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    New Movies and Shows Coming to Netflix in November: ’Emilia Pérez’ and More

    A parade of notable new titles are coming for U.S. subscribers all month. Here’s a roundup of the most promising.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles for U.S. subscribers. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Emilia Pérez’Starts streaming: Nov. 13A winner of multiple prizes at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, this genre-bending, gender-bending movie has Zoe Saldaña playing Rita, a lawyer enlisted to help a cartel boss formerly known as Juan begin her new life as Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón), while also helping Emilia’s wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), adjust to the change. Written and directed by the accomplished French filmmaker Jacques Audiard — and featuring songs by the composer Clément Ducol and the singer Camille — “Emilia Pérez” is at once a comedy, a musical and a crime drama, shifting approaches freely as it tells the story of a woman aiming for a profound transformation of a messy life.‘The Piano Lesson’Starts streaming: Nov. 22Following “Fences” (2016) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020), Denzel Washington’s latest film adaptation of the plays in August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” tackles one of the playwright’s most popular works. Produced by Washington (with Todd Black) and directed by Washington’s son Malcolm, “The Piano Lesson” has John David Washington (another son) as Boy Willie, who hatches a plan to buy some land by selling his family’s hand-carved piano, currently in the possession of his Uncle Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) but held dear by Willie’s sister, Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler). Set in the 1930s, the film is a lively and complex drama about a Black family debating the best way to honor its enslaved ancestors — either by preserving their history as-is or by using their legacy as a way to get ahead.‘Spellbound’Starts streaming: Nov. 22One of the first feature film projects announced by Skydance Animation (way back in 2017) finally makes it to the screen after a production complicated by Covid and distribution difficulties. Rachel Zegler voices Ellian, a princess of the kingdom of Lumbria, which is being torn apart after a spell transformed the king (Javier Bardem) and queen (Nicole Kidman) into monsters. Featuring songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, and direction by Vicky Jenson (best-known for her work on “Shrek”), “Spellbound” follows Ellian’s multi-step quest to save her family and her people.‘Our Little Secret’Starts streaming: Nov. 27The 2022 Netflix movie “Falling for Christmas” saw the return of Lindsay Lohan as a leading lady in a film for the first time in nearly a decade; and the movie went on to become one of the streamer’s biggest hits that holiday season. Two years later, Lohan is once again surrounded by wreaths, ribbons and twinkling lights for the romantic comedy “Our Little Secret.” She play Avery, who gets stuck at a holiday gathering with her boyfriend’s family, where she discovers that her man’s sister is dating Logan (Ian Harding), with whom Avery had a messy breakup 10 years earlier. Since the exes both want to make a good impression for their new significant others’ fussy mother (Kristin Chenoweth), they decide to pretend they don’t know each other — which becomes increasingly complicated as the Christmas togetherness rolls on, day after day.‘Senna’Starts streaming: Nov. 29This flashy Brazilian mini-series dramatizes the too-brief career of the Formula 1 champion Ayrton Senna. Gabriel Leone plays Senna, who took the F1 circuit by storm in the late 1980s and early ’90s before dying at 34 from injuries sustained during a race. “Senna” is packed with fast-paced racing scenes, but the show’s creator, Vicente Amorim, is just as interested in the backroom politicking that sprung up once Senna’s more aggressive racing style put him in the winner’s circle ahead of the more established (and more conservative) European stars. While getting into Senna’s family and personal life, the series also documents how one of Brazil’s national heroes argued that the sport’s financiers and governing bodies too often kept the drivers from competing at their best.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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    Netflix and Lifetime Christmas Movies Strip Down With ‘Hot Frosty’ and More

    With “Hot Frosty,” “The Merry Gentlemen” and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance,” holiday fare is headed in a shirtless new direction.Fans of Christmas romance usually know exactly what to expect when tuning in to any of the dozens of new movies on cable and streaming platforms each year.For 90 minutes or so, they’ll see a city slicker return to her immaculately decorated small hometown for the holidays. A local guy will sweep her off her feet. The scenery will be snow-covered. The music will be merry. And a quick peck on the lips will reliably signify the lovers’ happy ending.This year, however, some holiday films are stripping down. Literally.“Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” on Netflix and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance” on Lifetime employ many of the usual tropes, but they’ve ditched the sweaters and fleeting embraces for steamier visuals. Here, in a move seemingly born of the realization that women are a key viewing demographic of the genre, the men are often shirtless and on display to be ogled by the female townsfolk. The kisses are passionate. And, in at least one instance, the lead characters have s-e-x.Judging by the moans and longing gazes, these fictional women have been deprived of carnal fulfillment during holidays past. Modern Christmas movie viewers have been left wanting, too.“Way back before Lifetime and Netflix, the old idea of a merry Christmas was filled with mistletoe, which invited transgressional romantic and sexual activity,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He also noted the presence of sexual undertones in everything from Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (a party scene where blindfolded revelers identify one another by touch) to songs like “Santa Baby” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”Chad Michael Murray, left, and Hector David Jr. are part of a male revue in “The Merry Gentlemen.”Katrina Marcinowski/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

