Hi friends,
Welcome to this week’s roundup of the best new titles in streaming right now. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do and as always, let me know how the viewing goes!
Have a great weekend ahead.
OUR TOP TV SHOW OF THE WEEK
The Peripheral
On Amazon Prime Video 🍅 rating: 74%
Our top TV pick this week is The Peripheral, the Amazon Prime original that has likely been taunting you on your homescreen for weeks now. I suggest giving it a try if you liked The Matrix and HBO’s Westworld (whose creators also serve as producers in this show), or if you’re just generally intrigued by all thing tech and sci-fi.
The Peripheral is set in 2032 and finds a protagonist in Flynne Fisher (Chloe Grace Moretz), a cash-strapped but ambitious woman who gets stuck between alternate timelines and realities after testing out an experimental gaming device. She stays for the money and safety promised to her, but quickly finds out that she’s getting more than what she bargained for in this twisty, action-packed thriller.
OUR TOP MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Is That Black Enough for You?!?
New on Netflix 🍅 rating: 100%
Is That Black Enough for You?!? is a comprehensive and brilliantly structured documentary written, directed, and narrated by NYT critic Elvis Mitchell. Its main focus is on the birth and suspicious disappearance of Blaxploitation, that revolutionary era in the 1970s that saw the rise of black-centered movies. But more generally, the movie tracks the entirety of black cinema and how it shaped and was shaped by American society.
The history lesson told through Mitchell’s precise prose plus interviews with past and present stars like Harry Belafonte, Samuel L Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, and Zendaya make it a truly illuminating and worthwhile watch.
Top picks outside of Netflix and Amazon Prime
Our top TV pick outside of Netflix and Prime is season 2 of Gangs of London, which premiered a few weeks ago. The highly acclaimed British series continues to dive deep into underground crime and mafia territory, this time doubling down on the ultraviolence and gore. The latest season is streaming on AMC+, but you can watch the first season on Amazon Prime Video.
Our final pick is Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues, one of a string of recent Apple music documentaries that successfully enliven the subject in question. It’s been called the definitive Louis documentary on account of it being told largely through the Jazz pioneer and American icon’s own words. Streaming on Apple TV+.
New titles worth your time
I would be remiss not to mention The Crown (season 5 is new on Netflix), which for all its pomp and circumstance, is still a solid and sumptuous good watch. The latest season follows the British royal family’s reign in the ‘90s. Also new on Netflix are the hijacking thriller Captain Phillips and the World War II drama The Railway Man.
Over at Amazon Prime Video, the original series The English, starring Emily Blunt as a vengeful Englishwoman in 1890s America, is new and worth catching. Also new on Prime Video is the psychological period thriller A Royal Affair, starring Alicia Vikander as Queen Caroline Matilda of Great Britain and Mads Mikkelsen as her lover, Johann Friedrich Struensee.
Great titles that will soon expire
There are still no noteworthy titles leaving Netflix this week, but over at Prime Video, the medical sitcom Scrubs expires on November 13. The Oscar-nominated Swedish film Evil and the Hunter S. Thompson documentary Gonzo are also set to expire the next day, November 14.
That’s all for this week. This edition of the newsletter will be back on Friday, November 18.
Till then,
Renee