The final season of “The Crown” and the mini-series adaptation of a Pulitzer-winning novel highlight this month’s slate.
Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
‘All the Light We Cannot See’
Started streaming: Nov. 2
Based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning 2014 novel, the four-part mini-series “All the Light We Cannot See” follows two young people across a decade, up to the moment when their paths finally cross, in a bombed-out European city during World War II. One is French: Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind teenager who carries the memory of her father (Mark Ruffalo) and the spirit of her great-uncle (Hugh Laurie) as she hides from the Nazis and transmits secret radio broadcasts filled with philosophy, literature and music. The other is German: Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann), a reluctant soldier who became a military radio operator in part to locate those broadcasts, which he treasures. The screenwriter Steven Knight and the director Shawn Levy amp up the wartime action in Doerr’s book, inserting flashbacks to the two main characters’ back stories between scenes of them dodging bullets and shrapnel during the Battle of Saint-Malo in 1944.
‘Nyad’
Started streaming: Nov. 3
In this unusual underdog sports drama, Annette Bening plays Diana Nyad, the long-distance swimmer who in her 60s came out of retirement and tried multiple times to do something she had dreamed of for three decades: swim nonstop from Cuba to Key West, without the protection of a shark cage. Jodie Foster plays Nyad’s best friend and chief cheerleader, Bonnie Stoll, while Rhys Ifans plays the skilled seaman who pilots their support boat. The Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi make their narrative directing debut with “Nyad,” bringing some of their knack for true-life adventure (seen in the likes of “Free Solo” and “The Rescue”) to the harrowing swimming sequences. Bening brings a lot of her own intense energy to the picture too, embodying a stubborn athlete who refuses to let age, childhood demons or the fraying patience of her supporters keep her from her goal.
‘The Killer’
Starts streaming: Nov. 10
The director David Fincher and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker are longtime collaborators who first worked together on the stylish 1995 serial killer thriller, “Seven.” They offer a more grounded take on the crime genre with their adaptation of the French comic book series “The Killer.” The movie pays homage to the French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, who specialized in stark crime stories, suffused with ennui and populated by emotionally distant antiheroes. In “The Killer,” that role is filled by Michael Fassbender, whose unnamed protagonist travels the world, assassinating the former associates who have turned against him. Fincher and Walker eschew the fantastical exaggerations of franchises like “John Wick” and “The Mechanic” in favor of plainer costumes, weapons and scenarios, intending to capture this hired gunman’s exhaustingly obsessive nature.
‘The Crown’ Season 6, Part 1
Starts streaming: Nov. 16
Queen Elizabeth II was still alive when the first season of this internationally popular biographical drama series debuted in 2016; and now the show is coming to an end, a year after her death. Although the show’s writer-producer Peter Morgan said he has had the ending of “The Crown” planned out for a while, the queen’s memory and legacy will undoubtedly shadow this final run of episodes. Season 6 primarily focuses on how the death of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) affected the relationship between the royal family and the U.K. populace, altering the meaning of the monarchy. Imelda Staunton returns as the queen, to wrap a saga that began in the 1950s with the end of King George VI’s reign and has since tracked the profound social changes of the late 20th century.
‘Rustin’
Starts streaming: Nov. 17
This acclaimed biopic stars Colman Domingo as the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, perhaps best-remembered for being one of the primary organizers of the 1963 March on Washington — the occasion for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Rustin’s contributions to the movement often happened behind the scenes, complicated by two aspects of his personal and public lives: that he was openly gay, and that he was involved at different times with various communist and socialist organizations. Directed by the accomplished theater director George C. Wolfe from a screenplay by Julian Breece and the Oscar-winning “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, “Rustin” mostly follows its subject in the ’60s, telling a story about how activism can sometimes push people to face the limits of their own progressive ideals.
Also arriving:
Nov. 1
“Locked In”
“Mysteries of the Faith” Season 1
“Nuovo Olimpo”
“Wingwomen” (a.k.a. “Voleuses”)
Nov. 2
“Onimusha” Season 1
Nov. 3
“Blue Eye Samurai” Season 1
“Daily Dose of Sunshine” Season 1
“Ferry: The Series” Season 1
“Selling Sunset” Season 7
“Sly”
Nov. 8
“The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend”
“Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld”
“Escaping Twin Flames”
Nov. 10
“At the Moment” Season 1
“Fame After Fame” Season 1
Nov. 14
“How to Become a Mob Boss”
Nov. 15
“Stamped from the Beginning”
Nov. 16
“Best. Christmas. Ever!”
Nov. 17
“All-Time High”
“Believer 2”
“CoComelon Lane” Season 1
“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” Season 1
Nov. 21
“Leo”
Nov. 22
“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America” Season 2
“Squid Game: The Challenge” Season 1
Nov. 24
“A Nearly Normal Family”
Nov. 28
“Love Like a K-Drama” Season 1
Nov. 29
“American Symphony”
Nov. 30
“Family Switch”
“Obliterated”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