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    ‘Meet Me Next Christmas’ Review: An a Cappella Affair to Remember

    This Netflix Christmas rom-com inexplicably wants to remind viewers that the group Pentatonix still exists.You’d be forgiven if you were convinced in the early goings of “Meet Me Next Christmas” that the Netflix film is just a slightly more expensive Hallmark Christmas movie. combined with a wild-goose chase rom-com.Still, it’s not actually either of these things. This film, directed by Rusty Cundieff, seems to be a bewildering Christmas movie centered on reminding its viewers that the a cappella pop group Pentatonix still exists.After Layla (Christina Milian) is stuck in an airport during a holiday snowstorm, she hits it off with James (Kofi Siriboe), a suave stranger who might also be the man of her dreams. Knowing she’s in a relationship, James proposes that they don’t exchange any information, but instead meet one year later at a Pentatonix Christmas concert (the strangest version of the “Before Sunrise” premise if there ever was one).A year later, Layla, newly single, crisscrosses town for last-minute tickets to the show with the help of Teddy (Devale Ellis), a concierge whom she reluctantly begins to fall for.Their adventures play out with little charm, and the writing is often baffling, including the nonstop references to Pentatonix, who are also awkwardly featured in scenes throughout. (One can practically see their agent negotiating the contractual clauses onscreen.)In recent years Netflix has become a factory for B-rate Christmas movies, with the occasional cheap comfort to be found in its manufactured holiday romances. This bizarre concoction, not so much.Meet Me Next ChristmasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Specials by Tom Papa and Others to Distract You From the News

    Tom Papa, James Adomian and Emily Catalano take very different, very funny approaches in their new hours.Tom Papa, ‘Home Free’(Stream it on Netflix)If the scroll of election news has you in the mood for some light distraction and cheer-me-up laughs, Tom Papa’s latest special arrives just in time. The ultimate escapist comedian, Papa has built a soothingly funny body of work with a persona that stands out in these anxious times: a sensible optimist who thinks you are too hard on yourself. The title of his last special sums up his message: “You’re doing great!”Papa — the perfect name for his brand of middle-aged dad comedy — tells well-crafted jokes about family secrets and hot-dog-eating contests with the spirit of a self-help guru. Even his complaints come out as gratitude. “A good day is any day I don’t have to retrieve a username and password,” he once joked.In his new special, he opens with an unexpectedly sunny take on being an empty-nester. It’s set up with an unshowy deftness that lets you know you are in good hands. His delivery is lilting and subtle. When one of my daughters was getting a little weepy about the prospect of her sister leaving home, I showed this joke to her and the mood lightened. Papa shot the special in Washington, D.C., and nods to Americans’ exhaustion with politics, before suggesting we take a break from the news now and then. “You can know too much,” he says. “Ignorance is bliss” is a theme.He loves that therapy is popular, but it’s not for him. “I’m having a good time,” he says. “If I go to therapy, they’re going to stop it.” And yet, Papa can sound like a therapist — or at least a comedian version of one.He asks questions that reframe your perspective to something healthier. Is there some “power of positive thinking” hokum here? Sure. But there’s also an entertainer’s ethos that the job is to make you forget your troubles — come on, get happy. This doesn’t mean avoiding darkness. In fact, Papa understands that grim news is necessary to find the incongruity that will make you laugh. In explaining to a child what “nuclear Armageddon” means, he gives it as rosy a slant as one could. “We’re all going to die someday and there’s a way we can all die on the same day.” Then he smiles and does a little dance.James Adomian, ‘Path of Most Resistance’(Stream it on YouTube)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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    New Comedy Specials by Tom Papa and Others to Distract You From the News

