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Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.) ‘Frankenstein’ Starts streaming: Nov. 7 The Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro has spent most of his career making movies about misunderstood monsters and human vanity, so it was only a matter of time before he tackled Mary Shelley’s gothic horror novel “Frankenstein.” Del Toro delivers a fairly faithful adaptation of the book, keeping much of Shelley’s structure, including the dual narratives: the first from the perspective of the reckless scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), obsessed with reanimating the dead, and the second through the eyes of Victor’s patchwork creature (Jacob Elordi), who becomes more intelligent and sensitive than his creator imagined possible. Similar to del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,” this film is rich with Old World atmosphere, with most of the action playing out in spectacular edifices suffused with rot, reflecting the damaged people who dwell within them. ‘The Beast in Me’ Starts streaming: Nov. 13 Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys play two strong-willed people who become neighbors and then unlikely collaborators in “The Beast in Me,” a character drama cloaked as a murder mystery. Rhys is Nile Jarvis, a brashly opinionated real estate developer who is famous both for his ruthless business acumen and for the rumors that he killed his long-missing ex-wife. Danes is Aggie Wiggs, a best-selling author whose life fell apart when her son died in a car accident. When Aggie decides to shake off her writer’s block by making Nile her next subject, he goes along with the project, assuming he can control the narrative. Although this story is ostensibly about a stressed-out writer becoming an amateur detective, the series also explores the tension that develops between two outsized personalities, both of whom think they have the upper hand. ‘Nouvelle Vague’ Starts streaming: Nov. 14 A playful movie aimed at serious cinephiles, “Nouvelle Vague” looks back at one of the most significant moments in pop culture history: when Jean-Luc Godard made his 1960 debut feature “Breathless,” radically bending the rules of filmmaking. The director Richard Linklater and his crew pay homage to the film by recreating its grainy, black-and-white look. They also honor the heyday of what came to be known as the French New Wave by filling the frame with actors playing the heroes of French cinema. Mainly, though, Linklater captures the youthful exuberance and experimentation of this time. Guillaume Marbeck gives a dryly funny performance as Godard, stubbornly iconoclastic to an infuriating degree, while Zoey Deutch (as Jean Seberg) and Aubry Dullin (as Jean-Paul Belmondo) are incredibly charming, playing actors who struggle to make sense of what their eccentric boss is asking them to do. ‘Train Dreams’ Starts streaming: Nov. 21 Based on a Denis Johnson novella, this lyrical historical drama is set mostly in the first half of the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest, where a freelance logger and handyman, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), tries to carve out a modest life for himself. Clint Bentley, the film’s director and co-writer, maintains the episodic quality of Johnson’s book, using Will Patton as a narrator to help connect the fragments of Robert’s story: the romance, the personal tragedy, the Great Depression, the expansion of the railroads, the dangerous adventures in the forest and the wonders he witnesses. “Train Dreams” is muted, melancholy and lovely to look at, with a cumulative power as it approaches its end and Robert reflects on what it means to be alive. ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5, Part 1 Starts streaming: Nov. 26 It has been over three years since the arrival of “Stranger Things” Season 4, but the action in the fifth and final season picks up just a little over a year later in Hawkins, Ind., a small town resting above a gateway to a demonic realm. When last we saw the show’s mostly teenage heroes, they had fought hard in multiple locations around the world but ultimately failed to prevent Vecna (played in his human form by Jamie Campbell Bower), the evil ruler of the Upside Down, from opening portals from his dimension into ours. For the first four episodes of the eight-episode final season, the series’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, have finally brought their sprawling cast back together in Hawkins for another round of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg-inspired 1980s nostalgia — and to prepare for the finale, which arrives on New Year’s Eve. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
