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From exciting Originals like “Private Life,” to horror classics like “The Shining,” Netflix is swinging for the fences this October.<\/p>\nFrom exciting Originals like “Private Life,” to horror classics like “The Shining,” Netflix is swinging for the fences this October.<\/p>\n
Sundance<\/p>\n
2018 has been a game-changing year for Netflix\u2019s original film output, and its October release slate hammers that home in a big way. After months of festival hype, the streaming giant\u2019s subscribers will finally get to see a handful of the very best movies the company has released thus far. From Tamara Jenkins\u2019 tender and hilarious \u201cPrivate Life,\u201d to Sandi Tan\u2019s unclassifiable meta-doc \u201cShirkers,\u201d Sara Colangelo\u2019s unnerving remake of \u201cThe Kindergarten Teacher\u201d (featuring a career-best performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Timo Tjahjanto\u2019s brutal Indonesian beat-em-up \u201cThe Night Comes for Us,\u201d Netflix is earning your $10.99 this month.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s not all: In addition to that eclectic mix of exciting new films, the service is also bolstering their roster with a few certified classics, from the iconic \u201990s comedy \u201cEmpire Records\u201d to Sergio Leone\u2019s \u201cOnce Upon a Time in America\u201d (a film that some say was the \u201cEmpire Records\u201d of its day). There\u2019s even a little something for all the horror fans who are counting down the days to Halloween, as no month-long celebration of the genre is complete without \u201cThe Shining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are the seven best movies coming to Netflix in October 2018.<\/p>\n
7. \u201cThe Night Comes for Us\u201d (2018)<\/p>\n
In case you couldn\u2019t guess from badass title (and all of the violence that it implies), \u201cThe Night Comes for Us\u201d is the latest bone-breaking spectacular featuring Indonesian action star extraordinaire, Iko Uwais. And judging by the early word out of Fantastic Fest \u2014 one review called the film \u201ca wonderfully creative look at how absolutely every single inanimate object in the room can be turned into a weapon\u201d \u2014 Uwais\u2019 latest vehicle is such an over-the-top bloodbath that it makes \u201cThe Raid 2\u201d look like \u201cThe Raid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read More:Fantastic Fest Reborn: One Year After Scandal and Heartbreak, a Beloved Genre Festival Is Working to Rebuild
\nWritten and directed by Timo Tjahjanto (\u201cHeadshot\u201d), the movie casts Joe Taslim as a Jakartan hitman who goes rogue after his bosses ask him to murder a little girl. In response to that heartless request, our hero decides to find every corrupt gangster in his entire criminal organization and kick them to death. Alas, that\u2019s not going to be as easy as it sounds, as his childhood friend \u2014 Uwais \u2014 has been dispatched to kill him. Lots and lots of pain is sure to ensue. It\u2019s true that a film like \u201cThe Night Comes for Us\u201d inevitably loses something when you don\u2019t see it on the big screen, but the Netflix of it all at least gives us the power to pause and rewind all of the most brutal fight scenes, of which there should be many.<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 19th.<\/p>\n
6. \u201cEmpire Records\u201d (1995)<\/p>\n
Damn the Man! Save the Empire!<\/p>\n
Buried in theaters as though it were always intended to be an evocative time capsule of the mid-\u201990s, Allan Moyle\u2019s \u201cEmpire Records\u201d is a glorious throwback to a magical time when flannel ruled the land, the Gin Blossoms were the sound of a generation, and record stores were a thing that still existed. In fact, this entire anti-establishment studio comedy takes place in one of those forgotten temples of physical media, as a motley crew of young and attractive retail employees try to survive a very busy day at their home away from home, and also convince their manager (an iconic Anthony LaPaglia) not to sell out to The Man.<\/p>\n
This movie has everything: Ren\u00e9e Zellweger blaring \u201cSugarhigh\u201d at the top of her lungs, Ethan Embry as a GWAR-obsessed wasteoid, Liv Tyler playing a plaid-aholic schoolgirl who\u2019s split between crushes, Robin Tunney as a suicidal pre-emo girl who memorably shaves her head on screen, and Johnny Whitworth doing everything in his power not to come off as the poor man\u2019s Ethan Hawke. And then there\u2019s the soundtrack \u2014 a genuine lifechanger if ever there was one. The Cranberries! Toad the Wet Sprocket! Evan Dando! To this day, \u201cEmpire Records\u201d still owns \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d by Dire Straits (a vintage holdover that isn\u2019t even on the soundtrack, but managed to catch fire all the same).<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 1st.<\/p>\n
