Ridley Scott’s Napoleon charges onto streaming today, supported by Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen TV series spinoff, Adam Sandler’s Spaceman, and more!
SERIES
The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin S1
1 March 2024 – Apple TV+
I’m assuming that Dick Turpin is not exactly a household name, unless that household happens to be British. The infamous 18th century English highwayman may not have been that famous while he was doing all his robbing, but following his eventual arrest and execution, his exploits got greatly romanticized by writers of the time. This included a completely fictional 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess. And it’s with spirit of excessive embellishment that The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (the name should be a dead giveaway) approaches the recounting of the life of the historical figur. Comedian Noel Fielding plays the titular vagabond, with Hugh Bonneville taking on the role of Jonathan Wild, the lawman out to get Turpin.
Death and Other Details S1
5 March 2024 – Disney+
If there’s one thing that I’m a sucker for, it’s a locked-room murder mystery, so I’m super stoked for Death and Other Details. Mandy Patinkin stars as Rufus Cotesworth, “the world’s greatest detective”, who just happens to find himself on a luxury cruise liner at sea when a guest turns up violently murdered. Violet Beane plays Imogene Scott, a young woman also on the cruise who gets taken under Cotesworth’s wing when she shows an innate knack for detective work.
Supersex S1
6 March 2024 – Netflix
Rocco Siffredi is one of the biggest porn stars ever. Yes, that pun was fully intended. Born Rocco Antonio Tano, how did he go from small-town young man to becoming known as the “Italian Stallion”, a hugely influential, multiple-award-winning adult performer? Supersex is the dramatized retelling of Siffredi’s life, dealing with his childhood, family life, complicated relationships, sex addiction and more.
The Gentlemen S1
7 March 2024 – Netflix
British filmmaker Guy Ritchie started out his career with a proverbial bang, but for the last decade or so has been varying quite a bit in the quality of the films he’s given us. So maybe it’s time to try some longform storytelling. Set in the same world as Ritche’s 2019 film of the same name, The Gentlemen features all-new characters with a new story led by Theo James’ Eddie Halstead, a down-on-his-luck aristocrat who inherits the family estate from his estranged father, only to discover that it’s home to a large marijuana empire. And along with the drugs come the hardcore criminals who absolutely don’t want anything ruining their business.
MOVIES
Napoleon
1 March 2024 – Apple TV+
Acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott is back with another historical epic, reteaming with his Oscar-winning Gladiator collaborator Joaquin Phoenix to tell the story of Napoleon Bonaparte. This sweeping drama details his rise from young army officer during the French Revolution to praised military commander and eventually Emperor of the French, to his eventual fall with his defeat at Waterloo. Alongside these events, the film puts the spotlight firmly on Napoleon’s stormy relationship with his wife, Joséphine Bonaparte, played by Vanessa Kirby. And according to the mixed reviews, it’s this relationship that you really want to watch this movie for as Phoenix and Kirby act the hell out of it. Scott also produces those jaw-dropping battles you would expect, but the film took lots of criticisms for its many historical inaccuracies.
Spaceman
1 March 2024 – Netflix
If anybody ever tells you that Adam Sandler is a terrible actor, slap them. He’s not a terrible actor, he’s a lazy actor. For the vast majority of his career, Sandler has coasted on low-brow goofball comedies that were more about giving his friends paychecks than actually making a worthwhile movie. But every once in a while, Sandler stops being lazy and takes on a serious project to remind people that he can really do this really well. Is Spaceman another one of those highlights? It’s a bit too early to say for certain, but it definitely has all the right ingredients. Directed by Johan Renck, the Emmy Award-winning director of the incredible Chernobyl, Spaceman follows “an astronaut sent on a mission to the edge of the solar system who encounters a creature that helps him put his earthly problems back together.” This is no pew-pew space action movie though, but rather a contemplative drama that should give Sandler some serious thespian meat to sink his teeth into.
American Fiction
26 February 2024 – Prime Video
Yes, that release date above is for last week, but that’s because this one somehow snuck onto Prime Video without anybody noticing but it definitely deserves to be highlighted. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, American Fiction follows Jeffrey Wright as a novelist-professor frustrated with how little public traction his in-depth and insightful works are getting. In exasperation, using a pseudonym, he decides to write an outlandishly terrible satire of popular “black books”, poking fun at all the bad stereotypes and cringey Ebonics… only for this book to be mistaken as serious literature and earning him all the critical praise and commercial success he never achieved with his actual good writing. The feature film debut of award-winning writer/director Cord Jefferson, American Fiction just continues to add to his collection as it earned the People’s Choice Award the Toronto Film Festival, was voted as one of top 10 films of 2023 by the American Film Institute, and is currently in contention for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay!
Next Goal Wins
27 February 2024 – Disney+
Here’s another one that slipped under the radar… Kinda. According to the latest press release by Disney, popular filmmaker Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins will be debuting on Disney+ on 27 March. However, somebody somewhere clearly made a mistake because it already showed up on the streaming service a few days ago. Based on a factual 2014 documentary of the same name, it tells the story of the American Samoa national football team as they tried to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup after spending over a decade being known as one of the worst football teams ever by losing 31-0 to Australia, the worst loss in international football history. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Thomas Rongen, the Dutch American coach forced to choose between getting fired or turning around the fortunes of the American Samoa team, as unlikely as it may seem.
VOD RENTALS/PURCHASES
The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:
The Color Purple
Purchase: Google Play Movies – R212
Rental: Google Play Movies – R170
Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel, The Colour Purple, has been adapted several times now. Most famously, it got the big screen treatment from maestro Steven Spielberg, with breakthrough performances by Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, earning eleven Oscars nominations overall as it told the harrowing coming-of-age story of a young African-American girl who endured horrific abuse, poverty, and racism. Inspired by both that film and Walker’s original novel, The Color Purple was then adapted as a Broadway stage musical which ran from 2005 to 2008, earning eleven Tony Award nominations of which it won one, before a revival from 2015 to 2017, won it two Tony Awards. And now we have Ghanaian multi-hyphenate Blitz Bazawule with screenwriter Marcus Gardley adapting that stage musical to the big screen. No pressure! Luckily for the filmmaking pair, this new version of The Color Purple has also received a wave of critical praise (despite bombing badly at the box office), including a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Danielle Brooks, and Golden Globe nominations each for Brooks and lead Fantasian Barrino.