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      How the Queen of Denmark Shaped the Look of Netflix’s “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction”

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      Once upon a time, there was a princess in Denmark who aspired to become an artist.Though she was the eldest child of the country’s reigning king, for the first 12 years of the princess’s life, only men had the right to inherit the throne. That changed when the Danish constitution was amended in 1953, and the princess became her father’s presumptive heir soon after turning 13. She continued to pursue her interest in art throughout her teenage years, producing drawings by the stacks before largely stopping in her 20s.Around the time the princess turned 30 — and after she had earned a diploma in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and had studied at Aarhus University in Denmark, the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics — she read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” It inspired her to start drawing again.Three years later, upon her father’s death in 1972, the princess was crowned as queen: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, to be specific.Margrethe, now 83, celebrated 50 years on the throne in 2022. But in assuming the role of queen, she did not abandon her artistic passions. As a monarch she has taken lessons in certain media, has taught herself others and has been asked to bring her eye to projects produced by the Royal Danish Ballet and Tivoli, the world’s oldest amusement park, in Copenhagen.Margrethe made 81 decoupages, a type of cut-and-paste artwork, that served as the basis for sets in “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction.” Interiors at a castle in the film were based on this decoupage.NetflixHer paintings have been shown at museums, including in a recent exhibition at the Musée Henri-Martin in Cahors, France. And her illustrations have been adapted into artwork for a Danish translation of “The Lord of the Rings.” (They were published under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, and the book’s publisher approached her about using them after she sent copies to Tolkien as fan mail in 1970.)Margrethe recently notched another creative accomplishment: serving as the costume and production designer for “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction,” a feature film that debuted on Netflix in September and has wardrobes and sets based on her drawings and other artworks.The film is an adaptation of the fairy tale “Ehrengard” by Karen Blixen, a Danish baroness who published under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Set in a fictional kingdom, the story is loosely about a woman named Ehrengard who becomes a lady-in-waiting and foils a royal court painter’s plot to woo her.“It was great fun,” Magrethe said of working on the film in an interview in August at the Château de Cayx, the Danish royal family’s estate in Luzech, a village near Cahors in the South of France.“I hope that Blixenites will accept the way we’ve done it,” she said.Conjuring AtmospheresThe Netflix adaptation, a sort of fantasy dramedy, has been more than a decade in the making.JJ Film, the Danish production company behind it, approached Margrethe about working on the movie after she served as production designer for two shorter films it produced, “The Snow Queen” and “The Wild Swans,” which were both adapted from Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. Those films, released on Danish television in 2000 and 2009, also featured sets based on artworks by Margrethe, who in 2010 became an honorary member of the Danish Designers for Stage and Screen union.For the Netflix film, the queen designed 51 costumes and made 81 decoupages — a type of cut-and-paste artwork — that were used as the basis for sets. (She was not paid by Netflix or JJ Film.) Her sketches, along with some of the clothes and many of the decoupages, are being shown at the Karen Blixen Museum just outside Copenhagen through next April. Afterward, there are plans to show them in New York, Washington and Seattle.The movie, an adaptation of the fairy tale “Ehrengard,” is loosely about a woman named Ehrengard who becomes a lady-in-waiting and foils a royal court painter’s plot to woo her.NetflixFor certain decoupages, the queen cut up images of interiors and pasted the pieces together to create new scenes, like this sumptuous room.Dennis Stenild for The New York TimesMargrethe based her costume designs on clothes from the Biedermeier period, which took place in parts of Europe from 1815 to 1848. Certain details, like leg-of-mutton sleeves, reflected fashion at that time.Dennis Stenild for The New York TimesTo compose the decoupages, the queen cut up images of various landscapes and interiors and pasted the pieces together to create new scenes, like a sumptuous sitting room and a rocky canyon with a fortress and a waterfall.“Sometimes it takes hours, and sometimes things want to come together and they do as you want them to do, and suddenly you’ve done a whole decoupage in an afternoon,” she said. “It’s kind of a puzzle.”She was guided by Blixen’s “very visual writing,” she said, noting that Blixen, as well as Tolkien and Andersen, were writers who also painted or drew.Bille August, 74, the film’s director, described the queen’s decoupages as a “tuning fork” that he used to build “a world that is detached from reality without being a full-on fairy tale.” (He compared the general visual style he sought to the tone of Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!”)“Conjuring that special atmosphere is perhaps the queen’s greatest achievement here,” Mr. August said.Scouts would seek locations that reflected the decoupages, which set designers would then style with props to further emulate the artworks. Elements in the decoupages that couldn’t be found were rendered using computer-generated imagery. Some decoupages were scanned and details from the artworks were added to scenes in postproduction.Blixen did not set “Ehrengard” in a specific time, giving Margrethe freedom to interpret the look of the costumes. She chose to base her designs on clothes from the Biedermeier period in Austria and other parts of central and northern Europe, which took place from 1815 to 1848.Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen, 56, the film’s costume supervisor, said she generally translated Margrethe’s sketches “one to one” when fabricating the garments, which were made with textiles and trimmings that the queen helped select.Bille August, left, the film’s director, described Margrethe’s decoupages as a tuning fork. “Conjuring that special atmosphere is perhaps the queen’s greatest achievement here,” he said.Jacob Jørgensen/NetflixMargrethe said that for one costume she had sketched — a dress in hunter green with pink paisley-like specks — she had hoped to find a sprigged fabric. “But we couldn’t find one,” she said, so the pattern was custom printed. Another costume designed for the film’s grand duchess character was inspired by a portrait of a French queen.“She was wearing a lovely get-up,” Margrethe said. “It seemed to me exactly what the grand duchess should be wearing.”Certain elements of the costumes, like leg-of-mutton sleeves, reflected fashion at the time of the Biedermeier period. “I quite like that style,” Margrethe said. “I’ve been interested in style and in the history of style and costume for a very long time.”Other details were less historically accurate: Some dresses had waistlines that were slightly lower than those typical of that era, to give them a more flattering fit.Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, 39, the actor who played the court painter, Cazotte, said that when Margrethe saw an early version of his costume, she thought it lacked color. “And she was clear about exactly which colors she wanted to see,” he added.The actress Alice Bier Zanden, 28, who played the title role of Ehrengard in the film, said that at a costume fitting attended by Margrethe, the queen’s enthusiasm was palpable. “You’re just smitten by it,” she said.Sidse Babett Knudsen, 54, who played the grand duchess, described the queen’s presence at the fitting this way: “bare legs, beautiful shoes, nice jewelry — smoking away.” (Margrethe has made no secret of her fondness for cigarettes.)Scouts would seek locations that reflected the decoupages, like this one Margrethe made using clippings from images of landscapes. NetflixMs. Knudsen added that she felt comfortable “clowning around” in front of Margrethe, who has generally been popular in Denmark. According to a 2021 poll by YouGov Denmark, she was the most admired woman in the country (the most admired man was Barack Obama), and in a 2013 Gallup poll conducted for Berlingske, Denmark’s oldest newspaper, 82 percent of participants agreed or partly agreed that the country benefits from the monarchy.Her critics have included members of her family. Prince Joachim, the younger of her two sons, bristled at her recent decision to shrink the monarchy by stripping his children of their royal titles. In 2017 her husband, Prince Henrik, announced that he did not wish to be buried beside Margrethe because he had never been given the titles king or king consort. (He died six months later.)Helle Kannik Haastrup, 58, an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of Copenhagen, who specializes in celebrity culture, said that some detractors have dismissed Margrethe as “a Sunday painter.”But to other people, Professor Haastrup added, the fact that Margrethe is a head of state with a “side hustle” has made her more relatable.‘Honestly, She Can’t Stop’Margrethe sketches and makes art at the chateau in France and at studios at Amalienborg Palace and Fredensborg Palace, the royal family’s residences in Denmark. She described the studios as places “where I can let things lie about,” adding, “I try to clear them up occasionally — but not too often!”“I work when I can find the time,” she said, “and I seem usually to be able to find the time.”“Sometimes, I think people are at their wit’s end because I’m trying to do these two things at the same time,” Margrethe said of her royal duties and her creative undertakings. “But it usually works, doesn’t it?”Annelise Wern, one of the queen’s four ladies-in-waiting, said, “Honestly, she can’t stop.”In the 1980s, when she was in her 40s, Margrethe took weekly painting lessons. She has mostly concentrated on painting landscapes with watercolors and acrylics — or “lazy girl’s oils,” as she called them.The queen said that when she started to make decoupages in the early 1990s, she didn’t know there was a name for the artworks. “I called it ‘cutting and sticking,’” she said.Dennis Stenild for The New York TimesThen, in the early 1990s, she started cutting up pages from The World of Interiors magazines and catalogs from auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s and using the paper cutouts to decorate objects.“I didn’t even know there was a smart name for it,” she said, referring to decoupage. “I called it ‘cutting and sticking.’”Since then, her relatives have occasionally been “smothered in decoupage,” as she jokingly put it. And in needlepoint, which she had learned as a girl and picked up again later in life.Her colorful needlepoint designs, some of which were recently featured in an exhibition at the Museum Kolding in Kolding, Denmark, have been fashioned into purses for family members and have been used to upholster fireplace screens, footstools and cushions for the royal family’s yacht, Dannebrog, which shares its name with the Danish flag.Margrethe’s taste for bold colors can be also seen in her wardrobe. In a 1989 biography of the queen by the Danish journalist Anne Wolden-Raethinge, Margrethe said: “I always dream in color. At full blast. Technicolor. Everywhere. Every shade.”Her clothes often feature vivid prints and fur trims, and are almost always accessorized with jewelry. Among the items in her personal collection are gold pieces by the Danish jewelers Arje Griegst and Torben Hardenberg, whose designs are both baroque and gothic-punk, and costume jewelry like plastic clip-on earrings she found at a Danish drugstore.For her 80th birthday, in 2020, Margrethe had a gown made using velvet that she had requested be dyed a particular shade of sky blue. A floral raincoat she had made with a waxed fabric meant for tablecloths, which she picked out at the department store Peter Jones & Partners in London, has inspired other fashion designers’ collections.“I usually am quite deeply involved,” she said of having clothes made for her.Ulf Pilgaard, 82, a Danish stage and screen actor, has parodied the queen some dozen times over the decades. (He was knighted by Margrethe in 2007.) “I always wore earrings and a necklace and very nice colorful outfits,” Mr. Pilgaard said.For his last turn as Margrethe, in 2021, he wore a bright yellow dress with oversize pearl earrings and a chunky turquoise ring. At the end of the performance, she surprised him onstage.“People got on their feet and started roaring and clapping,” he said. “For a few seconds, I thought it was all for me.”Margrethe wore a pantsuit in the red color of the Danish flag (and the Netflix logo) to the film’s premiere in Copenhagen last month.Valdemar Ren/NetflixAt the premiere of “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction” in Copenhagen last month, Margrethe wore a pantsuit in the red color of the Danish flag (and the Netflix logo), along with a hefty turquoise brooch and matching earrings by Mr. Hardenberg, who before starting his namesake jewelry line made costumes and props for theater and film productions.Nanna Fabricius, 38, a Danish singer and songwriter known as Oh Land, who has worked alongside Margrethe on recent productions at Tivoli, said, “I think a very big part of why the queen is so liked is because she does things.”“We aren’t totally surprised when she makes a Netflix movie,” she added.“She’s kind of what Barbie wants to be,” Ms. Fabricius said. “She does it all.” More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in October

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      “Lupin” returns and the latest literary horror adaptation from Mike Flanagan debuts, just in time for Halloween.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of October’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.)‘The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile’Started streaming: Oct. 1The country music singer Tanya Tucker was still a teenager when she recorded her first hit songs in the early 1970s; and hitting the top of the charts at a young age soon led to problems like substance abuse, bad relationships and stage fright. The director Kathlyn Horan’s documentary “The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile” uses the recording and release of a 2019 Tucker comeback album — spearheaded by the modern alt-country stars Carlile and Shooter Jennings — as the frame for a more comprehensive look at the musician’s tumultuous life. This is a touching movie about an artist trying to find her voice and purpose again, helped by two famous fans who sometimes struggle to convince Tucker that they know what they are doing.