5. \u201cThe Kindergarten Teacher\u201d (2018)<\/p>\n
Kindergarten teacher Lisa Spinelli (a captivating Maggie Gyllenhaal) has spent the last 20 years of her life teaching kids the alphabet and shepherding them to the next stop on the assembly line of America\u2019s school system, and she\u2019s finally beginning to succumb to the banality of it all. Her coping mechanism: A nighttime poetry course she attends once a week in a dank university classroom somewhere along her commute back to Staten Island. The trouble is, she needs this just a little bit too much. Alas, Lisa\u2019s poetry is awful \u2014 well, \u201cawful\u201d isn\u2019t the right word, but the truth of the matter is even worse: her poetry is mundane. And she knows it.<\/p>\n
So when one of Lisa\u2019s five-year-old students starts walking around her classroom in a trance and reciting some very beautiful lines of original verse, the teacher is instantly both rapt and rattled. Little Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) has never stood out to her before, but it doesn\u2019t take long for Lisa to believe that she has a young Mozart on her hands. Jimmy\u2019s family isn\u2019t interested in nurturing the boy\u2019s genius, so Lisa decides to take matters into her own hands. Things only escalate from there, the butter sliding off the knife as she desperately tries to protect Jimmy\u2019s remarkable gift before it\u2019s snuffed out by a callous world that doesn\u2019t know what to do with beautiful things.<\/p>\n
An exceptionally acted (if exceedingly faithful) remake of Nadav Lapid\u2019s 2014 Israeli film of the same name, \u201cThe Kindergarten Teacher\u201d is a harrowing ride, packing the nail-biting moral panic of a great thriller into a tilted character study about a woman coming undone as she screams into the void. While Colangelo sorely lacks Lapid\u2019s autobiographical insight and his formal virtuosity (the \u201cLittle Accidents\u201d director opting for a straightforward approach that strips this version of the original\u2019s roving and intimate camerawork), she understands every inch of Lisa\u2019s situation, and mines a fiercely brilliant turn from Maggie Gyllenhaal.<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 12th.<\/p>\n
4. \u201cShirkers\u201d (2018)<\/p>\n
Sandi Tan has always wanted to be a filmmaker, and she has never been willing to wait. As a teenager growing up in Singapore in the early \u201990s, Tan\u2019s imagination was so infectious that all of her friends rallied around the cause, helping her to create a wildly idiosyncratic coming-of-age movie that was suffused with the unique spirit of its cast and crew. That movie was called \u201cShirkers.\u201d Maybe you\u2019ve seen it? Trick question: Nobody\u2019s seen it, because all of the footage was stolen by the strange American man who served as Tan\u2019s mentor, and spent a little too much time helping these high school girls on their after-school project. The trauma of this betrayal would linger with Tan for decades; not only did this guy steal her story, it was as if he had also stolen her ability to tell stories at all.<\/p>\n
But now, after a lifetime of doubt, Tan is ready to reclaim everything that was rightfully hers. A documentary that boasts the same title its maker once assigned to her feature debut, Tan\u2019s new \u201cShirkers\u201d finds the filmmaker piecing together memories of her formative years, and then trying to track down the man who walked out of her life with canisters full of her dreams; it\u2019s a beguiling personal odyssey about a woman closing the distance between herself and her art. Combining the unbridled joy of DIY filmmaking with the morbid intrigue of a murder-mystery, \u201cShirkers\u201d is as delightful and captivating as anything you\u2019ll see this year (on Netflix or elsewhere).<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 26th.<\/p>\n