    Tom Papa, James Adomian and Emily Catalano take very different, very funny approaches in their new hours.Tom Papa, ‘Home Free’(Stream it on Netflix)If the scroll of election news has you in the mood for some light distraction and cheer-me-up laughs, Tom Papa’s latest special arrives just in time. The ultimate escapist comedian, Papa has built a soothingly funny body of work with a persona that stands out in these anxious times: a sensible optimist who thinks you are too hard on yourself. The title of his last special sums up his message: “You’re doing great!”Papa — the perfect name for his brand of middle-aged dad comedy — tells well-crafted jokes about family secrets and hot-dog-eating contests with the spirit of a self-help guru. Even his complaints come out as gratitude. “A good day is any day I don’t have to retrieve a username and password,” he once joked.In his new special, he opens with an unexpectedly sunny take on being an empty-nester. It’s set up with an unshowy deftness that lets you know you are in good hands. His delivery is lilting and subtle. When one of my daughters was getting a little weepy about the prospect of her sister leaving home, I showed this joke to her and the mood lightened. Papa shot the special in Washington, D.C., and nods to Americans’ exhaustion with politics, before suggesting we take a break from the news now and then. “You can know too much,” he says. “Ignorance is bliss” is a theme.He loves that therapy is popular, but it’s not for him. “I’m having a good time,” he says. “If I go to therapy, they’re going to stop it.” And yet, Papa can sound like a therapist — or at least a comedian version of one.He asks questions that reframe your perspective to something healthier. Is there some “power of positive thinking” hokum here? Sure. But there’s also an entertainer’s ethos that the job is to make you forget your troubles — come on, get happy. This doesn’t mean avoiding darkness. In fact, Papa understands that grim news is necessary to find the incongruity that will make you laugh. In explaining to a child what “nuclear Armageddon” means, he gives it as rosy a slant as one could. “We’re all going to die someday and there’s a way we can all die on the same day.” Then he smiles and does a little dance.James Adomian, ‘Path of Most Resistance’(Stream it on YouTube)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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    Stream These Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in November

    A slew of great movies and TV shows are leaving Netflix for U.S. subscribers in November. Here’s a roundup of the best.Three inventive and engaging biopics are leaving Netflix in the United States this month, along with a scorching stage adaptation, a thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle and an animated comedy that is decidedly not for the kiddies. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Edge of Tomorrow’ (Nov. 6)Stream it here.If James Cameron remade “Groundhog Day,” it might come out looking like this fast, funny and thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle from the director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”). Cruise stars as a military public relations man with a cowardly streak who is reluctantly thrown onto the front lines, where he discovers he is trapped in a time loop: When he is killed, he jolts awake back at the beginning of his adventure, forced to keep doing it until he gets it right. Emily Blunt is dynamite as the heroic soldier who shows him the ropes (and has a fair number of laughs at his expense), while Liman orchestrates the comic and action beats with equal grace and skill.‘First Man’ (Nov. 14)Stream it here.A common thread of this month’s titles is unconventional biopics — stories about important historical figures that mostly manage to eschew the cradle-to-grave framing, on-the-nose dialogue and shallow insights of too many screen biographies. Take this portrait of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, which is less interested in telling a broad historical story than an intensely personal one. As played by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong is a modest man, one who takes that “one giant leap” more from a sense of duty and service than from ambition or ego. It’s a character study; the character just so happens to be the first man to walk on the moon. The director Damien Chazelle, re-teaming with his “La La Land” leading man, is as aware of the biopic clichés as you are, and he smoothly sidesteps most of them to make a picture that is surprisingly urgent and emotional.‘Harriet’ (Nov. 15)Stream it here.The “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons directs this similarly outside-the-lines dramatization of the life of Harriet Tubman, brought to scorching life by the gifted Cynthia Erivo (on the big screen this fall in “Wicked”). The telling is fairly direct: Working from a script written with Gregory Allen Howard, Lemmons hits the biographical milestones in Tubman’s journey from slave to runaway to guide for those who wished to do the same. But Lemmons’s direction is artful and lyrical, taking its cues from the visions that Tubman said guided her, which gives the enterprise an almost otherworldly quality. Erivo’s performance is powerful and textured; she is supported by an excellent cast, including Joe Alwyn, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr. and Clarke Peters.‘Sausage Party’ (Nov. 22)Stream it here.Parents who aren’t quite paying full attention might assume that this animated feature about anthropomorphic supermarket foods is typical kiddie fare — and boy, oh boy, would they be in for a surprise. This is very much an R-rated, adults-only venture, the brainchild of the actor and filmmaker Seth Rogen and his frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg. As with their previous films “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” and “This Is the End,” the jokes are rude and crude, and the cast is stuffed with comic stars. But the nicest surprise of “Sausage Party” is its thoughtfulness; in the end, it’s a pointed examination of conventional wisdom surrounding religion and death, which is not quite what you might expect from a film that culminates in a food orgy.‘Ali’ (Nov. 30)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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    Martha Stewart Gives Netflix’s ‘Martha’ a Scalding Review

