a lot of money.

The Stronghold — NETFLIX FILM

Action thriller about cops who cross ethical boundaries while trying to catch drug dealers. Directed by Cédric Jimenez.

Coming to Netflix September 20, 2021

Crawl

Coming to Netflix September 21, 2021

Go! Go! Cory Carson: Chrissy Takes the Wheel — NETFLIX FAMILY

Yet another story from the animated franchise about talking cars, this one focusing on the little sister of the main talking car.

Love on the Spectrum: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Australian reality dating series about people on the autism spectrum looking for love.

Doctor Sleep

Coming to Netflix September 22, 2021

Confessions of an Invisible Girl — NETFLIX FILM

Descriptions of this Brazilian film make it unclear whether the main character, a socially-awkward schoolgirl, is literally invisible or just has trouble getting people to notice her.

Dear White People: Volume 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The final season of the show about Black students at a fictional Ivy League college (four seasons is a lot, for Netflix) will address campus life during the pandemic, and also, somehow, be a musical.

Heartland: Season 14

The Ice Road

Intrusion — NETFLIX FILM

Freida Pinto stars as a woman who is traumatized after a home invasion, and discovers that it may have been something more dangerous than just a random crime.

Jaguar — NETFLIX SERIES

Blanca Suárez is the star of this 1960s period drama series, playing a Holocaust survivor who joins a team that hunts down Nazis who fled to Spain during the Franco era.

Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary about an accused rapist who made history when he pled not guilty on the basis that he had multiple personalities, and it was his other personalities that committed the crimes.

Coming to Netflix September 23, 2021

Je Suis Karl — NETFLIX FILM

Maxi (Luna Wedler) joins a is influenced by a young man named Karl (Jannis Niewöhner) to join a youth movement, which unbeknownst to her is part of the same terrorist group that killed her family.

Coming to Netflix September 24, 2021

Blood & Water: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In the first season, Puleng (Amamkele Quamata) tried to solve mystery that involved the hidden secrets both her family and her high school. This season will feature different mysteries and secrets, but what they are – well, that’s also a mystery and a secret.

Ganglands (Braqueurs) — NETFLIX SERIES

Thriller series about a gang war between a group of professional thieves and the drug lord they unwittingly angered.

Iron Man 2

Jailbirds New Orleans — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality series about life in a New Orleans’ women’s prison.

Midnight Mass — NETFLIX SERIES

Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) created this horror series about a small island where unexplained and seemingly miraculous things begin to happen after a priest (Hamish Linklater) starts to live there, but the miracles may not be as benign as they initially seem.

My Little Pony: A New Generation — NETFLIX FAMILY

This animated film from the unstoppably popular toy/animation franchise picks up the ponies where they left off in “My Little Pony: Friendship is magic,” but now they’re CGI-animated, because everything has to be.

The Starling — NETFLIX FILM

Melissa McCarthy plays a woman in a troubled marriage who starts to become obsessed with trying to kill a bird that won’t get out of her backyard. Directed by Theodore Melfi and co-starring Chris O’Dowd and Kevin Kline, the film will get its theatrical premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival early this month.

Vendetta: Truth, Lies and The Mafia — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Ruggero di Maggio and Davide Gambino produced this true-crime series about anti-crime crusaders in Sicily who turned out to be involved in the very thing they were crusading against.

Coming to Netflix September 27, 2021

Judy

Coming to Netflix September 28, 2021

Ada Twist, Scientist — NETFLIX FAMILY

Based on Andrea Beaty’s children’s books, this edu-tainment series features the science-loving title character (“Add a twist,” get it?) as she and her friends learn about science and explain it to the viewers.

Attack of the Hollywood Clichés! — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

See introduction for details

Coming to Netflix September 29, 2021

The Chestnut Man — NETFLIX SERIES

Based on the novel by Søren Sveistrup, this series begins with a murder where the killer leaves a calling card in the form of a doll made out of chestnuts.

Friendzone — NETFLIX FILM

A movie about a nice guy who wants to win the heart of a woman who only considers him her best friend. Yes, it’s a romantic comedy, though it could easily be a horror film with the same premise.

MeatEater: Season 10 Part 1 — NETFLIX SERIES

Since 2012, Steven Rinella has been going everywhere he can to find delicious meat and eat it on camera, and he’s not going to let a pandemic stop him.

No One Gets Out Alive — NETFLIX FILM

Cristina Rodlo plays a woman who gets an unexpected break when she finds a great apartment she can afford. Unfortunately, as the title indicates, she’s in a horror story. Based on the novel by Adam Nevill.

Sounds Like Love — NETFLIX FILM

Maca (María Valverde), who works for a fashion influencer in Madrid, is living a more or less happy life until her ex-boyfriend (Álex González) comes back to town. Based on a series of novels by Elísabet Benavent.

Leaving: Line of Duty, Seasons 1-4

Coming to Netflix September 30, 2021

Grey’s Anatomy: Season 17

Love 101: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Romantic series (it says so right in the title) about teenagers finding love in 1990s Istanbul.

Luna Park — NETFLIX SERIES

Another series with a period setting: the period is the 1960s, the place is Rome, and the main characters are Nora (Simona Tabasco), a poor girl from a carny family, and Rosa (Lia Greco), a rich girl from an aristocratic family, who find themselves connected in an unexpected way.

Leaving: Kill Bill, parts 1 & 2

The post Netflix Canada in September 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Two years ago, Simu Liu decided to host a Toronto screening of The Farewell in the style of a “Gold Open,” where people in the industry buy out theatres to help boost the opening numbers of films made by and starring Asian artists. In this case, Liu was looking to support director Lulu Wang and actor Awkwafina.

He first made the request for tickets through Cineplex the day before the screening but was refused on account of the short notice. So he rolled up to the theatre’s counter with friends the day before the show to buy tickets the old-fashioned way—from a cashier (who recognized Liu)—waiting an hour or so for them to be physically printed. And then he tweeted that 500 would be available the next day, first-come, first-served.

“We just thought we could manage it ourselves,” says Jason Chan, a childhood friend of Liu’s who is also an actor. “But clearly, we weren’t thinking.”

Hundreds showed up, flooding the Manulife Centre in downtown Toronto. The line snaked up two floors to the movie theatre, resembling an opening night at TIFF rather than a visit to an unspectacular theatre in a sterile office tower. Clement Chu, another friend of Liu’s who was asked to help with logistics and crowd control, called Liu, who was having dinner nearby before the show: “You need to get over here.” When Liu arrived, the crowd erupted, yelling his name and asking for autographs.

Days earlier, the actor then best-known for his role on the CBC sitcom Kim’s Convenience was announced as the lead for the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, making him the first Asian superhero in a Marvel film.

For Chu, the scene at the Manulife Centre was a preview of the fame Liu now had within his grasp. The 32-year-old’s anointment as the next Marvel superhero breaks major ground for Asian-Canadian and Asian-American actors, not to mention the fact that it vaults Liu into the company of Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson and most of the Chrises (Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt). But the loud celebration of Liu as a trailblazer has sometimes drowned out the quieter complexities that come with carrying the mantle of “first.” Liu himself described it as a burden in a recent Interview magazine piece. It means Liu has to offer more than just himself—a multitude of experiences and in turn, expectations, are mapped onto him. He carries the weight of ensuring that there will be a “second” and “third” in his shoes, that there will be opportunities for those who follow in his footsteps. For him, it’s not enough to succeed on his own; he wants to bring his community with him, to hold open doors he had to pry open.

Liu’s role as Shang-Chi puts him in the company of Marvel stars like Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson and all the Chrises (Courtesy of Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios 2021)

On the cusp of potentially becoming a household name, Liu is already well-known enough to be given spreads in Interview and Vanity Fair, while also gracing the covers of Men’s Health and Entertainment Weekly. His PR representative wouldn’t grant an interview for this profile unless Maclean’s guaranteed it would be a cover story. In the end, Liu answered questions by email.

He had recently lost both his grandparents, who died in quick succession in May. They cared for him the first five years of his life, after his parents left him in Harbin, China, to study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. “One day, this stranger shows up at my door and tells me he’s my dad, and that he’s going to take me to Canada,” Liu told Maclean’s. “I just wanted to stay with my grandparents, who were the only parental figures I had known.”

Arriving in Kingston was “very disorienting,” he writes. He recalls crying at daycare because he didn’t understand English and couldn’t communicate with his caregivers. In a piece he wrote addressed to his parents for Maclean’s in 2017, Liu describes a strained relationship, which was partially a result of this early separation: “Perhaps, in the same way that you were strangers to me, your son also felt like a foreigner to you. That rift would only widen as I adopted the values and norms of a culture that you were unfamiliar with.”

READ: The marvel behind Marvel Studios: How a group of B-list comic stars took over the world

The stereotypical immigrant pressure to excel was very real for Liu, and he attended a private school that compounded the focus on academics and achievement, the University of Toronto Schools (UTS). There he met Ling Wong, a geography teacher whose story was, in some ways, parallel to his—she came to Canada at three from China, struggled with her parents’ expectations and veered off an expected path to live in tents in the North as a geologist before becoming a teacher. Liu stood out to her, not because he had the best grades but because he seemed to know how to be himself—he was more interested in the talent show and getting on the basketball team than he was in his marks. “When kids were freaking out right before a test, he would be just singing and dancing in the halls,” says Wong.

Wong told Liu he could continue playing sports in university, that grades weren’t the most important thing in life and that following your passion can be a route to a career. “For him, it was an eye-opener, because his parents were like, ‘You will go to university and get good marks and get a good job,’ ” says Wong.

Liu did go to Western University, for business school, and landed a coveted position at Deloitte, only to be laid off eight months later. Then he spotted a Craigslist ad for extras for the production of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and, after landing on set, went all in. His early credits include an episode of Nikita, appearing in music videos (once as a stuntman, once as “office worker”) and odd jobs like posing as a stock photo model. The roles grew bigger—in 2015, he had a recurring part in the OMNI series Blood and Water—and he broke out as Jung on Kim’s Convenience, which premiered on CBC in 2016.

The cast of Kim’s Convenience (George Pimentel/Contour/ Getty Images)

The sitcom about a Korean-Canadian family that owns a convenience store was based on a play by Ins Choi, and Jung Kim was a role Liu identified with, writing in 2017: “I am now playing myself on TV: a troubled kid, burdened by his relationship to his parents, trying to find his place in the world.”

Despite its growing popularity, Liu hustled while on Kim’s—cultivating relationships in Los Angeles, including with Wong Fu Productions, a digital production company with over three million YouTube subscribers, and co-writing his own short film with Tina Jung called Meeting Mommy, which showcased his abilities beyond comedy. “L.A. became the new territory for me, and I pursued it with so much drive and vigour partially because I knew that I could not rely on Kim’s to take my career where it needed to go,” Liu later wrote in a Facebook post.

Ziad Ek joined the cast of Kim’s Convenience in its third season as Omar, one of Jung’s co-workers at a rental car company. He admires Liu’s entrepreneurial approach to acting but couldn’t help noticing how exhausted it made him. “We made jokes that he was notoriously good at falling asleep on a dime just to recuperate,” says Ek. Shooting for Shang-Chi during the pandemic meant Liu worked on scenes for the show’s fifth and final season over nine days, a process that would normally be done over two months. “He was in every single scene of every single day, which is an insane amount of work—nobody does that,” says Ek. “He killed it.”

READ: A Canadian director on how to make a Marvel series

The show became a beloved part of the CBC landscape, winning awards and amassing a loyal fan base who named themselves #KimBits, first in Canada and then abroad as Netflix picked up the series. But it wasn’t without its critics. Journalist Dakota Kim wrote in the Los Angeles Times about a pattern where “cheap punchlines about race, ethnicity and nationality supplanted the observational humour that brought the series its legions of fans.” And over the years, discord behind the scenes had grown; despite being renewed for a sixth season, the show was unceremoniously cancelled in March. Cast members were called shortly before the public announcement, which cited showrunners Ins Choi’s and Kevin White’s decision to move on to other projects as the reason for the cancellation.

Liu initially posted on Twitter that he was “heartbroken.” In June, he blasted out a list of grievances in a lengthy Facebook post: lack of diversity in the writers’ room, being shut out of contributing to his character’s development, being paid a “horsepoop rate” and the fact that the only member of the cast getting a spinoff show was Nicole Power, a white woman.

When asked for comment, Jonathan Schwartz, director of communications for Kim’s Convenience, pointed to a press release stating that the reason for the show’s cancellation was that the “two co-creators confirmed they were moving on to other projects” and to a Globe and Mail story in which the show’s producer, Ivan Fecan, said that he “made the tough call that, without Ins, there is no show.” Schwartz also pointed to a June 6 Facebook post by Anita Kapila, a South Asian writer who worked on Kim’s Convenience, in which she acknowledged and named the women and people of colour with whom she worked on the show. CBC did not offer comment when asked.

READ: Kim’s Convenience: A TV first that doesn’t buckle under the pressure

For some, Liu’s post shattered the idea of Kim’s as an example of a truly diverse production. And for others, it read as a familiar story. “Your candour opens the possibility for much needed conversations in order to change harsh and unfair practices in the Canadian film and TV industry with regards to ‘diversity,’ top-down silencing, exclusion and exploitation,” wrote Canadian broadcaster, director and musician Sook-Yin Lee in the comments below Liu’s post.

Liu’s lengthy post is reflective of an emerging pattern for the actor—as his star has shone brighter, his voice has become louder on issues of race and representation. He penned a column on anti-Asian hate for Variety earlier this year. “Most disappointing of all, I’ve watched as you, the bystanders and witnesses, have stood idly by and simply not cared enough to speak up,” he wrote. “Most of you don’t even believe that racism against Asian people exists.”

His former teacher Ling Wong worries about this—“Say it in a nicer way, just so, you know, it doesn’t come back and bite you later,” she says—but she also admires how Liu has held on to his Asian identity. And so do others. “A lot of folks, when they start to get some acclaim, they’ll shy away from talking about difficult issues,” says Jason Y. Lee, founder of L.A.-based production company Jubilee Media. “It’s really cool when people see their platform as a responsibility and are deliberate about what they want to say and do with it, rather than just saying, ‘Hey, I’m just a star.’ ”

Lee and Chu both point to the extensive volunteer hours Liu puts in—from speaking engagements to charity basketball events to holding workshops with young actors. “I was like, ‘Dude, that’s insane that you’re spending time doing that,’ ” Lee recalls saying to Liu when he first heard about the workshops. Liu responded that he would have been able to progress so much more rapidly in his own career if only he knew what he knows now.

“Believing there [can only be one] Asian American in the room is such an antiquated idea,” says Lee. “As we grow the Asian-American community, the idea should not be, how do I get my slice of the pie? It’s, how do I actually make this pie much larger for our community, for our peers, for the next generation? That’s why I’m really proud of him.” He sees what Liu is doing as part of a multi-pronged approach to not only building on-screen Asian representation in Hollywood, but “having a seat at the table or making your own” in an industry that was very much designed for the white gaze.

Nathalie Younglai, a Canadian writer and director, has also made inclusion in the industry a big part of her work. In 2012, she founded BIPOC TV and Film and has mentored emerging filmmakers—including Liu—through the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. They first met in 2013, and when Liu started to see some success with Kim’s and decided to pitch a web series to the CBC about a couple who fall out of love, he asked Younglai to be part of the project. “That was his opportunity but he shared it with me,” says Younglai, who is a co-creator and showrunner of the project Hello (Again). “He’s very genuine in that way—he wants to lift up others.”

Liu visits Shawarma Palace in Avengers Campus at the Disneyland Resort (Richard Harbaugh/Disneyland Resort/Getty Images)

When asked which actors he admires, Liu pointed to Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega. “I naturally gravitate to actors who present themselves as artists with a message who stand for social change,” writes Liu. He also mentioned the late Chadwick Boseman, star of the immensely popular Marvel film Black Panther. Shang-Chi is already being described as the “Asian Black Panther” in its effort to centre Asian voices in a story about a Chinese superhero. The film is out in early September, and the trailer promises as thrilling a ride as Black Panther: we see Liu falling multiple floors from a building, hanging off a speeding bus, facing a dragon underwater and dealing with some big bad daddy issues, with Shang-Chi’s father, Wenwu (played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai), as the villain.