‘Lupin’ Part 3Starts streaming: Oct. 5After a long layoff, the hit French adventure series “Lupin” is back for seven more episodes of high-stakes heists and sly social commentary. Omar Sy returns as Assane Diop, who has turned his disgust with the rich and powerful — and his love of the author Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman thief character Arsène Lupin — into a lucrative career as a criminal mastermind. The show’s twisty plotting jumps between thrilling caper sequences and scenes that explore Assane’s past as the son of a Senegalese immigrant. The previous set of episodes ended with the hero achieving one of his major goals: exacting revenge on his family’s greatest enemy. The new set begins with Assane on the run and plotting his next moves — which are complicated by his becoming something of a national folk hero.‘Fair Play’Starts streaming: Oct. 6This edgy business-world drama was a sensation at Sundance earlier this year, stirring up audiences with its story of two ambitious young hedge fund analysts — Emily (Phoebe Dynevor from “Bridgerton”) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich from “Solo”) — whose passionate secret love affair starts going sour after Emily is promoted into a supervisory position at their firm. The writer-director Chloe Domont worked previously on “Billions” and “Ballers,” two TV series that examine how money and power complicate interpersonal relationships. With “Fair Play,” Domont also factors in gender roles, as the couple is pulled apart by the demands of an industry that values macho swagger. The film has the rhythm of a thriller, anchored by the question of whether Emily and Luke’s romance and careers can survive her sudden success.‘The Fall of the House of Usher’Starts streaming: Oct. 12The third of the writer-director Mike Flanagan’s literary horror mini-series for Netflix (after “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor”) uses the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a jumping-off point for a social satire with gothic overtones. Bruce Greenwood plays Roderick Usher, the patriarch of a large and wealthy family that has made much of its fortune peddling dangerous pharmaceuticals. When all of his grown children begin dying, Roderick tells the crusading attorney C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) the story of his tragedy scarred, supernaturally plagued life. Flanagan and his writers borrow names and ideas from other Poe books; but they have set their saga and its thematic concerns in the modern day, with a stellar cast that also includes Mark Hamill, Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell and Henry Thomas.‘Pain Hustlers’Starts streaming: Oct. 27Emily Blunt and Chris Evans play persuasive pharmaceutical salespeople in the drama “Pain Hustlers,” the latest in a recent string of films and TV series that dig into the roots of America’s opioid crisis. The movie is directed by David Yates, who has spent much of the past 15 years at the helm of the Harry Potter movie franchise; and it was scripted by Wells Tower, who has won acclaim as an author of short fiction. These two adapt Evan Hughes’s nonfiction book of the same name, turning it into a fast-paced and fact-filled big business exposé. It is similar to the likes of “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short” in the way it uses documentary-style interludes and charismatic antiheroes to tell the story of how greed and lax ethics played a role in the systemic overprescribing of painkillers.Also arriving:Oct. 4“Beckham”“Race to the Summit”Oct. 5“Everything Now” Season 1Oct. 6“Ballerina”“A Deadly Invitation”Oct. 10“Last One Standing” Season 2Oct. 11“Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul”“Once Upon a Star”“Pact of Silence” Season 1Oct. 12“Good Night World” Season 1Oct. 13“The Conference”Oct. 17“The Devil on Trial”Oct. 19“Bodies”“Crypto Boy”“Neon” Season 1Oct. 20“Creature”“Doona!”“Elite” Season 7“Old Dads”“Surviving Paradise”“Vjeran Tomic: The Spider-Man of Paris”Oct. 25“Life on Our Planet” Season 1Oct. 26“Pluto” Season 1Oct. 27“Sister Death”“Tore”“Yellow Door: ’90s Lo-Fi Film Club” More

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      Stream These 9 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in October

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      Oscar winners and comedy classics are among the great titles leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers next month.Netflix’s venerable DVD wing shut its doors this month, and that’s not all that’s disappearing; Oscar winners, period pieces, genre thrillers and comedy classics are among the titles leaving Netflix in the United States in October. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘The Rental’ (Oct. 1)Stream it here.This horror thriller from the actor and director Dave Franco — written with his co-star and offscreen partner Alison Brie and the indie stalwart Joe Swanberg — may well have benefited from what seemed like unfortunate timing: It was released in July of 2020, to the drive-ins that were the only operating movie theaters in those early days of the pandemic. Plenty of folks were also taking that opportunity to escape their surroundings and hole up in Airbnbs, so this story of two couples on an isolated weekend getaway in a rental home may have landed with more bite than even its skilled filmmakers intended.‘Cliffhanger’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.There’s a bit of a Stallone-assaince in the air, thanks to his streaming hit “Tulsa King,” the return of the “Expendables” franchise and a coming Netflix documentary. So it’s a fine time to revisit one of his best films of a not-so-great era: this 1993 action-adventure, frequently (but accurately) described as “‘Die Hard’ on a Mountain.” Stallone stars as a Rocky Mountain rescue worker who has a stranded climber slip through his fingers and plunge to her death in an intense, terrifying opening sequence. When he faces a supervillain (played with relish by a scenery-chewing John Lithgow) who has hijacked and crashed a plane full of cash, our hero has to rediscover his mettle. The director Renny Harlin stages the copious stunts and set pieces with eye-opening verisimilitude, and Stallone, though typically cast as superhuman brutes, proves adaptable to his John McClane-style Everyman role.‘Collateral’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.With Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” speeding into theaters for Christmas, the time is right to revisit the writer and director’s earlier auto-based action drama. Tom Cruise is calm, cool and chilling as an unnamed killer-for-hire who has a few hours in Los Angeles to take care of several “errands”; Jamie Foxx, at his most charismatic, is the poor cabby unfortunate enough to be hired to shuttle Cruise’s killer around town. Mann’s signatures are all accounted for — pulsing music, electrifying action sequences, smeary nighttime photography, effortless cool — but there are also generous and affecting doses of dark humor and character-driven drama.‘Coming to America’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Eddie Murphy was the biggest movie star on the planet in 1988, and he could’ve easily continued to crank out fast-talking turns in “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 HRS.”-style action-comedies for eternity. Instead, he developed and starred in this (comparatively) gentle and funny romantic comedy, playing against type as the soft-spoken Prince Akeem of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, who flees his homeland on the eve of his arranged marriage in order to find a wife he actually loves. He looks in what sounds like the perfect spot: Queens. Murphy is charming, the supporting cast is stacked, and the director John Landis’s ingenious inclination to have Murphy and his co-star Arsenio Hall play multiple roles results in some of the funniest and most quotable scenes of Murphy’s career.‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.When Matthew Broderick popped up as an overprotective parent in the summer comedy “No Hard Feelings,” older viewers couldn’t help but chuckle; this was exactly the kind of affable pushover that his most famous creation, the high school con artist Ferris Bueller, would have eaten for lunch. It remains his defining role, thanks to his affable personality, the straight-to-camera asides that make the viewer a co-conspirator and the wickedly smart dialogue of the writer and director John Hughes. But it’s not just Broderick’s show; Mia Sara charms as his girlfriend, Sloane; Jennifer Grey is a scream as his resentful sister; and best of all, the future “Succession” standout Alan Ruck is a basset hound of teenage ennui as Ferris’s best buddy, Cameron.‘Girl, Interrupted’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Angelina Jolie won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her scorching turn in this adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen, and it was something less than a surprise; it’s the kind of role that’s written to steal the show, a ferocious yet charismatic troublemaker who gets an equal proportion of laugh lines and breakdowns. But there’s much more to recommend here: the sensitive and atmospheric direction by James Mangold (whose varied filmography went on to include “Logan,” “3:10 to Yuma” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”); the heartbreaking supporting work by Brittany Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg; and the especially striking lead performance of Winona Ryder as Kaysen’s avatar, a suicidal neurotic whose time in a Massachusetts mental hospital is both harrowing and healing.‘Pride & Prejudice’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Viewers who know Matthew Macfadyen only as the ruthless social climber of “Succession” may be shocked by the humanity (and natural British accent) he brings to the role of Mr. Darcy in this delightfully energetic adaptation of the Jane Austen classic. The director Joe Wright (“Atonement”), in his feature film debut, stages it all with verve and wit, and Keira Knightley is marvelous as the plucky and gregarious Elizabeth Bennet. The jaw-dropping supporting cast includes Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Jena Malone, Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike and Donald Sutherland.‘Reservoir Dogs’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Few films of the 1990s announced, with the piercing clarity of a schoolyard whistle, the arrival of a startling new talent like this 1992 feature debut of the writer and director Quentin Tarantino. Exploding at that year’s Sundance Film Festival like a stick of dynamite, “Dogs” shook up the previously artsy expectations of independent cinema, thanks to what would become the Tarantino trademarks of stylized violence, pop culture-infused dialogue, incongruent needle drops, scrambled chronology and tough talk from a stacked cast (including Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Tim Roth and Tarantino himself). All would become clichés in the ensuing decade, but “Reservoir Dogs” still sparks with the electricity of a born filmmaker, already working with considerable confidence and skill.‘Steel Magnolias’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Robert Harling’s adaptation of his modest Off Broadway play set entirely in the beauty parlor of a small Louisiana town was brought to the big screen in 1989 as a big event. The director Herbert Ross (“The Turning Point,” “The Goodbye Girl”) filled his cast with boldfaced names: the Oscar winners Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis; the ’80s icon Daryl Hannah; the force of nature Dolly Parton; and a then-unknown actress named Julia Roberts, who ended up landing, surprisingly enough, the film’s only Academy Award nomination. Despite Ross’s efforts to open it up, “Steel Magnolias” still feels like a filmed play, and that’s to its benefit; the characters are big, the emotions are bigger, and the comic dialogue has the zing of a Southern-fried Neil Simon. More

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      Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope

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      The company’s DVD subscription service is ending this month, bringing to a close an origin story that ultimately upended the entertainment industry.In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.“It’s sad when you get to the end, because it’s been a big part of all of our lives for so long,” Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix’s DVD division, said in an interview. “But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home.”When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was “Beetlejuice” — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry. It started as a brainstorm between Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, successful businessmen looking to reinvent the DVD rental business. No due dates, no late fees, no monthly rental limits.Edgar Ramos working at one of the facility’s DVD sorting machines. Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week. “I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”It did much more than that. The DVD business destroyed competitors like Blockbuster and altered the viewing habits of the public. Once Netflix began its streaming business and then started producing original content, it transformed the entire entertainment industry. So much so that the economics of streaming — which actors and writers argue are worse for them — is at the heart of the strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill.Even before the strikes, streaming had rendered DVDs obsolete, at least from a business perspective. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery. Today, there are five such facilities — the others are in Fremont, Calif.; Trenton, N.J.; Dallas; and Duluth, Ga. — and DVD revenue totaled $60 million for the first six months of 2023. In comparison, Netflix’s streaming revenue for the same period reached $6.5 billion.Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week with titles ranging from the popular (“Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Fabelmans”) to the obscure (the 1998 Catherine Deneuve crime thriller, “Place Vendôme”). Each of the employees at the Anaheim facility has been with the company for more than a decade, some as long as 18 years. (One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company.)Erik Melendrez, 33, who has worked at the warehouse since he was 18, at one of the automated stations that sorts DVDs.Anh Tran and Mr. Melendrez at a station that sorts returned DVDs. At its height, Netflix operated 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations. Today, there are five such facilities. A few of them started straight out of high school, like Edgar Ramos, and they can run Netflix’s proprietary auto-sorting machines and its Automated Rental Return Machine (ARRM), which processes 3,500 DVDs an hour, with the precision of Swiss watch engineers.“I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said while sorting envelopes into their ZIP code bins. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”Mike Calabro, Netflix’s senior operations manager, has been with the company for more than 13 years. He said the unexpected moments of frivolity were a big part of why he had stayed, like the drawings made by renters on the envelopes or the Cheetos dust and coffee stains that often mark the returns, evidence of a product that has been well integrated into customers’ lives.But when asked if he had ever met some of the most active customers in person, Mr. Calabro quickly replied, “No!” In fact, the anonymous look of the facility, which provides a stark contrast to the giant Netflix logos that adorn the company’s other real estate, is intentional. Visitors, it is clear, are not welcome.