The Best Movies New to Every Major Streaming Platform in November 2024

“Blitz” (dir. Steve McQueen, 2024)

It’s strange to discover that “Blitz” is the most anonymous movie that Steve McQueen has made thus far, as this pseudo-Dickensian epic — the story of a half-Grenadian boy’s quest to reunite with his guilt-ridden single mother (Saoirse Ronan) after she evacuates him out of London in the fall of 1940 — would appear to be an ideal showcase for his singular vision as a filmmaker. 

Drawn towards subjects that allow him to interrogate and expand upon historical notions of resilience, the “Hunger” director has frequently returned to portraits of life during wartime over the course of his career as both a visual artist and commercial auteur. This one, set at the height of the stiff upper lip spirit that McQueen is eager to question for its cracks, offers such a natural canvas for his favorite subject that it can seem like he’s spent the last 20 years waiting for the budget to paint on it. 

And yet “Blitz” is the first one of McQueen’s features that feels like it could’ve been made by someone else. Wantonly staid and sentimental where his earlier work was austere and intuitive, “Blitz” is old-fashioned in its design even when it’s artful in its telling, and broadly shaped around Britain’s most familiar tropes even as it’s lovingly specific to the experience of its young hero — a biracial kid at a time that has seldom been depicted with any trace of color. But if the movie doesn’t quite come together with the emotional force that it should, it still manages to keep you in its grip on the strength of the raw humanism and probing intelligence that McQueen brings to everything that he creates. Honestly it’s worth a stream just for the heart-stopping scene where Ronan sings an original ditty on the BBC, her voice warbling over the airwaves like a faint prayer for a weary nation.

Available to stream November 22

Other highlights:

– “Bread and Roses” (11/22)

“The Big Heat” (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953)

Nobody does Noirvember like Criterion, and that definitely hasn’t changed in 2024, as the elite streamer leads its monthly programming with a deep and satisfying retrospective dedicated to Columbia Pictures’ singular imprint on the genre. While their rivals pounced on more prestigious fare, Columbia was happy to dive head-first into the dirtiest gutters of American life with arsenic-laced films like Earl McEvoy’s “The Killer that Stalked New York” (a 1950 gem about diamond smugglers who trigger a smallpox outbreak!) and enduring mid-century masterpieces like Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat.” 

But subscribers with a nose for noir would do well to sniff around the rest of Criterion’s November slate as well, as the Channel’s Coen brothers series includes the great neo-noir that launched their careers (“Blood Simple”), while the Ida Lupino retro is stuffed with the likes of “High Sierra” and “They Drive by Night.” Even the Jacques Audiard package — timed to the release of his “Emilia Pérez” — is able to get in on the action, as the Channel is streaming the French director’s unforgettable “The Beat that My Heart Skipped,” a noir-shaded crime thriller that continues to endure as the single most gripping thing that Audiard has ever made.

All films available to stream November 1

“Deadpool & Wolverine” (dir. Shawn Levy, 2024)

Well I guess it’s time to find out if the Disney+ algorithm is smart enough to avoid auto-playing this movie right after your kids finish watching “Moana” (the swearing and violence are fine, but impressionable young minds should be protected from the cinema of Shawn Levy at all costs). 

Available to stream November 12

Other highlights:

– “Music by John Williams” (11/1)
– “Out of My Mind” (11/22)
– “Beatles ’64” (11/29)

“Ad Astra” (dir. James Gray, 2019)

Another introspective but immaculately crafted adventure epic from “The Lost City of Z” director James Gray (whose upcoming “Paper Tigers” already has the indie film world abuzz with excitement), “Ad Astra” is an awe-inspiring film about the fear of male vulnerability and the fait accompli of becoming your own father — whomever he might be. Truth be told, the more baggage you can bring to the table the better, as these characters are mere vessels for the movie’s interplanetary voyage into the heart of darkness.

Following Brad Pitt on a journey from Earth to Neptune in search of his errant astronaut dad, this is spare and mythic storytelling; the more expansive its vision gets, the more inward-looking its focus becomes. Even with a linear narrative that never slows down, a chase sequence that feels like “Fury Road” on the moon, and a suspenseful vision of the galaxy that makes room for any number of unexpected surprises (beware the claw marks inside a seemingly abandoned spaceship), “Ad Astra” is still one of the most ruminative, withdrawn, and curiously optimistic space odysseys this side of “Solaris.” It’s also one of the best.