While there is a celebratory air ahead of the film’s release, there are also nerves. “When’s the last time [Marvel] failed?” says Chu. “You could then flip it around to say, well, that’d be kind of scary if this is the first one that fails.” But Liu’s perpetual hustle means he’s already working on projects beyond Shang-Chi, including the CBC web series Hello (Again), a romantic film called One True Loves based on a bestselling book, and the publication of a memoir in 2022. And he has ideas about the kinds of stories that he thinks still need to be told about Asian history in North America, like how Chinese workers built the railroads in North America. “We’ve been here and contributing to the culture and the history for over 100 years,” writes Liu in his email to Maclean’s. “And it’s time people stopped treating us like perpetual foreigners.”

This article appears in print in the September 2021 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Almost famous.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post Simu Liu is on the cusp of superstardom. But that isn’t his end game. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Marvel

What If… (Beginning Wednesday, August 11)

Disney’s helpless dependence on Kevin Feige continues to be rewarded, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe launches its first animated series. The show is based on a Marvel comic of the same name, which imagined what popular Marvel storylines would have been like if one detail had been changed. (One story from that comic, “What if Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor?” will soon be the plot of the next Thor movie.) Like the comic, the show is hosted by the omniscient Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright), who shows us what would have happened if the Marvel characters had become zombies or if Captain America’s love interest Peggy Carter had become “Captain Carter.” Some of the Marvel actors will be returning to voice their characters – including the late Chadwick Boseman, who did some of his last work here but not Robert Downey Jr. Also, Marvel has hinted that some of the alternate realities here may have ramifications for future “multiverse” movies. Though that might just be a way of convincing us not to assume that the stories won’t count.

Disney

Short Circuit (Wednesday, August 4)

Alas, this isn’t the Short Circuit about the robot who becomes sentient. Disney still doesn’t appear to own that yet. Instead, this is the second batch of short films from a special Walt Disney Animation Studios project, a contest for Disney employees where the winners were allowed to direct their own independent animated film with the full resources of Disney behind them. The shorts being released here are “Dinosaur Barbarian” (directed by Kim Hazel), about a dinosaur barbarian; “Going Home” (directed by Jacob Frey) about someone who goes home several times; “Crosswalk” (directed by Ryan Green) about a crosswalk where the light never turns green; “Songs to Sing in the Dark” (directed by Riannon Delanoy) about two creatures who sing songs in the dark; and “No. 2 to Kettering” (directed by Liza Rhea) about a girl riding the No. 2 bus to Kettering.

Growing Up Animal (Wednesday, August 18)

Even though Disney does own the Muppets, this isn’t about Animal from the Muppets. It’s a new nature-documentary series, whose first six-episode season is being released all at once, Netflix-style; each episode follows a different baby animal from conception to birth through growing pains, focusing on the cuteness of newborn animals trying to learn to walk, as well as the trouble their mothers have to go to to raise them right.

Star Wars

Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian — Making of the Season 2 Finale

Is it still a spoiler that the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian had a really big guest star? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, Disney doesn’t have a lot of new Star Wars content right now, so while waiting for another season of The Mandalorian and that Obi-Wan-Kenobi series, here is an extra episode of their “making-of” series where everyone talks about that particular guest star and why it was cool that he appeared.

Star

Vacation Friends (Friday, August 27)

Don’t be fooled by the promo art that says “Disney+” on it: this is another Hulu production that is airing on Disney’s adult imprint in countries (like ours) that don’t get Hulu. It’s described as a “raw and raunchy” comedy, so you can tell that it wasn’t originally made for Disney. The vacation friends of the title are a couple of obnoxiously wacky people played by John Cena and Meredith Hagner, who meet a less obnoxious couple (Lil Rel Howery and Yvonne Orji) while on vacation, and somehow decide that this entitles them to invite themselves to the other couple’s wedding. Clay Tarver (Silicon Valley) directs.

Only Murders in the Building (Tuesday, August 31)

Another Hulu production, this is one of those streaming series where the names are so big that they probably could have gotten the green light to film themselves doing crossword puzzles for ten episodes: the stars are Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez (all three of whom have enough clout to get an executive producer credit). They play three people who live in the same ritzy apartment building in New York, but have never met until someone dies in the building and all three of them find out that they are true-crime afficionados who suspect that it was actually murder. They record a podcast together (which is at least more exciting than crossword puzzles) and come to suspect each other of the crime. Steve Martin co-created the show with writers John Hoffman and Dan Fogelman.

The post Disney+ in August 2021: What’s new this month in Canada appeared first on Macleans.ca.

What you should watch

Vivo (August 6)

Lin Manuel Miranda is the songwriter and lead voice actor for this animated musical film, which has had a rocky journey to our screens. It spent much of the 2010s in “Development Hell” at Sony Pictures Animation, and when it was finally made, with Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) directing, it became one of many films that wound up going to Netflix instead of theatres, due to the pandemic. Miranda voices the title character, a talking and singing kinkajou (a rainforest mammal) who sets out on a journey, as characters forever seem to be doing in these animated movies; in this case, the journey is from Cuba to Florida, but it’s made for strictly non-political reasons. Other voice actors include Ynairaly Simo, Zoe Saldana, Juan de Marcos González and Gloria Estefan.

The Defeated (August 18)

The premise of this German series seems like someone asked the question: “What if The Third Man were also a police procedural?” Created by writer/director Måns Mårlind, it  takes place in 1946, in the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, where an American cop played by Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) is assigned to build a de-Nazified police force and help the city deal with rebuilding and the onset of the Cold War. But like the protagonist of The Third Man, he’s also trying to find a missing person, in this case his brother, who has a shady past that may have to be hidden from his own police force. The series, originally announced under the title “Shadowplay,” will have 16 episodes released in two eight-episode batches.

The Chair (August 20)

The first new show from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, but for those of you still angry about the Game of Thrones finale, don’t worry, they didn’t write it: actress Amanda Peet (who is married to Benioff) and co-writer Annie Wyman created the story of Ji-Yoon Kim, played by Sandra Oh, who is the first woman of colour to become Chair of the English Department at a small, fictional university. It’s a half-hour comedy/drama whose supporting cast includes such favourite character actors as Bob Balaban and Holland Taylor; Oh, who is also an executive producer on the show, will take her character through the pressures of being in charge of a modern university department, which may be the kind of pressures Hollywood writers can really identify with.

Sparking Joy (August 31)

One of Netflix’s biggest meme generators before Tiger King was Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, where the household-organizing consultant offered advice on how to declutter your home. The most meme-tastic line from the show was her advice that when considering whether or not to throw something away, we should ask ourselves, “does it spark joy?” So of course that inspired the title of her new Netflix show, which uses the same tried-and-true reality makeover format, but with a switch: instead of helping homeowner declutter their home, Kondo goes to three different businesses and teaches them how to organize themselves along Kondo-approved lines. She’ll also be helping an employee improve their lives by discarding emotional baggage, and hopefully the businesses won’t decide that the employees are among the things they need to declutter.

Date TBA

Comedy Premium League — NETFLIX SERIES

Combination of comedy and reality competition series, where 16 comedians are organized into four teams that compete against one another in tests of jokery and wisecrackdom.

D.P. — NETFLIX SERIES

Drama series, based on the web cartoon by Kim Bo-tong, about a special military squadron with the morally ambiguous job of pursuing and capturing deserters.

Coming to Netflix August 1, 2021

Coming to Netflix August 3, 2021

Pray Away  — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary film about so-called conversion therapy, or “pray the gay away” as it’s nicknamed, where we hear from victims of the attempts to brainwash people out of being LGBTQ, as well as people who used to work within the movement. Ryan Murphy is one of the executive producers; the film, directed by Kristine Stolakis, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.

Shiny_Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The story of Shiny Flakes, a teenage drug lord. Well, specifically, it’s about a guy named Maximilian Schmidt, who became a drug dealer when he was a teenager living at home; his story inspired the Netflix show “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).”

Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified — NETFLIX SERIES

Sadly, there are not any actual top secret UFO projects declassified in this show, which originally aired in the UK. It’s another series about how UFOs may be real, where we hear from people who say UFOs are real.

Coming to Netflix August 4, 2021

76 — NETFLIX FILM

Director Izu Ojukowu made this film (originally released to theatres in 2016) set during the 1970s in Nigeria, about a soldier (Ramsey Nouah) accused of taking part in a military coup attempt, and his wife (Rita Dominic) who tries to prove his innocence.

Aftermath

Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A sequel to director Billy Corben’s 2006 documentary film Cocaine Cowboys, this series expands on the story of the Florida drug trade in the 1970s and 1980s by focusing on two men, Augusto “Willy” Falcon and Salvador “Sal” Magluto, who made a reported $2 billion from drug smuggling in 1980s Miami.

Control Z: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In the first season, Sofia (Ana Valeria Becerril) had to solve the mystery of who was revealing students’ secrets to the school. Now she has to solve the mystery of who is taking revenge on students and faculty for something that happened in the first season.

Car Masters: Rust to Riches: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Mark Towle leads a group of car experts who give old cars “makeovers” to make them look like new cars, which may defeat the point of owning old cars in the first place.

Cooking With Paris — NETFLIX SERIES

Remember Paris Hilton, the hotel heiress who was everywhere in reality TV? Well, she’s still here, and now she’s doing a cooking show.

Definitely, Maybe
The Five-Year Engagement
Inside Man
Jarhead
Miami Vice
Savages
Slap Shot
The Unborn

Coming to Netflix August 6, 2021

Hit & Run — NETFLIX SERIES

Lior Raz (who also co-wrote the show) stars in this globetrotting thriller series as a man whose happy life in Tel Aviv is shattered when his wife is killed, and he finds out that her death was no accident.

Navarasa — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix has done so many anthology movies from India that it was natural for it to move into anthology series: each of the nine episodes has a different director and deals with an emotion that is related to one of the nine rasas or aesthetics. Created by Mani Ratnam.

The Swarm — NETFLIX FILM

This is not the 1978 American horror movie The Swarm, about killer bees. This is the 2021 French horror movie The Swarm, about killer locusts.

Vivo — NETFLIX FILM

See introduction for details

Coming to Netflix August 9, 2021

SHAMAN KING — NETFLIX ANIME

A shaman competes with other shamans to become, as the title implies, the Shaman King. This is not currently an Olympics tie-in, but you never know what events they might add eventually.

Coming to Netflix August 10, 2021

Gabby’s Dollhouse: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated show for preschoolers, about a plucky girl and her room full of talking, educating dolls.

Phil Wang: Philly Philly Wang Wang — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

The first full-length Netflix special for the British-Malaysian stand-up comic, taped at the London Palladium.

UNTOLD: Malice at the Palace — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The first of five documentary films (released weekly), each looking at a memorable sports event. The first film is an in-depth exploration of the “Pacers-Pistons brawl” of November 19, 2004, which involved not only the teams but the fans.

Coming to Netflix August 11, 2021

Bake Squad — NETFLIX SERIES

Another baking competition in which four contestants compete to see who will create the most delicious desert. Hosted by Christina Tosi.

The Kissing Booth 3 — NETFLIX FILM

The third in the series of young-adult movies about Elle (Joey King) and her romance with hunky, mildly troubled Noah (Jacob Elordi). This time, Elle has to decide whether to go to college or follow Noah to his new home.

Misha and the Wolves — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Sam Hobkinson directed this documentary film about a woman whose Holocaust memoir didn’t hold up under scrutiny (including from her own publisher).

Coming to Netflix August 12, 2021

AlRawabi School for Girls — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix’s second original series in Arabic deals with girls who try to get revenge on bullies at an all-girls’ school, only to find that the line between bullies and the bullied isn’t always as clear as it seems.

Lokillo: Nothing’s the Same — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

Colombian stand-up comic Lokillo Florez does one of the first Netflix comedy specials that deals with the world of the pandemic and social distancing.

Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild — NETFLIX ANIME

The titular monster hunter, Aiden, hunts a monster, in this case a dragon.

Riverdale: Season 5 — NETFLIX SERIES (new episodes weekly)

Netflix Canada continues to have the rights to the CW’s successful “dark edgy Archie comics” show, but you can tell it’s not a real Netflix show because they have to release the episodes weekly.

Coming to Netflix August 13, 2021

Beckett — NETFLIX FILM

John David Washington plays the title character in this Hitchcock-style thriller about a an American tourist in Greece who has to go on the run to clear his name when he is framed for a crime he didn’t commit.

Brand New Cherry Flavor — NETFLIX SERIES

Rosa Salazar plays a would-be film director who goes through some supernatural terrors in this eight-episode horror series, which takes place in the most terrifying time and place of all – Los Angeles in the early 1990s.

Fast & Furious Spy Racers: Season 5: South Pacific — NETFLIX FAMILY

The animated spinoff of the unstoppable Fast & Furious series continues with another multi-episode plot; in this one, one of the gang of very fast drivers is being held captive, and the other very fast drivers must drive very fast in order to rescue him.

Gone for Good — NETFLIX SERIES

Giullaume (Finnegan Oldfield), who thought he had rebuilt his life after the deaths of two people he loved, finds that his girlfriend has mysteriously disappeared, and tracking her down may uncover some unpleasant secrets.

The Kingdom — NETFLIX SERIES

A celebrity preacher runs for president of Argentina, and some unpleasant secrets may be uncovered, particularly since his original running made was mysteriously killed.

Valeria: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

The title character (Diana Gómez) looks for fulfilment in her career and her love life with the help of her three best friends.

Coming to Netflix August 15, 2021

Starbuck

Coming to Netflix August 16, 2021

Joker
She’s Out of My League

Coming to Netflix August 17, 2021

Go! Go! Cory Carson: Season 5 — NETFLIX FAMILY

This is not the unusually long-running Netflix animated series about people who drive cars very fast. That’s Fast & Furious Spy Racers. This is the unusually long-running Netflix animated series about talking cars.

UNTOLD: Deal with the Devil — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 

The second of the five Untold documentaries providing in-depth looks at memorable moments in sports; this one focuses on pioneering women’s boxer Christy Martin.

Coming to Netflix August 18, 2021

The Defeated — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A true-crime documentary with a creepy twist: thanks to tapes the convicted serial killer Dennis Nielsen recorded in prison before his death in 2018, his own voice is used to narrate this entire story.

Out of my league — NETFLIX FILM

Not to be confused with She’s Out of My League, this Italian film focuses on a young woman “with a  rare genetic disorder” who is tired of dating and decides to find her one true love.

The Secret Diary of an Exchange Student — NETFLIX FILM

Comedy about two best friends who move from Brazil to America as part of a student exchange program.

Coming to Netflix August 20, 2021

22 Jump Street

The Chair — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Everything Will Be Fine — NETFLIX SERIES

Diego Luna created this comedy/drama about a couple (Flavio Medina & Lucía Uribe) who decide their marriage is no longer working but still want to stay together for the sake of their daughter, so they try and work out a new and unconventional approach to family life.

The Loud House Movie — NETFLIX FAMILY

As viewers of Family Ties Vacation and The Facts of Life Goes to Paris can inform you, the best way to do a movie-length spinoff of a TV series is to do a road trip. This feature film is a spinoff of the long-running Nickelodeon animated series about a family with eleven children, and while the show takes place in Michigan, the movie takes them on a trip to Scotland.

Sweet Girl — NETFLIX FILM 

Jason Momoa (Aquaman) stars in this Liam Neeson-esque thriller where he tries to get justice for his dying wife and winds up uncovering a conspiracy that will require him to get revenge against those who threaten his family.

Coming to Netflix August 21, 2021

Rocketman

Coming to Netflix August 23, 2021

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf — NETFLIX ANIME

Animated film spinoff of Netflix’s popular live-action fantasy series “The Witcher,” about a new supernatural threat which, presumably, has something to do with wolves.

Coming to Netflix August 24, 2021

Oggy Oggy — NETFLIX FAMILY

A spinoff of the popular animated series “Oggy and the Cockroaches,” this also features the cute baby kitten Oggy, but without cockroaches.

The Peanut Butter Falcon

UNTOLD: Caitlyn Jenner — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 

The third of the five in-depth sports documentaries, this one focuses on the life and career of the Olympic champion and would-be governor of California Caitlyn Jenner.

Coming to Netflix August 25, 2021

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The story of TV painting instructor Bob Ross, who somehow became even more famous after his death in 1995.

Clickbait — NETFLIX SERIES

Nick Brewer (Adrian Grenier, Entourage) is the victim of a crime that was apparently influenced by social media; the series uses multiple points of view to examine the sinister role of social media in modern life.

John of God: The Crimes of a Spiritual Healer — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The story of João Teixeira de Faria, the celebrity faith healer who, to date, has also been sentenced to a total of more than 63 years in prison for sexual assault.

