When Does the Flash Come Back to Netflix

Jeffrey M. Anderson

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The best in streaming entertainment, from the experts.

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New on Netflix this week

TechHive's film critic names the best new movies Netflix has to offer for streaming.

Netflix's 'tick, tick... Boom!' — Netflix

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Netflix has a massive movie catalog these days, both original productions and entertainment licensed from studios across the globe. Not all of it is great—for every The Irishman you'll encounter two or three bombs like The Kissing Booth—so finding something worthwhile to watch can be a challenge if you don't have the time or patience to sift through thousands of titles. Here we focus on the best that Netflix has to offer, so you can spend more time watching and less time searching.

Updated December 13 to add two more recommendations. Jeff's previous picks follow in alphabetical order, starting with The Beguiled.

The Power of the Dog

Oscar-winner Jane Campion (The Piano) returns with her first feature film since 2009's Bright Star (she'd spent time working on the series Top of the Lake). The Western The Power of the Dog, based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, shows that Campion has lost none of her potency. She uses the landscape, and even the earth itself, to tell this primal, feral story. The Cain-and-Abel brothers are alpha-male Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who bathes only occasionally and uses his vast, drawling vocabulary and steely eyes to cut others down, and clean-cut, soft-spoken George (Jesse Plemons), whose carefully chosen words make him seem simple.

The two run a successful cattle empire, and while on a drive, Phil ridicules the thin, un-masculine young Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who waits on their table at an inn. George comforts the boy's distraught mother, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and winds up marrying her. Back at the ranch, the power games ramp up, with subtle acts and wrenching moments, vanquishments tilting into defeats, with the twist of a rope.

tick, tick… Boom!

Lin Manuel-Miranda was everywhere in 2021, and in addition to writing songs and acting, he made his feature directing debut with this extraordinary, emotional adaptation of a play by Jonathan Larson, best known as the creator of Rent. The semi-autobiographical tick, tick… Boom! was written before that hit, during the days of struggle. Jon (Andrew Garfield) is seen performing the play, which was conceived as a one-man show and later expanded, and he serves as narrator.

It's 1990 in New York City, and he has been trying to stage his first play, Superbia. It has taken years, and his chance to workshop it is right around the corner. But, acting on the advice of Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford), he realizes he must compose one more song to fully flesh out the play, and with his thirtieth birthday approaching, he's stuck. Meanwhile, his friends are contracting AIDS all around him, and his girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp) is considering taking a job in Massachusetts. Garfield is the whirlwind at the center of this, giving a deeply enthusiastic, anguished performance, with enough energy for a dozen movies.

The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola's remake of the 1971 film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood follows roughly the same story, but with a subtler touch. Whereas Siegel's film was almost like a psychological horror tale, Coppola not only fleshes out the female characters and makes their motivations more emotional, but also provides a more sensual, poetic touch, using elements of nature to provide a misleading comfort, and a disquieting confinement.

The Beguiled (2017) takes place during the Civil War in the Deep South, where a girls' school continues to operate with a small staff and a handful of students. Nicole Kidman, in a clever performance, plays the headmistress, Kirsten Dunst is a teacher, and Elle Fanning is a coy, young flirt, experimenting with her newfound sexuality. Colin Farrell plays a wounded soldier nursed back to health by the women. While recuperating, he begins to romantically and sexually manipulate the other women, a game that turns slowly darker.

Concrete Cowboy

Based on a novel by Greg Neri, Concrete Cowboy (2021) moves with a most familiar story arc, but its setting is wonderfully unusual. Teen Cole (Caleb McLaughlin, from Stranger Things) has been in one fight too many in his Detroit high school, so his mother sends him to live with his father, in Philadelphia. The father, Harp (Idris Elba), is part of a community that raises and rides horses amongst the big city hustle-bustle. Of course, father and son are going to clash and Cole will get into more trouble, and then, eventually the son will fall in love with horses, bond with one horse in particular (a troublemaker named Boo), connect with his father, and become a better person.

But the setting—the ramshackle, slightly illegal stables—and the connection to the past (many American cowboys were Black, a fact that white history tends to overlook) make it endlessly fascinating and lovable. A scene with a man in a wheelchair riding a horse may have viewers wiping away tears. Clifford "Method Man" Smith, of the Wu-Tang Clan, plays a sympathetic cop.

The Conjuring

James Wan graduated from the gore of Saw (2004), to the sophisticated, intriguing horror of this film, whose success launched an ongoing series of interconnected chillers ("the Conjuring Universe"). The Conjuring (2013) takes its story from the case files of real-life paranormal investigators Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson). In the early 1970s, the Perron family, Roger (Ron Livingston), Carolyn (Lili Taylor), and their five daughters, begin to experience all kinds of creepy things in their new Rhode Island home.

The Warrens think there's a demon at work, but when Carolyn becomes possessed, Lorraine's clairvoyant abilities may not be able to withstand an exorcism. Wan's brilliant directing, editing, and use of space, bring fresh, soul-chilling energy to all the old scares. This is perhaps partly thanks to the superb, eerie score by Joseph Bishara, and also because of the metaphysical awareness that this comes from a true story.

