September’s streaming highlights include a classic horror prequel, an acclaimed chamber dramedy, and Clooney and Pitt in fine fettle.
ON NETFLIX
Starts Sept. 13
Uglies
Young-adult readers received an Orwellian science-fiction dystopia to call their own in 2005’s Uglies, the first in a trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. Now, the opening salvo of that best-selling franchise is earning its long-awaited adaptation, and its trailer calls to mind a “Black Mirror” episode for the teen set. It takes place 300 years in the future, where all 16-year-olds, as a rite of passage, are given compulsory plastic surgery by the government, thus transforming from “uglies” to “pretties.” Joey King plays the Winston Smithesque rebel, Tally Youngblood, who considers escaping her homogenized world of enforced beauty standards to live among the Smoke, an exiled group of cosmetically untouched renegades.
Starts Sept. 20
His Three Daughters
The premise of this acclaimed new film from writer-director Azazel Jacobs is simple enough: Three estranged sisters reunite for their dying father’s last days in home hospice in a New York City co-op. Of course, its simplicity is deceptive and timeless: There are echoes of Shakespeare and Chekhov in the clashing personalities, temperaments and grievances of the “daughters” in the title, played to universal acclaim by three of today’s stalwarts: Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen, the sort of actors’ actors that directors love to shape and be shaped by. Expect early Oscar buzz for this intimate chamber dramedy, which currently boasts a 100-percent Fresh ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.
ON PARAMOUNT+
Starts Sept. 27
Apartment 7A
Endeavoring to capture the visceral matriarchal horror of “Rosemary’s Baby” for a new generation, writer-director Natalie Erika James scripted “Apartment 7A” as a prequel to that 1968 Roman Polanski classic. It’s set in New York City in 1965, where Julia Garner’s Terry Gionoffrio, an aspiring dancer nursing a foot injury, rents a room from Dianne Wiest’s seemingly kind landlady, “Minnie” Castavet. Terry is even given a second shot at dance stardom when an influential Broadway producer comes calling. But if you’re familiar with “Rosemary’s Baby,” you know a literal devil’s bargain when you see one.
ON APPLE TV+
Starts Sept. 27
Wolfs
It’s been 17 years since George Clooney first played a fixer, in 2007’s excellent “Michael Clayton,” and now he returns in a similar capacity in “Wolfs,” this time in an action-comedy paradigm. Clooney, working once again in an elite capacity in his field, is “Margaret’s Man,” who is called upon to fix an unexpected situation with a dead body. Problem is, like in a TaskRabbit glitch, another fixer had already been booked for the job—Brad Pitt, aka “Pam’s Man”—and though neither enjoys working with a partner, they’re forced to collaborate on their employer’s solution, egos be damned. And did we mention that the dead body isn’t really dead? “Wolfs” is directed by Jon Watts, famous for his work on three recent “Spider-Man” sagas from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
ON MAX
Starts Sept. 6
The Boy and the Heron
Last year’s winner for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards finally receives its streaming debut in the U.S. In master director Hayao Miyazaki’s coming-of-age fantasy, 12-year-old Mahito is haunted by the trauma of losing his mother in a hospital fire during the Second World War. A year later, he moves with his new family into a mansion in the countryside, and encounters a persistent grey heron that leaves its feathers for Mahito like so many breadcrumbs. Soon enough, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, he enters a parallel underground world, where characters from his aboveground life have transmogrified into different people, where cute little puffballs represent the souls of future humans, and where parakeets dominate the region’s politics with Borglike single-mindedness. “The Boy and the Heron” is a psychedelic, freewheeling journey on definitively uncharted cinematic waters.
For more of Boca magazine’s arts and entertainment coverage, click here.