Motel Makeover — NETFLIX SERIES

Six episodes about a Toronto motel and how its owners carried out their ambitious plan to, well, make it over, despite the pandemic and the fact that it required at least six episodes’ worth of work.

Open Your Eyes — NETFLIX SERIES

In this drama series, Julka (Maria Wawreniuk) wakes up with amnesia in what she thinks is a treatment centre… but her strange dreams reveal that there may be something more sinister going on.

Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes — NETFLIX SERIES

Lise (Kathrine Thorborg Johanse) dies and comes back as a vampire, but she still wants to help her family run their funeral parlour.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Coming to Netflix August 26, 2021

EDENS ZERO — NETFLIX ANIME

The title refers to a spaceship that takes the main character, a child with superpowers, on his quest to meet “Mother.”

Family Reunion: Part 4 — NETFLIX FAMILY 

More episodes of the sitcom (starring such familiar TV faces as Tia “Sister Sister” Mowry) about people who leave a Northwestern city to move in with their relatives in Columbus, Georgia.

Coming to Netflix August 27, 2021

He’s All That — NETFLIX FILM 

The 1999 teen comedy She’s All That was a thinly disguised version of Pygmalion, in which a cool guy accepts a bet that he can turn a loser into a cool girl. This is an undisguised version of She’s All That, where a cool girl (Addison Rae) tries to do the same for a loser guy (Tanner Buchanan).

I Heart Arlo — NETFLIX FAMILY

Spinoff from the Netflix animated film Arlo the Alligator Boy, with twenty eleven-minute episodes about a boy named Arlo who is half-alligator.

Titletown High — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality show about a high school football team in Valdosta, Georgia, trying for the title during their first season under a new coach – who was also the star of a different reality show by the creator of this series.

Coming to Netflix August 28, 2021

Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha — NETFLIX SERIES

TV series adaptation of the film Mr. Handy, Mr. Hong, about a dentist (Shin Min-a) who falls in love who Mr. Hong (Kim Seon-ho), who is a handyman.

Coming to Netflix August 29, 2021

The Equalizer

Coming to Netflix August 31, 2021

Good Girls: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The continuing story of three women (Christina Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Whitman) who turned to crime to make ends meet in the first season, and are still encountering complications with 43 episodes already aired and seven more to go.

Sparking Joy — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

UNTOLD: Crime and Penalties – — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 

The last of the five in-depth sports documentaries is about a hockey team where some of the players were allegedly involved with organized crime, but the alleged criminal they were involved with was a teenager.

Manifest: Season 3

Leaving Netflix

Leaving 8/11, 2021

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Leaving 8/14, 2021

Bridget Jones’s Diary

Leaving 8/31, 2021

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Easy A

Family Guy: Seasons 9-11

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

The post Netflix Canada in August 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

It’s not possible to dislike Ryan Reynolds. The Deadpool star is perhaps best known for his raunchy, self-aware and slightly immature sense of humour. But while most other celebrities revealed a little too much about themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic—by Instagramming parties on private islands, or complaining about lost opportunities to play the Royal Albert Hall—Reynolds recorded public service announcements for the government of British Columbia, helped to promote SickKids hospital and even helped to recover a precious teddy bear stolen from a Vancouver park.

READ: Ryan Reynolds is the quasi-hero we can all tolerate right now

It was exemplary behaviour from a hometown boy who has established himself within the ranks of the Hollywood elite. Despite living the life of fame in America, Reynolds keeps one foot grounded in Canada, the country he credits with instilling his brand of self-deprecating humour. He also made a show of showing his love for home and native land at a moment when the country was struggling. He spoke with Maclean’s contributing editor Jen Gerson about the pandemic, parenting and why he doesn’t like to hurt people. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Let’s start with this: how’s your pandemic going?

A: Wow, yeah, I’m reluctant to personalize it in such a way but, as with anyone who has three young children—or two young children, or one, or a dog—it’s definitely challenging. Lots of Zoom school and that kind of stuff, but we’re really happy that we’re seeing the waning days. It’s feeling great now.

Q: There seems to be an air of relief now that it’s coming to an end.

A: Yeah, that is something that is felt across this country and North America. Hopefully it’s going to continue to get better. The countries that have less access to vaccines, hopefully that will change.

Q: I’ve been poking around with the new movie you have coming out, Free Guy, and it’s a really fun concept for a movie. You’re playing an NPC, which stands for non-player character. NPCs are unmemorable background avatars used to fill out crowd scenes in video games, but this one is a nice guy who realizes he’s a character in a video game, and becomes the hero of the tale. What interested you about that movie?

A: I really love this idea of making a film that is a large, summer blockbuster in scale, but that is also not [pre-existing intellectual property]. It’s not based on anything like a comic book or a sequel or anything like that. It felt exciting to dig into. There’s also an adventure element to it. I grew up watching Amblin movies that [Steven] Spielberg was making and they were real adventures that would take you off to some place that was extremely exciting. And I love wish fulfillment. I’ve always loved that.

Also, just this notion that there are people living in the background: there’s no better personification of that than an NPC—someone who is meant to fill the space in the background, don’t speak up, don’t take action, don’t do anything. Shut up, work, breathe and die. I like the idea of those people stepping into their light. This movie isn’t just about my character stepping into his light. It’s about a whole bunch of NPCs stepping into their light, and that was a lot of fun.

Q: It’s an interesting parallel to the Deadpool character; it’s still an action-adventure, you still have the flashy pyrotechnics and all that, but it’s a much more wholesome character than what we’ve come to expect.

A: He’s technically four years old in the movie, so when he becomes somewhat sentient or realized, he’s almost like a child. In some ways, the character is inspired by Will Ferrell’s Elf. He’s a little like the elf—he’s got this childlike innocence. But when you meet that at the intersection of “fed up”—I’m using less salty language than I’d like to there—it gets really interesting. This movie is one in which I just couldn’t believe the level of talent around me. The actors, the crew, the directors—everyone was just there to make something extremely special.

Q: I want to talk a bit about humour, which is part of your persona and character. This character is not at all raunchy, and is quite the contrast to Deadpool, yet it’s still identifiably a Ryan Reynolds character. There’s something that is inherently wholesome about your humour. If you think about it, there was also something kind of wholesome about the humour of Deadpool; it just happens to be over-the-top raunchy humour at the same time. How did you master this kind of wholesome/not-wholesome comedy dichotomy?

A: I think it’s part of how I was raised. I don’t just mean my parents, I mean being born and raised in Canada and having close ties to Canada. I learned at a young age to laugh at myself. I think self-deprecating humour is something Canadians are well known for all over the world.

And I think you learn from mistakes. When I was a young buck starting out in Hollywood, I made a couple of jokes at the expense of someone else, and I remember noting how that didn’t feel good. Despite the fact that it got a laugh, there was something darkly icky about it, and I made this promise to myself that I wouldn’t do that anymore. I think making that promise really helped me. It taught me to laugh more at myself—to direct that acerbic, vitriolic style of humour at myself. That way, the [total] casualties are one, and they only serve to help me grow as a performer.

I don’t know if I would ever call it wholesome, because I have the mind of an 11-year-old. But I would say it’s definitely not aimed to hurt anyone, and I think that is a tricky tightrope to walk because you still have to be subversive, you still have to provoke because that’s what you hope comedy and performances do. I just don’t love attacking anyone in particular besides Ryan f–king Reynolds.

Q: Was the other person you made fun of Hugh Jackman?

A: No! I don’t mind making fun of somebody if they’re in on it. If they’re not in on it and it’s coming at them in a surprising way that they don’t feel good about, then I don’t feel great about that. Hugh and I have had a decades-long rivalry that I hope will end sometime around 2063.

Q: Who is winning?

A: Oh, there is no winning here. We’re both losers. We’re both losing hideously.

Q: So you’re saying you’re not wholesome because you’re like an 11-year-old, but at the same time, I can’t think of anything more wholesome than an 11-year-old.

A: Right? Yeah, I guess so. Well, maybe a 13-year-old boy. Maybe I have the mind of a 13-year-old boy.

Q: Just old enough.

A: That’s the default. But it’s combined with, I hope, some empathy and compassion as well to balance things out, I think.

Q: There is something meta and self-aware about your humour, as well, which plays well in the post-COVID era. We’re accustomed to celebrities who a) can’t make fun of themselves and b) don’t seem to be aware of their place in the world and the role they play in it. Those two things don’t describe you, and I think people quite like that about you. There is something culturally Canadian about it, as well. How much of your meta persona is a put-on and how much of it is a genuine reflection of your personality?

A: In real life, if we were to sit down and have a drink in a bar, you might see that I’m a lot more shy than I let on. That’s a bit of a self-defence mechanism, this guy who takes over. I remember every talk show I’ve ever done—even the earlier ones, like David Letterman, standing backstage thinking I’m going to die. And then the curtain opens and this other guy takes over and handles it for me and I’ve always appreciated that.

I think being self-aware and meta all stems from something much more tangible and palpable, which is that I have kids. I don’t know how to parent children. Does anyone? So I read books on how to parent my kids, how to be the best parent I can be. That doesn’t mean being the most-liked parent or the most-beloved parent or their best buddy. It means being the person who is in charge of their safety and well-being.

Back in 2014, I read this thing that talked about how it’s probably best not to strive for happiness for your children, but rather for self-awareness. That really stuck with me. Happiness is a recipe for disappointment; it’s a recipe for evaluation instead of observation. It’s a recipe for kids thinking, “Why am I not happy at this moment?” Instead you want to welcome every feeling: sadness, anger, grief, anxiety, anything that is coming up.

That weirdly applies to show business—and I recognize what a weird leap that analogy is. I try not to wake up each day and think, “I have to be happy” or “I have to be this thing or that thing.” As long as I’m aware of what I’m feeling, I’m in a much better position to deal with those feelings. And weirdly, I translate that to comedy sometimes.

Q: Unlike a lot of people who escape Canada and never look back, you’re still very involved in Canadianness. You’re doing stuff with SickKids. I believe recently you did something on Twitter to bring back a beloved teddy bear stolen from a park. There are all sorts of these stories. You have a foot back in Canada emotionally.

A: I’m very connected to it. I owe a lot of who I am to Canada, and as I’ve gotten older, I look at this amorphous thing called celebrity as something to share, not something to hide in the shadows with.

When I was starting out, the people who were quite famous tended to have a different outlook on celebrity. That it was something to begrudge, or that it was this burden to carry. I just found that it felt really good to share it; I share it with Canada. I like to share power, I like to step aside where necessary. I think all of those things are signs of strength, not weakness. I love where I grew up, I love everything about it. My brothers all live there, my mother lives there.

The causes that are important to me are often causes that are important to Canadians. I’m proud of carrying that with me.

Q: Is being a celebrity awful?

A: No, no! It is what you make it. Is being anything awful? For me it’s not awful as long as I’m always sharing it. I try to never say no to any video for someone or a hello or anything—even a peek behind the curtain makes it more normal for me.

I’m not saying it’s all puppy dogs and ice cream, but I would be a fool to look down at it. It’s given me amazing life adventures that I might not otherwise have experienced. I want to take as many people on that adventure and that ride with me as possible because otherwise it’s pretty dull and pretty isolating.

Q: It sounds like a lot of work, though. It sounds exhausting.

A: It’s not if you’re not premeditating it. If you’re just waking up in the morning open to possibility, and open to anything that might come as a result of that, it’s not exhausting at all.

This interview appears in print in the August 2021 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “Ryan Reynolds and the joy of meta-Stardom.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.

The post Star? Or meta-Star? Ryan Reynolds explains himself. appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Marvel

Black Widow (Friday, July 9)

Disney is hedging its bets on movie theatres in the vaccine era. The first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie since the pandemic began, delayed for more than a year, will go to theatres, but it will be simultaneously available to stream as “Premier Access” content (i.e., subscribers will have to pay extra to see it). It’s only the second MCU movie with a woman as the sole star, and a woman who has already been killed off: in this prequel, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) will face a menace from her famously dark-and-troubled past, and confront a villain called the Taskmaster, who has the ability to mimic anyone else’s fighting style. The film also stars Florence Pugh as another dark-and-troubled spy who may become the next Black Widow, as Kevin Feige slowly replaces his original roster of stars with younger and less expensive (for now) actors.

Disney

Monsters at Work (Beginning Wednesday, July 7)

It used to be that new Disney streaming content would drop on Fridays. Now, the world has changed suddenly and perhaps irreversibly: TV shows (like Loki, concluding this month) appear on Wednesdays, leaving Fridays free for feature films. This weekly half-hour show is a spinoff of the 2001 Pixar film Monsters, Inc.; it’s being hyped as the first Disney TV show based on a Pixar film, though what that means in practice is that Disney is slowly but surely draining Pixar of any claim it had to being a separate entity. Anyway, the show revolves around Tylor Tuskmon (Ben Feldman), a new arrival in the city of Monstropolis: the movie ended with the monsters deciding to become kinder, gentler monsters who didn’t need to scare children to survive, and Tylor is nonplussed at this new approach to monstering. So it’s a sequel to a film that ended in a way that precluded a sequel.

Turner & Hooch (Beginning Wednesday, July 21)

So do you remember that movie where Tom Hanks was a cop with a dog sidekick? Yes, that movie, the one people are always pointing to as an example of the kind of material he got stuck with before he reinvented himself as a dramatic actor. Well, someone at Disney looked at it and decided that was a story worth continuing in serialized television form. And “continuing” is the right word: the Turner in question is Scott Turner (Josh Peck), the son of the original Scott Turner that Tom Hanks played; that character has been killed off, possibly to avoid paying Tom Hanks for a cameo. In any case, the younger Turner inherits Hooch, a dog named after his dad’s big hilarious dog sidekick, and for some reason ends up working with him for 12 episodes. Don’t expect the original Hooch to appear, though. He died in 1992.

Behind the Attraction (Wednesday, July 21)

As a sort of prelude to his new movie Jungle Cruise, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is executive-producing two documentaries that will run the week before, though they’re not directly related to the movie. This is a documentary TV series (you can tell because it’s dropping on a Wednesday) about rides at Disney theme parks and the amazingly fantastic origins of those rides, including the synergy-tastic story of how a ride called “Twilight Zone Tower of Terror” was replaced with a Guardians of the Galaxy tie-in ride.

Stuntman (Friday, July 23)

And this is a documentary film (you can tell because it’s dropping on a Friday), originally premiered in 2018, about Eddie Braun, a Hollywood stuntman who has been working in the business since at least 1980, as he talks about the dangers of a stuntman’s life and tries to perform one last death-defying daredevil stunt before he has to retire.

Turning the Tables With Robin Roberts (Wednesday, July 28)

This is not the Robin Roberts who was a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s dead and Disney doesn’t have him under contract. Instead, this show is hosted by the Robin Roberts who is the anchor of Good Morning America on the Disney-owned ABC Network. Each episode consists of a roundtable discussion between Roberts and three women who are famous for different reasons, as they try to get to the heart of what it means to be a trailblazing woman. Among the guests listed are Debbie Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Melissa Etheridge, Billie Jean King and Raven-Symoné. It’s called “Turning the Tables” because, according to Roberts, “they turn the tables on me and we turn the tables on each other.”

Chip ‘n’ Dale: Park Life (Beginning Wednesday, July 28)

The saddest news of the month is that this is not a revival of “Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers.” Instead, the two wacky chipmunks have been given modern-day redesigns but with an old-fashioned format of seven-minute short cartoons. Because today’s cartoons are expected to have prosocial messages, Disney promises that the team will “face down bullies great and small,” instead of tormenting Donald Duck — though Pluto is expected to make appearances. The cartoons were produced by Disney’s French division, though presumably they’ll be available in multiple languages.

The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse: Batch 2 (Beginning Wednesday, July 28)

Mickey, on the other hand, is still big enough of a name to get his cartoons produced at Disney’s U.S. branch, and he doesn’t (yet) need a modern-day redesign. Instead this series reverts to his early design, when he didn’t need eyeballs or human-looking skin, and the seven-minute cartoons feature him and Minnie doing typical cartoony things with other A-list Disney characters like Donald Duck. However, Disney also promises that this batch of cartoons “will include stories inspired by various lands and Disney parks,” so don’t expect this to be a refuge from modern-day Disney synergy.

