Netflix

After a paralyzing 118 days, the actors’ strike is now, finally, looking like it’s over, following hard in the footsteps of the similarly resolved WGA strike a couple of weeks ago. The SAG are claiming victory over the studios, who took an exceptionally long time to ratify demands that included everything from increased fees for work appearing on streaming services, to protections regarding the use of AI, to reproduce actors’ images on screen. There were many times during the strike when it looked as if both sides were simply too far apart to achieve a resolution. In the end, money talks: the major Hollywood studios and streaming services realized that without the swift agreement they needed, there would be a drought of product in the marketplace next year, and beyond.

After a relatively quiet few weeks at the US box office, now that the Barbenheimer phenomenon has finally receded from view, it has fallen to another all-conquering icon to drag audiences back to theaters in their millions. Yes, Taylor Swift is no longer content with conquering stadia, but has now managed to establish herself as an unparalleled draw for the big screen as well, with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour opening in American cinemas. With a first weekend gross of $97 million, it will either be the highest October launch since Joker in 2019, or even surpass it. Not bad for something made on a budget of no more than $20 million, self-produced by Swift herself and bypassing studios to be distributed directly to theaters.

Since Netflix’s Sex Education began in 2019, it has won plaudits for being one of the most reliably entertaining shows on the platform, combining refreshing frankness about sex in all its forms with a finely judged balance between gross-out humor and genuine wit, while also being unafraid to delve into deeper emotional territory. Showrunner and creator Laurie Nunn — daughter of British theatrical royalty Sir Trevor — has proved a remarkable talent, not least for assembling a truly excellent cast of lesser-known actors who have all transformed into stars over the past four years. There is, inevitably, a problem with popular shows continuing beyond their natural ending, and that is a feeling of staleness.

When the history of comedy’s resurgence in the early twenty-first century is written — when masses of people, silenced by the speech codes of the day, found solace and contrarian hope in the words of unsilenced comics — Shane Gillis will be a major turning point in that story.  It’s not just that he’s arguably the best stand-up under forty working today; it’s that his work won out over all the obstacles the world threw at him. He is now the comedy world’s embodiment of the Streisand Effect, where his attempted cancellation functioned instead as a rocket ship for his career based not on victimhood but on the stubborn nature of his skill. Gillis’s first special, Live in Austin, was a YouTube joint that has racked up 14 million views.

In the Nineties, David Fincher established himself as the cult director for a certain type of cineaste. After the misstep of Alien 3 (underrated, still not great), he came back triumphantly with the still-astonishing serial killer thriller Se7en, and then established his credentials with the millennial satire Fight Club. It was a box-office flop but attracted an immediate, fervent following who latched onto its director as a near-prophetic figure, capable of combining visual pizzazz acquired from his days as a music video director with a mordant, dark wit. He became one of those filmmakers who could simply be referred to by the initiated by his surname, like Scorsese or Spielberg.

The third series of the hit comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building has arrived on Hulu, to the same critical acclaim as the previous two installments, and the adventures of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez show few signs of coming to an end. This time the trio are joined by none other than acting royalty Meryl Streep, playing Loretta, a plucky but frustrated actress who has never advanced to the big time, and Paul Rudd, the supposedly nicest man in Hollywood, deliberately cast against type as the obnoxious and entitled star of the show that Short is directing on Broadway, which he is hoping will restore his fortunes: a desire cruelly frustrated by Rudd’s character dropping dead on opening night.

If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was the subtle message of Eldorado, a documentary that pretended to inform us about the real-life background sexual milieu to Cabaret and Babylon Berlin, but was really much more interested in promoting its political view that Weimar Germany with its sexual promiscuity, rampant drug use and anything-goes view on "gender" represented some kind of paradise on Earth which we should seek to emulate. A voice-over told us what to think: "They feel intimidated by this rapid change. The pace of change is a source of frustration to just about everybody. If you’re a radical, then change is happening much too slowly for you.