Available to stream November 1

Other highlights:

– “The Last Duel” (11/1)
– “Robot Dreams” (11/26)
– “Elf” (11/27)

“Hit the Road” (dir. Panah Panahi, 2021)

A family road trip movie in which we never quite know where the film is heading (and are often lied to about why), “Hit the Road” may be set amid the winding desert highways and gorgeous emerald valleys of northwestern Iran, but Panah Panahi’s miraculous debut is fueled by the growing suspicion that its characters have taken a major detour away from our mortal coil at some point along the way. “Where are we?” the gray-haired mom (Pantea Panahiha) asks into the camera upon waking up from a restless catnap inside the SUV in which so much of this film takes place. “We’re dead,” squeaks the youngest of her two sons (Rayan Sarlak) from the back seat, the six-year-old boy already exuding some of the most anarchic movie kid energy this side of “The Tin Drum.”

They aren’t dead — at least not literally, even if the adorable stray dog who’s come along for the ride seems to be on its last legs — but the further Panahi’s foursome drives away from the lives they’ve left behind in Tehran, the more it begins to seem as if they’ve left behind life itself. A purgatorial fog rolls in as they climb towards the Turkish border, and with it comes a series of semi-competent guides (one amusingly trying to steer a motorbike from behind a sheepskin balaclava) who show up to give the family vague directions as if they were clueless interns for the ferryman on the river Styx. A cosmic pall starts to shadow every scene, the characters growing further and further away from us with every long shot until they’re (literally) sucked into the shimmering abyss of outer space.

Available to stream November 22

Other highlights:

– “Un Flic” (11/7)
– “Atomic Cafe” (11/22)
– “Chef Flynn” (11/26)

“Janet Planet” (dir. Annie Baker, 2023)

Max is light on new releases this month (though the botched release of “Juror #2” is a perfect excuse to revisit a library addition like “Unforgiven”), but one of the year’s richest and most rewarding films is making its way to the streamer, and it’s a comfort movie par excellence at a time when such things might go a long way. Here’s a taste of what Esther Zuckerman wrote in her review of Annie Baker’s “Janet Planet”:

“In the opening moments of ‘Janet Planet,’ Annie Baker‘s understated miracle of a directorial debut, a young girl runs across a darkened field into a seemingly abandoned structure. She picks up the phone in the dimly lit wooden room and makes a shocking claim: She’s going to kill herself. It’s a disorienting statement that makes the viewer immediately question what exactly this film is or may become. It also turns out to be a wry joke that serves as an introduction to Lacy (newcomer Zoe Ziegler), the wonderfully peculiar preteen whose perspective is the movie’s engine.  

Lacy’s threat, it turns out, is an empty one. She just wants her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) to come pick her up from camp where she’s feeling like an outcast and uses an overly dramatic ploy to get what she wants. Janet, who gives the film its title, obliges, and it’s the first glimpse of the fascinating and idiosyncratic codependent relationship that Baker brings to life in her first feature.” 

Available to stream November 1

Other highlights:

– “Goodfellas” (11/1)
– “Unforgiven” (11/1)
– “Unstoppable” (11/1)

“Youth (Spring)” (dir. Wang Bing, 2023)

With the third installment of Wang Bing’s “Youth” trilogy now playing at the Metrograph theater itself, Metrograph at Home is giving subscribers a golden chance to get back in on the ground floor by streaming the triptych’s first chapter, “Youth (Spring”). And while an 11-hour observational documentary about Chinese textile workers might sound like the kind of thing that you can enter at any point, to see this project in full is to appreciate the true sweep of its portraiture. Here’s some of what critic Ben Croll wrote about “Youth (Spring)” when it premiered at Cannes last year:

“A formally austere direct-cinema tour through Middle Kingdom sweatshops, this dense slice-of-life offers notes on a theme, lamenting stifled promise while considering the ways such youthful vigor can withstand, overcome or wholly be crushed by the grinding gears of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. ‘Youth (Spring)’ opens in a dingy alley in the industrial hub of Zhili City and stays there all the way through, devoting uninterrupted attention to the cramped and cruddy workshops that fill a street all too ironically called Happiness Road. After spending five years quietly observing the area’s various businesses, Wang demarcates each discrete space with supertitles that land like grim punchlines given the complete absence of appreciable difference. That monotony in interior design takes on more sinister implications given the workers’ ostensible ‘freedom’ — nearly all of them economic migrants from the nearby Anhui province, the various youths flock to Happiness Road to work as free agents, ‘free’ to change workshops at will, and are paid for items produced instead of a fixed wage.    

“Though bleak, this panel is not just a garden of earthly despair. As in previous films, Wang’s impassive handheld camera waits for life to reveal itself, and for light to shine through the cracks in these concrete tombs. Like a Brueghel or a Bosch, ‘Youth (Spring)’ is less an individual portrait than a bustling portrayal of types — lovesick fools and weary old souls, agitators and wallflowers, peacocks and young parents-to-be, all united and made equal by the same shared and endless labor and the same cramped living quarters.”

