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      Stream These 9 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in July

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      A bunch of major titles are leaving for U.S. subscribers this month, including films by George Lucas and Ang Lee. See them while you can.Two of the biggest movies of the 1970s and one of the biggest of the ’80s are among the movies leaving Netflix in the United States in July; other highlights include a family favorite, a comic book oddity and an unconventional biopic. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ (July 14)Stream it here.This true-crime documentary became such a must-watch (and must-discuss) sensation on Netflix, it ended up spawning a limited series dramatization on Peacock. It’s not hard to see why: This is truly stranger-than-fiction stuff, detailing how the 12-year-old Jan Broberg was abducted by a neighbor and family friend, Robert Berchtold — and then, somehow, abducted again by the same man several years later. The internet outrage surrounding the film (and blaming Broberg’s parents) missed the point; the director Skye Borgman sensitively and intelligently explores how Berchtold used brainwashing and grooming to commit his shocking crimes.‘Big Eyes’ (July 23)Stream it here.In an era of increasingly dreary, paint-by-numbers biopics, the works of the screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski seem like oases in the desert — witty, insightful, poignant and frequently cockeyed portraits of unconventional subjects like Larry Flynt, Andy Kaufman and Rudy Ray Moore. This 2014 effort reunited the writers with their “Ed Wood” director, Tim Burton, telling the story of the artist Margaret Keane, whose wildly popular and undeniably distinctive paintings were originally believed to be the work of her monstrous husband, Walter. Amy Adams plays Margaret with sympathy and grace, while Christoph Waltz’s turn as the egomaniacal Walter is the best work he has done outside of the Tarantino-verse.‘American Graffiti’ (July 31)Stream it here.This 1973 coming-of-age comedy-drama was a mind-boggling launchpad. First and foremost, it started a movement of ’50s nostalgia (even though it is set in 1962, it still feels like the ’50s) that continued through the decade with the likes of “Grease” and the film’s unofficial TV spinoff, “Happy Days.” It was also a big break for several members of its then-unknown cast, including Candy Clark, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith and Cindy Williams. And perhaps most important, it was the first big hit for its co-writer and director, a quiet young California filmmaker named George Lucas, who based the picture on his own youth as a Modesto hot-rodder. Its critical and commercial success allowed him to take on his dream project, a sci-fi epic called “Star Wars,” and well, you know the rest.‘Fatal Attraction’ (July 31)Stream it here.This erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne was one of the most successful pictures of 1987 — and one of the most controversial, prompting heating conversations about its depictions of adultery and mental illness that moved from movie listings to opinion pages and magazine covers. The story is simple: Michael Douglas stars as a family man whose seemingly offhand weekend extramarital affair with Glenn Close turns into a matter of literal life and death. It is a deeply flawed picture — Close’s nuanced characterization outclasses the paper-thin caricature she’s given, and critics of the era were right to call out the cheap-thrills ending as a cop-out — but a nevertheless fascinating snapshot of the era’s sexual mores and moral paranoia.‘The Great Wall’ (July 31)Stream it here.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Family Affair’ Review: A Rom-Com With a Third Wheel

