What’s new on Netflix, Prime, Crave and Criterion this week

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

New on Netflix

Cheap rom-coms (both cheap to make and of middling worth) have become a backbone of Netflix’s original output — big payoff for relatively small risk. The Kissing Booth 2 is, as you may have surmised from the title, the sequel to a 2018 rom-com starring Joey King (Fargo, The Act) and Jacob Elordi (Euphoria). Based on a young adult book, it tells the story of a high school senior and her long-distance relationship with her Harvard-bound, reformed-bad-boy hunk of a boyfriend. It drops today alongside Sing Along: Spain, a karaoke competition, and Offering to the Storm, a Spanish detective thriller.

Season 3 of the crime comedy Good Girls (which originally airs on NBC) drops on July 26. The show stars Christina Hendricks, Mae Whitman and Retta as a trio of women who turn to a life of crime in a time of necessity. From the archives comes Neil Blomkamp’s Elysium, a sci-fi movie starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, which drops on July 27. Jan Komasa’s follow-up to Corpus Christi, the Tribeca Festival award winner The Hater, drops on July 28. It centres around a young man who harbors a grudge against a bourgeois family and takes a job at a troll farm in which he finds the perfect opportunity to target the family he so thoroughly detests. Finally, this week sees the release of new seasons of docuseries Last Chance U (July 28) and Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons (July 29).

New on Amazon Prime Video

Jim Gaffigan combines the two most common formats available to comedians with streaming deals, the stand-up special and the travel special, with Pale Tourist, in which he travels to a country, takes in the culture and subsequently delivers a set tailored to its audience. The two countries covered in this first (and perhaps last) installment of Pale Tourist are Canada and Spain, which are admittedly a little easier to write for than, you know, Uzbekistan might be. Also dropping on Amazon on July 30 is Greta Gerwig’s acclaimed Little Women, the adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet.

New on Crave

Not that much has been made about the return of puppet crank-calling show Crank Yankers, which took a 12-year hiatus to return in late 2019. That season is now available for streaming on Crave. New additions to the regular rotation include Nick Kroll, Chelsea Peretti, Ron Funches and Natasha Leggero. Subscribers to the HBO + Movies branch of Crave can now stream the George Michael-inspired Christmas rom-com Last Christmas and the acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire as of today, July 24. On July 31, you can stream all six seasons of the true-crime docuseries Fear Thy Neighbor, which is predictably about… fearing your murderous neighbours.

New on Criterion Channel

It’s probably no coincidence that Criterion has an eight-film retrospective of Atom Egoyan’s work timed with the VOD release of his latest film, Guest of Honour. As of today, you can stream the Toronto-based director’s first eight films on the channel. Amongst other highlights is the Corneliu Porumboiu-directed documentary Infinite Football and Emir Kusturica’s Hollywood debut, the off-the-wall comedy Arizona Dream starring Johnny Depp, Vincent Gallo, Faye Dunaway and Jerry Lewis. ■

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.

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 and Criterion Channel