“If we put Netflix out on the door, we would have people showing up with their discs, saying: ‘Hey, I’d like to return this. Can you give me my next disc?’” Mr. Calabro said.That was the usual transaction with a video rental retailer, but Netflix wanted to make sure customers knew this was something different.“It was a decision we made very early on,” Mr. Breeggemann said. “If they knew where we were, we’d run into that problem. And then it wouldn’t be a good customer experience. We wanted to mail both ways.”Lorraine Segura, a senior operations manager, works with the labels that go on packages. Ms. Segura, who started in 2008, used to rip open 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont, Calif., to learn how to run the machines. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal.Bean Porter, 35, lives in St. Charles, Ill., and has subscribed to Netflix’s DVD and streaming services since 2015. She said she was “devastated” that there would be no more DVDs. Ms. Porter was able to use her subscription to watch DVDs of shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” — episodic television made for other streaming services that would have required her to buy additional subscriptions.She and her husband also watch three or four movies a week and find Netflix’s DVD library to be deeper and more diverse than any other subscription service. She often hosts cookouts in her backyard and invites neighbors to watch movies on an outdoor screen. That is easier to do with a DVD, she said, than with streaming because of internet connectivity issues. And she has become involved with the DVD operations’ social media channel, posting videos, interacting with other customers and chatting directly with the social media managers working for the company.“I’m pretty angry,” she said. “I’m just going to have to do streaming, and I feel like what they’re doing is forcing me into having less options.”To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals. Ms. Porter intends to keep “The Breakfast Club,” “Goonies” and “The Sound of Music.” As for the last DVD she intends to watch: She’s leaving that up to fate.“I have 45 movies left in my queue, and where I land is where I’ll land, as there are too many good options to pick from,” she said.The morning’s DVDs being shipped out to subscribers. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers. The employees have a more sanguine attitude. Lorraine Segura started at Netflix in 2008 and used to rip open envelopes — 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont to learn how to run the machines and pass that training on to others. Now she runs the floor with Mr. Calabro as a senior operations manager.“I’ve learned a lot here: how to fix machines, how to make goals and hit targets,” she said before leading her team in a round of ergonomic exercises to prevent repetitive stress injuries. “I feel empowered now to get out in the world and do something new.” More

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      ‘Sex Education’ Is Back. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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      The raunchy British teen dramedy has been away for two years. Here’s a refresher for the Netflix series’s fourth and final season.School is back in session for the sweet, sometimes absurd British comedy “Sex Education,” which leans heavily into its streaming-series freedom to portray adolescent sex for what it generally is: awkward, mediocre, part of life. Expect close-ups of patchy pubic hair, belly rolls and many (many) penises — among other physical realities of sex that don’t typically appear in teen stories.The show, which won the award for best comedy series at the International Emmy Awards in 2022, centers on Otis (Asa Butterfield), the erudite but romantically floundering son of a sex therapist (Gillian Anderson), who finds that he, too, has a gift for doling out intimate advice — in his case, to his desperately uninformed classmates. Unlike other raunchy teen dramas, like the provocative “Skins” and “Euphoria,” “Sex Education” takes a normalizing, endearingly un-edgy and even occasionally musical approach to the birds and the bees (though the writers would probably choose a more clinical term).In the fourth and final season, now streaming on Netflix, Otis must navigate a new school alongside his effervescent best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa). After the closure of Moordale Secondary School at the end of Season 3, they now face a social hurdle more daunting than trying to become popular: survival as the new kids.But if popularity at Moordale was all about status and appearance, the new school represents something of an alternative educational universe, where learning is student-led, sustainability is cool and gossip is frowned upon.Will Otis and Eric fit in? Will Otis set up a new sex therapy clinic? And where is his broody, wryly sharp love interest Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey)?Two years have passed since the release of Season 3. Here’s a refresher — a little gossip, if you will — as we head into Season 4.What happened to Moordale?After a schoolwide sexually transmitted infection outbreak in Season 2 and an obscene, intergalactic production of “Romeo and Juliet: The Musical,” Moordale Secondary School attracted news attention for its debauchery and earned the nickname “Sex School.” The administration hired a new head teacher, Hope Haddon (Jemima Kirke), to turn things around, but her shame-based approach to discipline and strict dress code couldn’t keep the students from being sexually curious teenagers.As revenge, the student body revolted at a public assembly for Moordale’s investors and the news media, disrupting the program with a screening of a sex-positive student film in which they dressed in genitalia-inspired costumes. Then the audience chanted, “We are Sex School,” and the band performed an explicit song.It was chaotic and symphonic, and it was enough of a ruckus to scare off investors and prospective paying parents. Moordale’s funding was withdrawn, and it closed its doors, forcing its students to find new schools.Where is Maeve?In Season 3, one of the English teachers at Moordale, Ms. Sands (Rakhee Thakrar), gave Maeve, Otis’s crush and sex clinic business partner, a brochure for a gifted and talented program in the United States. Throughout the season, Maeve wavered back and forth on the decision, concerned about the money and leaving her little sister behind.Otis and Maeve’s will-they-won’t-they relationship got some resolution when they finally kissed on a class trip to France. But in the final scene of the season, we learned that Maeve was leaving to study literature at a prestigious American university.The news came as a blow to Otis, who was happy for Maeve’s dream opportunity but devastated to see her go. Maeve promised that her departure didn’t mean that they were over, but she didn’t define the relationship further.Gillian Anderson in the Season 4 premiere of “Sex Education.”Thomas Wood/NetflixIs Jean … OK?Yes … and no. At the end of Season 3 Otis’s mother, Jean, went into labor with dire complications, including hemorrhaging. But she pulled through, and in the season finale, she delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Joy. Although the pregnancy had a happy ending, the future of the family is a bit fuzzier. In one of the final scenes of the finale, Jean opened a paternity test and her shock revealed that her partner, Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt), might