November is here and almost over, which means we only have one month left in the year to look forward to before 2024 arrives. There are still exciting new releases on the horizon, including the North American theatrical premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s The boy and the heronZack Snyders Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of FireAnd Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson.
In the meantime, there are still plenty of great movies to watch before they air at the end of the month. November’s top picks include a cult classic dystopian drama for fans of The Hunger Games, a laugh-out-loud comedy starring Emma Stone, an iconic non-narrative documentary and more.
Here’s what to watch this weekend before these titles leave their streaming services.
To enjoy!
Editor’s choice
Battle Royale
Image: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Form: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarō Yamamoto
Departing: Nov. 30 on Criterion Channel
With the recent debut of The Hunger Games prequel The ballad of songbirds and snakes, the fifth installment in the dystopian action series, this is a good time to look back at a spiritual predecessor to the series. Kinji Fukasaku’s action thriller, based on Koushun Takami’s novel, was hugely controversial when it premiered in 2000 and is one of the most shocking and indelible Japanese films of its time.
It is set in a future where an economic recession and a resulting rise in crime have transformed the Japanese government into a totalitarian regime. Battle Royale follows a class of high school students who are selected to fight to the death to strike fear into the hearts of the country’s people. Chained with explosive collars, the children are sent into the forest of a deserted island in search of weapons and supplies. Whoever is the last child left gets his freedom. Such as Suzanne Collins’ book series or Netflix’s Squid game, Battle Royale is essentially an exploration of the transformation of characters under life-or-death duress. It’s a heartbreaking and thrilling drama, exploring which students are willing to stubbornly cling to their desire to survive the carnage without killing, and which students succumb to despair or malice. Featuring great performances from Tatsuya Fujiwara (Obituary), Chiaki Kuriyama (Death Bill Vol. 1), and defeat Takeshi, Battle Royale is a film best experienced firsthand, and not just through the many stories it influenced. —Toussaint Egan
Movies to watch on Netflix
Arrival
Image: Paramount Photos
Director: Dennis Villeneuve
Form: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker
Leave Netflix: November 30
For the better part of a decade, Denis Villeneuve has asserted himself as a confident director of science fiction dramas characterized by beautiful barren expanses and sweeping vistas. Of Dune: part two coming in 2024, the second half of Villeneuve’s ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic space opera, it’s worth taking a look back at the film that first established the director’s reputation as a science fiction author.
Based on the novella ‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang, a story that was thought at the time to be unadaptable. Arrival is a somber and philosophical drama about the nature of time, space, human relationships, and the power of language in mediating the divide between what is known and what is not. It was a critical success when it premiered, earning more than eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and ultimately opening the way for Villeneuve to direct Ridley Scott’s sequel. Blade Runner. -AT
Movies to watch on Max
Reformed first
Image: A24
Director: Paul Schrader
Form: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles
Maximum exit: November 30
If I were asked to pick my favorite films of the 21st century, I would spend quite a bit of time picking out my top pick. But I know Reformed first would be at stake.
Paul Schrader is a filmmaker obsessed with contradiction, often combining unlikely groups of themes or characters to beautiful effect. We saw it early on Cab driver and more recently with Master Gardener (or movies like Hard, AutofocusAnd Patty Hearst), but for me it’s the pinnacle Reformed first.
Anchored by a masterful performance from Ethan Hawke, Reformed first follows a pastor (Hawke) of a small, old church in New York. His church is more of a museum than an actual congregation, funded by a local megachurch run by a famous pastor (Cedric the Entertainer). For many filmmakers, that conflict alone would be rich enough to delve into. But Paul Schrader is different from many filmmakers.
Schrader delicately weaves a story about climate change, grief and the challenges that lie ahead, both as individuals and as a society. What could easily be a downer (and sometimes it is bleak) instead manifests a very human connection, even in despair. That’s something worth holding on to. —Piet Volk
Movies to watch on Hulu
Easy A
Image: Fencing stones
Director: Will Gluck
Form: Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Penn Badgley
Leaving Hulu: November 30
Easy A belongs in the pantheon of great high school films Mean girls And The breakfast club; it really is that good.
Reefing The Scarlet Letter – the literary classic of which it is a kind of reverse remake – it is a sophisticated comedy of manners about bored, precocious teenager Olive (Emma Stone), who agrees to fuck her gay best friend to ward off the bullies. When others on the fringes of high school find out and request the same service, she becomes a kind of imaginary prostitute, trading her new, falsely slutty reputation for favors. The film walks the line of its illusory dilemmas with a light, easy step, and like a high school sex comedy in which no sex actually takes place, it manages to be outrageous and wholesome at the same time.
Stone is a knockout in her first leading role, the script is a stunner, and there’s a hilarious Greek chorus of riotous adults who wryly comment on the action without really having a moral leg to stand on, including Lisa Kudrow, Thomas Haden Church and the wonderfully wry Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s liberal parents. —Oli Welsh
Movies to watch on Prime
Koyaanisqatsi
Image: The Criterion Collection
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Prime exit: November 30
Rockstar Games, the studio behind the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, will unveil the announcement trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto game early next month – likely during this year’s annual Game Awards.
You may be wondering, “Toussaint, what does that have to do with Godfrey Reggio’s experimental non-narrative documentary?” Great rhetorical question, I’ll be happy to explain. Consists mainly of time-lapse images of cities and natural environments, Koyaanisqatsi is a fascinating time capsule of 20th-century society on the eve of the new millennium, which asks audiences to consider the symbiotic relationship between humans and the Earth and whether, as the English translation of the film’s title suggests , life when we know it is out of balance.
The film has been referenced and parodied numerous times since its 1982 premiere, including in the 2007 announcement trailer for Grand Theft Auto 4, featuring a song from Philip Glass’s iconic score for the film. There’s no guarantee that Rockstar will include another sneaky nod to Reggio’s magnum opus in the next Grand Theft Auto trailer, but even if the studio doesn’t, you should still take the time to appreciate this monolith of majestic introspective films. -AT