What’s new on Netflix, Prime, Crave, DisneyPlus and Criterion

A weekly roundup of the new movies and TV series on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video, DisneyPlus and Criterion Channel

New on Netflix

The Umbrella Academy was, by Netflix’s own admission, the third most popular show on the service in 2019, which does strike me as a bit of a surprise considering the almost complete absence of water-cooler conversation around the superhero show starring Ellen Page. Nevertheless, that’s more than reason enough to greenlight a second season, which hits Netflix today. Once you’re done bingeing that, you can move on to Get Even, a British murder-mystery show set at a boarding school. Also hitting the service today are South African rom-com Seriously Single and The Speed Cubers, a documentary short about competitive Rubik’s Cube-solving champions.

Aug. 1 also means the traditional smorgasbord of catalogue titles, which this month include The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Man of Steel, Murder on the Orient Express, Gone Baby Gone, Titanic and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, all of which drop on the first of the month. A little later this month you can catch most (but, it seems, not all) of the films from the Bring It On franchise, Doom and EdTV.

New on Amazon Prime Video

Over at Amazon Prime you can stream Jexi, which essentially seems to be a lowbrow take on Her wherein a dude (Adam Devine) falls in love with his operating system (voiced by Rose Byrne). All seasons of 24 and the U.K. superhero teen show Misfits are also dropping on Aug 1, followed soon thereafter by Bad Boys for Life (Aug. 5) and the Clark Duke-directed crime drama Arkansas (also on Aug. 5th), which co-stars Vince Vaughn and John Malkovich. 

New on Crave

I think the biggest (fiction) release this week has to be An American Pickle, the Seth Rogen vehicle based on a novella by Simon Rich that’s set to premiere on Aug. 6 on HBO Max in the States and Crave in Canada. Rogen stars as a turn-of-the-(19th)-century Jewish immigrant who falls into a vat of pickles and is preserved for 100 years, awakening to meet his directionless ancestor (also played by Rogen). If that doesn’t float your boat, you can catch up with Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (dropping on Aug. 1) or catch the first episode of the brand-new Star Trek prequel Lower Decks. 

New on DisneyPlus

About a month ago it was announced that Beyoncé had secured a $100-million deal with Disney to work on three separate projects, the first of which starts streaming today. Black Is King is described as both a “visual album” in the vein of Beyoncé’s previous film Lemonade and as a companion to The Lion King: The Gift. The 85-minute film is receiving rapturous, almost universal praise for both its visuals and its musical content.

New on Criterion Channel

On Aug. 2, Criterion presents Australian New Wave, a 21-film retrospective of innovative and influential Australian films from auteurs like George Miller (Mad Max), Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli), Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom, Money Movers) and Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, Starstruck). It’s followed a few days later by a partial retrospective of documentary filmmaker Ron Mann’s work, then by groundbreaking Kenyan LGBTQ romance Rafiki. ■

See what’s new on Netflix Canada here.

For what’s new on Crave, click here.

Find out what’s new on Amazon Prime Video here.

For what’s new on DisneyPlus, click here

See what’s new on Criterion Channel here.

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For more coverage of new movies and TV series, visit the Film & TV section.

A weekly roundup of the new movies and TV series on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video, DisneyPlus and Criterion Channel