New on Netflix

New on Netflix for the Holiday Season

I keep being impressed by the quantity and often quality of the content made available for online

streaming on Netflix.  HBO is just now showing its first non-English language production—the excellent Italian series My Brilliant Friend.  But Netflix, now in over 180 countries, is way ahead in terms of top-notch international productions.  In a previous post I praised the German series Babylon Berlin set in 1929.  I’m also hooked by the new Polish series 1983 set during the last years of the Communist Cold War era (8 episodes so far, fraught with danger, intrigue, murder, sex, and treachery in a hothouse of repression versus revolutionary agitation).

            On the documentary side, an absolute must view are the 8 episodes of Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II: A Natural History of the Oceans. One runs out of superlatives to describe the diverse range of of astonishing underwater images illustrating an amazing compendium of often little-known information. Attenborough narrates another epic achievement that is awesome, enthralling and utterly absorbing.  A+

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

From the acclaimed writer-director duo of the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, comes this offbeat Western that plays out as a series of tall tales.  In the first one, about the titular Buster Scruggs, Tim Blake Nelson hams it up as a goofy devil-may-care gunslinger, until he meets his match. Subsequent Western stories, always told on the wry side, cycle though a host of fine actors evidently enjoying appearing in a Coen brothers production.  Although the movie does lose some steam towards the latter half, it’s a consistently entertaining affair.  Indeed the Coens took the best screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival and the National Board of Review named Ballad one of its top 10 films of 2018.  B+

Mowgli-Legend of the Jungle

Director Andy Serkis is best known for his motion-capture performances—as “Gollum” in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, and as “Caesar”, the simian leader in the recent Planet of the Apes movies (2011-2017).  Given the Disney Jungle Book films (most recently in 2016), one wonders about another remake, even if Serkis does go back to the original source material of Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 All the Mowgli Stories collection.

            Mowgli is the “man cub” rescued as an infant by a black panther Bagheera (voiced by Christian Bale) after his parents have been devoured by the terrorizing tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), a threatening presence throughout.  The feral Indian boy Mowgli (played by 11-year old Rohan Chand) is raised by a wolf pack he seeks to join.  Another protector is a bear named Baloo (voiced by Serkis).  Mowgli’s adventures take a fateful turn when he gets taken in to a human village that includes a tiger hunter (Matthew Rhys), leading up to a showdown that also involves elephants and a python among other talking jungle creatures.  This isn’t a great movie but it does feature quality animation combined with live action.  A caution about some quite violent scenes which may be disturbing for young children.   B