Available to stream November 1

Other highlights:

– “Danton’s Death” (11/1)
– “L for Leisure” (11/1)
– “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (11/1)

“Fish Tank” (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)

As MUBI builds itself into both an emergent theatrical distributor and an essential streaming platform, it’s been fun to watch the company take advantage of its various opportunities for synergy. Whenever it gears up for a big screen new release from a major auteur, you can expect that MUBI’s streaming platform will offer subscribers a chance to discover or re-engage with that filmmaker’s most crucial previous work. And lo, as MUBI gears up for the release of Andrea Arnold’s “Bird” (one of the only films this year that features Barry Keoghan blasting Coldplay songs in order to make his pet toad excrete some more of its psychotropic sweat), the company’s latest streaming slate is topped by the animal-crazy director’s 2009 breakthrough “Fish Tank,” a hard-knuckled coming-of-age drama that continues to endure as the most unsparing and cathartic of her features. 

Capitalizing on the chatter around Luca Guadagnino’s “American Psycho” remake, MUBI’s November slate also includes Mary Harron’s original film, along with a bevy of work from the great Canadian documentarian Alanis Obomsawin (e.g. “Mother of Many Children”), along with fascinating shorts from the likes of David Cronenberg and Julie Dash.

Available to stream November 8

Other highlights:

– “American Psycho” (11/1)
– “Mother of Many Children” (11/1)
– “Diary of an African Nun” (11/1)

“Elegant Beast” (dir. Yuzo Kawashima, 1962)

OVID continues to be an invaluable safety net for interesting new movies that fall through the cracks of America’s broken industry, as well as a brilliant catch-all for under-the-radar classics that deserve to have their moment in the spotlight. November’s OVID slate makes good on both of those functions. In regards to the former we have Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s “Stonewalling,” a 2022 NYFF highlight about a 20-year-old Chinese student who tries to plot out a course for her life in the aftermath of an unexpected pregnancy; informed by a penetrating look at the various avenues and dead ends of China’s current economy, “Stonewalling” offers a lucid window into the life of an ordinary woman struggling to find her way. 

On the flipside, Yuzo Kawashima’s unsparingly satirical “Elegant Beast” spirits us back a few decades to an economy of a very different sort, as an “ordinary” family preys on their friends and lovers in order to get ahead during Japan’s post-war period. A major touchstone for the generation of radical Japanese films that would follow in its wake, “Elegant Beast” is a must-watch for fans of firebrands like Nagisa Oshima and Koreyoshi Kurahara, and OVID is the only place you can stream the film’s new 4K restoration.

Available to stream November 15

Other highlights:

– “Stonewalling” (11/8)
– “Cat City” (11/14)
– “Stuntwomen” (11/20)

“The Piano Lesson” (dir. Malcolm Washington, 2024)

November is typically Netflix’s biggest month of the year for exclusive new movies, and 2024 is no exception to that rule, as the streaming giant is once again unleashing the lion’s share of its Oscar hopefuls all at once before the Thanksgiving break. The highest-profile of the lot would have to be Jacques Audiard’s admirably eccentric but audaciously mishandled trans cartel musical “Emilia Pérez,” which is storming into awards season with a momentum that continues to baffle many critics. Fortunately, that albatross is joined by a handful of smaller but more interesting titles, including “Barbie” cinematographer Rodriego Prieto’s directorial debut “Pedro Páramo,” the all too timely but aptly named invention-of-IVF drama “Joy,” the Chiwetel Ejiofor Sundance drama “Rob Peace,” and the Rachel Zegler-voiced “Spellbound.” Best of all might be Malcolm Washington’s bold and brilliantly performed August Wilson adaptation “The Piano Lesson,” which takes a more aggressive approach to the source material than the director’s father did with “Fences,” and — thanks to the likes of Danielle Deadwyler, Samuel L. Jackson, and Danielle Brooks — boasts must-see performances of a simular magnitude. 

Available to stream November 22

Other highlights:

– “Pedro Páramo” (11/6)
– “Joy” (11/22)
– “Spellbound” (11/22)

“Pig” (dir. Michael Sarnoski, 2021)

The most resonant films about loss represent a wide variety of genres and modes, and yet they’re all bound together by the shared understanding of a simple truth: Acceptance may be the last stage of grief, but it’s invariably the longest as well. The acceptance of death is neither a respite nor an exit ramp — it’s a purgatory as infinite and layered as the inferno itself, a maze so vast that most people eventually stop looking for a way out and instead start looking for ways to forget that they can’t escape. The story of a man so lost in the labyrinth that he thinks he’s managed to escape it, Michael Sarnoski’s remarkable “Pig” is nothing if not one of those films (and Quentin Tarantino would seem to agree).

