Netflix has been dishing out its best films of the year recently, with Frankenstein, Nouvelle Vague and Train Dreams all firmly entrenched on my watchlist — but other new-to-Netflix movies should be on your radar.
Happy Christmas is a holiday movie aimed at people who hate holiday movies, while Moonage Daydream is an appropriately trippy documentary about the legendary musician David Bowie.
Finally, I always crave a good family drama this time of the year, and Everybody’s Fine has enough parent-child pathos to fill that quota and then some.
‘Happy Christmas’ (2014)
The holidays are fast approaching, and newly single Jenny (Anna Kendrick) has nowhere to go but back home. That’s in Chicago, where her indie film director brother, Jeff (Joe Swanberg), lives with his novelist wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey), and their two-year-old child. Jenny means well, but she’s a bit immature and flighty. While Jeff is willing to give her a chance, Kelly remains skeptical — can she really trust someone she barely knows? Jenny wants to prove she’s a good sister and aunt, but can she grow up in time to become the responsible adult she aspires to be?
Happy Christmas sounds like a typical holiday family movie, but it’s anything but. As part of the mumblecore movement, the movie favors naturalistic lighting and real dialogue over the exaggerated plots and characters normally found in Christmas movies. The result is a believable movie about what it actually feels like to visit your relatives over the holidays — the relief of being taken care of by others, the awkwardness that comes when you realize just how far you’ve grown apart and the love you still feel for each other. Happy Christmas is an oddly life-affirming movie that doesn’t use false sentiment or eye-rolling plots to achieve that.
Happy Christmas is streaming on Netflix.
‘Moonage Daydream’ (2022)
The word “icon” gets used a lot nowadays, but the singer/actor/personality David Bowie deserved to be called one. A taboo-shattering trendsetter, he broke ground as a musical iconoclast who also upended traditional perceptions of gender, sexuality and masculinity.
It’s only fitting that he got a documentary that’s every bit as unusual and aesthetically astounding as he was. Brett Morgen’s 2022 film Moonage Daydream uses a non-linear narrative to capture Bowie’s life, from a struggling artist who took London by storm in the late 1960s to a global superstar who conquered and influenced late 20th-century pop culture.
With access to over 5 million artifacts belonging to the Bowie estate, including rare recordings, poetry and paintings by the man himself, Morgen highlights how diverse and weird his career was. He wasn’t just a singer — he was also a painter, actor, writer, philosopher and, above all, an artist. I know that sounds a bit heavy, but Moonage Daydream isn’t deadly serious. Like Bowie’s music, it’s a blast to experience, and it will change the way you look at the man — and pop art — forever.
Moonage Daydream is streaming on Netflix.
‘Everybody’s Fine’ (2009)
Retired widower Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) is excited to reunite with his grown children over the holidays. When all of them cancel at the last minute, he decides to visit them to see what they are up to. But to Frank’s dismay, he discovers he doesn’t know his kids as much as he thought. Daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore) seems to be hiding her personal life from him, while son Robert (Sam Rockwell) has lied about his well he’s doing at his job. After all these years, Frank must come to terms with the fact that he’s not a perfect dad and make up for it with the little time he has left.
Everybody’s Fine is a deliberately sentimental movie that takes a somewhat hard look at parenting and all the pleasures and regrets that come along with it. Frank made some mistakes in the past, but his heart was always in the right place. Does that compensate for the disappointment his children feel about him?
As the self-doubting Frank, De Niro has one of his rare leading roles that allows him to showcase his vulnerability. Frank isn’t a tough guy — he’s genuinely upset he’s not as close to his kids as he’d like to be. Barrymore also shines as a daughter who feels more comfortable lying to her dad instead of really connecting with him. Everybody’s Fine is a star-studded drama that asks tough questions and provides some — if not all — the answers.
Everybody’s Fine is streaming on Netflix.
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