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Coming Attractions: Streaming in September 2025

Notable shows “The Paper” (Peacock, 8/4), from the creators of the American “The Office,” is a sitcom that sends the documentary crew to Toledo to chronicle the efforts of a publisher (Domhnall Gleeson) to revive an historic newspaper. “NCIS: Tony and Ziva” (Paramount+, 9/4) reunites Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo as the former NCIS agents, now married and raising a daughter, as they go on…

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'The Tomb of Ligeia' – Vincent Price mourns his lost love on MGM+

The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), the eighth and final film in Roger Corman‘s cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, is considered by many the best (partisans tend to split over this and The Masque of the Red Death, 1963). It is certainly the most sophisticated, with rich performances by Vincent Price and British actress Elizabeth Shepherd. Price is both haunted protagonist and Gothic romantic leading…

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'The Bridge' – the last days of Nazi Germany on Criterion Channel

German filmmakers avoided (and perhaps audiences as well) were reluctant to confront World War II and its legacy in the years after the surrender to the Allies. Bernhard Wicki‘s The Bridge (Germany, 1959), adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Manfred Gregor (the pen name of journalist Gregor Dorfmeister), was the first major German film to take on the subject directly, and it did so…

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'Hangmen Also Die!' – resistance noir on Prime Video and Criterion Channel

With Hangmen Also Die! (1943), German-born filmmaker Fritz Lang takes one on the most momentous acts of resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe: the only successful assassination of a major Nazi commander. Reinhard Heydrich, who earned the nickname “The Hangman” for his brutality as Reichsprotektor of Czechoslovakia, was attacked in 1942 and died of his injuries, an action that was met with terrible…

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'Brawl in Cellblock 99' – Vince Vaughn picks a fight on Hulu and MUBI

Brawl in Cellblock 99 (2017) is my pick for the smartest piece of cinematic pulp fiction in 2017. It didn’t draw audiences to theaters, perhaps due to the extremes of the violent action. But if it lacks the elaborate choreography and martial grace of John Wick (by design), it more than makes up for it in the explosiveness of the action and the punch of raw brutality in the violence. Even when…

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The original 'Wet Hot American Summer' on Netflix and Peacock

Wet Hot American Summer (2001) has lived longer than anyone would have predicted while watching it in 2001. The self-aware summer camp spoof/nostalgia lampoon spawned a prequel and a sequel series for Netflix that play out in the same cheeky, silly, self-aware manner of adult actors playing at being teenagers. It feels as much an improv comedy game with old friends from the club circuit as it…

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'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' – We are family on Disney+

The Silver Surfer, the lonely, philosophical metal man who swooped down to Earth as a herald of the planet-devouring Galactus, was the most existential comic book creation of the 1960s. These two larger-than-life characters become the center of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), the sequel to the first big screen incarnation of the first family of Marvel Comics superheroes. It…

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'In Which We Serve' – for King and country on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

David Lean made the leap from film editor to director with help from playwright, actor, and all-around showman Noël Coward. He wanted more control over the screen adaptations of his plays but wanted help bringing his work to the big screen and brought on Lean as his co-director for In Which We Serve (1942). “This is the story of a ship,” intones the narrator (an unbilled Trevor Howard) as the…

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'Salt of the Earth' – fighting the power in 1954 on Prime Video and MGM+

The only American film ever to be blacklisted in the U.S., Salt of the Earth (1954) is an independently produced drama inspired by a real-life strike in New Mexico by Mexican-American mineworkers. The cast is comprised largely of non-professionals (many of them participants in the real strike) and the film was financed by the mineworker’s union and produced by socially-motivated artists that had…

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'Event Horizon' – a haunted space ship on Paramount+ and MGM+

A team of astronauts investigates an experimental American space ship that, after disappearing year before, suddenly reappears in the orbit of Neptune in Event Horizon (1997). Laurence Fishburne stars as mission commander Captain Miller and Sam Neill is Dr. Weir, the scientist who designed the mystery ship. Dressed in T-shirts and army green fatigues, Miller’s crew of smart talking pros finds a…

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The first big screen 'Fantastic Four' on Disney+

The original superhero family team first hit the big screen in Fantastic Four (2005), a busy, colorful, paper-thin comic book movie produced after Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men set a high bar and before the birth of the MCU. Given how well those movies reimagined the comics for live action cinema, Fantastic Four was something of a disappointment. Earnest Ioan Gruffudd was…

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Coming Attractions: Streaming in August 2025

Notable shows Jason Momoa cocreates and stars in “Chief of War” (Apple TV+, 8/1) as a Hawaiian warrior who attempts to unify the islands of Hawai’i before Western colonization at the turn of the 18th century. “The Paper” (Peacock, 8/4), from the creators of the American “The Office,” is a sitcom that sends the documentary crew to Toledo to chronicle the efforts of a publisher (Domhnall Gleeson)…

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'I, Robot' – the robotics (r)evolution on Disney+, Hulu and AMC+

Will Smith is Det. Del Spooner, a two-fisted, fast-talking, streetwise cop in near future Chicago, where robots are woven through the fabric of society, in I, Robot (2004). Suspicious of technology in general and robots in particular, he’s probably the last guy who should be investigating the death of Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the robotic pioneer who founded U.S. Robotics and created the…

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James Cagney is a 'Lady Killer' on HBO Max

James Cagney is the Lady Killer (1933) in this a spunky, snappy collision of gangster drama and show-biz comedy. Dan Quigley (James Cagney) is a two-bit hustler who muscles his way from back-alley crap games and crooked poker games to the top of the New York underworld. He’s top of the world until a murder sends him on the lam. He lands in Los Angeles, where he hustles his way to success a…

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'Brief Encounter' – the end of the affair on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Brief Encounter (1945), the last of four collaborations between director David Lean and playwright/screenwriter Noël Coward, isn’t just the pinnacle of their work together. Decades after its debut, it remains one of the most romantic films ever made. The bittersweet drama of an affair of the heart stars Celia Johnson as Laura, a suburban housewife who takes weekly trips to the city and falls in…

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Werner Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo' – bringing opera to the jungle on Prime Video, Peacock, and Metrograph

Fitzcarraldo (Germany, 1982) remains the most ambitious physical undertaking in German filmmaker Werner Herzog‘s five-decade-plus career. Klaus Kinski stars as the opera loving Brian Fitzgerald Sweeny (nicknamed Fitzcarraldo by the locals), a European would-be entrepreneur in South America who dreams of bringing the great Enrico Caruso to the jungle. To lure the famous tenor to the Amazon he…

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'The Bridge' – Two seasons of cultures in collision on Prime Video and Hulu

The U.S. has a long and complicated history of remaking foreign shows. There are a lot of failures, to be sure, but also a lot of success stories. The Bridge (2013-2014) is one of the more natural imports. The original show, a dark murder mystery procedural from Denmark, throws a cross-border complication into a case where the victim is found lying across the borderline on a bridge between…