Jungle Cruise (Friday, July 30)

And finally, just as the month is nearly over, we get the Dwayne Johnson wackiness that we’ve all been waiting for. A tongue-in-cheek period adventure film in the vein of the Indiana Jones movies, but with a bit of The African Queen thrown in, it casts Johnson as a rough, tough, rugged steamboat captain who takes a prim-and-proper scientist (Emily Blunt) on a, well, jungle cruise to find the legendary Tree of Life, which is totally nothing like the Holy Grail, while fighting off attacks from animals and German bad guys (but this takes place before the Nazi era, so it’s nothing like Indiana Jones). Like Black Widow, this is being simultaneously released to movie theatres and to the “Premier Access” section of Disney Plus, which means it’s a test case to see if the company even needs to bother with movie theatres in the future.

Star

Summer of Soul (Friday, July 2)

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the prolific musician and producer who co-leads the band The Roots, makes his film directing debut with a documentary about a part of music history that gets left out of standard music histories: while most of the media’s attention was focused on the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the Harlem Cultural Festival was going on, and while film cameras captured the performances, most of the footage went unreleased. So instead of the umpteenth Woodstock documentary, Questlove turns the spotlight on the performances at this festival, by stars like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips and Sly & the Family Stone, with new documentary footage to place the concert performances in historical context.

McCartney 2.0 (Friday, July 16)

But for those who just can’t get enough of 1960s Boomer icons, fear not: courtesy of Hulu, Disney’s Canadian imprint has an interview with Paul McCartney (primarily known, of course, as the frontman for Wings), which lasts not one, not two, but six whole episodes! The interviewer is the record producer Rick Rubin, who was born in 1963, the year of the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP, and the director is Academy Award nominee Zachary Heinzerling (Cutie and the Boxer). Can even Sir Paul be entertaining enough company to hold our attention through six episodes of two guys talking about music? Will he tell any Beatles anecdotes he hasn’t already told multiple times in the last 50 years? In its own way, it’s very suspenseful.

The post Disney+ in July 2021: What’s new this month in Canada appeared first on Macleans.ca.

What you should watch

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson: Season 2 (July 6): Have you ever seen that Twitter meme where a guy dressed as a giant hot dog implausibly claims that he’s not the person who drove a hot dog-shaped cart through a window? Well, the hot dog guy is comedian Tim Robinson, and it was from the first season of the Netflix series he co-created and starred in. Two years later, he’s back with another collection of sketches built around the theme of socially-awkward people carrying their social awkwardness past the point where it becomes funny, and then to the point where it becomes funny again. Incidentally, the title is “I Think You Should Leave”; the show is not actually advising us to leave with Tim Robinson.

Gunpowder Milkshake (July 14): Netflix describes this film as “the mother of all action movies,” which may be a promise more than any film can deliver, but still, it’s an ambitious take on the “hardened female assassin” subgenre coming to theatres this month with Black Widow: Lena Headey plays a hardened assassin whose abandoned daughter, played by Karen Gillan, has grown up to be a hardened assassin, until she finds herself protecting a young girl (Chloe Coleman), and, to protect her, must reconnect with her mom and a whole team of hardened female assassins (Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Carla Gugino). Will they protect the girl, and if they do, will she also grow up to be a hardened assassin?

Masters of the Universe: Revelation (July 23): There have been many attempts to revive the 1980s Filmation cartoon, whose popularity has long outlived the Mattel toys it was intended to sell. This one, from creator Kevin Smith, is a bit different because instead of a reboot it’s billed as a sequel: the show will pick up where the original show ended, and try to clear up some of the plot points that the original show brought up but never got to (or, frankly, never intended to) resolve. The voice cast is new, and includes Chris Wood as the he-man named He-Man, Mark Hamill as the skeletal Skeletor, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Teela, the character who ended the original series with the most plot threads unresolved.

Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean (July 30):  How can a story simultaneously be 1950s, 1970s and 1980s nostalgia? When it’s a documentary about John DeLorean, the automobile mogul who came to prominence in the 1970s, and created the DeLorean sports car which took Michael J. Fox to the ‘80s to the ’50s in Back to the Future. Netflix’s three-part documentary series appears to be partly based on a 1981 documentary co-directed by the late D.A. Pennebaker (famous for documentaries about other luminaries like Bob Dylan and Stephen Sondheim), though Netflix promises that they were given access to “never-before-seen footage” Pennebaker was able to capture; the film will recap how he started his own company and became a byword for what is generally termed the “excess” in business (both legal and illegal) in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. There probably won’t be much ‘50s content, though.

Date TBA

Feels Like Ishq — NETFLIX SERIES

Another in Netflix’s already-long series of anthology films from India, with six short films from different directors, based on a unifying theme. This month’s theme is the “meet cute,” where young people unexpectedly meet and fall in love.

How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast): Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

German comedy/drama about high school buddies who start a business selling drugs online, though not always fast.

Coming to Netflix on July 1, 2021

Audible — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Matt Ogens directed this documentary that follows high school athlete Amaree Mckenstry-Hall through his senior year at the Maryland School for the Deaf.

Dynasty Warriors — NETFLIX FILM

Adaptation of the popular “hack and slash” video games, themselves a loose adaptation of the classic Chinese novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”

Generation 56k — NETFLIX SERIES

In Italy, two adults in their thirties consider rekindling a romance they had when they were teenagers in 1998. “56k” refers to the speed of modems back in the ancient 1990s.

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway — NETFLIX ANIME FILM

The story of Hathaway Noa, leader of a terrorist organization against the Federation (doesn’t every science-fiction story have a federation?). Based on the novel by Yoshiyuki Tomino.

Young Royals — NETFLIX SERIES

Surprising as it may be to North Americans, England isn’t the only country with royals. This show is from Sweden, and focuses on Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) after he’s sent away to boarding school. Created by Lisa Ambjörn.

Coming to Netflix on July 2, 2021

The 8th Night — NETFLIX FILM

Supernatural thriller about a cop (Park Hae-joon) who turns out to be the key to defeating a supernatural being. Written and directed by Kim Tae-hyung.

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 — NETFLIX FILM

Another supernatural thriller about people trying to defeat a supernatural being, but this time they’re younger, because this is the first of three movies based on R.L. Stine’s “Fear Street” series of novels.

Haseen Dillruba — NETFLIX FILM

A non-supernatural thriller about a widow (Taapsee Pannu) whose secrets are revealed when she’s under investigation for the death of her husband.

Mortel: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Three teenagers with superpowers must once again try to defeat the supernatural being they thought they’d defeated in the first season.

Now You See Me

Coming to Netflix on July 4, 2021

We The People — NETFLIX FAMILY

Barack and Michelle Obama’s latest Netflix production is an attempt to help kids learn about American civics, in the form of educational songs by stars like Janelle Monáe, H.E.R., Adam Lambert, and Brandi Carlile.

Coming to Netflix on July 5, 2021

You Are My Spring — NETFLIX SERIES

A concierge (Seo-Hyun-jin) and a psychiatrist (Kim Dong-wook) unexpectedly bond after a murder is committed in the building when they live.

Coming to Netflix on July 6, 2021

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson: Season 2 — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

See introduction for details

Coming to Netflix on July 7, 2021

Cat People — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

No relation to the horror films about the woman who turns into a cat, this is a documentary series about people who love cats, with lots of footage of the cats they love.

Dogs: Season 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

To provide equal time and create balance, Netflix is also dropping the second season of this series about people who love dogs. No word yet on a possible crossover with “Cat People.”

The Mire: ’97 — NETFLIX SERIES

The first season of this Polish series took place in the 1980s and dealt with the fallout after two dead bodies are discovered in the forest. The new season takes place in the 1990s and deals with the fallout after another dead body is discovered in the forest.

Major Grom: Plague Doctor — NETFLIX FILM

Russian action film, based on a comic book, about Major Igor Grom (Tikhon Zhiznevsky), a detective on the trail of a vigilante killer. The film has already been released theatrically, and it didn’t do well.

The War Next-door — NETFLIX SERIES

A poor family wins a contest and gets a house in an upper-class neighbourhood, which leads to conflict between them and their snobby upper-class next-door neighbours.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Little Fockers
Meet the Fockers
Meet the Parents
Peter Pan

Coming to Netflix on July 8, 2021

Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary about a woman who stood trial for killing and dismembering her husband, including an exclusive interview with Matsunaga about her actions.

RESIDENT EVIL: Infinite Darkness — NETFLIX ANIME

Another entry in the long-running multimedia series about viruses that turn people into zombies, whose popularity can’t be shaken even by a viral pandemic.

Coming to Netflix on July 9, 2021

Atypical: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The story of Sam (Keir Gilchrist), a young autistic man, continues; this season he and his sister Casey (Brigette Lundy-Paine) both make up their minds to leave home.

Biohackers: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Mia (Luna Wedler) continues to run for her life while learning the terrible secrets of biohacking in this suspense techno-thriller from Germany.

The Cook of Castamar — NETFLIX SERIES

In 18th-century Madrid, Clara (Michelle Jenner) becomes a cook for a recently-widowed aristocrat (Roberto Enríquez) in this 12-episode adaptation of the novel by Fernando J. Múñez.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 — NETFLIX FILM

The second of three new films based on the novel series “Fear Street” by R.L. Stine (Goosebumps).

How I Became a Superhero — NETFLIX FILM

Another deconstructive film about superheroes, in which two detectives team up with two superheroes to investigate the illegal sale of a drug that grants superpowers.

Last Summer — NETFLIX FILM

When it comes to poignant movies about teenagers finding romance during the summer in a seaside town, Netflix aims to have at least one from every country. This is the one from Turkey.

Lee Su-geun: The Sense Coach — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

The first Netflix stand-up comedy special for the South Korean comedy star.

Virgin River: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

It’s been three years since Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) moved to the small town of Virgin River, but she’s still finding out that small towns are full of romantic complications, secrets, and occasional violence. Based on the novels by Robyn Carr.

Coming to Netflix on July 11, 2021

It Chapter Two

Coming to Netflix on July 13, 2021

Ridley Jones — NETFLIX FAMILY

In this animated preschoolers’ series, Iara Nemirovsky provides the voice of the title character, who guards the Museum of Natural History when its exhibits come to life, and helps teach the viewers what these exhibits represent. Created by  Chris Nee (“Doc McStuffins”).

Coming to Netflix on July 14, 2021

A Classic Horror Story — NETFLIX FILM

The idea of a group of people who get lost in the woods and targeted by a killer may not sound like an original story for a horror movie, but the title calls it a “classic” story, which makes it okay.

Gunpowder Milkshake — NETFLIX FILM

See introduction for details

Heist — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Three stories, each from a different director, about a real-life heist that is (they hope) more exciting than any heist movie. Each story is two episodes long, making six in all.

My Unorthodox Life — NETFLIX SERIES

The ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jewish community has already been the focus of some popular fiction series, but this is an unscripted series about fashion designer Julia Haart, who used to be a member of that community until she was in her forties; now she’s trying to help her children with the challenges of living a more secular lifestyle.

Private Network: Who Killed Manuel Buendía? — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Manuel Buendía was a prominent Mexican journalist who was shot to death in 1984. This documentary examines the reasons for his murder and the questions that still remain about it.

Coming to Netflix on July 15, 2021

A Perfect Fit — NETFLIX FILM

Netflix’s first original film from Indonesia takes place in Bali and concerns the romance between Saski (Nadya Arina) and Rio (Refal Hadi).

BEASTARS: Season 2 — NETFLIX ANIME

Adaptation of Paru Itagaki’s Manga about a school where some of the students are carnivorous talking animals, and the herbivore students who are understandably nervous about this.

Emicida: AmarElo – Live in São Paulo — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A concert by the star rapper Emicida, recorded live in São Paulo.

My Amanda — NETFLIX FILM

Alessandra De Rossi directed and co-starred in the story of Amanda (de Rossi) and TJ (Piolo Pascual), two best friends who support each other through their romantic complications (with other people).

Never Have I Ever: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Canadian actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan returns in the lead role of co-creator Mindy Kaling’s mostly-not-autobiographical comedy series about a high school student dealing with romance, family and identity issues.

The Final Girls
Peppa Pig: Season 6
Top Gun

Coming to Netflix on July 16, 2021

Deep — NETFLIX FILM

Four young insomniacs sign up for a sleep-disorder science experiment that goes horribly wrong. Starring Care-Panisara Rikulsurakan, Kay Lertsittichai, Fern-Supanaree Sutavijitvong, and Kit-Krit Jeerapattananuwong.

Explained: Season 3 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY (new episodes weekly)

More episodes (released, unusually for Netflix, in weekly format) from the gang at Vox Media, explaining what you should know and, sometimes, what you should think about various topics.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666 — NETFLIX FILM

The last of the three new films based on R.L. Stine’s novel series, aimed at a somewhat older audience than his Goosebumps series.

Johnny Test — NETFLIX FAMILY

A revival of the Canadian/American animated series about an average kid, his talking dog, and his two super-smart scientist sisters.

Van Helsing: Season 5 — NETFLIX SERIES

The last season of the post-apocalyptic vampire-hunting series. And in case you’re wondering how a Netflix show managed to last five seasons, they just license it from a U.S. cable channel.

Coming to Netflix on July 17, 2021

Cosmic Sin

Coming to Netflix on July 20, 2021

Milkwater

Coming to Netflix on July 21, 2021

The Movies That Made Us: Season 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Another series of documentaries about the making of hit films that are now “old classic movies,” no matter how much we may try to deny it. The films featured in this batch are Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Pretty Woman and Forrest Gump.

Sexy Beasts — NETFLIX SERIES

Every dating show has a gimmick. The gimmick of this British hit is that contestants have to choose among potential dates who are all wearing makeup and prosthetics to disguise themselves as animals, space creatures, and so on.

Too Hot to Handle: Brazil — NETFLIX SERIES

Brazilian edition of the reality show where people are thrown together in a sexy atmosphere and must abstain from sex in order to win the big cash prize.

Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans — NETFLIX FAMILY

A feature-length finale to the animated series “Trollhunters” from Guillermo del Toro.

Coming to Netflix on July 22, 2021

Still Working 9 to 5

Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop — NETFLIX ANIME

Romantic animated film about Cherry, an introverted boy with a penchant for poetry, and Smile, a girl who smiles a lot.

Coming to Netflix on July 23, 2021

A Second Chance: Rivals! — NETFLIX FAMILY

Sequel to the 2011 Australian film A 2nd Chance, in which Maddy (Emily Morris), the gymnast from the first film, pulls a Mighty Ducks and starts coaching a team of younger gymnasts.  

Bankrolled — NETFLIX FILM

Comedy about two guys who create a pitch for an app that doesn’t exist, and have to create one after their pitch unexpectedly raises a lot of money.

Blood Red Sky — NETFLIX FILM

In a combination of an airplane hijacking thriller with a supernatural thriller, a vampire is taking a peaceful flight with her son until terrorists hijack the plane.

Kingdom: Ashin of the North — NETFLIX FILM

A special bonus episode of the hit zombie-fighting series Kingdom, which will fill in some of the backstory behind the show’s plot.

The Last Letter From Your Lover — NETFLIX FILM

In one of many films that is absolutely in no way trying to be The Notebook, Ellie (Felicity Jones) discovers some love letters from the 1960s and decides to track down the two people who wrote the letters and find out how their romance ended.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Sky Rojo: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Crime drama from the creators of the hit “Money Heist,” about three sex workers on the run from their former pimp. The season consists of eight short (25 minutes) episodes.

Wrath of Man

Coming to Netflix on July 26, 2021

The Goldfinch

The Walking Dead: Season 10

Coming to Netflix on July 27, 2021

The Angry Birds Movie 2

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Mighty Express: Season 4 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated kids’ series about a  reality where there are no adults, just kids and talking trains.

Coming to Netflix on July 28, 2021

Bartkowiak — NETFLIX FILM

A former MMA fighter has to run the family business after his brother dies, and then he finds out that his brother may have been murdered. Hopefully his MMA skills will come in handy for avenging him.

The Snitch Cartel: Origins — NETFLIX SERIES

This series combines two of Netflix’s favourite things: period nostalgia and the drug trade. It begins in Cali, Colombia, in the 1970s, and deals with two brothers as they fight their way to the top of the crime game.

Tattoo Redo — NETFLIX SERIES

In this variation on the hardy genre of the fixer-upper reality show, we meet tattoo artists who have to try and transform the worst, ugliest tattoos into something presentable.

Coming to Netflix on July 29, 2021

Resort to Love — NETFLIX FILM

A singer (Christina Milan) is invited to perform at the wedding of her former fiancé (Jay Pharoah). It’s a romantic comedy, so it seems likely that it won’t actually turn out to be someone else’s wedding.

Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom — NETFLIX ANIME

The end of the Transformers “War for Cybertron Trilogy,” based on the Hasbro toy line of the same name.

Coming to Netflix on July 30, 2021

Centaurworld — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated series about a regular horse who enters a world of half-man, half-horse creatures, and appears to be weirded out by this.

Glow Up: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Reality competition show for makeup artists who compete at wacky and hopefully not too humiliating makeup-applying challenges.

The Last Mercenary — NETFLIX FILM

Jean-Claude Van Damme is back, so 2021 is already better than 2020. Shot in France, JCvD plays a former secret service agent who has to come out of hiding to save his son from the French government and the mafia.

Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

See introduction for details

Outer Banks: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In this teen action drama, a group of kids find a surprising amount of mystery and buried treasure on North Carolina’s Outer Banks (hence the title).

Leaving Netflix

Leaving 7/5, 2021

The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
The Scorpion King
Ted
Ted 2

Leaving 7/23, 2021

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

Leaving 7/31, 2021

Titanic

The post Netflix Canada in July 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Not even a pandemic could stop Marvel from taking over the world. With no movies in theatres since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, and with its flagship star Robert Downey Jr. having left the franchise, it seemed like the perfect time for Marvel Studios to end the hot streak it’s been on since it debuted with Iron Man in 2008. Instead, it’s only become more successful, and more important to the future of its owner, the Walt Disney Company.

Marvel Studios returned in 2021 with WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, two limited series for the Disney+ streaming service. Their success brought millions of new subscribers to Disney and set the stage for a glut of Marvel content: starting with Black Widow in July, Disney will have a new Marvel movie or series ready to go almost every month.

READ: A very real, not at all fake Captain Marvel synopsis

Though no one can completely explain the success of Marvel Studios, industry experts know who gets the largest share of credit for it: Kevin Feige, who has produced all its films and shows. “Directors, writers and stars have come and gone, but as producer and president of Marvel Studios, he has been the one consistent element in every one of their films,” says Ben Fritz, an editor at the Wall Street Journal and author of the book The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies. Feige began by making a household name of Iron Man, a B-list comics star, and is now doing the same for B-listers from his own movies: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier gave the title of Captain America to his buddy Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and WandaVision made stars out of a witch and a robot in love, who had only had a few minutes of screen time in the Avengers films.

Elisabeth Olsen is Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany is Vision in Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. (Courtesy of Marvel Studios)

It may be one of the secrets to Feige’s success that he’s constantly trying to get his viewers interested in new characters, so that they won’t drift away from the franchise when actors leave. Kari Skogland, the Canadian filmmaker who directed all six episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, was pleased with the way Marvel used its streaming series to flesh out the characters and set them up for new things: “It’s a new path for Marvel, which opened doors for them for all of their characters in future projects. You get to know the characters. They become more complex, because you get to go home with them.” This puts Feige ahead of another Disney-owned franchise, Star Wars, which is still heavily dependent on familiar characters from the George Lucas movies, including a movie about Han Solo and an upcoming series about Obi-Wan Kenobi. Meanwhile, Feige is making shows about Iron Man’s former sidekick (Armor Wars) and the Hulk’s lawyer cousin (She-Hulk).

READ: How to make a Marvel series

Another thing that helps Feige stay on top may be that, despite the formulaic nature of superhero storytelling, his work is slightly less predictable than the competition. Fritz notes that Marvel Studios usually tries to explore different genres with different projects: “The Captain America movies have more of a spy and espionage element, Thor is fantasy, the Guardians of the Galaxy are science-fiction, Black Panther deals with colonialism, Spider-Man is a teen soap opera.” Following that pattern, WandaVision was a tribute to classic sitcoms, with its first episode actually shot before a studio audience, while the movie it leads into, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, has been hyped by Feige as Marvel’s first horror film.

Marvel has also tried to provide some changes when it comes to style and tone. While many of the studio’s competitors have been trying to copy the humour and optimism of Marvel movies like The Avengers, Feige has quietly turned his product in more morally ambiguous directions. WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier were written and partially shot before the pandemic, but they both take place in a depressing, despairing world quite familiar to anyone who has lived through the past year. Though WandaVision has a couple of antagonists, it’s the protagonist who accidentally puts an entire town of innocent people under mind control and initially refuses to let them go. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ends with a cynical twist where a crime boss emerges as the real winner, and there aren’t any unambiguous villains for the heroes to fight; Skogland says that one of its themes is that this is a more complex era where “the bad guy isn’t always just bad.”

Anthony Mackie stars as Falcon/Sam Wilson in Marvel Studios’ ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.’ (Courtesy of Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios)

The bleaker feel of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe has something to do with another Feige specialty, the ongoing story element that is threaded throughout the studio’s productions. The new MCU shows and movies often refer to an event from Avengers: Endgame, when the heroes succeeded in bringing back half the world’s population after the bad guy wiped them out. The writers have been instructed to show what life might be like if millions of people vanished and then returned. “It was a great opportunity to look at imperialism, and we looked at it as a very big story device that could allow us to explore the future versus the past,” Skogland says.

These heavier themes could be part of an attempt to bring Marvel into one area that it hasn’t yet conquered: prestigious, award-winning film and TV. Marvel scored a Best Picture Academy Award nomination for Black Panther, and it may have similar ambitions for this fall’s Eternals, based on an obscure comic by Marvel Universe co-creator Jack Kirby; the story of an ancient race of god-like aliens living on Earth was assigned in 2018 to indie director Chloé Zhao, this year’s winner of the Academy Award for Best Director for Nomadland (also distributed by Disney). Feige has also tried to find ways to showcase actors who were wasted in his earlier films; Elizabeth Olsen, who was hired to play Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch based on her performance in the independent drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, finally got to demonstrate why in WandaVision, a tragicomic story about her character snapping under the weight of unprocessed trauma.

Marvel movies and shows are still mass-market Disney superhero productions, and they can’t stray too far from the formula. “Nearly all of the movies start off in unique ways, but end with a CGI-heavy, over-the-top battle to save a city or country or the world or the universe,” says Fritz, adding that when WandaVision’s finale abandoned the sitcom format in favour of a conventional fight scene, it “loses the intimacy and cleverness with which the series began.”

But even if he never gets that Oscar or Emmy, this more serious approach may pay off for Feige. For one thing, it makes the feel-good moments feel even better when they do come; despite the grimness of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Skogland found it an inspiring moment when Sam finally takes on the Captain America identity and shield: “I felt this was the most important show of the century because it was a Black man picking up a white iconic symbol, and it was frankly long overdue.” And the shift in tone will help keep viewers from thinking they know exactly what to expect. Fritz says that Feige is masterful at making films that are repetitive enough that “fans generally know what to expect and are satisfied,” but “without being so repetitive that people get bored.” Being surprising and predictable at the same time: that’s the Marvel way.

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Marvel

Loki (beginning Wednesday, June 9)

Disney’s month-long nightmare is over: Kevin Feige is back to supply them with another Marvel Cinematic Universe show to keep their subscribers from jumping ship. Unlike “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” which made stars out of relatively minor characters, “Loki” is a more traditional spinoff: Tom Hiddleston, playing Thor’s mostly-but-not-totally villainous brother Loki, was probably the most popular Feigeverse character who hadn’t gotten his or her own movie yet. Loki was killed off in Avengers: Infinity War, so his series will deal with concepts like how a character can be alive in one timeline and dead in another; Owen Wilson plays a member of the Time Variance Authority, an organization that arrests Loki for breaking the laws of time travel. All this is intended to set up the “multiverse,” which means, roughly, “an excuse to have different versions of the same character running around.” Kate Herron is the director, Michael Waldron is the head writer, and the comic everyone has already bought at inflated prices is Thor #372, where the Time Variance Authority first appeared.

Pixar

Luca (Friday, June 18)

While some Disney feature films are going to theatres this summer with a pay-per-view option, Pixar’s latest animated film will be free to Disney+ subscribers, following the successful streaming-only release of Pixar’s Soul. Continuing the more international, less America-centric feel of recent animated films, this one takes us to a seaside town in Italy, where the title character (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and his best pal (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer) go for a summer vacation, making friends with the locals and doing picturesque Italian things (eating pasta, going for Vespa rides, etc), while trying to hide their secret: they’re actually sea monsters who are able to disguise themselves as human children… as long as they don’t get wet. The director, Enrico Casarosa, is a veteran Pixar artist who was born and raised in Italy.

Disney

The Mysterious Benedict Society (beginning Friday, June 25)

Is Tony Hale in everything? Probably. In this series, based on the young-adult novel series by Trenton Lee Stewart, he plays a mysterious man who identifies four orphan children as having special abilities that can help him foil a dangerous plot; to carry out this mission, the four kids must go undercover as students at a sinister boarding school. So it’s like Harry Potter, but the gifted children have non-magical gifts, and their mentor is working against the boarding school instead of for it. Hale also plays his character’s twin brother; the show was filmed in Vancouver.

Wolfgang (Friday, June 25)

This isn’t about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (that’s Amadeus, which Disney doesn’t own yet). This is about Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian chef who became a huge success in America after starting his own restaurant, Spago, in Los Angeles in 1982; as the chef-in-residence of Hollywood, he became a media celebrity that matched many of the stars he cooked for. David Gelb (Chef’s Table) produced and directed this documentary, which aims to show how Puck built his food and media empire and how success isn’t always such a wonderful thing.

Star

Love, Victor, season 2 (beginning Friday, June 18)

As noted when the first season came to Canada, this is sort of a recursive Disney+ show: it was originally created for that streaming service, but moved to Hulu when Disney got cold feet about LGBT content. In countries that don’t get Hulu, it’s on the Star imprint of Disney+ (which is likely what Hulu will eventually become in the U.S. anyway). At the end of the first season, Victor (Michael Cimino — not the film director; he’s dead) came out and started a relationship with Benji (George Sear); this season, he finds out what it means to be openly gay and how his family members, classmates and teammates react. The season has 10 episodes, which will all drop at the same time on Hulu, but might or might not follow the one-episode-per-week model on the Canadian version of Disney+. It’s all rather confusing, really.

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What you should watch

Sailor Moon Eternal: The Movie (June 3)

This film, from the beloved manga/anime franchise, already played in movie theatres in Japan earlier this year, but Netflix is releasing it everywhere else, and it’s said to be the first Sailor Moon movie to get an international release. It’s a continuation of the 2014 animated series “Sailor Moon Crystal;” an arc from the original manga series that was originally supposed to be the show’s fourth season was made into a long two-part feature film instead. The story involves a villain who makes nightmares real, and (this is a real heartbreaker) an apparent decline in the relationship of Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask.

Sweet Tooth (June 4)

In 2009, Canadian comic book writer/artist Jeff Lemire created the series “Sweet Tooth” for Vertigo, the now-defunct adult comics imprint of DC Comics. It took place in a post-apocalyptic world—though one that bears some resemblance to the small-town Ontario of Lemire’s youth—so it was inevitable that it would find a home on Netflix eventually, in the form of this TV series, developed by writer/director Jim Mickle. Thanks to the aforementioned apocalypse, the world is now full of mutant children who are half-animal, half-human; the lead characters are a half-human, half-deer kid named Gus (Christian Convery) and a mysterious man named Jepperd (Nonso Anozie) who promises to take Gus to a place where “hybrids” are safe.

Penguin Town (June 16)

Patton Oswalt has been busy lately, or at least his voice has been. In addition to his animated show “M.O.D.O.K.,” he’s the narrator of this nature series about penguins, the birds you can always turn to when you need to get your cuteness fix. The twist of this eight-episode show is that, despite being a documentary, it’s also a fish-out-of-water comedy in which a group of endangered penguins in South Africa have to do the usual penguin things—including looking for a mate—in the city. Oswalt told Yahoo Entertainment that what interested him about the show is that it’s “about nature invading urban spaces and how nature still wins out in spite of all these obstacles.”

The House of Flowers: The Movie (June 23)

Netflix gave us three seasons of creator Manolo Caro’s comedy/drama about the dysfunctional de la Mora family and their equally dysfunctional family-owned businesses. This being Netflix, there will be no fourth season, but instead, we’re getting this movie spinoff, directed by Caro. The premise finds the de la Moras learning that there is a secret treasure hidden in their old family home, leading to a feature-length scheme to break into the house; this is intercut with a flashback story taking place in the 1980s, where the family parents Virginia and Ernesto carry out a similar scheme.

Date TBA

Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens — NETFLIX FILM

Iqbaal Ramadhan plays a teenager who reacts to his father’s death by traveling to New York to find the mother he hasn’t seen in years.

Jiva! — NETFLIX SERIES

Noxolo Dlamini plays the role of Ntombi, who thinks dancing might be her ticket out of her depressing life, and forms a dance troupe with very different women with very similar dreams.

Ray — NETFLIX SERIES

Another in Netflix’s string of themed anthology series from India: the theme of the four short films in this series is that they’re all based on stories by filmmaking legend Satyajit Ray.

Record of Ragnarok — NETFLIX ANIME

Animated series about a fight between 13 gods and 13 mortals to decide whether mortal humans get to survive or not. Not to be confused with Disney’s “Thor: Ragnarok” or Netflix’s “Ragnarok” series.

So Not Worth It — NETFLIX SERIES

The story of international students all living together in the same dormitory. Was it worth coming all the way to another country to study? The title may or may not supply the answer.

Coming to Netflix June 1, 2021

Super Monsters: Once Upon a Rhyme — NETFLIX FAMILY

From Goldilocks to Hansel and Gretel, the Super Monsters reimagine classic fairy tales and favourite nursery rhymes with a musical, magical spin!

Coming to Netflix June 2, 2021

Carnaval — NETFLIX FILM

After a breakup, an influencer takes her friends on a free trip to Bahia’s vibrant Carnival, where she learns life’s not just about social media likes.

Licensed content:

Coming to Netflix June 3, 2021

Alan Saldaña: Locked Up — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

The Mexican comedy star returns to Netflix for his second special, where being “locked up” refers to being at home with the kids.

Creator’s File: GOLD — NETFLIX SERIES

In this mockumentary series, comedian Ryuji Akiyama parodies the world of social media content creation by casting himself as pretentious or self-absorbed social media influencers.

Dancing Queens — NETFLIX FILM

Helena Bergström directed this film about Dylan (Molly Nutley), a young woman who wants to dance at a nightclub where only drag queens are allowed to perform.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie: Part 1 / Part 2  — NETFLIX FILM

See introduction for details

Summertime: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In the first season, two teenagers (Coco Rebecca Edogamhe & Ludovico Tersigni) fell in love even though she’s a waitress’s daughter and he’s a rich bad-boy motorcycle driver. In the second season, they and their friends continue to have romantic complications in a beautiful Italian coastal town.

Coming to Netflix June 4, 2021

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Prolific TV science guy David Attenborough hosts his third Netflix documentary, about how humans have been bad stewards of the Earth and pushed it beyond sustainable limits. Featuring Swedish Professor Johan Rockström, an expert on sustainability.

Feel Good: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Mae Martin created and stars in a semi-autobiographical comedy about an abrasive Canadian comic living in London. This is the final season.

Human: The World Within — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

PBS documentary series where each episode looks at a particular aspect of how the human body works:  The six episodes are titled “Birth,” “Pulse,” “Fuel,” “Defend,” “Sense,” and “React.” Jad Abumrad (Radiolab) narrates.

Sweet Tooth — NETFLIX SERIES

See introduction for details

Trippin’ with the Kandasamys — NETFLIX FILM

The third in a series of movies about Shanti (Maeshni Naicker) and Jennifer (Jailoshini Naidoo), two ultra-competitive next-door neighbours. In this instalment, both decide to go on vacation with their husbands at the same time.

Xtreme — NETFLIX FILM

Daniel Benmayor directed this thriller about a hitman plotting revenge on the stepbrother who was responsible for the death of his son and father.

Coming to Netflix June 5, 2021

Kitty Love: An Homage to Cats — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The title doesn’t need much explaining; it’s a documentary about cats, for people who love watching cats do cute cat things.

Coming to Netflix June 9, 2021

Awake — NETFLIX FILM

Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) and Jennifer Jason Leigh are among the stars of writer-director Mark Raso’s science fiction film about what happens after all human beings are robbed of the ability to sleep.

Fresh, Fried & Crispy — NETFLIX SERIES

Food critic Daym Drops hosts a documentary series about places that serve the best fried foods, such as the fried chicken at Yo’ Mama’s Restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama.

