Stream These 9 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in January

A new year is upon us, and with a scary new coronavirus variant spreading, it once again seems like a good idea to stay home — kind of like the last two years. As such, this month’s list of movies and shows leaving Netflix in the United States should come in especially handy; you can check out literary adaptations, crime movies, existential dramas, family fare and more. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)

‘Snowpiercer’ (Jan. 1)

Before his astonishing four-Oscar haul for “Parasite,” the director Bong Joon Ho displayed his proficiency for fusing class commentary with genre cinema in this thrilling adaptation of the French graphic novel “La Transperceneige.” The story is set in a post-apocalyptic snowscape, in which the last members of the human race are on a train ride that never ends. But they are separated by class and caste; Chris Evans stars as the passenger who leads a rebellion among his fellow lower-class passengers in the back of the train. The action is gripping, the performances are eccentric, and the messaging is as pointed as ever.

Stream it here.

‘Episodes’: Seasons 1-5 (Jan. 5)

The rotten batting average of the stars of “Friends” and their post-“Friends” TV shows began right out of the gate, with Matt LeBlanc’s (mercifully) short-lived spinoff series “Joey.” So there’s perhaps some karmic justice in seeing LeBlanc wind up on arguably the best of the alumni series — and starring as himself, no less, a sly spoof on his persona as a pretty boy goof-off, with a dose of self-important actor arrogance thrown in. (He was nominated for four Emmys for the role.) A British-American coproduction, the series benefits from its dual perspective; it has the cynical bite of the best British comedies while showcasing the insiders’ knowledge of its American creators, David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik (“Frasier”).

Stream it here.

‘A Ghost Story’ (Jan. 6)

The writer and director David Lowery (who recently earned raves for “The Green Knight”) turns the connotations of his film’s title inside out, since a “ghost story” doesn’t have to be a horror story. Here, it’s quietly tragic, the tale of a young and happy married couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) who are starting their lives in their first shared home when he dies unexpectedly. But he cannot move on; he “haunts” their house in a simple, cartoonish “ghost” costume of a bedsheet, first observing his widowed wife in her unguarded grief, and then those who take on the home after. Mara is devastating, painting a portrait of loss that’s at times painful to watch, and Lowery’s keen ear for vernacular speech and eye for detail have rarely been so gracefully showcased.

Stream it here.

‘The Lorax’ (Jan. 6)

If you talk to a parent of young children, you will likely not hear much affection for Illumination Studios, the purveyors of some of the laziest, sloppiest and most obnoxious children’s entertainment around. (“Sing 2,” in theaters now! New Minions movie next summer!) The studio’s two best films are most likely its adaptations of Dr. Seuss books — unsurprising, as his texts provide such fertile material for animators. This 2012 animated take on Seuss’s 1971 environmental fable gets a big boost from Danny DeVito’s robust vocal performance as the title character; this is an actor whose voice was built for cartoons, and he makes his Lorax into a showstopping creation.

Stream it here.

‘Twilight’ (Jan. 15)

It’s not hard to make fun of “the Twilight Saga” (five films total, all leaving Netflix mid-month): Plenty of people have, from lazy film critics to hacky stand-up comics to smarmy YouTube hosts. And, to be clear, these are not great works of cinema; the plotting is silly, the tone is all over the place, and performances are uneven. But there are virtues as well: solid filmmaking (especially this first outing, from the “Thirteen” director, Catherine Hardwicke); a rare dramatization of budding female sexuality; and most of all, the power the series’ success gave its stars, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, to make whatever weird art movies they wanted afterward. Did you enjoy “The Lighthouse,” “Personal Shopper,” “Spencer,” or “Good Time”? Thank “Twilight.”

Stream it here.

‘The Bling Ring’ (Jan. 17)

This 2013 effort from Sofia Coppola effort plays like a culmination of all of her previous work: the celebrity satire of “Lost in Translation,” the hedonism of “Marie Antoinette” and the California alienation of “Somewhere,” stirred into a soup with the real-life story of four young Hollywood hangers-on who supplemented their party lifestyle by burglarizing the homes of famous people. A lesser filmmaker could have turned this story into a broad, dumb comedy or a stern lecture about the morals of today’s fallen youth. Coppola goes in another direction, capturing the glitz and glamour of this sleek world and its shiny surfaces before exposing the emptiness underneath.
Stream it here.

‘Cloud Atlas’ (Jan. 31)

The writer David Mitchell has been a key collaborator of the Wachowski siblings in recent years, working with them on their Netflix series “Sense8” and co-writing Lana Wachowski’s recent “The Matrix Resurrections.” But they first worked together less directly, co-writing and co-directing (with the “Run Lola Run” filmmaker Tom Tykwer) this 2012 adaptation of Mitchell’s vast novel “Cloud Atlas.” It’s an ambitious piece of work, combining multiple narratives across time and space and placing its main cast (including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant) in multiple roles. It doesn’t all work, but it’s such a big swing that it’s hard not to fall under its spell.

Stream it here.

‘Mystic River’ (Jan. 31)

Clint Eastwood was in a rough spot as a filmmaker in the early 2000s after several years of turning forgotten best-sellers like “True Crime” and “Blood Work” into forgettable movies. But he struck gold in 2003 with his adaptation of “Mystic River,” a Boston crime novel by Dennis Lehane, which netted Oscars for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. They star, along with Kevin Bacon, as friends since childhood who have dealt with a shared trauma in wildly different ways, and “Mystic River” expertly folds together its present-day and flashback timelines to reveal how the pain of the past is never far away.

Stream it here.

‘Shutter Island’ (Jan. 31)

Between their best picture-winning collaboration on “The Departed” and the best picture-nominated “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the director Martin Scorsese and the star Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up for this 2009 thriller — also adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel. It was generally seen as a castoff, a stylistic exercise allowing the filmmaker to play in the moody genre sandbox of the B-movie masters. But there’s a bleakness to the picture, an existential despair, at which those movies only hinted, particularly in the implications of its shattering closing scenes. DiCaprio shines throughout in a performance of increasing complexity; the more we know about this character, the clearer DiCaprio’s achievement becomes.

Stream it here.