November is starting off with a pretty chill weekend at the box office, but fear not: It is a stacked week for streaming. We’ve got an Oscar hopeful making a splash on Netflix alongside a documentary about the Italian Stallion, a new Taylor Sheridan series, the return of the nature-documentary GOAT, and a frankly absurd number of animated titles, including the streaming debut of Across the Spider-Verse. (And! This weekend also marks the wide release of Priscilla, so it’s not like there’s nothing new to see in theaters, you hound dogs.) —James Grebey
Featured Presentations
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Black Cake
This adaptation of Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel is full of marriage drama, familial secrets, and identity questions. It follows a runaway bride who disappears after her husband’s death in Jamaica; decades later, a woman leaves her two estranged children a flash drive containing stories about her life. Black cake, the traditional Caribbean fruitcake, connects the timelines. —Roxana Hadadi
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Lawmen: Bass Reeves
No corner of the West is safe from Taylor Sheridan, who executive-produces this series from creator Chad Feehan about the first Black deputy U.S. Marshal. Here, David Oyelowo gets to do all the horse riding, rifle shooting, and mustache sporting a Sheridan show requires. Dennis Quaid, Donald Sutherland, and Forrest Goodluck round out the cast. —R.H.
➽ Would be a wild swerve if Kevin Costner showed in this one.
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Quiz Lady
Awkwafina and Sandra Oh team up in director Jessica Yu’s Quiz Lady, a comedy about a pair of estranged sisters setting off to find money for their mother’s gambling debts. Oh plays the off-the-wall sister to Awkwafina’s (for once) straitlaced, game-show-obsessed Anne, who decides she should go on her favorite game show to win enough money for their mom. Will Ferrell, Jason Schwartzman, Tony Hale, and Holland Taylor round out a stacked cast. —Savannah Salazar
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Sly
A rags-to-riches story about an unlikely underdog who achieves tremendous fame and success — and all the problems and pitfalls that come with it? No, not Rocky. This is a documentary about the guy who made Rocky, the great Sylvester Stallone, looking back over his half-century career. —J.G.
➽ How much time do you think the doc spends on Stallone’s Guardians of the Galaxy role, Stakar Ogord? More or less than on Rambo?
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Invincible season two
The action-animation debuts on streaming are especially strong this week (more on the rest, below), but the title we’re most excited for is the return of the gritty animated superhero hour Invincible. In the wake of the first season’s reveal that the titular hero’s dad was an evil fascist P.O.S., Invincible must find a way to continue his superheroics while also facing new, skull-breaking, dimension-hopping, shape-shifting(?) villains. —Eric Vilas-Boas
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All the Light We Cannot See
Director Shawn Levy’s next project isn’t Deadpool 3, it’s actually a World War II drama. In All the Light We Cannot See, Aria Mia Loberti stars as a young blind woman named Marie-Laure broadcasting across Europe to reunite with her father (Mark Ruffalo). She ends up forging a friendship with a Nazi recruit named Werner (Louis Hofmann). —S.S.
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Fingernails
Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White star in this Apple TV+ film about a world where a test can prove, scientifically, whether two people are in love by using a sample of each of their fingernails (gross). A problem arises when Buckley’s character starts developing feelings for her co-worker, even though the fingernails say she should only have feelings for her husband, right? —J.G.
➽ As a serial nail-picker, I’m not sure how I feel about this.
The Great Outdoors, Onscreen
Planet Earth III
Sir David Attenborough, himself a natural wonder of the world, returns to once more narrate jaw-dropping footage of nature’s majesty in the third installment of the acclaimed BBC documentary series, which makes its U.S. debut on BBC America. Episode subjects include coasts, forests, fresh water, and “human,” which will showcase how animals live alongside the most dangerous beast of all: man. —J.G.
Reality Bites
Selling Sunset season seven
The Über-elite real-estate agents of Los Angeles are back for their seventh season. Expect plenty of drama (naturally) and have fun window-shopping for luxurious Hollywood Hills houses. —S.S.
The Real Housewives of Potomac season eight
If you know, you know that the Real Housewives franchise is strong. Introduced in 2016, the ladies of Potomac, Maryland, are trucking along with their eighth season. Gizelle Bryan, Ashley Darby, and more return with a new Housewife joining the cast, Nneka Ihim. —S.S.
New to Streaming
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The best animated movie of the year — and one of the best movies of the year, full stop — web-slings onto streaming. (In a different corner of the multiverse, though, Across the Spider-Verse was already streaming … on Quibi.) —J.G.
A Haunting in Venice
Kenneth Branagh’s latest outing as Hercule Poirot is almost a spooky ghost movie as much as a mystery movie, so it was good timing that it hit Hulu on Halloween. It’s November now, but A Haunting in Venice still works as an eerie autumnal romp. (Why wasn’t it in theaters during Spooky Season to begin with, though?) —J.G.
➽ Nyad, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster’s biopic about the titular jerk-wad swimming phenomenon, is now streaming on Netflix.
Animation Station
Onimusha
Directed by action maverick Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Ichi the Killer, Audition), this new anime based on the popular video game follows the samurai Musashi Miyamoto (whose character model is based on Toshiro Mifune’s look in the classic Samurai film trilogy) as he carves down fantastical demons in Japan’s early Edo period. —E.V.B.
Blue Eye Samurai
Netflix’s other action-packed chanbara series debuting today, Blue Eye Samurai, was created in the West (by husband-and-wife Michael Green and Amber Noizumi) but looks no less stylized. Also set in the Edo period, it follows a mixed-race woman who has to navigate the patriarchy and enemy swordplay as she walks “the path of revenge.” —E.V.B.
Make It a Double Feature
Watchmen (2019)
A series about Bass Reeves starring David Oyelowo? If that sounds familiar, it’s because Oyelowo already starred in a show playing a character who was inspired by the real-life lawman. Watchmen also has superheroes, deadly squid-rain, and a whole bunch of glorious weirdness that the Paramount+ series probably lacks. —J.G.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of October 27.