Tragic Jungle — NETFLIX FILM

Indira Andrewin stars in director Yulene Olaizola’s mystical period piece, about a woman who flees into the jungle to escape being forced into marriage with an Englishman.

Coming to Netflix June 10, 2021

Late Night

Locombianos — NETFLIX SERIES

A stand-up special from Colombia, featuring four different comics in their first post-lockdown performances.

Coming to Netflix June 11, 2021

Love (ft. Marriage and Divorce): Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Drama about three women from three different generations who all work on a radio show and all have issues making their marriages work.

Lupin: Part 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

One of Netflix’s biggest recent hits was this French series, starring Omar Sy as a gentleman thief who models his life and technique on the classic fictional character Arsène Lupin.

Skater Girl — NETFLIX FILM

Manjari Makijany co-wrote and directed this film about a small-town girl (Rachel Sanchita Gupta) who decides to enter a national skateboarding competition.

Trese — NETFLIX ANIME

Based on the comic series created by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, this show’s title character, Alexandra Trese (voiced in English by Shay Mitchell), is a private detective who is frequently called in to solve cases involving mythological or fantasy creatures.

Wish Dragon — NETFLIX FAMILY

An animated feature film about a guy who finds a genie who is also a dragon, hence the title. Chris Applehans wrote and directed, and Jimmy Wong and John Cho provide the English-language voices of, respectively, the guy and the wish dragon.

Coming to Netflix June 14, 2021

Elite Short Stories — NETFLIX SERIES

While waiting for the fourth season of the hit Spanish teen drama Élite, the producers offer these mini-episodes that fill us in on what the characters were doing during the summer.

The Sun Is Also a Star

Coming to Netflix June 15, 2021

Rhyme Time Town: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

DreamWorks animated series about talking animals who recite, and act out, classic nursery rhymes.

Unwind Your Mind — NETFLIX INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE

Another Netflix co-production with the Headspace meditation app. Company representatives tell you, with the aid of animation, three different techniques for mind-unwinding, depending on what time it is and whether you want to call it “meditation” or not.

Licensed content:

Desperado
Power Rangers Dino Fury: Season 1

Coming to Netflix June 16, 2021

The Hurricane Heist

Penguin Town — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

See introduction for details

Silver Skates — NETFLIX FILM

A big hit in Russia, notable as the first Russian film released by Netflix, this film moves the basic plot of “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates” from Holland to Russia, and also adds a Romeo-and-Juliet style romance, with that plot also relocated to Russia.

Spider-Man: Far from Home

Coming to Netflix June 17, 2021

Black Summer: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

It’s hard to keep track of all the zombie apocalypse shows out there. This is the one that’s filmed in Calgary and stars Jamie King.

The Gift: Season 3 — NETFLIX SERIES

Beren Saat returns for the final season as Atiye, a painter who discovers she has a connection to some form of mystical power.

Hospital Playlist: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Drama about five doctors who all went to medical school together and all work at the same Seoul hospital.

Katla — NETFLIX SERIES

The basic format for a lot of drama series is to have a horrible disaster and a survivor looking for someone who may or may not be alive. In this series from Iceland, the horrible disaster is the eruption of a volcano, and the lead character, played by Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð, is looking for her daughter, who has been missing since the disaster began.

Coming to Netflix June 18, 2021

A Family — NETFLIX FILM

Writer-director Michihito Fujii tells the Godfather-style story of Kenji (Gô Ayano), who spends two decades as a member of the Yakuza.

Elite: Season 4 — NETFLIX SERIES

The previously-mentioned hit Spanish teen drama, about students at a snooty secondary school. This season, four new kids and one new principal are added to the cast.

Fatherhood — NETFLIX FILM

Kevin Hart stars as a Matthew Logelin, who is left alone to raise his daughter after his wife suddenly dies. Co-written and directed by Paul Weitz, based on a memoir by the real-lie Matthew Logelin.

Jagame Thandhiram — NETFLIX FILM

A gangster (Dhanush) is summoned to London to help a crime boss (James Cosmo) in this action thriller from Indian writer-director Karthik Subbaraj.

The Rational Life — NETFLIX SERIES

Drama series about a woman (Qin Lan) who seeks to lead a “rational life” when it comes to her career and love life, but finds it isn’t so easy, especially after she ends up in a love triangle with two of her co-workers.

The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals — NETFLIX SERIES

Netflix already brought you “The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes,” and now this series takes you to great short-term vacation rental properties, for when vacations are legal again.

Coming to Netflix June 19, 2021

Booksmart

Nevertheless — NETFLIX SERIES

Romantic drama about two people who want a relationship even though they claim not to want a serious romantic commitment.

Coming to Netflix June 21, 2021

Long shot

Coming to Netflix June 22, 2021

Blinded by the Light
The Kitchen

Coming to Netflix June 23, 2021

Good on Paper — NETFLIX FILM

Iliza Shlesinger wrote and stars in a comedy about a stand-up comic who meets a guy (Ryan Hansen) who seems to be everything she ever said she wanted in a man, but is he really? Probably not, judging by the title. Directed by Kimmy Gatewood.

The House of Flowers: The Movie — NETFLIX FILM

See introduction for details

Murder by the Coast — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Tània Balló Colell directed this documentary about one of Spain’s most famous murder cases, the 1999 killing of teenager Rocío Wanninkhof, and a conviction that became a notorious miscarriage of justice.

Too Hot to Handle: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

In yet another reality show that was conceived before the pandemic but accidentally took on new meaning because of it, a group of contestants are ordered to live together but never have sex or romantic contact; whoever distances the longest wins $100,000.

Coming to Netflix June 24, 2021

Godzilla Singular Point — NETFLIX ANIME

Sadly, the monster in this animated Godzilla spinoff is probably not called “Godzilla Singular Point.” It’s about an engineer and a grad student who are investigating unexplained occurrences when they both hear a mysterious song that will lead them to uncover a threat to the world.

The Naked Director: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Eight more episodes of the biographical drama about the pornographic film director Toru Muranishi (played by Takayuki Yamada). This season picks up Muranishi after he’s worked his way up from porn magazines to porn films, as he sets his sights on conquering the medium of satellite TV.

Sisters on Track — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The true story of Tai, Rainn and Brooke Sheppard, three sisters who went from a homeless shelter to youth track stardom. Directed by Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne.

Coming to Netflix June 25, 2021

The A List: Season 2 — NETFLIX SERIES

Lost meets Pretty Little Liars in a teen drama about teenage girls jockeying for status on an island-based summer camp where supernatural secrets and brainwashing are the order of the day.

Sex/Life — NETFLIX SERIES

Billie (Sarah Shahi) is living a quiet suburban life with her husband and children when her ex — and a reminder of the life she used to lead — arrives on the scene. Stacy Rukeyser adapted this series from the B.B. Easton novel “44 Chapters about 4 Men.”

Coming to Netflix June 26, 2021

Wonder Boy — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A portrait of the French designer Olivier Rousteing and how he became creative director of the Balmain fashion house.

Coming to Netflix June 27, 2021

The Secret Life of Pets 2

Coming to Netflix June 28, 2021

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement — NETFLIX ANIME

Another instalment in the long-running anime series about an order of knights known as the Seven Deadly Sins.

Coming to Netflix June 29, 2021

Black Lightning: Season 4 – NETFLIX SERIES

The final season of the DC Comics series about Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), an educator who keeps trying and failing to quit his old job as the superhero Black Lightning.

Midsommar

StarBeam: Season 4 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Another batch of episodes in the non-threatening animated superhero series about a little girl who turns into a hero named StarBeam.

Coming to Netflix June 30, 2021

America: The Motion Picture — NETFLIX FILM

Archer director Matt Thompson brings a similar sensibility to this animated retelling of the American Revolution, with Channing Tatum voicing George Washington, Judy Greer as Mrs. Washington, Simon Pegg as Sam Adams and Bobby Moynihan as Paul Revere.

Sophie: A Murder in West Cork — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Three-part docuseries about the 1996 murder of French television producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier while on holiday in West Cork, Ireland, which led to years of attempts by the French government to extradite her suspected killer.

Leaving Netflix in June 2021

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Disney

Cruella (Friday, May 28)

After more than a year of waiting, Disney appears to have settled on its preferred method of film distribution for the pandemic era: its big movies will be released simultaneously in movie theatres and on the Disney+ streaming service in the pay-per-view “Premier Access” format. So one way or another, you’ll have to pay to see this film, as well as all the big Marvel movies coming later this year. The movie itself is in the tradition of Maleficent, taking a popular villain from a Walt Disney animated movie (in this case, Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians), casting her with a popular actress (in this case, Emma Stone), and doing a prequel about how she got to be so deliciously wicked. Confusingly, though, this prequel takes place in the 1970s, when 101 Dalmatians was released in 1961. So expect a sequel that will explain the multiple timelines of Disney synergy.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: Season 2 (beginning Friday, May 14)

One of Disney’s first streaming shows returns for another season of the most confusing series concept in the business. The first season was not based on High School Musical, but instead focused on a high school putting on a production of the stage version of Disney’s High School Musical. This season, we follow the lives and loves of the theatre kids as they prepare to put on a production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. So, to review, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is now a series that’s not based on High School Musical, about kids who are not putting on a production of High School Musical.

Launchpad (beginning Friday, May 28)

This is not a series about Duck Tales breakout star Launchpad McQuack. It’s a series of live-action short films made by young filmmakers from backgrounds that are not often represented in U.S. mass media; this first batch of films is organized around the one-word theme of “Discover,” and range from the story of a Muslim Pakistani student campaigning to get Eid recognized as a day off from school, to a teenager who has to confess to her best friend that she’s part human and part vampire. The six directors represented in this batch are Hao Zheng, Ann Marie Pace, Jessica Mendez Siqueiros, Stefanie Abel Horowitz, and Moxie Peng. Hopefully at least one film to come will have something to do with Launchpad McQuack.

Pixar

Inside Pixar: Unpacked (May 21)

Tony Kaplan and Erica Milsom directed this series of promotional shorts about the people who work at Pixar and the jobs they do. This batch focuses on the storytelling tools of a Pixar film, including what it takes to create an effective villain, how to animate crowd scenes, and the elements of Pixar-style character design (not too cartoony, not too realistic). W. Kamau Bell narrates.

Star Wars

The Bad Batch (Beginning Tuesday, May 4)

This is a spinoff from the animated series Clone Wars, generally regarded as the best thing to come out of the world of the Star Wars prequels. Dave Filoni, director and producer of that series, created this one, which focuses on a group of clone warriors who become mercenaries, traveling through space and going on dangerous, and not always quite respectable, missions. All the clones are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, because they’re clones; Ming-Na Wen (Mulan) voices one of the non-clones.

Star

Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. (Friday, May 21)

There is no new Marvel Studios content on Disney+ this month, but as a consolation prize, we get the last show produced by Marvel’s television division before it was disbanded (in the U.S., it airs on Hulu, Disney’s “adult” streaming imprint). The title character is a super-smart villain from the Captain America comics, whose head is much bigger than the rest of his body and whose name stands for “Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing.” As you might guess, the show doesn’t take him too seriously; Patton Oswalt co-created the series and voices the title character; Jon Hamm voices Iron Man (so there’ll be no confusing it with the “real” Iron Man), and Nathan Fillion voices Wonder Man, a Marvel superhero the movies never got around to using.

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What you should watch

Jupiter’s Legacy (May 7): No streaming service is allowed to go too long without a superhero show. This one is based on an independent comic by writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely, which, like many independent comics, is a deconstruction of corporate-owned heroes: it’s about the generation-gap clash between a group of older superheroes who were active in the 1930s (and, naturally, resemble the Justice League as much as possible without getting sued) and their children, who also have superpowers but believe that the old ways of being a superhero are no longer relevant in this new, more complex world. The cast includes Josh Duhamel as the leader of the old-guard superheroes, Leslie Bibb as his wife and partner in crimefighting, and Elena Kamouris as their daughter, who proves that young people with superpowers can be just as embarrassed by their parents as anyone else.

Halston (May 14): One of Netflix’s busiest producers, Ryan Murphy, executive-produced this limited series (based on a biography by Steven Gaines) about Roy Halston Frowick, who became one of the most influential fashion designers of the 1970s, and an icon of the Studio 54 era: “I was very aware, as a 15-year-old, of who Halston was,” Murphy (who, like Halston, is from Indiana) told Vogue magazine. “I mean, the Ultrasuede, the wrap dress he did, the luggage for Hartmann.” Ewan McGregor plays the title role, and Murphy has said that McGregor was attracted to the fact that Halston’s story will demonstrate “how confusing it is to have to be an artist and a businessman at the same time.”

The Woman in the Window (May 14): A.J. Finn’s novel, a female-led take on Rear Window about a reclusive woman who claims to have witnessed a murder through her apartment window, has had a long and confusing route to the screen. It was begun in 2019 by the Fox 2000 division of 20th Century Fox, which no longer exists because Disney bought the company and shut it down. After poor test screenings, major rewrites and reshoots were demanded by producer Scott Rudin (now under fire for what employees have described as his abusive management style). It was then scheduled to arrive in theatres in spring 2020, but all the movie theatres were closed. So it finally arrives on Netflix now, the last film from Fox 2000 and possibly one of the last Scott Rudin productions. Amy Adams plays the lead, with Marvel’s Anthony Mackie and Wyatt Russell in supporting roles.

Army of the Dead (May 21). This seems to be Zack Snyder’s year. First he got the chance to give the world the legendary “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, and now Netflix is giving a hybrid theatrical/streaming release to his take on the ever-popular zombie movie genre—and it’s very much his take, because apart from directing, he co-produced, co-wrote (based on his own story) and did his own cinematography. Actually, the story feels more like Snyder didn’t know whether he wanted to make a zombie movie or a heist movie, so he made both at the same time: Dave Bautista plays the ringleader of a gang that decides to pull off the greatest heist in the history of Las Vegas, which happens to be under attack by zombies. In keeping with the Zack-centric nature of the film, the cast doesn’t have a lot of big star names, though one piece of casting did make news: one of the cast members, Chris D’Elia, was dropped from the film after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, and his entire part was re-shot with Tig Notaro. Which means that Snyder spent an awful lot of the past year shooting new scenes for movies he already made.

Date TBA

Mad for Each Other — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Korean romantic drama about a man and a woman who are thrown together when they discover that not only do they live next door to each other, they share the same therapist.

Master of None—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Racket Boys—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
16-episode drama series about a former professional badminton player (Oh Na-ra) who takes a job as a middle-school badminton coach and tries to turn a ragtag group of kids into a world-class team.

Ragnarok: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Not to be confused with the Marvel movie, this Norwegian series attempts to be a more accurate modern take on Norse mythology, following the adventures of a modern man (David Stakston) who is actually the reincarnation of Thor, god of thunder and fighter of frost giants.

Coming to Netflix May 1, 2021

Leaving Netflix May 3, 2021

Mallrats

Coming to Netflix May 4, 2021

Selena: The Series: Part 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The biographical drama about the tragically short life of pop star Selena Quintanilla (played by Christian Serratos) includes a dramatization of Selena’s real-life meeting with a young, starstruck Beyoncé.

Trash Truck: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY
Netflix has a number of animated children’s shows about talking vehicles. This one, as the title suggests, features a talking trash truck, whose name is Trash Truck.

Coming to Netflix May 5, 2021

The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
A four episode documentary series about the famous “Son of Sam” murders of the 1970s and the attempt by journalist Maury Terry to demonstrate that the convicted killer, David Berkowitz, didn’t act alone. Directed by Joshua Zeman.

Licensed content:

Coming to Netflix May 7, 2021

Girl from Nowhere: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Chicha Amatayakul returns in this unique combination of serialized drama and anthology series, playing Nanno, a mysterious girl who keeps transferring to different schools and exposing the secrets and lies of the students and teachers.

Jupiter’s Legacy — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
See introduction for details

Milestone — NETFLIX FILM
Suvinder Vicky won Best Performance at the Singapore International Film Festival (where the film also won the Best Film prize) for his role as a veteran truck driver who has recently lost a loved one and now faces the loss of his job to a younger man. Directed by Ivan Ayr.

Monster — NETFLIX FILM
Kevin Harrison Jr. stars in an adaptation of Walter Dean Myers’ novel about a student who is thrown into the dehumanizing nightmare of the U.S. legal system when he is accused of murder.