not be the father.Throughout the pregnancy, Jean and Jakob were committed to raising their baby together and forging a robust, if a bit untraditional, family unit with Otis and Ola (Patricia Allison), Jakob’s daughter (who, in a messy set of circumstances, used to date Otis).Will Jean, a careerist rising in her field, continue her sex therapy practice? Will Jakob remain in the picture? And if he isn’t the father, who is?Where do things stand with Eric and Adam?Eric, who is gay and proudly wears eyeliner, colorful nail polish and silky scarves, has had an emotional roller coaster of a relationship with Adam (Connor Swindells), a closeted bully who is new to intimate relationships. They grew closer as Adam learned to accept his sexuality, but Eric struggled to be with someone who couldn’t fully open up, and he eventually kissed another boy on a family trip to Nigeria.Adam eventually forgave the infidelity, but Eric realized he had outgrown the relationship and broke up with him anyway. Heartbroken, Adam began to come to terms with his identity; in the finale, he came out as bisexual to his mother, finally admitting to her that Eric had been his boyfriend. This could be a turning point for the animal-loving gentle giant who always feels like a misfit.Is there still a wide array of experience in Season 4?Somehow the show’s lens has gotten even wider. “Sex Education” is known for its nuanced depictions of gender, sexuality and disability, and for presenting forms of intimacy that are rarely displayed on mainstream television. A progressive new school promises an even more varied student body, with types of relationships not explored in previous seasons. Whether the school lives up to its “good vibes only” reputation remains to be seen.The show celebrates the body — its limitations, its potential, its drive — in its many forms. Whatever Season 4 may bring, it is sure to explore a wide range of teenage lust and physical complexities. More

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      How Shane Gillis Both Plays to and Mocks Red Staters

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      The comic’s savvy approach fits into the evolving meaning of conservatism and has resulted in hugely popular stand-up specials, like “Beautiful Dogs” on Netflix.At the start of his new special “Beautiful Dogs,” Shane Gillis, a bulky comic with the mustache of a Staten Island cop, announces that America is the best country in the world and that all the others suck. His crowd roars. Then he says he’s only been to three other countries and when he boasts about his home abroad, they ask about mass shootings.“There’s really not a good comeback,” he says, shifting from swaggering to struggling, then exclaims, using a profanity: “What, are we going to give up our guns like a bunch of gay guys?” His tone flattens into resignation: “No, we’re just going to have shootings all the time.”This opening bit, which celebrates and satirizes rah-rah American jingoism in the style of “South Park,” encapsulates the Shane Gillis experience. It’s got the amiable idiot swagger, plus the trolling offensive spin. Then there’s the satirical overlay that subverts the perspective. It’s dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.Since getting fired from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019 after videos surfaced of him using Asian and gay slurs on a podcast, Gillis has built perhaps one of the fastest growing comedy careers in America. His debut special, released on YouTube in 2021, racked up a staggering 14 million views, and he’s the most popular podcaster on Patreon with more than 71,000 paying listeners. “Beautiful Dogs,” his second special, has been lodged in Netflix’s Top 10 most popular shows since the streamer released it on Sept. 5. He regularly sells out theaters. Don’t be surprised if he becomes an arena act.Getting fired paid off. It made Gillis a martyr to some, and he was savvy enough to embrace those fans without tediously obsessing over cancel culture. He has said he understood the criticism of his comments, offered a halfhearted apology, then doubled down on lumbering through the china shop of cultural sensitivities. A comic who tells the crowd he has no female friends isn’t looking to appeal to everyone.There’s an element of shock jock to his persona. Onstage, his bits are more controlled and agile than they seem, and he’s skilled at winning fans in unexpected places. Speaking in an admiring 2022 New Yorker profile of Gillis, the comic Jerrod Carmichael, who came out as gay in his last special, called him one of the few truly funny comics working today. “His material still feels dangerous,” he said.Gillis, a 35-year-old former football player from central Pennsylvania, often holds the microphone with two hands, more like a singer than a stand-up. His attitude is less telling you the truth about the world than stumbling through the mess of his thought process. His appearance telegraphs rumpled ordinary guy, not polished entertainer. And he speaks to crowds as if he were messing around with friends. Few comics do more with the word “dude.”To fully understand his success, you must use a word taboo in certain comedy circles: conservative. Many comics who rail against cancel culture tend to flinch at that one. Call Joe Rogan one and you will hear umbrage and a list of his liberal policy positions. And look, no one likes to be pigeonholed. But there is a political valence to Gillis’s comedy and the way it fits into the evolving meaning of what it is to be right wing.Being conservative in the age of Trump is not as much about opinions on free markets or foreign policy anymore; now it can mean projecting a certain attitude, alternatively nostalgic and contemptuous, fixated on the supposed oppressiveness of liberal norms and bluntly giddy about transgressing them.That posture sits comfortably in the comedy scene. It’s no accident that two prime-time hosts on Fox (Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld) cut their teeth doing comedy, of sorts. Part of the reason Gillis is such a phenomenon is clearly political. (The title of the special is a Trump quote.)Right-wing media adores him. The Spectator called his success a major turning point in the resurgence of comedy. But unlike comics who are primarily animated by caricaturing and picking apart the left, Gillis lands a broader crowd by focusing on an affectionately mocking insider perspective of the half of the country that voted for Trump (which isn’t to say he did, though there’s no question he finds the politician hilarious).There are MAGA-like identity politics at the center of some of his bits, as when he describes the story of the first baseball game played by Jackie Robinson not as a civil rights landmark but as the moment when white people stopped being cool. “I know what I look like,” he says. “I got the body type of the guy who says, Let’s look at the rest of the body cam footage before jumping to any conclusions.”His last special lovingly poked fun at his “Fox News dad,” who goes to bed angry every night. In “Beautiful Dogs,” he describes himself as a bit of a history buff, which he calls a sign of “early onset Republican.” He levels with his audience: “If you’re a white dude in your 20s and 30s and can’t stop reading about World War II, it’s coming, brother.”The assumptions here are that being a Republican makes you a beleaguered outsider. He compares the pull of it to that of a person turning into a werewolf. “I’m not a Republican, but I can feel it,” he says. “It grows.”Gillis, who lives in New York, regularly works clubs here, and there’s a way that his comedy is pitched as an explanation of a red state sensibility for a blue state audience. Some of this can