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      When Zara (Joey King) realizes that her mom (Nicole Kidman) is dating her boss (Zac Efron), she tries to split them up.Joey King is a bit of a unicorn: a genuine movie star brought into being by Netflix. As far as movies are concerned, the streamer does make a lot of them, but often seems at a loss to promote them or the actors. But in 2018, King starred in the Netflix-produced “The Kissing Booth” and made enough of an impression to power two sequels.“A Family Affair,” King’s newest film on the streaming service, may appear to be a kind of lab experiment — how does the buoyant actress react when thrown into a pool with Hollywood luminaries? King is not exactly outclassed by Nicole Kidman, Kathy Bates and Zac Efron. But the movie’s script, by Carrie Solomon, puts her at a disadvantage.Set in Los Angeles, “A Family Affair” finds King’s character, Zara, stuck in a personal assistant loop with Chris Cole (Efron), an action movie hunk who seems even more shallow and self-absorbed than the average caricature of such types. As is often the case in such arrangements, their relationship is creepily close; in the opening scene, Zara is late delivering the expensive but insincere gift Chris is about to bestow on a girlfriend he’s dumping.The movie serves up a light critique of Hollywood. Discussing Chris’s latest project, Zara repeats the log line, “It’s like ‘Die Hard’ meets ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’” to which her pal replies, “So it’s not about anything.”The beacons of integrity here are Zara’s mom, Brooke (Kidman), described by Zara in one of her frequent outbursts as a “Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award whatever,” and Zara’s paternal grandmother, Leila (Bates). Important plot point: Brooke is a widow who hasn’t been on a date in a long time. One afternoon, while dusting the house, Brooke is interrupted by Chris (semi-repentant, he’s looking for Zara, whom he’s just fired for the umpteenth time); they hit the tequila together and erotic attraction flares up. Awkward.But there’s “something real” between them, they insist to Zara, whose reaction to this development is vehemently off the charts. Until her grandmother gives her a good talking to, King’s character has three modes: peeved, indignant and grossed out. You could almost call the movie “The Longest Eye Roll.” (By contrast, Kidman, once a consistently expressive actress, performs with an inertia that could be read as a form of serenity.)King gets to show a little charm in the final third of the movie, and it’s refreshing. But every now and then you wonder whether “A Family Affair,” directed by Richard LaGravenese in a mode that vaguely recalls the work of Nancy Meyers, might have been more compelling as, instead of a rom-com, a drama about an entitled, manipulative daughter who almost ruins the lives of those around her.A Family AffairRated PG-13 for adult themes and language. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      How Netflix’s Corporate Culture Has Changed

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      The company’s latest internal memo about its corporate culture is more about how it expects employees to behave than what it wants to become.Netflix has long been a company known for its secrets: no Nielsen ratings, little feedback on why shows are canceled, no box office numbers for the rare movies that are actually released in theaters.Yet for a place defined by its opaque approach to the outside world, the streaming giant has long been aggressively transparent internally. The company’s philosophy was immortalized in 2009 when Reed Hastings, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, first laid out the corporate ethos in a 125-slide presentation that introduced new buzzy phrases like “stunning colleagues,” “the keeper test” and “honesty always.”The presentation, with its insistence on constant and unfiltered candor, felt both brutal and refreshingly antithetical to Hollywood’s normal way of doing business. To the frustration of former employees and current competitors, it may just be the blueprint that has enabled Netflix to have so much success while its rivals have stumbled.Three more culture memos have followed over the years. Before being released, they are pored over and analyzed for months by top executives. At the same time, any employee can pop into the Google Doc where the memo is being assembled to leave a thought or a comment.The latest iteration of the document, which was released internally on May 8 and will soon be made public, underwent eight months of vetting and received 1,500 comments from employees, according to Sergio Ezama, Netflix’s chief talent officer. It is five pages long (half the length of Mr. Hastings’s final memo in 2022), and some core tenets have changed, however slightly.When Mr. Hastings titled his 2009 presentation “Netflix Culture,” he gave it the subhead “Freedom and Responsibility.” The idea was that Netflix trusted its employees to act in the best interest of the company. If you want a vacation, take a vacation. If you have a baby and need to go on leave, go on leave. Documents were shared widely throughout the company without any fear of leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Black Barbie: A Documentary’ Review: Becoming the Main Character