3. \u201cOnce Upon a Time in America\u201d (1984)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine that a movie this large could ever fall through the cracks, but the gargantuan \u201cOnce Upon a Time in America\u201d \u2014 an engrossing period crime epic that features indelible performances from the likes of Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Tuesday Weld, and even James Woods, along with one of Ennio Morricone\u2019s finest scores and luminously bronzed cinematography by Tonino Dell Colli \u2014 has never found the broad fanbase that it deserves. It feels like \u201cThe Godfather\u201d plays on HBO more times in a single month than \u201cOnce Upon a Time in America\u201d plays on all of cable television in an entire year. But now there\u2019s something that might level the playing field.<\/p>\n
Watching \u201cOnce Upon a Time in America\u201d on your laptop is sort of like looking at the \u201cMona Lisa\u201d on a postcard, but it\u2019s hard to deny the upside of having Sergio Leone\u2019s sprawling and tortured late-career masterpiece available to all six zillion of Netflix\u2019s subscribers. Or, at least, a version of Leone\u2019s sprawling and tortured late-career masterpiece: Mercifully, Netflix is streaming the 229-minute \u201cEuropean Cut,\u201d and not the truncated American edition (the full, 269-minute version is still being restored with help from Martin Scorsese and his Film Foundation).<\/p>\n
De Niro stars as a guy named Noodles\u2026 and that should be enough to convince you to give this movie a shot. But if you really need more: Stretching from the 1920s to 1968 and points beyond, the film chronicles Noodles from his time as a Lower East Side street kid, to his stunted rise through the local underworld during Prohibition, and then to his new life upstate where he assumes a fake identity. It\u2019s a moving and monumental piece of work, with plenty of rewards for anyone who\u2019s willing to set aside the time and devote their full attention.<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 1st.<\/p>\n
2. \u201cPrivate Life\u201d (2018)<\/p>\n
A hilarious, bougie, and crushingly honest story about a desperate couple trying something \u2014 anything \u2014 to have a baby before it\u2019s too late, Tamara Jenkins\u2019 first film since \u201cThe Savages\u201d has been gestating for nine years, and it\u2019s more than worth the wait.<\/p>\n
Another acting showcase for a writer-director who\u2019s previously mined new depths from talents like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei, \u201cPrivate Life\u201d stars Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn as Richard and Rachel Grimes, 47 and 41 respectively. By the time the film kicks off, it\u2019s clear the pair have been running themselves ragged on \u201cthe fertility treadmill\u201d for quite a while. Maybe too long. Their story is sad and funny in equal measure, with all of the laughs are delicately layered atop a bedrock of scar tissue and disappointment. But things start to look up for the Grimes\u2019 when they take in their stray 25-year-old niece, Sadie (spirited newcomer Kayli Carter), who might be willing to help them out.<\/p>\n
And so begins a modern domestic rollercoaster, full of tempered highs, devastating lows, and a tenacity that blurs into the quixotic. At times feeling like an entire season of a Netflix series has been crunched down to 127 minutes, \u201cPrivate Life\u201d is a long and winding road, but the sheer gauntlet that Richard and Rachel put themselves through is best appreciated without interruption. Over time, as one cycle bleeds into another, \u201cPrivate Life\u201d grows into less of an epic about reproduction than one about resilience. It\u2019s a beautiful modern love story, in a way.<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 5th.<\/p>\n
1. \u201cThe Shining\u201d (1980)<\/p>\n
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
\nAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
\nAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
\nAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
\nAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
\nAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.<\/p>\n
Available to stream on October 1st.<\/p>\n
View this article at IndieWire<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From exciting Originals like “Private Life,” to horror classics like “The Shining,” Netflix is swinging for the fences this October. Sundance 2018 has been a game-changing year for Netflix\u2019s original film output, and its October release slate hammers that home in a big way. After months of festival hype, the streaming giant\u2019s subscribers will finally
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