Licensed content:

Lost Girls & Love Hotels
Patch Adams

Coming to Netflix May 8, 2021

Mine — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Series about two women and the ruthless things they do for the sake of their family business.

Coming to Netflix May 10, 2021

Shaft

Coming to Netflix May 11, 2021

Money, Explained — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
The latest “explainer” documentary series from Netflix’s collaboration with Vox Entertainment is about the thing that keeps Netflix in business, but focusing mostly on the role of money in the everyday lives of ordinary people, and especially the way we are constantly encouraged to take on more debt. Narrators include Tiffany Haddish, Bobby Cannavale, Edie Falco, Jane Lynch and Marcia Gay Harden.

Coming to Netflix May 12, 2021

Dance of the Forty One — NETFLIX FILM
David Pablos directed this fictionalized retelling of the 1901 Mexican police raid on a party for gay men. Alfonso Herrera plays the President’s son-in-law, who was alleged to have been at the party.

Oxygen — NETFLIX FILM
Mélanie Laurent plays a woman who finds herself trapped in a cryogenic pod with no memory of who she is and how she got there, and must find a way to escape before she runs out of oxygen (hence the title).

The Upshaws — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Kim Fields (Living Single) and Mike Epps star in a sitcom as a working-class African-American couple in the Midwest, trying to pay their bills and raise their family as best they can.

Coming to Netflix May 13, 2021

Castlevania: Season 4 — NETFLIX ANIME
The fourth and last season of Netflix’s first original anime, based on the video games about modern-day vampire hunters. Netflix is reportedly already considering replacing it with a new series set in the same universe.

Leaving Netflix May 13, 2021

Sucker Punch

Coming to Netflix May 14, 2021

A Madea Family Funeral

Ferry — NETFLIX FILM
A prequel to the Belgian-Dutch TV series Undercover, focusing on the early years of drug lord Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers) and the woman who will become his wife (Elise Schaap).

Haunted: Season 3 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
In Netflix’s reality horror series, real people claim to have experienced things that only happen in horror movies.

Halston—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
See introduction for details

I Am All Girls — NETFLIX FILM
Donavan Marsh’s film, set in the 1980s in Apartheid South Africa, is about a detective who is forced to team up with a serial killer to target a sex trafficking ring.

Jungle Beat: The Movie — NETFLIX FAMILY
From the makers of the animated series Jungle Beat, about cartoon animals who can’t talk, comes this movie version, where the animals all gain the ability to talk, but it’s because of an alien who crash-landed in the jungle as part of a plan to take over the world.

Love, Death & Robots: Volume 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Animated anthology series, created by Deadpool director Tim Miller, where rotating filmmakers tell adult-oriented short stories dealing with love, death, and/or robots.

Move to Heaven — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
16-episode drama about Geu Roo (Tang Jun Sang), a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome, and his uncle (Lee Je Hoon), who must put aside their differences to run a family business that specializes in arranging and moving people’s possessions after they die.

The Strange House — NETFLIX FILM
A family moves from the city to a creepy house in a small town in Austria, and their two sons become convinced that the house hides a terrible secret.

The Woman in the Window — NETFLIX FILM
See introduction for details

Leaving Netflix May 14, 2021

Sherlock

Coming to Netflix May 16, 2021

Little

Leaving Netflix May 16, 2021

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Coming to Netflix May 17, 2021

Annabelle Comes Home

Coming to Netflix May 18, 2021

Men in Black: International
Poms

Sardar Ka Grandson — NETFLIX FILM
Arjun Kapoor plays a man who promises to take his grandmother (Neena Gupta) back to her childhood home before she dies, only to find that this is harder than it seemed.

Coming to Netflix May 19, 2021

The Last Days

Who Killed Sara?: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Manolo Cardona returns as Álex, who is determined to avenge the killing of his sister Sara, and finds out in the process that he may never have known his sister very well.

Coming to Netflix May 20, 2021

Hating Peter Tatchell

Special: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The second and last season of creator/star Ryan O’Connell’s comedy series about a man with cerebral palsy who decides to pretend that his disability was caused by something else.

Leaving Netflix May 20, 2021

Silver Linings Playbook

Coming to Netflix May 21, 2021

Army of the Dead — NETFLIX FILM
See introduction for details

Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous: Season 3 — NETFLIX FAMILY
Animated spinoff from Jurassic Park, in which people visit a camp with living dinosaurs and—in an unprecedented twist—the dinosaurs start trying to kill them.

The Neighbor: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Quim Gutiérrez returns for another season of the comedy about an ordinary guy who gets superpowers. This season, he finds out that not only are superheroes real, but so are aliens.

Coming to Netflix May 23, 2021

Us

Coming to Netflix May 26, 2021

Baggio: The Divine Ponytail — NETFLIX FILM
Biographical drama film starring Andrea Arcangeli as the legendary Italian footballer Roberto Baggio.

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America — NETFLIX FILM
Based on a book by food historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris, this four-episode series looks at the history of Black cuisine in America and how it intersects with the shameful parts of U.S. history as well as the inspiring ones. Stephen Satterfield hosts the show, with Roger Ross Williams directing.

Nail Bomber: Manhunt — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
Documentary about a series of bombings in London in 1999, and the motivations of the far-right extremist who made and detonated the bombs.

Coming to Netflix May 27, 2021

The Banana Splits Movie

Black Space — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Israeli series starring Guri Alfi as a detective investigating a a mass murder at a high school, and the student app (known as “Black Space”) which may provide the clue to who did it and why.

Blue Miracle — NETFLIX FILM
Dennis Quaid stars in this drama film, based on a true story, about kids who enter a fishing tournament to try to win the money to save their orphanage from being closed down.

Eden — NETFLIX ANIME
Netflix has a surprising number of animated shows about dystopias. This one focuses on a future where all the humans have been wiped out and the robots have taken over, until two robots stumble upon a lone human girl, and try to raise her in secret.

Soy Rada: Serendipity — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL
A stand-up special for the Argentine comedian, magician and musician.

Coming to Netflix May 28, 2021

Dog Gone Trouble — NETFLIX FAMILY
Originally released in 2019 under the title “Trouble,” this animated family film focuses on a domesticated dog (named Trouble, and voiced by Big Sean) trying to survive on the streets.

Lucifer: Season 5, Part 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The adventures of the fallen angel Lucifer (Tom Ellis).

The Kominsky Method: Season 3 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The third and final season of Chuck Lorre’s foray into prestige single-camera comedy, starring Michael Douglas as a successful acting coach, but not co-star Alan Arkin, who elected not to return to the show, and will be written out.

Leaving Netflix May 29, 2021

American Crime

Coming to Netflix May 31, 2021

The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Reality show about a family-owned luxury real estate business in Paris.

Leaving Netflix May 31, 2021

Full House

The post Netflix Canada in May 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Ottawa native Kari Skogland has been directing television since 1994, including episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Walking Dead, and The Borgias. But The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Marvel limited series, wasn’t a completely typical TV directing experience. Most drama shows in the U.S. use multiple directors throughout a season, which allows one episode to be prepared while another is being filmed. But Skogland directed all of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The sixth and final episode, debuting on the Disney+ streaming service on Friday, was the culmination of a shooting schedule that was grueling even before it was lengthened by the COVID-19 pandemic: “I obviously just made it part of my life,” Skogland told Maclean’s when asked about the work it requires to direct an entire series.

Unlike a similarly big-budgeted show like The Mandalorian, whose last eight episodes were directed by seven different people, Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios has elected to go with the single-director policy for all the shows it produces for Disney: Skogland’s counterparts include Matt Shakman on WandaVision and Kate Herron on the upcoming Loki, and, like them, she’s credited as an executive producer on the show.

READ: Netflix Canada in April 2021: What’s new this month

“I think when you direct all six, you become one of the authors,” she says. On a typical show, “it’s hard to author it because you’re not informed by what happened before, and you can’t steer the ship to where it’s going. You’re just doing your little piece of the puzzle. You can’t adjust or react to something that happened in an earlier scene, because you weren’t there. So, I feel like it’s a difficult job to come in as a guest director, because you by definition just don’t have all the information. You’re always playing catch-up.”

Skogland also thinks that the continuity of having one director is good for the actors. “Seeing a new face every couple of weeks is unsettling if you’re trying to discover a character and actualize it,” she says. In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, she was able to work with such familiar Marvel faces as Anthony Mackie (the Falcon), Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier) and Daniel Brühl (the treacherous Baron Zemo) to plan out how their characters would evolve as the show went on:  “It gave them the confidence to try stuff, and gave me the confidence to allow us to bust through different doors in order to discover where we wanted to sit tonally, and where we wanted to take each character, because I was part of the whole process.”

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was the first Marvel Studios limited series to enter production, so it was a different experience for a team accustomed to making feature films. While each series is what Skogland calls “a six-hour movie,” telling a complete story that pays off with a big action sequence near the end, they’re able to use the extra time to develop the characters in ways that can’t happen in a feature.

In an action movie, Skogland explains, “you’ve got a very clear end game that you have to get to, and so if the characters veer off that path, you feel like you’re out in the wasteland somewhere, and they’re not doing their job to save the world.” But in the next-to-last episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, there was little action, and the characters spent most of their time having conversations. When the action starts up again in the finale, Skogland says, “we’re coming at the next beat, the next story plot, with much more thoughtful and experienced characters who have now come to conclusions as a result of what’s happened,” and that makes the action more meaningful than it might be in a two-hour movie.

One way The Falcon and the Winter Soldier resembles a typical movie, though, is the aspect ratio. Instead of shooting it to fit our TV screens, Skogland and her crew chose the 2.35:1 “Scope” aspect ratio that has been used for most of Marvel’s features. Skogland says that this extra-wide format “gave us a framing and a particular look that gave it the filmic qualities that we wanted. Because it really needed to be a Marvel movie on what we think of as a smaller screen… but honestly, in our homes, they’re all big screen.” And while we may currently be watching the show with black bars at the top and bottom of our TV screens, that may not be the case if TVs get wider or more adjustable in the future: “We wanted to future-proof it for all kinds of other formats. We don’t necessarily know what they’re going to be.”

The post How to make a Marvel series appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Marvel

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (episodes 3-6, of 6)

The first Marvel Studios series, WandaVision, promoted two supporting characters to stardom while setting up a new character to be a supporting character in future movies. The second series is doing the same, giving the starring roles to Captain America’s sidekicks Sam “Falcon” Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), while also introducing a breakout supporting character in John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a jingoistic, my-country-right-or-wrong type who’s been chosen by the government as the next Captain America. Will Sam become Captain America in the end? Will Walker end by taking on a different superhero identity? The only thing we can predict is that everyone will get a new costume and a new tie-in toy based on that costume. New episodes drop on Friday mornings, with the final episode arriving April 23.

Marvel Studios Assembled (Friday, April 30)

A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, to fill the insatiable need for Marvel content while they’re getting ready to roll out the next series, Loki.

Disney

Big Shot (Beginning Friday, April 16)

No, this isn’t the Disney series about a lovable ragtag hockey team; that was last month’s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changer. This series is about a lovable ragtag basketball team. TV’s John Stamos, the man who cannot age, is down on his luck after being kicked out of pro basketball, but gets his “big shot” to turn his life around when he accepts a job coaching basketball at an all-girls school. There, he helps the girls bring out their hidden potential and maybe, just maybe, he’ll learn something about himself, too.

National Geographic

Earth Moods (Beginning Friday, April 16)

Disney’s acquisition of National Geographic allowed it to have some quiet, relaxing content to remind you that not everything on this planet is terrible. This five episode series is intended to be a placid experience, with the filmmakers traveling around the world to get footage of the most soothing, calming and non-stress-inducing sights they can find, both in the natural and man-made world. The episode titles are “Frozen Calm,” “Night Lights,” “Tropical Serenity,” “Desert Solitude” and “Peaceful Patterns.”

Secrets of the Whales (Thursday, April 22)

Released on a Thursday, for once, in honour of Earth Day, this four-episode documentary series is narrated by Sigourney Weaver and excecutive-produced by James Cameron. The secrets in question are the way whales communicate with one another. The creative team spent three years filming five different types of whales to give us a fuller picture of how they manage to “speak,” while of course providing lots of footage that will reinforce National Geographic’s reputation as the soothing section of Disney+.

Star

Nomadland (Friday, April 9)

Americans with a Hulu subscription already got this acclaimed film from writer/director Chloé Zhao. Hulu-free countries like ours can now see why the film is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress for star and co-producer Frances McDormand. In this fictionalized version of the nonfiction book of the same name by Jessica Bruder (though with some of the real people from the book appearing as themselves), McDormand leaves her home town after her husband dies and its economy collapses; she becomes one of many rootless people in modern-day America who lives wherever she can find work, and meets a group of organized nomads who provide a supportive community for people who no longer have a physical community to call their own.

The post Disney+ in April 2021: What’s new this month in Canada appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Netflix in April 2021: What You Should Watch

Worn Stories (April 1) – Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black) created this documentary series based, like so many Netflix shows are, on a book: Emily Spivack’s 2014 book, where 60 different people shared stories about an article of clothing and the difference it made in their lives. The eight loosely themed half-hour episodes will follow a similar format, with a mix of interviews and other vignettes (including animation), where people tell stories about clothes and the meanings and memories they carry with them; unlike the book, which focused mostly on established storytellers, the documentary puts more of the spotlight on ordinary people, such as a man who helps people pick out their first clothes after being released from prison.

Concrete Cowboy (April 2) – Netflix picked up the rights to this modern Western, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020. Idris Elba is the star (he also co-produced), playing an urban cowboy who rides a horse through the streets of North Philadelphia. His teenage son (Caleb McLaughlin) is sent to stay with his dad for the summer, and initially doesn’t think much of this whole cowboy subculture. First-time director Ricky Staub adapted Greg Neri’s novel Ghetto Cowboy.

My Love: Six Stories of True Love (April 13) –  In 2013, filmmaker Jin Mo-young had a hit with his documentary My Love, Don’t Cross That River, which followed two people who had been married for 76 years. Audiences loved seeing the end of a relationship that had lasted so long. This six-part documentary series is a follow-up to that film: each episode was directed by a different filmmaker in a different country, all of whom chose an elderly couple and followed them for a year to find out what makes a relationship last. Mo-young directed the fourth episode, following a different Korean couple; other directors include Hikaru Toda (Japan) and Elaine McMillion Sheldon (the United States).

Dad Stop Embarrassing Me! (April 14) – Despite Jamie Foxx’s success as a film actor (most recently as the lead voice in Soul), he’s never abandoned his roots as a TV sitcom performer, most recently appearing as George Jefferson in a live TV re-creation of an All in the Family episode. So maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that he decided to do the kind of family sitcom that most stars don’t do until their movie careers have tanked. In this show, created by Bentley Kyle Evans (who also ran Foxx’s sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show), he plays a dad whose teenage daughter moves in with him after being away for years and, as the title implies, he discovers that he is not considered a cool dad. The show also incorporates shout-outs to Foxx’s early days as a cast member of In Living Color by having him play several other characters, and signing up another cast member, David Alan Grier, to play the grandpa character. Foxx’s actual daughter, Corinne, is an executive producer.

Date TBA

The Disciple — NETFLIX FILM

Alfonso Cuarón executive-produced director Chaitanya Tamhane’s film about a singer’s long, hard attempt to master the art of Indian classical vocalism.

Searching For Sheela — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A follow-up to the 2018 Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, about a controversial commune led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; this documentary focuses on his assistant Ma Anand Sheela, as she visits India for the first time in decades.

Coming to Netflix on April 1, 2021

Magical Andes: Season 2 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 
Another season of the documentary series that takes us on a journey through the Andes mountains and the countries through which they run.

Prank Encounters: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Gaten Matarazzo, of Netflix’s Stranger Things, does double duty as the host of a hidden-camera prank show where the pranks are horror-themed.

Tersanjung the Movie — NETFLIX FILM

An adaptation of the popular Indonesian soap opera of the same name, which ran from 1998 to 2005. The movie version focuses on Yura (Clara Bernadeth) and her love triangle with two old friends, Christian (Giorgino Abraham) and Oka (Kevin Ardillo).

Worn Stories — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
See introduction for details

Licensed content:

Coming to Netflix on April 2, 2021

Concrete Cowboy — NETFLIX FILM
See introduction for details

Just Say Yes — NETFLIX FILM

Romantic comedy from Holland about that most perennial of romantic-comedy subjects: the search for the perfect wedding. In this case it’s Lotte (Yolanthe Cabau), who wants a wedding to outdo her sister’s.