    When a reporter phoned about her new documentary, the lifestyle star didn’t hold back: “I hate those last scenes. Hate them.”Most business titans spout niceties — insipid, banal, stale — when speaking to reporters on the record. It can be impossible to get them to say what they really think, and if they accidentally let something colorful slip, a saw-toothed publicist inevitably arrives to try to scrub it away.But not Martha Stewart. As a media savant, she may understand that startling candor cuts through the clutter and gets her heard. Or maybe, at 83, she just has no more you-know-whats left to give.Even so, I was not quite prepared for a recent phone interview with her. I called to discuss her experience with the documentarian R.J. Cutler, whose “Martha” documentary arrived on Netflix on Wednesday after a run on the fall festival circuit. I figured our chat would last 10 minutes. She’d say a positive thing and a negative thing and go back to making TikToks with Snoop Dogg.Out came roughly 30 almost uninterrupted minutes of sharp critique. “R.J. had total access, and he really used very little,” she said, referring to her archive. “It was just shocking.”After a couple of failed attempts to interject a question, I decided it was best to just get out of her way. Below are some of the things she’s sore about (some lightly edited for clarity).Cutler declined to comment on specific points. “I am really proud of this film, and I admire Martha’s courage in entrusting me to make it,” he said. “I’m not surprised that it’s hard for her to see aspects of it.”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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    New Horror TV Shows to Stream This Halloween: ‘Teacup,’ ‘Uzumaki’ and More

    This year’s horror series take us to damned villages, cursed towns and countries fallen into anarchy.This selection of shows from October’s annual parade of horror series will take you on a tour of places where the world appears to be out of control: a South Korea going through a religious frenzy, a Georgia farm under attack, a bucolic English village visited by aliens, a Japanese seaside town haunted by spirals. Just keep telling yourself it’s fiction.‘Hellbound’Based on an online cartoon, this Korean series on Netflix has a comic-book hook, repeated a time or two per episode: A trio of towering, golem-like figures materialize, heralded by cracks of thunder, and roast a human who has been identified as a sinner. This usually involves a lot of smashing and tossing about of people and vehicles. These scenes are kinetically satisfying — it is a Korean production, after all — and there’s something counter-intuitively adorable about the silent, hulking reapers. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho of the “Train to Busan” zombie films, “Hellbound,” whose second season premiered last week, is a solidly constructed supernatural thriller, with well-choreographed action that often features a tight-lipped lawyer (Kim Hyun-joo) who gets more use out of her police baton than her legal training.The bam-pow does not dominate the show, however. The screenwriter Choi Gyu-seok, adapting Yeon’s 2002 webtoon, focuses less on explaining the supernatural happenings than on portraying a society’s reactions to a terrifying rip in reality. Those responses are bad and badder, running from coercive religious fanaticism to cathartic, mordant anarchy — parallels to current trends around the world are almost certainly intentional — while a few contrarians fight for rationality and free will.The drama of ideas is talky and pitched between comic book and Philosophy 101, but there is enough inventiveness and feeling in the storytelling to keep you attuned to the show’s evocation of a world quickly going mad.‘The Midwich Cuckoos: Village of the Damned’When this mini-series premiered in Britain two years ago, it had the same title as the John Wyndham novel on which it is loosely based, “The Midwich Cuckoos.” For its American release, Acorn TV and Sundance Now (both will have the third of seven episodes on Thursday) tacked on the name of the cult-favorite 1960 film adaptation, “Village of the Damned.” The series is a solid, watchable piece of work, though it might have been better if they hadn’t reminded us of the chilling, compact, highly satisfying movie.The story, if you are unfamiliar, begins with everyone in a British village blacking out; shortly after, every woman of childbearing age finds herself pregnant. The resulting children, as you might guess, are a scary bunch, with powers of mind control that represent an extinction-level threat. “The Midwich Cuckoos” handles the science-fiction aspects capably, and like the film, it has its share of quietly creepy moments. Filling out the expanded running time with a lot of agonizing about motherhood and parenting, though, feels a little precious when the story is about aliens getting Earth women pregnant. Focus!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