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

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

New on Netflix

Netflix ponied up a whopping $30-million to acquire the rights to Malcolm & Marie (Feb. 5), a drama by Sam Levinson (Euphoria) that was shot on the sly during the pandemic. John David Washington stars as a filmmaker who forgets to thank his girlfriend (Zendaya) during an awards acceptance speech; the film focuses on the ensuing blowout. Early reviews have been savage, though it must be said that the film is certainly picking its battles by focusing much of its ire on film critics themselves. (See my review here.) The film was originally pegged as an awards frontrunner but seems to be losing momentum as awards groups have started releasing nominations. It hits Netflix on the same day as the Taiwanese drama Little Big Women, the Italian romance The Last Paradiso and the Korean space blockbuster Space Sweepers.

The disappearance and death of Elisa Lam has been much discussed on the Internet. The young woman disappeared from the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles in February of 2013 and was found dead in the hotel’s water supply five days later. The mysterious death is the subject of Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, the latest in Netflix’s ever-expanding catalogue of multi-chapter true-crime sagas. It premieres on Feb. 10 alongside The Misadventures of Hedi and Cokeman, a French comedy based on a webseries of the same name. Also hitting the service on Feb. 11 (a few days before Valentine’s Day, of course) are the Polish rom-com Squared Love and the Indonesian romance Layla Majnun.

New on Amazon Prime Video

Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek star in Bliss, a new sci-fi drama from Mike Cahill (Another Earth, I Origins). I can’t say I found it a particularly edifying watch, though Cahill certainly has his fans out there — and it’s at the very least a riskier proposition than a lot of what the big streaming services are rolling out these days. (Read my review here.) Amazon also has the exclusive rights to Greenland, a Gerard Butler-starring disaster film that saw its local release kiboshed by the pandemic. Reviews were curiously positive, though not exactly dithyrambic, when the film played in the States. Also hitting the service this week are the newest version of The Secret Garden and The Silencing, an action thriller starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

New on Crave

All four seasons of the hit HBO show Search Party drop onto Crave on Feb. 5. Alia Shawkat and John Early star in the dark comedy from creators Michael Showalter, Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers. MTV’s Cribs has somehow been resurrected in the form of MTV Cribs International, which premieres on Feb. 5. Other additions include the 2019 documentary Willie, about First Nations hockey player Willie O’Ree; The Big Sick, the Academy Award-nominated rom-com written by and starring Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan (and directed, in fact, by the aforementioned Michael Showalter); Denzel Washington’s directorial debut Antwone Fisher and the classic early 2000s rom-com Love & Basketball.

New on Apple TV Plus

The Snoopy Show is the latest adaptation of Charles M. Schulz’s classic comic strip Peanuts, a direct result of the success of Snoopy in Space, a short film that premiered on Apple TV Plus around the time the platform launched.

New on CBC Gem

Season 4 of the British show Call the Midwife drops on Feb. 5 alongside the TV movie Anthony, about a British teenager who was killed in a racist attack in 2005. Also premiering on the service this Friday is the cooking show Rachel Khoo: My Swedish Kitchen and Sweet Daddy Siki, a documentary about the country singer and wrestler of the same name.

New on Criterion Channel

The partnership between 1930s dream team Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich is on display with a seven-film retrospective on the Channel. Also the subject of retrospectives this week are Lana Turner and Ruby Dee, as well as streaming releases of Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell and the 1980s animated classic The Last Unicorn. ■

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.

Find out what’s new on Apple TV Plus here.

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

See what’s new on Criterion Channel here.

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