feel forced and far below his intelligence, tipping over into Larry the Cable Guy territory.He uses a hack sexist line, only to draw attention to how bad it is. His punchlines about porn cover well-trod ground, and his contrarian joke about terrorists is similar to the one that got Bill Maher fired from his ABC show after Sept. 11. Gillis can get stuck in his own bubble, drawing some familiar or easy laughs. His new special has more sex jokes than his last, some about his own grossness (“coughing during sex is funny”) and others about the hopelessness of being competitive with the Navy SEAL who previously dated his girlfriend.His most ambitious bit in the new hour involves a trip to George Washington’s Mount Vernon during the racial upheaval of 2020. He describes the absurdity of the historical re-enactors, but also the gruesome detail of the slave quarters, mapping how he vacillated between hero worship of our first president and denunciation of our country’s original sin.Not unlike his opening bit, Gillis moves back and forth on his feelings about our country through the narrative of Washington, his military exploits, his lore. “I was trying to be cool and liberal and hate him,” he says. “Couldn’t do it.”Interestingly, he includes a joke that is identical to one John Oliver recently told mocking the idea that we are more divided than ever by bringing up the Civil War. Of course, in the 19th century, we couldn’t express our dislike for one another as easily. But what hasn’t changed is that people remain curious about those different from them, even those they dislike or hate. It may be human nature or strategy. (Know thine enemy.)Partly people watch Shane Gillis for the same reason some liberals binge Fox News — to see how the other half thinks. More

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      ‘Wrestlers’ Is Greg Whiteley’s Latest Underdog Tale

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      When Greg Whiteley was 19 he ventured from his hometown, Bellevue, Wash., to spread the word of the Mormon Church on Navajo reservations in the Southwest. At first he would come in hot, as the kids say, eager to knock on doors and proselytize.“Frequently the thing I’d ask was, ‘Do you have time to hear a message about Jesus Christ today?’” he recalled during a video interview earlier this month from his Southern California home. “And the answer 99 times out of 100 was, ‘No, I do not have time for that.’ I think I spent the first months of my mission talking at people, and it was a very discouraging experience.”Gradually, however, he learned to shut up and listen. “I was amazed at how quickly people would disclose the most vulnerable things at a doorstep within 90 seconds of meeting them,” Whiteley said. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was preparing himself for a successful career as a documentary filmmaker.Today, Whiteley, 53, is best known for creating, producing and directing immersive, off-the-beaten-path underdog sports docu-series for Netflix, including “Last Chance U,” “Cheer” and his latest, “Wrestlers,” which premieres Wednesday. All are notable for what they are not: manipulative, sensationalist, opportunistic.“Wrestlers,” premiering Wednesday on Netflix, explores Ohio Valley Wrestling, a scrappy company that has nurtured several famous wrestlers.NetflixWhiteley finds subjects that offer maximum access and editorial control. “It’s really hard to get that from the New England Patriots,” he said. In other words, this isn’t “Hard Knocks,” the HBO series that purports to offer revealing behind-the-scenes stories from N.F.L. training camps. For “Last Chance U,” which premiered in 2016, Whiteley focuses on individual community college football and basketball teams. In “Cheer,” the subject is a Texas community college cheerleading squad that happens to be a national dynasty. And for “Wrestlers,” Whiteley and his 20-person crew descended upon Ohio Valley Wrestling, a scrappy, underfunded professional wrestling company, with a passionate, blue-collar fan base, based in Louisville, Ky. Famous O.V.W. alumni include John Cena and Paul Wight (who wrestled as Big Show), but the company has maintained an authentic little-guy personality.“Wrestlers” is vintage Whiteley. He identified a few dynamic lead characters, including Al Snow, the fiercely dedicated, disarmingly thoughtful former W.W.F. and W.W.E. wrestler and current minority owner and day-to-day manager of O.V.W., who sees wrestling as a means of telling great stories preferably for television; Matt Jones, the aggressively opinionated O.V.W. co-owner and sports radio personality, focused on touring and keeping the company afloat financially; and HollyHood Haley J, a rebellious (and often irresponsible) young wrestler who is one of O.V.W.’s most popular performers and drives Snow mad with her propensity to smoke weed on the gym premises.Whiteley and his crew settled in and familiarized themselves with the rhythms of the operation. Perhaps most important, he quickly established that he wasn’t trying to burn anyone or manufacture the gotcha moments that fuel reality TV, which those on both sides of the camera are adamant that “Wrestlers” is not.HollyHood Haley J, a brash young performer, emerges as one of the stars of “Wrestlers.”Netflix“There was a great deal of trust,” Snow said in a video interview from his home office. “Professional wrestling as a whole has always been a very closed, very secular business, never open, especially not to the general public and especially not in this manner. It was a tough decision for me to let this happen and be involved in it. But meeting Greg I really got the idea and the impression that he was going to treat it with respect and he was going to be honest.”The trust is largely a byproduct of Whiteley’s patience. He doesn’t push things, preferring instead to burrow in and hang out and get to know his subjects; “Wrestlers” was shot over a period of three and a half months. His ideal is to disappear, or at least create the illusion that he has. He wants his three camera teams constantly rolling film — unless his subjects tell them to stop, in which case they generally do. This, in turn, reinforces the trust level. He tells stories by spending countless hours with his characters, not by asking hot-take questions about drug abuse and romantic problems (both of which are present in “Wrestlers”).Al Snow, a former W.W.F. wrestler, oversees Ohio Valley Wrestling.NetflixSnow, who in the series likens himself to Kermit the Frog presiding over “The Muppet Show,” emerges as a sort of tormented showbiz impresario. He’s like a Broadway director in an old Hollywood musical, agonizing until the final curtain goes down, at which point he starts agonizing anew. The primary tension in “Wrestlers” simmers between Snow, the professional wrestling purist, and Jones, the entrepreneur focused on the bottom line. It doesn’t seem like the most obvious angle, but Whiteley has a gift for finding gold in the unobvious, in this case a conflict outside the ring that turns into a battle for the soul of O.V.W.“Credit to Greg, he sniffed that out,” said Adam Leibowitz, a producer who has been working with Whiteley since “Mitt” (2014), Whiteley’s documentary portrait of Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful bids for president in 2008 and 2012.