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      A new Netflix documentary explores what led to the release of Black Barbie in 1980, both celebrating her existence and recognizing her limitations.For more than four decades, Lagueria Davis’s aunt, Beulah Mae Mitchell, worked at Mattel. Davis, the director of the new Netflix documentary “Black Barbie,” was not a fan of dolls, but was drawn to the subject by her aunt, who is a devoted collector.On the surface, the documentary is about what led to the 1980 release of Black Barbie, but the issues it explores run much deeper: the harm of lacking a “social mirror,” the slow pace of progress and the tensions around darkening a white fictional character.There were already Black dolls in the Barbie universe before Black Barbie, but all were ancillary — friends of Barbie’s. The Black version of Barbie, created by the company’s first Black designer, Kitty Black Perkins, was meant to be a main character.What is most interesting about the documentary is the question of whether Black Barbie ever managed to escape her predecessors’ marginalization, as white Barbie remains the standard. Does society need Black versions of white cultural products or new products in which Blackness is centered?Featuring a wide range of Mattel employees, academics, cultural commentators and women who have had Barbies made in their image, such as the Shondaland founder Shonda Rhimes, the ballerina Misty Copeland and the fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, Davis complicates our understanding of Black Barbie, both celebrating her existence and recognizing her limitations.“Black Barbie” looks at a Black toy company that produced multiracial dolls and a line within Mattel that was focused on stand-alone Black characters, created by Stacey McBride-Irby, a protégée of Perkins. Staying with these scenes a little longer, exploring what worked and did not, would have expanded the conversations taking place in the film and the dissonance inherent in trying to make a white doll Black.Black Barbie: A DocumentaryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      How ‘The Boys’ Imagines Fascism Coming to America

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      “The Boys” and other TV series imagine fascism coming to America, whether wrapped in the flag or in a superhero’s tights.What would fascism look like in America? A quote long misattributed to Sinclair Lewis says that it would come “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” The comedian George Carlin said that it would come not “with jackboots” but “Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.”“The Boys,” Amazon Prime Video’s blood-spattered, dystopian superhero satire, has another proposal: It would be handsome, jut-jawed and blond. It would wear a cape. And it would shoot lasers out of its eyes.Homelander (Antony Starr) is the star-spangled, nihilistic and enormously popular leader of the Seven, a for-profit league of superheroes produced through bioengineering and drug injections by Vought, a corporation founded by a Nazi scientist. To the public, he is the chiseled personification of national virtue. Behind the scenes, he is a bully, a murderer, a rapist — and, as of the new season, possibly America’s imminent overlord.In Season 4, Homelander goes on trial for murdering an anti-supe protester. He runs ads asking for help against “his toughest opponent yet: Our corrupt legal system.” Amazon StudiosIn the bizarro America of “The Boys,” “supes” are only incidentally crime fighters. They’re valuable corporate I.P., pitching products, starring in movies and reality shows and lending their images to puppet shows and holiday ice pageants. They’re the world’s biggest celebrities, towering on billboards and omnipresent on Vought’s media platforms, and this gives the Seven a power greater than any super-speed or heat vision.When the series begins, however, Homelander is limited, by politics — the government has resisted using supes in the military — and by his deep-seated need for love and approval. Power breeds suspicion (“The Boys” takes its title from an anti-supe vigilante group whose exploits it follows), and Vought is constantly monitoring the Seven’s approval ratings and guarding against backlash. Homelander may be invincible, but he still has to answer to corporate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution’ Review: Beyond the Punchline

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      A new Netflix documentary showcases comedy as a source of queer liberation, featuring Margaret Cho, Tig Notaro, Joel Kim Booster and more.The director Page Hurwitz examines comedy’s place in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement in the new Netflix documentary “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution,” creating a rich, century-long timeline full of archival footage, behind-the-scenes glimpses and candid interviews with comedians. A standout subject is the 82-year-old trailblazer Robin Tyler, the first out lesbian on national TV.Throughout the film, Hurwitz showcases comedy as more than just a source of laughter, but of healing, catharsis and as an agent for queer liberation, particularly during the Stonewall riots in 1969 and, later, the AIDS epidemic.L.G.B.T.Q. comedians were already on hand for “Outstanding” — in 2022, many of them, including Lily Tomlin, Wanda Sykes and Billy Eichner, performed on the same stage during “Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration,” a Netflix standup special hosted by Eichner. The backstage footage from that special captured something that feels revolutionary, echoing Margaret Cho’s assertion that “queer comedy was really a solace” when she achieved fame in the 1990s.Many of the best moments in “Outstanding” occur when it draws connections between idols and admirers. A simple moment between Joel Kim Booster and Cho is made powerful through thoughtful editing: Cho, in a voice-over, describes the joy that queer comedy can evoke as we see Booster experiencing it among his peers.The film also addresses transphobic jokes by comedians like Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher, and ends with an acknowledgment of the anti-transgender bills being passed nationwide.“There’s no such thing as just kidding,” Tyler, the pioneering comedian, says. “So if anybody does homophobic jokes, they mean it.” The fight is still no laughing matter.Outstanding: A Comedy RevolutionNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Dancing for the Devil’: A Cult Docuseries That Takes Its Time

