Stream These 10 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in November

Family favorites, Oscar-winning (and nominated) acting, bawdy comedies and insightful documentaries are among the highlights of the titles leaving Netflix in the United States in November. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)

‘Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian’ (Nov. 6)

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When Jerry Seinfeld stepped away from his sitcom and retired his venerable stand-up act in 1998, he took a dramatic step back to square one. In this documentary from 2002, the director Christian Charles tracks that journey, following Seinfeld back into the world of stand-up clubs (and their often unforgiving audiences) as he develops an hour of new material from scratch. Seinfeld’s reboot is intercut with the story of Orny Adams, a young stand-up trying to follow the Seinfeld playbook. The counterpoint structure isn’t entirely successful — Adams isn’t nearly as compelling or charismatic as Seinfeld, so his scenes drag a bit — and some of the material hasn’t aged well (particularly Seinfeld’s initially moving climactic encounter with … Bill Cosby). But it’s a fascinating chronicle of the comedy industry, and Seinfeld’s shop talk with fellow comedians (including Robert Klein, Jay Leno, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock and Garry Shandling) is nearly as compelling as his material.

‘Loving’ (Nov. 15)

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The writer and director Jeff Nichols rose through the ranks of indie cinema with deeply felt, richly textured portraits of contemporary life in the heartland, including “Shotgun Stories,” “Mud” and “Take Shelter.” For this, in 2016, his first period piece and first true story, he dramatizes the struggles of Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs in the 1967 Supreme Court case that, in effect, legalized interracial marriage. It was a monumentally important historical precedent, but Nichols doesn’t paint with the broad strokes of staid historical drama; he keeps his storytelling intimate, focusing on the offhand intimacy and unwavering love of the couple in question, played with grace and sensitivity by Joel Edgerton and an Oscar-nominated Ruth Negga.

‘Disappearance at Clifton Hill’ (Nov. 29)

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A Canadian thriller with touches of buried trauma, conspiracy theory and true-crime podcasting, this 2020 moody effort from the director and co-writer Albert Shin concerns a young woman (Tuppence Middleton) haunted by a long-ago, half-understood encounter during a fishing trip that comes rushing back to her when she’s entrusted with handling a familial real estate transaction. Middleton is a sympathetic protagonist, and Hannah Gross is excellent as her sister, but the real M.V.P. here is the director David Cronenberg, who pops up in a small but memorable supporting turn as a podcaster with his own thoughts on what she saw, and what it meant.

‘About Last Night’ (Nov. 30)

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The chain of ownership here gets a tad convoluted, so stick with me: This romantic comedy from 2014 loosely remakes the yuppie-rom-com from 1986 starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, which was itself a loose adaptation of the 1974 play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” by David Mamet. Tropes about the battle of the sexes are so established, it seems, that a decades-old play can still yield both laughs and moments of truth. But as with the 1986 film, the most entertaining material is provided less by the central couple (here played by the perfectly acceptable Joy Bryant and Michael Ealy) than by their broadly comic B.F.F.s, memorably brought to life by Regina Hall and Kevin Hart.

‘Arrival’ (Nov. 30)

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Before he took on the massive challenge of bringing “Dune” to the big screen, the director Denis Villeneuve took his first crack at science fiction with this thoughtful 2016 exploration of the possibilities of extraterrestrial contact. While most filmmakers seize on the threat of life from beyond, focusing on alien invasions and property damage, Villeneuve’s film (adapted from Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life”) probes deeper, as a linguist (Amy Adams) works tirelessly to establish communication with the alien life-forms before narrow-minded military types jump to the wrong conclusions. Her struggle is a vivid and dramatic one, and the concluding passages are both narratively ingenious and deeply moving.

‘Fences’ (Nov. 30)

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Denzel Washington crafts one of his finest performances in this 2016 adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by August Wilson — and matches the force of his acting with his graceful and nuanced work as the picture’s director. He stars as Troy Maxson, once a rising star in the Negro leagues, now a husband and father who spends his days in a stew of regret, dissatisfaction and deception. His complicated relationships with his best friend (Stephen McKinley Henderson), his wife (Viola Davis) and his son (Jovan Adepo) form the story’s dramatic spine, as the tales Troy has long told others, and himself, about who he is come to a head. It’s a penetrating and powerful drama, and Davis’s subtle work landed her an Oscar for best supporting actress.

‘Hook’ (Nov. 30)

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The setup was so juicy — Steven Spielberg directing Robin Williams as Peter Pan, with Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook and Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell — that it had to be either a masterpiece or a grave disappointment. It felt like the latter when “Hook” landed in theaters in 1991; critics dismissed it as a mess, and the box office, while respectable, was disappointing. But children of that era (who were, let’s face it, the target audience) fell for it hard, wearing out their VHS tapes and forming lifelong attachments to Spielberg and Williams. Bring it up to Millennials sometime, and watch them start chanting for Rufio.

‘Stuart Little’ (Nov. 30)

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If you’d like a more straightforward family film, it’s hard to top this charming 1999 adaptation of E.B. White’s children’s book (co-written, improbably enough, by the suspense master M. Night Shyamalan). The ostensible stars are Jonathan Lipnicki (“Jerry Maguire”) and, as his parents, Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie — but the comic juice is supplied by the talented voice cast: David Alan Grier, Nathan Lane, Chazz Palminteri and Steve Zahn as streetwise cats; Bruno Kirby and Jennifer Tilly as paternal mice; and Michael J. Fox as the unfailingly upbeat titular mouse.

‘Superbad’ (Nov. 30)

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Seth Rogen expanded his comedy profile from valuable onscreen player to behind-the-scenes mover-and-shaker in 2007 when he parlayed his memorable appearances in the Judd Apatow comedies “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” into this uproarious production of a screenplay he penned with his longtime pal Evan Goldberg. The pair had written it years earlier while teenagers themselves (it’s no coincidence that the protagonists are named “Seth” and “Evan”), and the writing feels smuggled out from the front lines of teenage life, as their onscreen avatars (played with warmth and wit by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) grapple with hormonal awkwardness, unrequited love and the logistics of access to alcohol while trying to dutifully impress their respective crushes (played with charm and verve by Martha MacIsaac and, in her feature film debut, Emma Stone).

‘Up in the Air’ (Nov. 30)

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Few things are as compelling onscreen as watching a movie star subvert his or her image, and that’s what George Clooney does, quite adroitly, in his Oscar-nominated performance in this crisp comedy-drama from the co-writer and director Jason Reitman. Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, whose job is to fire people; he flies into town like an assassin-for-hire, dropping in to struggling companies to help their employees with their “career transitions.” Free of genuine attachments and a moral compass, Ryan finds his slick existence threatened by a new colleague (Anna Kendrick, terrific) who thinks their job can be done more efficiently online. Much of the picture’s subject matter is watermarked to its 2009 release date — it’s a product of the 2008 economic crisis — but its themes of professional dissatisfaction and emotional aimlessness have proven timeless.