In a sharp pivot away from the maximalism of his usual performances, Nicolas Cage delivers a career-best turn as Robin Chef, a revered Portland chef until personal tragedy inspired him to trade clout for snout and spend the rest of his days as a reclusive truffle forager in the woods at the edge of the city, where he lives with his beloved pig. People who decide to “Walden” themselves away from modern society always appear as though they understand something that the rest of us don’t, and Robin seems to have found a way to rescue meaning from the clutches of loss. Then some meth addicts steal Robin’s pig, the man goes haywire, and it shifts into focus that he hasn’t accepted his wife’s death at all.

On the contrary, we realize that Robin found life without her so hard to stomach that he just left it behind and refused to look back. It’s not denial so much as a slightly more extreme version of the way that most people learn to cope long-term. But that’s exactly why this surprisingly gentle and endearingly mythic tale makes for such an essential addition to the rich history of movies about grief: “Pig” doesn’t see acceptance as the end of one road, but rather the beginning of another — a road so long and winding that even its detours might lead you straight through hell and out the other side.

Available to stream November 26

Other highlights:

– “Fences” (11/1)
– “Clouds of Sils Maria” (11/30)
– “The Lovers” (11/30)

“Twisters” (dir. Lee Isaac Chung, 2024)

A stand-alone sequel to the second-biggest summer blockbuster of 1996, Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters” might belong to a different millennium than Jan de Bont’s original, and it only shares a single character with that cow-flying classic of early Hollywood CGI (a data machine named Dorothy), but each of these spectacles is swept along by the same creative ethos. To quote a character who’s racing to save as many civilians as he can from the massive tornado that rips through an Oklahoma town during the climax of Chung’s film: “We’ve gotta get everyone into the movie theater!” 

Much like its predecessor, this rousing and surprisingly romantic gust of multiplex fun spins a strange combination of genres into a conventionally satisfying ride. Where “Twister” spun a vintage screwball comedy into the shape of a cutting-edge disaster movie, “Twisters” effectively flips that script by launching a (very) breezy modern rom-com into the vortex of an old school Amblin adventure. 

Available to stream November 15

Other highlights:

– “Blockers” (11/1)
– “Interstellar” (11/1)
– “Ambulance” (11/23)

“Coraline” (dir. Henry Selick, 2009)

Prime Video is never going to be famous for its repertory programming, but the streamer’s November slate is bolstered by timely (if extremely available) mainstays like “Gladiator,” in addition to a handful of early 2000s Spielberg classics like “Catch Me if You Can” and “War of the Worlds.” Prime’s selection of new exclusives is a bit more of a grab bag, but “Abigail” could make a tasty appetizer for next month’s “Nosferatu,” and Megan Park’s memorably titled “My Old Ass” — which stars Maisy Stella as a teenager who trips so hard on mushrooms that she opens a dialogue with her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza — is the kind of heartfelt indie charmer that should play as well in your living room as it did at Sundance earlier this year. “Coraline,” our pick of the month, falls somewhere between those two categories, but look beyond the Neil Gaiman of it all and you’ll be rewarded with one of the greatest stop-motion films ever made, along with a sobering reminder that of the horrors that certain fantasies can inflict upon the real world.

Available to stream November 24

Other highlights:

– “Carrie” (11/1)
– “Catch Me if You Can” (11/1)
– “My Old Ass” (11/7)
 

“Rita” (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2024)

I’m sad to say that I haven’t had the chance to watch Jayro Bustamante’s “Rita” just yet (it premiered at Fantasia Fest in July, and is heading straight to Shudder later this month), but anyone familiar with the Guatemalan filmmaker’s “La Llorona” should understand why anything he makes is worth highlighting — even sight unseen. Shot during the COVID pandemic, but still formally unbound enough to win a Fantastic Fest award for its cinematography, “Rita” tells the story fo a 13-year-old girl who winds up in a very unusual institution for wayward youths after she runs away from her abusive father. The bad news is that the institution is run by a cadre of witches and demons. The good news is that Rita’s fellow inmates have developed the superpowers necessary to bring them down. Despite being rooted in the abject horror of the 2017 orphanage fire that inspired it, Bustamante’s latest is said to pivot away from the atmospheric dread of his previous work in favor of pursuing a more magical-realist bent in line with the likes of “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Eager as I am to revisit the “Child’s Play” series and check out Sarah Appleton and Jasper Sharp’s new documentary about J-horror films (“The J-Horror Virus”), “Rita” is undoubtedly at the top of my watchlist for November.

Available to stream November 22

Other highlights:

– “Child’s Play” (11/1)
– “The J-Horror Virus” (11/1)
– “Black Cab” (11/8)