It is the best of times and the worst of times in Hollywood, where the phenomenal success of Barbenheimer elevated both movies to soaring box offices even as virtually the entire entertainment industry is on strike. But the success of these two films — one backed by the branding power of nostalgia and the desire to wear the color pink, the other by one of the last mainstream auteur directors with the power to do whatever he wants — also contrasts with the big problem facing the strikers. We know how many people saw these movies. We don't know how many people see much of anything else. The great cord-cutting has led us into a world with unprecedented opportunities to make all kinds of content.

The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra — not least in Egypt — was the casting of a black actress, Adele James, in the title role. After all, one of the few things that seems certain about Cleopatra’s early life is that she was a Macedonian Greek. Luckily, though, the show had a powerful counterargument to this awkward and Eurocentric fact. As the African-American professor Shelley P. Haley put it with a QED-style flourish, back when she was girl, her beloved (if uneducated) grandmother once said to her: "I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.

A wave of recent films, from Crazy Rich Asians to Turning Red to Everything Everywhere All At Once, has received critical acclaim for their representation of Asian Americans. But too often such films are one-dimensional, depicting the angst of model-perfect characters damaged by generational trauma and helicopter parenting. That's why the arrival of Beef, a show streaming on Netflix that follows two strangers whose moment of road rage leads to the self-destruction of their lives, is so welcome. The series is complex and nuanced; it breaks more artistic barriers than it has any right to. Beef is never interested in emphasizing that its cast is predominantly Asian American. Instead it chooses to depict them as imperfect people, responsible for the bad choices they make along the way.

On the 100th birthday of Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese reflected on his love of the iconic Italian filmmaker in a cover essay he wrote for Harper's magazine. The essay begins by pushing back against a particular excess of the modern film industry, which is “content.” Following his criticism of the predominant Marvel Cinematic Universe as “theme park movies,” Scorsese aims at streaming services for relying on automated algorithms to determine what viewers want to watch. He then praises platforms that emphasize more curation. One of them is the Criterion Channel, a service that is part of the Criterion Collection, a physical media boutique that specializes in the restoration of classic and contemporary cinema.

As the bewilderingly overpraised Everything Everywhere At Once continues its inevitable march to Best Picture at the Oscars, many of the films that were once tipped to defeat it have slipped away. The Banshees of Inisherin, Top Gun: Maverick, Tár — all have settled into their time-honored place of being forever the Academy’s bridesmaid and not the triumphant bride. Yet almost out of nowhere, Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front has emerged as a serious contender. It swept the BAFTA awards in February, and with nine Oscar nominations, including Best Film, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Adapted Screenplay, it looks certain to win at least a couple of them. Not bad for a two-and-half-hour adaptation of a 1929 German novel.

Before the beginning of February, American viewers may have been forgiven for not knowing who Philomena Cunk was. The actress who plays her, Diane Morgan, was familiar enough thanks to her appearances in Ricky Gervais’ After Life and brief cameos in the Charlie Brooker-scripted Death to 2020 and Death to 2021. The one, the only, Philomena Cunk, however, remained a British phenomenon, much like Marmite and poor dentistry. Yet Netflix, recognizing the universal brilliance of the Cunk character, stepped in to co-produce her new series, Cunk on Earth, with the BBC. It aired to an appreciative Britain last September — now the United States has the great privilege of seeing Cunk unleashed. For the uninitiated, the set-up is simple but endlessly effective.

"Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three… between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP." So wrote Philip Larkin in his much-quoted poem "Annus Mirabilis." Sixty years later, while the Beatles’ Please Please Me is not entirely synonymous with matters sexual, there is still a fascination with DH Lawrence’s most famous book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It remains both a boundary-pushing erotic landmark and, now that the controversy behind it has long passed, a deeply affecting novel that is both romantic and Romantic in its reach.

For those with a love of history who remember what the History Channel once was, its current state is a travesty. What was once populated with interesting documentaries is now home to Ancient Aliens and Swamp People. Despite the channel being quite literally called the History Channel, history was not bringing in the dough. Now Netflix is joining the party. In early November 2022, the streaming platform released Graham Hancock’s eight-episode series, Ancient Apocalypse. Hancock believes that there was an advanced civilization that was destroyed at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,800 BC. Its members supposedly circumnavigated the globe, built wondrous feats of architecture, and may have left signs for future civilizations warning of coming catastrophes.