What's New To Streaming In November
Plus: Star Wars and Game of Thrones make big announcements
There are two major new streaming services debuting this month. Apple TV+ starts today (you can get that free for a year if you’ve recently bought an iPhone, iPad, or Mac) and Disney+ kicks off on November 12th. Stay tuned for more about these new services in the coming months, but for now we are giving you the best of what’s new to streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO this month. See here for the full lists.
Also, make sure you check out our BONUS Halloween edition sent out on Wednesday with a few horror recommendations.
Billy recommends…
Step Brothers (streaming on Netflix)
The dumb person comedy is a fascinating genre. It is so hard to get these movies tonally correct. Lean too hard on the dumb and you get characters that have nothing to latch on to. Go too far away from the dumb and you have the same problem. Let’s get this out of the way. Dumb and Dumber is the greatest dumb person comedy of all time, but Step Brothers is pretty damn perfect as well.
Will Ferrell is at the apex of his career when Step Brothers came out. Before this point he had already created classics and everything after is not nearly as memorable. There is nothing worse than someone analyzing a comedy and telling you why it’s funny, but I am going to try and do that here. A formula that seems to work for some legendary comedy is to have a transcendent funnyman like Will Ferrell and then bring in a great character actor like John C. Reilly. Reilly is for sure a funny actor. Talladega Nights came before this, but even Reilly’s serious roles had a little bit of comedy. Ferrell’s strength is understanding the comedy space and creating a scenario that on paper is funny. He himself is funny enough to make it kind of work, but leaning on a critically acclaimed actor like Reilly to carry the scene with him makes for some perfect scenes.
Two dim-witted 40-year-old toddlers, Dale Doback and Brennan Huff, living at home should be sad, but once you see the characters make bunk beds together it all of a sudden becomes hilarious. The writers recognize the actors comedic abilities and gives each of them a chance to explode. Ferrell gets to whip out his ball sack. Reilly gets to dress up as a KKK member to make sure his brother-in-law can’t sell their parents’ home. Adam Scott gets to lip sync “Sweet Child of Mine.” Kathryn Hahn gets to constantly try and seduce Dale with increasingly drastic methods. Richard Jenkins gets to reminisce on his early life desire to be a dinosaur.
All of these factors mold together to create 98 minutes of non-stop laughter. I’m not trying to hype this up so that other cinema lovers will respect me more. If anything it will hurt my cred. We all need movies like this in our lives. Laughing is an amazing thing and Step Brothers is one of the best at making me do that.
Drew recommends…
The Town (streaming on HBO)
The “criminal pulling off one last job before walking away from a life of crime” story may be cliched, but damn if it doesn’t work if executed well. In The Town, director and star Ben Affleck’s Boston heist movie, it is executed with impressive proficiency. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the leader of a gang of bank robbers that sets out to do one final score by robbing Fenway Park.
The Town is a very Boston movie, but it feels authentic because Affleck knows the area so well. In this film and his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, he uses non-actor “townies” to great effect. Similarly, the thick Boston accents don’t usually sound forced or put-on in his movies. After he spent most of the early 2000s starring in pretty terrible movies, Affleck surprised people with his ability to direct suspenseful and entertaining crime films. Just a couple years after The Town, his 2012 film Argo would go on to win Best Picture.
Affleck has proven himself to be excellent at casting his movies. As Jem, Doug’s loose cannon of a friend and fellow criminal, Jeremy Renner is as good as he’s ever been, leading to The Town’s only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Due to Renner’s menacing performance, you truly believe Jem would do anything -- anything -- to protect his people, which certainly doesn’t exclude sudden violence. Rebecca Hall plays Claire, a bank manager the crew takes hostage in the first scene. Doug falls hard for Claire, which complicates matters. The rest of the cast turns in memorable supporting turns, including Jon Hamm as the FBI agent on Doug’s tail and Blake Lively as Jem’s volatile sister.
The Town’s heist sequences are some of the best in recent memory (check out the heist movies we recommended in August). Each one, including the opening scene, the “nuns” robbery, and the Fenway heist, has a show-stopping feel. Affleck filmed these action scenes with impressive pace and skill, making this a highly rewatchable movie.
The Town accomplishes the difficult task of not only revitalizing a story we have seen before (criminal tries to escape his life), but also working hard enough to get us to care about these criminals. Each time I watch this movie, I come away ambivalent about if I want Doug to get away or not. That’s the mark of an incredibly compelling heist film.
Streaming TV Corner
The Office Episode of the Week
Billy: “Casual Friday” (Season 5, Episode 26)
This may have my favorite cold open. Kevin talking about his famous chili (I had chili tonight, btw) and upon finishing his recipe he falls and the chili spills everywhere. Doing pure physical comedy is often not funny, but this is an all time example of physical comedy that works.
Links to get you hyped
We are less than two weeks from the launch of Disney+, and with that, the premiere of the their new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian. A new trailer popped up this week, revealing stark visuals and an excellent cast featuring Pedro Pascal (Narcos), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad’s Gus), Carl Weathers, and Werner Herzog.
Whether you are “hyped” about this link depends on how negatively you felt about the final season of Game of Thrones, because GoT showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have stepped away from their planned Star Wars trilogy. (And in Thrones news, we’re getting a Targaryen spinoff series on HBO!)
The fall movie that is most likely to wreck you emotionally is Waves, starring Sterling K. Brown. It’s out November 15th.
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