“When you’re presented with a project like this, you think it’s going to be about funny wrestlers and their crazy costumes and their personalities,” Leibowitz continued. “Yes that’s great, and that’s a part of it. But for all of us, it was the tension between Al and Matt that really made this show super interesting, to have this almost Shakespearean battle between these two completely different personalities over this little gym.”Whiteley traces his patient approach not just to his missionary work, but also to a lesson absorbed from an old-school master of cinéma vérité. He first encountered the work of Frederick Wiseman as a film student at Brigham Young University. Then, when Whiteley was making “New York Doll,” his 2005 documentary about the New York Dolls bassist Arthur (Killer) Kane, he saw Wiseman’s “Public Housing,” an epic look at a Chicago housing project. He was struck by how Wiseman would wait a few beats after a question was answered, a process that often yielded some of the film’s most unguarded moments. Whiteley tried the approach with Kane, at one point asking if he was nervous about an upcoming reunion concert. No, Kane insisted, of course not. Then he stared straight ahead saying nothing, looking very nervous.Whiteley’s approach is to spend countless hours with his subjects and try to disappear into the background.Julien James for The New York Times“I’ve never quite had Wiseman’s courage to let situations breathe for as long as they’ll breathe,” Whiteley said. “But I do know I let them breathe longer than I would have had I not seen ‘Public Housing.’ And some of my favorite moments that we have ever filmed have occurred because we’re not cutting yet. Just stay on this moment.”He also likes to zoom in on characters who don’t seem to be trying out for the camera. For instance, he was fascinated by the swagger and authenticity of HollyHood Haley J, whose real name is Haley Marie James and who wrestles with and against her mother, Amazing Maria (Tina Marie Evans James). Haley, for her part, didn’t seem to care much about the project, even blowing off scheduled interviews.“I had an attitude at times, and Greg handled me very well,” Haley said in a video interview from her home in Louisville. “It was all new to me, especially them following me around. I’d try to run and hide and get away from everyone. And then here comes Greg with the camera.”Whiteley is always after what is real, which in this case sets up a rich irony: a painstakingly authentic look at an endeavor often derided for being fake. But for all of their veracity, Whiteley’s projects also make for fine drama, generating high real-life stakes, off the field as much as on, that go well beyond famous athletes winning big games and matches. None of the wrestlers in “Wrestlers“ are getting rich. The kids in the various iterations of “Last Chance U” are just hoping to catch on with a four-year college, or merely graduate and get a decent job. These are very human stories about people just trying to get by.Whitely wouldn’t have it any other way.“We really only have one gear as a company,” he said. “Let’s just tell the true story.” More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in September

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      Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’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.)‘Wrestlers’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Greg Whiteley, the co-creator and director of the popular Netflix docu-series “Last Chance U” and “Cheer,” tells another story of small-time athletes fighting to keep their dreams alive in “Wrestlers.” Set in and around a Louisville, Ky., gym, the series follows the veteran star Al Snow and the die-hard performers of Ohio Valley Wrestling, who are working to boost business after their new bosses have given them just a few months to increase revenue. As with Whiteley’s other shows, “Wrestlers” features up-close and exciting sports footage alongside intimate slice-of-life scenes and confessional interviews, as these people who love the history and traditions of regional professional wrestling share their hopes and dreams.‘El Conde’Starts streaming: Sept. 15The daring Chilean writer-director Pablo Larrain — best-known for his offbeat 2016 biopics “Neruda” and “Jackie” — puts his own peculiar spin on the life of Augusto Pinochet in “El Conde,” a black-and-white gothic horror film that reimagines the dictator as a depressed vampire, enduring an audit of his crumbling estate. Jaime Vadell plays Pinochet, who in this movie has been alive since the time of the French Revolution and has kept hanging around long after everyone has assumed he died. Larrain fits some actual history into this picture, but for the most part he uses satire to critique the lingering vitality-sapping effects of Pinochet’s tyrannical reign.‘Love at First Sight’Starts streaming: Sept. 15Based on the Jennifer E. Smith novel “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight,” this romantic dramedy stars the vibrant young actress Haley Lu Richardson as Hadley Sullivan, who is reluctantly on her way to London to attend her father’s wedding when she gets seated on the plane next to Oliver (Ben Hardy), a charming math whiz heading home for his mother’s memorial service. When the two are separated after landing, they have an eventful and emotional day of meeting family obligations while also trying to find each other again. Jameela Jamil plays multiple characters and also narrates the film, using Oliver’s nerdy number-crunching as a prompt to keep the audience updated on the ever-shifting odds that these two likable kids will be happy together.‘The Saint of Second Chances’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Bill Veeck was one of Major League Baseball’s maverick innovators, spending much of his life coming up with creative and sometimes controversial ballpark promotions to draw fans and make money. The documentary “The Saint of Second Chances” — co-directed by Jeff Malmberg and the Oscar-winning Morgan Neville — is about Bill’s son Mike, whose initial attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps were derailed by his part in the Chicago White Sox’s notorious 1979 “Disco Demolition Night,” which ended in a riot. Narrated by Jeff Daniels — with re-enactments that have the actor-comedian Charlie Day playing Mike — the film covers the younger Veeck’s big comeback in the ’90s, when he found ways to bring fun back to baseball and to his own life by running the independent minor league team the St. Paul Saints.‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’Starts streaming: Sept. 27Fresh off the critical and commercial success of his film “Asteroid City,” the writer-director Wes Anderson makes his Netflix debut with “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” an adaptation of a Roald Dahl story. Clocking in at around 40 minutes — a bit too long to be a short film and not long enough to be a feature — the movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a smug gambler who become fascinated with the rumors he has heard about a man who can see without using his eyes. As always, Anderson has enlisted an impressive supporting cast, including Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade and — as Dahl himself — Ralph Fiennes. This project also reportedly relies even more than usual on Anderson’s penchant for overtly theatrical effects, as the characters tell stories within stories while often remaining on a single stage.Also arriving:Sept. 7“Dear Child”“Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight” Season 3“Top Boy” Season 3“Virgin River” Season 5, Part 1Sept. 8“Burning Body” Season 1“Rosa Peral’s Tapes”“Selling the OC” Season 2“Spy Ops” Season 1“A Time Called You” Season 1Sept. 12“Michelle Wolf: It’s Great To Be Here”Sept. 13“Class Act” Season 1Sept. 15“Surviving Summer” Season 2Sept. 21“Sex Education” Season 4Sept. 22“Song of the Bandits”“Spy Kids: Armageddon”Sept. 26“The Devil’s Plan” Season 1“Who Killed Jill Dando?”Sept. 27“Encounters” Season 1“Forgotten Love”“Street Flow 2”Sept. 28“Castlevania: Nocturne” Season 1“The Darkness within La Luz del Mundo”Sept. 29“Nowhere” More