Madame Claude — NETFLIX FILM

Karole Rocher stars in the biographical film about Fernande Grudet, aka “Madame Claude,” who ran an influential Paris brothel in the 1960s. Rocher has described it as a rare chance to play a “female gangster role.”

Run — NETFLIX FILM

Directed by Aneesh Chaganty, this 2020 thriller is about Chloe (Kiera Allen), who begins to suspect that her mother Diane (Sarah Paulson) may be trying to harm her. The film was released on Hulu in the U.S., and Netflix picked up the international rights.

The Serpent — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

An eight-issue limited series, co-produced with the BBC, starring Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer who targeted tourists on South Asia’s “hippie trail” in the mid-1970s.

Sky High — NETFLIX FILM

A mechanic named Ángel (Miguel Herrán) becomes drawn into a life of crime after falling in love with Estrella (Carolina Yuste). Directed by Daniel Calparsoro.

Coming to Netflix on April 3, 2021

Escape from Planet Earth
High Life

Coming to Netflix on April 4, 2021

What Lies Below

Coming to Netflix on April 5, 2021

Coded Bias

Family Reunion: Part 3 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Sitcom about a family that moves from the Northwest to the Deep South to be closer to their other family members. The cast includes such sitcom stalwarts as Tia Mowry (Sister, Sister) and Telma Hopkins (Family Matters).

Coming to Netflix on April 6, 2021

The Last Kids on Earth: Happy Apocalypse to You — NETFLIX FAMILY

Special interactive episode of the animated show, based on the popular novel series, that proves it’s possible to make a fun family-friendly series about people fighting zombies in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Leaving:
Happy Gilmore

Coming to Netflix on April 7, 2021

The Big Day: Collection 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Each episode from this docu-series focuses on a different lavish, sinfully expensive wedding in India and the people involved in planning, preparation and payment. This is the second batch of six episodes.

Dolly Parton: A MusiCares Tribute — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Netflix presents the 2019 concert in honour of the legendary singer/songwriter, when the non-profit organization MusicCares selected her as “Person of the Year” for her combined work in music and philanthropy. Guest stars include Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Miley Cyrus.

Snabba Cash — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

This Swedish original series is a follow-up to a popular series of crime movies based on Jens Lapidus’s Stockholm Noir books: set 10 years after the events of the movies, it stars Evin Ahmad as an entrepreneur who borrows money from a criminal gang to get her business off the ground, and soon has reason to regret it.

This Is A Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A four-part documentary series about the still-unsolved 1990 theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where two thieves disguised themselves as cops, walked into the museum, tied up the guards, and got away with a whopping 13 art pieces. Directed by Colin Barnacle.

The Wedding Coach — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Another six-episode reality series about weddings. In each episode, comedian Jamie Lee, author of Weddiculous: An Unfiltered Guide to Being a Bride, visits a soon-to-be-married couple and tries to help them navigate the stress of planning a wedding.

Licensed content:

Coming to Netflix on April 8, 2021

The Way of the Househusband — NETFLIX ANIME

The story of a Yakuza boss who retires from crime and devotes himself to housekeeping while his wife pursues her career. Based on the manga by Kousuke Oono.

Coming to Netflix on April 9, 2021

Have You Ever Seen Fireflies? — NETFLIX FILM

An old woman looks back on her childhood in Istanbul during the middle of the 20th century. Directed by Andaç Haznedaroglu

Night in Paradise — NETFLIX FILM

Writer-director Park Hoon-jung’s latest film is about an ex-mobster (Uhm Tae-goo) hiding out on Jeju Island from the people who already killed his sister, and the dying woman (Jeon Yeo-been) he meets and falls in love with.

Thunder Force — NETFLIX FILM

The wife/husband team of Melissa McCarthy (star and co-producer) and Ben Falcone (writer/director) team up again for a comedy starring McCarthy and Octavia Spencer as two friends who gain superpowers and give the name “Thunder Force” to their two-woman superhero team.

Words on Bathroom Walls

Coming to Netflix on April 10, 2021

The Stand-In

Coming to Netflix on April 11, 2021

Diana: The Interview that Shook the World

Leaving:
Shrek Forever After 
Shrek the Third 

Coming to Netflix on April 12, 2021

New Gods: Nezha Reborn — NETFLIX FILM

Animated film, inspired by the classic novel Investiture of the Gods, in which a modern-day man turns out to be the reincarnation of the legendary Nezha, with all the powers and enemies that come with the title.

Leaving:
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Coming to Netflix on April 13, 2021

Mighty Express: Season 3 — NETFLIX FAMILY

More episodes of the animated series that tries to convince us that kids would have fun living in a world where there are no adults and the only other intelligent creatures are talking trains.

My Love: Six Stories of True Love — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
See introduction for details

The Baker and the Beauty: Season 1
Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Coming to Netflix on April 14, 2021

The Circle: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Another season of the most accidentally timely reality show of 2020, where a cast of strangers live in the same building but are never allowed to actually meet, and communicate with each other online.

Dad Stop Embarrassing Me! — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
See introduction for details

Law School — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Drama about the students and faculty at a prestigious law school, which gets a real-world test of legal principles when a shocking incident occurs at the school. The cast is led by Kim Myung-min as an exacting professor.

Love and Monsters — NETFLIX FILM

Yet another project that turns the apocalypse into fun: Joel (Dylan O’Brien) ventures out of his underground bunker seven years after the world was taken over by monsters, and sets out on a journey to find his girlfriend.

The Soul — NETFLIX FILM

Adaptation of the 2012 novel by science-fiction writer Jiang Bo, where what seems like a normal murder mystery turns out to revolve around “brain reproduction technology.”

Why Did You Kill Me? — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

Documentary about Crystal Theobald, who was killed in 2006 after being mistaken for a member of a gang, and her family’s attempt to use MySpace (back when that was what we meant by “social media”) to find and trap the killers.

Coming to Netflix on April 15, 2021

Ride or Die — NETFLIX FILM

Ryūichi Hiroki directed this thriller, based on a manga by Ching Nakamura, about Rei (Kiko Mizuhara) who murders the abusive husband of the woman she loves.

Coming to Netflix on April 16, 2021

Arlo the Alligator Boy — NETFLIX FAMILY

Animated film about Arlo, who is an alligator boy (half-boy, half-alligator), who lives in a swamp with other talking creatures, but goes to New York to find his long-lost dad.

Ajeeb Daastaans — NETFLIX FILM

Another in Netflix’s line of anthology films from India. These four short films, each by a different director, share the theme of negative emotions and what they can do to a relationship.

Fast & Furious Spy Racers: Season 4: Mexico — NETFLIX FAMILY

The animated Fast & Furious spinoff continues, as the characters are framed for a crime, and drive their very fast cars to Mexico to escape the authorities.

Into the Beat — NETFLIX FILM

German film about a young dancer torn between her parents’ desire for her to become a ballerina, and her own love of hip-hop dancing. Directed by Stefan Westerwelle.

Why Are You Like This — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Comedy series, first aired in 2018, about three millennials (Naomi Higgins, Olivia Junkeer, Wil King) who share an apartment in Melbourne.

The 2nd

Coming to Netflix on April 18, 2021

Luis Miguel – The Series: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Diego Boneta stars in this extended biographical drama about the life and career of pop superstar Luis Miguel.

Leaving:
Just Friends 

Coming to Netflix on April 20, 2021

Izzy’s Koala World: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY

The story of Izzy Bee, a girl who lives with her family on an island where they spend a lot of time saving animals, particularly koalas.

The Gift

Ocean’s Eleven

Coming to Netflix on April 21, 2021

Zero — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Film about a teenager who has the power of invisibility, and has to decide between using it to further his personal ambitions or to help his neighbours.

Coming to Netflix on April 22, 2021

Life in Color with David Attenborough — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY 

Veteran BBC broadcaster David Attenborough hosts this three-part series that uses special photographic technology to show us the role colour plays in the natural world, including colours that humans can’t observe from a distance.

Coming to Netflix on April 23, 2021

The Prodigy

Shadow and Bone — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

In this adaptation of the fantasy novels by Leigh Bardugo, an orphan named Alina (Jessie Mei Li) discovers that she is a “Grisha,” a person with the power to command one of the elements, and works to understand this power so she can help her war-torn home.

Tell Me When — NETFLIX FILM

Romantic comedy about a workaholic American who takes a trip to Mexico City and finds love.

Coming to Netflix on April 25, 2021

RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race: Season 1

Coming to Netflix on April 26, 2021

Greta

Coming to Netflix on April 27, 2021

Fatma — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Burcu Biricik plays the title role in this series, as a cleaning woman who discovers she has a talent for murder, and takes advantage of her unthreatening appearance to become the most fearsome killer in the underworld.

Go! Go! Cory Carson: Season 4 — NETFLIX FAMILY

Not many Netflix shows manage to make it to a fourth season, but there’s just no stopping this animated talking car and his world of other animated talking cars.

PJ Masks: Season 3

Coming to Netflix on April 28, 2021

Sexify — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

A young woman learns a lot more about sex than she bargained for when she and her friends try to create a sex app to enter in a competition.

Headspace Guide to Sleep — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The second of three co-productions between Netflix and Headspace, the meditation company. The first was The Headspace Guide to Meditation. This, as you may have guessed, is about how to sleep. We will see if it dares to point out that one of the reasons we can’t sleep is that we’re all watching too much Netflix.

Coming to Netflix on April 29, 2021

Things Heard & Seen — NETFLIX FILM

James Norton and Amanda Seyfried star in this modern gothic thriller about a couple who move to a vintage house that may harbour evil secrets, including evil secrets about their own marriage. based on the novel All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage.

Yasuke — NETFLIX ANIME

The title character, voiced in this version by LaKeith Stanfield, is a legendary African samurai who is pulled out of retirement to transport a young girl to safety.

Coming to Netflix on April 30, 2021

The Innocent — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

In this series, based on a novel by Harlan Coben, an ex-convict (Mario Casas) discovers that he might be going back to prison unless he can clear his name of an accusation; to find out the truth, he has to look more closely into the accidental killing that got him sent to prison.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines — NETFLIX FAMILY

The latest film from the unstoppable producing team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Into the Spider-Verse) was directed by Mike Rianda (Gravity Falls). It’s an animated comedy about a bickering family on a road trip that somehow finds itself the only hope to save humanity from a robot uprising.

Pet Stars — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Reality show about a company that works to promote “animal influencers” on social media.

The Unremarkable Juanquini: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Comedy series about a magician who accidentally got involved with organized crime in the first season, and is apparently still being pursued by the law in the second.

Fighting with My Family

Leaving:
Kingdom: Seasons 1-3

The post Netflix Canada in April 2021: What’s new this month appeared first on Macleans.ca.

What you should watch

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell (March 1): Christopher George Latore Wallace, or The Notorious B.I.G., lived up to his stage name by becoming arguably the most legendary rapper: he was shot to death in March 1997 at the age of 24, meaning that when Emmett Malloy’s new documentary drops, he’ll have been dead almost as long as he was alive. While the story of Wallace’s career and death has been told many times, Malloy was given access to footage that hasn’t been used in previous documentaries, including home videos captured on a camcorder by Wallace’s associate, Damien “D-Roc” Butler.

City of Ghosts (March 5): Elizabeth Ito (Adventure Time) created this unusual animated children’s series, which blends typical family animation with realistic documentary style. Set in Ito’s native Los Angeles, the show focuses on the “Ghost Club,” an enterprising group of children whose mission it is to meet and talk to ghosts. In addition to the voice actors, the show’s soundtrack includes interviews with real-life L.A. residents who talk about the city and its history. The show isn’t just about L.A., though; it aims to teach children about the way a city’s past intersects with its present and how neighbourhoods develop their character over many generations. While also, of course, letting them watch a cartoon about kids who talk to ghosts and solve mysteries.

Waffles & Mochi (March 16): Netflix’s contract with Michelle and Barack Obama continues with this 10-episode food series. The title characters are two puppets who want to become chefs, even though they don’t know anything about cooking. Fortunately, they have a magic shopping cart that sends them flying around the world to learn more about how to grow, choose and prepare good food. The show is a personal project for Michelle Obama, who has been strongly associated with the cause of improving children’s dietary habits; in addition to producing, she plays an onscreen role as owner of the supermarket where the title characters work. The series was created by Erika Thormahlen and Drunk History creator Jeremy Konner, and was originally announced under the title “Listen to Your Vegetables and Eat Your Parents.”

The Irregulars (March 26): The popularity of alternate takes on Sherlock Holmes will never end, because there’s always a slightly different way to do it. We already had a story where Holmes is incompetent and Watson does all the work (the 1980s comedy Without a Clue), but in this series, created by Tom Bidwell, Holmes is a hopeless drug addict and it’s a bunch of teenagers who do all the work: the Baker Street Irregulars, the loveable street urchins who helped Holmes get information, are actually doing all the mystery-solving themselves, with Watson as their boss, who writes the stories that give Holmes all the credit. Unlike Conan Doyle’s all-male Irregulars, this team is gender-balanced, led by Bea (Thaddea Graham), and they investigate mysteries that involve the supernatural. Producer Rebecca Hodgson told the London Times that the show is a Baker Street adventure aimed at Marvel-addicted kids who “are used to seeing massive special effects, massive action.”

Date TBA

Abla Fahita: Drama Queen —NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Disney may have the Muppets, but Netflix has this original series starring the Egyptian answer to Miss Piggy, the self-absorbed Abla Fahita, who finds herself accused of a crime she didn’t commit.

ARASHI’s Diary Voyage ep24 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

The very last episode of perhaps the most protracted release in Netflix history: 24 episodes about the Japanese boy band, released mostly monthly since 2019, when things were very different for a touring band.

The Yin Yang Master — NETFLIX FILM

An adaptation of the mobile game “Onmyōji,” where Chen Kun plays the title character, who finds himself learning more about himself as he prepares to fight a demon.

Coming to Netflix on March 1

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

See introduction for details

Licensed content:

Leaving Netflix on March 1

• Jaws
• Jaws 2
• Jaws 3
• Jaws: The Revenge
• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Legacy
• The Bourne Supremacy
• The Bourne Ultimatum

Coming to Netflix on March 2

Word Party: Season 5 — NETFLIX FAMILY

In this edu-tainment animated children’s series from the Jim Henson Company, five cute animals learn about the meanings and pronunciations of English and Mandarin words.

Coming to Netflix on March 3

Moxie — NETFLIX FILM

Amy Poehler directed and co-produced this film adaptation of the book by Jennifer Mathieu, about a teenaged girl (Hadley Robinson) who starts an anonymous publication that encourages a grassroots revolution against institutional sexism at her school. Poehler co-stars as Robinson’s mother.

Murder Among the Mormons — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

A three-episode documentary produced by BBC Studios, taking an in-depth look at a series of pipe bombings in Salt Lake City in 1985, and how they unlocked an investigation into forged documents that purported to show the secret history of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Licensed content:

Coming to Netflix on March 4

Pacific Rim: The Black — NETFLIX ANIME

Animated spinoff of the popular franchise: while looking for their missing parents in a post-apocalyptic Australia, two characters must learn how to pilot one of the big robots from the movies.

Coming to Netflix on March 5

City of Ghosts — NETFLIX FAMILY

See introduction for details

Dogwashers — NETFLIX FILM

Colombian film about a gardener who finds a secret trove of drug money.

Nevenka: Breaking the Silence — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

In 2001, Nevenka Fernández sued Ismael Álvarez, mayor of the Spanish town of Ponferrada, for sexual harassment. In a country with a reputation for being lax on the issue, her lawsuit became a landmark, and this documentary series looks at the trial and its aftermath.

Sentinelle — NETFLIX FILM

Olga Kurylenko stars in this action/revenge film as a soldier who takes it upon herself to hunt down the man who raped her sister.

Licensed content:

Vice

Yes, God, Yes

Coming to Netflix on March 8

Bombay Begums — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Drama series about modern urban life in India, told through the intersecting stories of five different women of different ages and social backgrounds. Alankrita Shrivastava (Made in Heaven) created the series and directed three of the six episodes.

Bombay Rose — NETFLIX FILM

Gitanjali Rao wrote and directed this animated film which uses painted animation to tell stories of star-crossed love. Originally premiering at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival, it now makes its Netflix debut after being delayed from its originally-planned December release date.

Coming to Netflix on March 9

The Houseboat — NETFLIX ORIGINAL