Halloween is over, and you know what that means. That’s right, we only have… *checks calendar* 363 days until next Halloween! While we wait in the meantime, there’s still a bunch of exciting new releases on the horizon to look forward to, including Gladiator II and Wicked! If you’re looking for the best movies new to streaming in November, however, you’ve come to the right place.
This month, we’ve got a smorgasbord of terrific films to watch from the comfort of your home, including a underseen Coen brothers classic, a beautiful sci-fi drama starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, and an Oscar-winning psychological drama starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons. Not to mention Gladiator — yes, it really is that good and you should watch it, even if you have already!
Here are the movies new to streaming services you should watch this month.
Editor’s pick: Barton Fink
Where to watch: Criterion Channel
Genre: Black comedy
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis
The Coen brothers have built a long successful career on irreverent tragicomedies and pseudo-period pieces rife with beleaguered protagonists and oddball characters. Barton Fink is both of those things and yet something more: a satire of the artifice of studio-era filmmaking and a scathing condemnation of artistic self-delusion.
Playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) travels to Los Angeles to write scripts for a film studio in Hollywood. What he experiences there shakes him to his core, forcing him to confront not only the limitations of his chosen profession, but that of his worldview and self-conception. Anchored by powerful supporting performances by John Goodman and Judy Davis, not to mention a phenomenal climax sequence that must be seen to believe, Barton Fink is one of the oddest and most extraordinary films in the Coen brothers’ entire oeuvre, and that’s really saying something. —Toussaint Egan
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
Genre: Psychological drama
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser
Is Damien Chazelle’s 2014 psychological drama a movie about an abusive musical instructor molding an impressionable student into his ideal player, or a story about what it takes to be the best in your chosen field? Wherever you land by the end of the movie, what’s clear is that Whiplash is one of the most impeccably crafted films of the 2010s. Miles Teller stars as Andrew Neiman, an aspiring jazz drummer who is terrorized by Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a ruthless and highly respected instructor at a prestigious conservatory in New York City.
The dynamic between the two is the driving force behind the film’s story and emotional arc, as Fletcher’s increasingly conniving and psychologically manipulative tactics push Andrew to his breaking point again and again, forcing him to abandon all other considerations apart from his drive to become a better drummer and finally earn his mentor’s approval. The music by Justin Hurwitz is scintillating, the cinematography is electrifying, and the performances rank as some of the best in Simmons and Teller’s respective careers to date. Whiplash is a cinematic tour de force that’ll grab you by your shirt collar and refuse to let go, right up to the exhilarating crescendo of its climactic finale. —TE
Image: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Genre: Sci-fi drama
Director: James Gray
Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga
Ad Astra never got the respect it deserved. This sci-fi masterpiece from director James Gray follows astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), who gets sent to a far-away solar system in search of his missing father, who made the same journey 30 years earlier and now seems to be threatening the universe.
While it was originally billed as a cross between a sci-fi epic and Apocalypse Now in space, the truth is that Ad Astra is a much quieter, more thoughtful film than that description might suggest. It’s more about the relationships between fathers and sons in adulthood than it is about laser gunfights or the human heart of darkness, though both of those things are certainly in there too. With the correct expectations, it’s easy to appreciate just how incredible Ad Astra really is. —Austen Goslin
Image: Warner Home Video
Genre: Gangster drama
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci
One of Martin Scorsese’s most celebrated and memorable films, and possibly his last unimpeachable classic, Goodfellas charts the rise and fall of a wannabe gangster who works his way into the Mob in 1950s Brooklyn, then finds the organization’s focus and fortunes changing radically over the decades that follow.
Packed with storytelling devices that Scorsese went on to repeat over and over — particularly the monologue voice-over introduction of a whole pack of colorful gangster characters who don’t much matter — Goodfellas is full of indelible dialogue and familiar comic bits (“I’m funny how? I mean funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?”). It’s the sprawling saga of a criminal watching the world change around him until he doesn’t recognize it anymore, made before any of these tropes, lines, and devices became clichés because so many people imitated Goodfellas. —Tasha Robinson
Image: Warner Home Video
Genre: Historical epic
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen
For more than two decades, Gladiator II has felt like a mirage; it was the far-off promise of a sequel to a turn-of-the-century classic that we’d never actually see. But then Paul Mescal happened and Ridley Scott, history’s most prolific 86-year-old director, decided the moment was finally right to give us the story of Lucius, son of Maximus. But we’ve still got about three weeks until that movie hits theaters, so it’s time for you to catch up on or revisit the original movie.
It’s hard to contextualize the original Gladiator today, but the good news is you don’t really have to. In the nearly 25 years since its release, Gladiator has aged wonderfully into an era-defining Hollywood epic. Scott photographs the grandeur and beauty of his cinematic Rome wonderfully, and watching this it’s easy to remember why Russell Crowe was the biggest movie star in the world in the early 2000s. So whether you’ve seen it or not, the sequel is the perfect excuse to return to the arena to witness Maximus’ glory. —AG