NOW December picks

Every month, a new slate of titles is added to NOW’s library of films and TV shows—and critic Clarisse Loughrey picks the very best among them to watch. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (November 4)

For those yet to dive into journalist Ronan Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill, or its accompanying podcast, they’ll find plenty worthwhile in this six-part redux covering his efforts to expose Harvey Weinstein—the now-convicted Hollywood producer who used his position in order to create a veil of silence around his abuse and harassment of women. It not only provides a concrete basis for those trying to better understand the #MeToo movement—particularly when paired with the book She Said by journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey—but shines a light on the survivors and newspaper workers whose relative anonymity robbed them of their rightful place in the story.

Dexter: New Blood (November 8)

Considering he was such an early entry into prestige television’s pantheon of antiheroes, it seems only right that the serial killer with a conscience, Dexter Morgan (Michael C Hall), should get a second shot. After all, there’s many a fan out there still stewing over showrunner Clyde Phillips’s decision to end things with a logically impossible escape from a hurricane and a new life as a lumberjack.

This new “event” season promises something more satisfying, though Phillips himself has refused to call it a definitive conclusion. We meet Dexter in a strange, self-conconcted harmony, working in an outdoors shop in upstate New York under the alias Jim Lindsay. But can he really escape his most base impulses? Our guess is no.

Sort Of (November 11)

Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo’s tender-hearted comedy broke ground in its native Canada, as the first primetime TV show with a non-binary lead and a queer South Asian Muslim star at its centre. But it’s revolutionary in its thought, too—the show’s premise revolves around the idea that “transition” is a universal experience, though it comes it many forms.

Sabi Mehboob (Baig) is navigating several identities—who they are at work, with their Pakistani family, or as a nanny to a hippie family. So is their mother, who recently stopped working and now feels disconnected to her old life. And so is every other character—such is Sort Of’s broad, inclusive lens.

Top Picks: Movies

The Matrix Trilogy (November 14)

The Matrix trilogy is still unbeaten in the realm of pop-philosophy. Not only is it a challenge to navigate any conversation about technology and free will without uttering its name, but phrases like “red pill” are now fully embedded in our language—for better or worse.

With a fourth entry, The Matrix Resurrections, on the horizon, it’s worth revisiting these films (or visiting, if you missed them entirely) and reappraising the grungy, hypnotic beauty of the Wachowskis’s vision. Sure, certain scenes and ideas have lapsed into pure parody, but a few things remain true: “bullet-time” changed cinema; the series’ refusal to lean into happy, easy endings still feels brave; and it made tiny sunglasses and long leather coats perennially cool.

Riders Of Justice (November 24)

An ex-military commander seeks vengeance for his murdered wife—on paper, Riders of Justice is as rote as action cinema comes. But director Anders Thomas Jensen builds up those assumptions only to thoroughly undermine them. His film is, in truth, a frequently moving, but also frequently hilarious, portrait of grief and unspoken trauma set in the Danish suburbs.

It helps that the ex-military commander in question is played by Mads Mikkelsen, who’s always been very good at the kind of character you can’t quite decide whether to hug or flee.

A Boy Called Christmas (November 26)

‘Tis the season for heart-warming family fare—and A Boy Called Christmas is set to kick off your holiday celebrations in style. Adapted from Matt Haig’s award-winning bestseller, it follows a young boy (Henry Lawfull) as he sets out in search of his missing father, a man determined to find the legendary dwelling place of the elves. But the real appeal here lies in its all-star cast, which features Toby Jones, Kristen Wiig, Sally Hawkins, Michael Huisman, Jim Broadbent, Maggie Smith, Zoe Colletti and Stephen Merchant.