new on Netflix

What’s new on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, Crave, CBC Gem & Criterion

A critically acclaimed Andy Samberg comedy, George Clooney’s comeback, Chadwick Boseman’s last movie & more!

A weekly round-up of the new movies and TV series on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, CBC Gem and Criterion Channel

New on Netflix

George Clooney returns to the silver screen (whatever that might mean these days) in The Midnight Sky (Dec. 23), his first film as an actor in four years and first as a director in three years. Clooney plays Augustine Lofthouse, a scientist working alone in the Arctic in the wake of a global catastrophe. Having decided to stay behind due to a deadly illness, he discovers that a ship full of astronauts is returning to Earth and sets out trying to warn them of the cataclysm. The Midnight Sky’s opulent visuals would likely have worked better on the big screen, but as it stands, it’s Netflix’s last major film release of the year. 

new on Netflix
The Midnight Sky (new on Netflix)

Preceding it by a few days is George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, an adaptation of an August Wilson play set in the 1927 Chicago jazz scene. Black Bottom is particularly bittersweet as it features the last performance by Chadwick Boseman, who died of colon cancer earlier this year. Boseman plays a trumpet player alongside Viola Davis as the titular Ma Rainey. Also dropping this week is Your Name Engraved Herein, a Tawainese queer love story set in 1988. Quebec actor Jean-François Blanchard plays a priest in the film directed by Kuang-Hui Liu.

There’s a sizeable amount of catalogue (or “new-old”) titles being added to the service this week, including the 2020 Pauly Shore comedy Guest House, the Ferrell-Reilly bomb Holmes & Watson and A Dog’s Way Home, one of several million talking-dog movies released to general indifference in the last few years. This one has Bryce Dallas Howard voicing the titular dog. 

New on Amazon Prime Video

MacGyver (new on Amazon Prime Video)

Canadian audiences were left perplexed when Palm Springs, a Hulu-exclusive comedy starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti, was released to overwhelmingly positive reviews earlier this year — everywhere except here, where some Hulu titles simply fall into a vortex upon release. Benevolent streaming giant Amazon has fixed this by acquiring Canadian rights to Palm Springs, which drops on the service today alongside season 4 of The Grand Tour.

Also making their way to the service this week are seasons 1 to 3 of the MacGyver reboot starring Lucas Till and the middling Riley Keough-starring horror movie The Lodge, both available as of Dec. 20. On Dec. 24, you can stream the Malayalam comedy Halal Love Story and the Hindi comedy Coolie No. 1.

New on Crave

Four Kids and It (new on Crave)

Things are much quieter at Crave this week — it is the holidays, after all. Season 3 of Corner Gas Animated drops on Dec. 18 alongside the FOX News drama Bombshell starring Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron, the romantic drama The Photograph with Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield and something called Four Kids and It, a British movie in which kids befriend a magical little creature voiced by Michael Caine and use it to teach their wicked uncle (played by Russell Brand, of all people) a lesson. From HBO Sports comes Under the Grapefruit Tree: The CC Sabathia Story (Dec. 22), about the MLB pitcher of the same name.

New on Disney Plus

Soul (new on Disney Plus)

Disney Plus has a new Frozen-themed yule log. And the new Pixar movie Soul comes out next week, if that’s what you’re waiting for.

New on CBC Gem

new on Netflix
Find Me in Paris (new on CBC Gem)

CBC Gem has the third and final season of Find Me in Paris, a YA dramedy set in the world of ballet, dropping on Dec. 18. Also dropping today is a new season of Escape to the Chateau, a lifestyle series about buying chateaus aimed at, presumably, chateau enthusiasts and other sundry billionaires. 

New on Criterion Channel

new on Netflix
La Flor (new on Criterion Channel)

Ashley Clark programs Afrofuturism, a 28-film series based on the concept of imagined and alternative global Black experiences. Highlights include the Sun Ra film Space Is the Place, John Sayles’s The Brother From Another Mother and Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen. It premieres on the channel on Dec. 20. Just in time for Christmas is Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale, presented in a double feature with Miguel Gomes’s short Christmas Inventory. On Dec. 23, Criterion adds a retrospective of the work of director Margarthe von Trotta, while on Dec. 24, you can stream Mariano Llinas’s epic 14-hour (!) film La Flor. ■

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 Disney Plus here.

For what’s new on CBC Gem, click here.

See what’s new on Criterion Channel here.


For more film and TV coverage, please visit the Film & TV section.

A weekly round-up of the new movies and TV series on Netflix, Crave, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, CBC Gem and Criterion Channel