Fruitvale Station

Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler made a powerful feature debut with Fruitvale Station (2013), based on the New Year's Day, 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant by police in the BART train station of the title. Coogler's carefully researched screenplay depicts the events of the day leading up to the tragedy. Michael B. Jordan gives a star-making performance as Oscar, who already has a difficult day, trying to get his grocery store job back so he doesn't have to deal drugs, trying to placate his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who has caught him cheating, and trying to buy food for his mother's birthday party. (Octavia Spencer is extraordinary as the mother.)

Coogler takes his time with the day's details, dropping in moments of beauty, reflection, and heartbreak, resulting in a surprisingly tender, thoughtful movie, rather than one based on outrage. Additionally, Coogler's choice to show the white cops (Kevin Durand and Chad Michael Murray), but not give them a backstory, is a bold one. Despite strong acclaim and many awards, the movie somehow failed to earn even a single Oscar nomination.

Fear Street Trilogy

Based on a series of Young Adult novels by R.L. Stine and directed by Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon), the three Fear Street movies achieve the neat trick of feeling like YA stories, but including grown-up gore to please more sophisticated horror fans. Fear Street: Part One - 1994 sets up the tale about a centuries-old witch, "Sarah Fier," who possesses the bodies of teens and goes on murderous rampages (accompanied by some cool, vintage alt-rock tunes). Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 is a summer-camp movie with high socks (think Meatballs meets Friday the 13th). And Fear Street: Part Three - 1666 transports all the actors back in time, playing earlier incarnations of themselves, and ingeniously wrapping things up.

There's lots of carnage and gore, but Janiak's bright, robust tone keeps it from feeling too intense. Sadie Sink (Stranger Things), Gillian Jacobs, Kiana Madeira, and Benjamin Flores Jr. play just a few of the many characters.

The Game

David Fincher's creepy little crime movie features Michael Douglas as Nicholas Van Orton, a slick businessman who gets a most unusual birthday present from his brother (Sean Penn), a "game" that will provide some real-life thrills for the man who has everything. Van Orton tries to return the present, but strange things begin happening to him. Is it the game, or is it something more sinister?

Like many filmmakers before him, Fincher saw something dark, twisted, and almost schizophrenic among San Francisco's city streets, using them to suggest both the familiar and the dangerous. 1950s pin-up queen Carroll Baker (George Stevens's Giant, Elia Kazan's Baby Doll, etc.) appears as Van Orton's maid! Deborah Kara Unger, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and James Rebhorn co-star.

A Ghost Story

A scene from the film 'Ghost Story' — A ghostly husband (Casey Affleck) watches a lonely woman (Rooney Mara) in David Lowery's *A Ghost Story*.

This special movie casts a delicate spell, with the power to transport viewers to a soul-stirring place of cosmic poetry. A couple (Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck) lives together in a small house in Texas. They argue. The woman wants to leave and the man wants to stay. The woman likes living in lots of places and likes to leave little notes hidden in cracks in the walls. The man dies in a car accident and returns as a ghost. He's really nothing more than a guy with a sheet over his head, and yet he can do nothing but stand and watch (he sometimes chooses to haunt, but mostly he watches).

Unexpectedly, the movie begins leaping through time, and what began as a rumination on death and place becomes something more profoundly existential. Directed by David Lowery, A Ghost Story (2017) uses slow, still cinematography, with heartbreaking music by Daniel Hart, to create this most unique experience.

It Follows

A definite contender for the best horror movie of the last 10 years, David Robert Mitchell's It Follows (2015) contains a simple, terrifyingly primal idea. A pretty, blonde teen, Jay Height (Maika Monroe) decides to sleep with a boy she likes; when she does, he informs her that he has passed something on to her. There's a force, a thing, that walks toward you. It never speaks, never runs, and it can look like anything. You do not want it to touch you, so you must sleep with someone else and pass it on.

The "following" theme is right out of nightmares, but coupled with the complex concept of sexual awakening, it becomes something more, perhaps the subject of term papers or of a therapist's office. Mitchell has clearly been inspired by John Carpenter, using expertly staged widescreen frames and natural locations (no shaky cam), as well as a deeply unsettling score by the composer known as Disasterpiece.

The Harder They Fall

An exciting mess of a movie, lit as if shining the frontier sun through a prism, Jeymes Samuel's bold, kinetic all-Black Western The Harder They Fall (2021) is a must-see for anyone who can handle gore in the name of art. The complex 139-minute tale has Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) seeking revenge against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) for killing Nat's family when he was a child (and also carving a small cross in the boy's forehead). They each form gangs—Stagecoach Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz) and Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo) join up with Nat, and Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield) are on Buck's side—and go to war, with bloody headshots aplenty.

Director Samuel emerges full force, with fluid, confident use of color, space, and rhythm, where characters sizing one another up is as important as the shooting, and it all becomes a rumination on violence itself. While the story is fictional, and practically unreal, the characters' names come straight out of the history books.

Magnolia

When Does the Flash Come Back to Netflix

Source: https://www.techhive.com/article/3632135/new-on-netflix.html