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      This three-part Netflix documentary examines the supposed scheme to exploit TikTok dancers — and proves why cult narratives shouldn’t be rushed.There’s a train wreck quality to most documentaries about cults, an invitation to crane your neck at weird rituals, bizarre leaders and peculiar anecdotes. By nature, cults are insular, inscrutable and strange to outsiders. But for those on the inside, every teaching and action seems to follow a logic, to make sense. That’s sort of the point.I’ve watched a lot of cult documentaries in the past years, and so have a lot of Americans — they’re adjacent to true crime, which makes them perfect streaming fodder. Like many people, I settled in to watch Derek Doneen’s three-part documentary series “Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult” (streaming on Netflix) because I realized I’d seen some of the dancers on my own social media feeds, and was baffled to discover that lighthearted dancing to popular oldies could be cultish behavior.To my surprise, the series made its case by digging behind headlines, exposing how the supposedly controlling and manipulative pastor Robert Shinn found ways to dominate his church members for decades, long before the advent of TikTok. Parishioners tell stories that are disturbing, especially for anyone who’s had sustained contact with high-control religious groups — tales of abuse, extortion, grooming and worse. The series claims that Shinn most recently started a talent management company (called 7M) and attracted beautiful, aspirational young people, and then filched their earnings and kept them under his thumb. (Shinn did not participate in the documentary and denies wrongdoing.) Former 7M dancers as well as former church members describe the tactics they say he used to exploit them. They are chilling.I happen to know a lot of people who’ve been in cults, some of whom managed to leave, so I’m extra sensitive to a common flaw of cult documentaries: Sometimes they focus more on the train wreck than on those the train wrecked. This is particularly an issue in feature-length documentaries — it’s tough, in two hours, to explain the entire story and center the survivors, rather than the perpetrator.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adria Arjona on ‘Hit Man’ and How the Production Surprised Her

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      The actress, who stars with Glen Powell, said that with the contract-killer movie, her ideas were finally valued in a writer’s room.Editor’s note: Spoilers ahead.Adria Arjona doesn’t like doing what she’s told.The co-star of the new Netflix romantic action comedy “Hit Man,” Arjona accompanied her father, the Guatemalan Mexican singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona, on tour from the time she was young. It was a musical mentorship opportunity, so she ended up deciding early on: Music was out.He also made her read the poems of Pablo Neruda and the work of Gabriel García Márquez, so naturally, she said, all she wanted to do was listen to ’N Sync.“I do everything backwards,” Arjona, 32, said on a recent weekday morning over sparkling water at the Whitby Bar in Midtown Manhattan. “That’s just my personality — I just listen to my intuition. It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose or trying to be rebellious.”In “Hit Man,” directed by Richard Linklater, Arjona is Madison Masters, a desperate housewife who tries to hire a hit man, played by Glen Powell, unaware he’s a police operative. The rapturously reviewed movie is the latest entry in a 12-year-long acting career that has suddenly become white hot.She broke out in 2022 as the mechanic Bix Caleen in the streaming “Star Wars” series “Andor,” playing Cassian Andor’s fearless friend. (Season 2 of the Disney+ series, which she’s finished filming, is expected next year.) She also appeared as the betrothed daughter in the 2022 reboot of “Father of the Bride,” after roles in “Pacific Rim: Uprising” and Season 2 of “True Detective.”Arjona with Glen Powell in “Hit Man,” the Netflix action romantic comedy.Brian Roedel/NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More