True North Streaming: The Best New Titles on Netflix Canada, May 5/19
True North Streaming is a semi-regular column highlighting some of the best new additions to Netflix’s Canadian service. Like many of you, every so often I get a pleasant surprise when I discover a cool movie or TV show that’s just popped up on Netflix’s often-maligned sister platform. These posts will help you filter through the often quirky mix of Netflix Canada’s offerings and find the most valuable ways to waste some time.
And with that, in no particular order...
Wonder Woman
We’ve covered it already here on the site, but the notable thing about Wonder Woman is how it was the first of the current generation of DC adaptations to be, well, good. Prior to Patty Jenkins’ film, it seemed like we might be doomed to at least a handful more of dour, Zack-Snyder-tastic superhero movies. Jenkins and her star Gal Gadot proved that the missing factors were twofold: humour and narrative cohesion. Wonder Woman allows us to both understand and admire its heroine’s godlike powers, and establishes a psychology for the lead character that its predecessors severely lacked. Oh, and the jokes about Chris Pine’s dick were funny, too.
Burning
Another movie we covered here when it premiered at TIFF 2018, Burning is a frequently puzzling but ultimately stirring mystery. The movie follows an unassuming deliveryman and aspiring writer (Yoo Ah-In) who comes to believe that a love triangle he’s ensnared in may have had a violent or murderous end, though he has no concrete proof.
Burning has a deliberately slow, methodical pace, and for this reason we can’t recommend it to people looking for a satisfying, Hitchcockian setup and solution. But for those who stick with it, this Korean-language head-scratcher may become a favourite. A special shout-out to Steven Yeun, who crafts a deliciously ambiguous performance that makes me want to see what he’d do with a Bond villain role.
Leave No Trace
This film, by Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik, is part of a tiny subgenre of movies about people who choose to isolate themselves from society, only to have civilization come crashing in against their will (see: Captain Fantastic). Granik hinges her return to narrative filmmaking on a story that might feel initially aspirational for some: a father and daughter (Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie) have been living off the grid in the wilderness outside Portland, Oregon, only to accidentally attract the attention of the authorities and endanger their remote way of life.
Leave No Trace popped up on a lot of critics’ best-of-2018 lists last year, and it feels destined to be a hidden gem, perfect for services like Netflix to get in front of more viewers.
Border
If you live in Canada, now’s your chance to catch a movie I saw at last year’s TIFF that I knew nothing about going in, and was pleasantly surprised by, if a bit disturbed. On the face of it, Border is a straightforward tale imagining what would happen in modern-day Sweden if humans and trolls coexisted. How would real-life questions about racism, immigration, and sexual politics be refracted?
But the true conflict is more internal: the main character spends much more time trying to reconcile her upbringing as a human with the revelation that she’s a troll. Writer-director Ali Abbasi also works in a romance between the leads that culminates in one of the weirder sex scenes you’ll probably ever see outside of some dark corner of the Internet.
That being said, Border packs a lot of nuance into something that could have been a mere creature feature, and for that it’s worth a look for the more adventuresome viewers out there.
Wildlife
I didn’t write about Wildlife when I first saw it, but it nevertheless made an impression. The feature directing debut of always-punchable actor Paul Dano, Wildlife has a deceptively simple premise. It documents the dissolution of a typical American family in the 1960s, showing just how easily the concept of “family” can slip through one’s fingers and turn to ash.
Wildlife is a vehicle for two powerful performances by Carey Mulligan (doing her best to make you hate her and yet keep watching) and Jake Gyllenhaal; if you like either actor, Wildlife is essential. But like any strong filmmaking debut, the film is also useful to understand where Dano may go next; he has the chance of being the next great interpreter of American literature.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
I’m including Close Encounters here as a reminder for any burgeoning film fan who has yet to cross Steven Spielberg’s classic off their list. Of course, there’s no shortage of ways to watch this collection of touching and memorable interactions between humans and extra-terrestrials, but Netflix is just making it super easy. It’s unclear which cut is on offer here (there have been a few), though no matter which version, get ready to have the alien-communication jingle stuck in your head for a few days afterwards. In a related note, a double-feature pairing of this movie and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival would make a great match.
Knock Down the House
If there’s one thing Netflix is known for aside from its original TV series, it’s documentaries. The platform has been a boon for the genre, allowing non-fiction movies that might have struggled to be financially viable in the past get in front of millions of potential viewers. The latest, Knock Down the House, tackles a politically divisive but crucial topic: female representation in the U.S. Congress.
The star of the show is the omnipresent Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but the tale of her improbable rise to her leadership role is told alongside those of three other underdog stories about women who ran with Ocasio-Cortez in the 2018 midterm elections, charting their origins and their efforts to fight back against a persistent tide of hateful rhetoric. The RottenTomatoes scores for this release paint a fitting picture: 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, whereas the audience score sits at a poetic 50%.
What did you think of this list of Netflix recommendations? Are there any notable recent uploads on the Canadian service that I missed? Join the discussion in the comments section, and if you liked this post, share it with your friends and followers!