Every month, Netflix Canada adds a new batch of TV shows and movies to its library. Here are the titles we think are most interesting for August, broken down by release date. Netflix occasionally changes schedules without giving notice.
Movies
‘Otherhood’
Starts streaming: Aug. 2
The premise for “Otherhood” sounds like a cautionary tale for errant children: After another Mother’s Day without cards or gifts from their adult sons, three suburban moms head off to New York City to pay them an unannounced visit. Once there, they find plenty of disorder to straighten out, from filthy bachelor pads to screwed-up romantic relationships, but they also take time to experience a little big-city night life of their own. Felicity Huffman plays one of the mothers, alongside Angela Bassett and Patricia Arquette (the film was delayed a few months in the wake of Ms. Huffman’s involvement in a college admissions bribery scheme). It doesn’t seem as if enough time has passed for viewers to forget the scandal, but how much they’re affected by it is another matter.
‘Being John Malkovich’
Starts streaming: Aug. 7
Twenty years have passed since this surreal comedy announced Charlie Kaufman as a major screenwriting talent, kicking off a career that would later include such brilliant melancholy oddities as “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Synecdoche, New York.”
Kaufman wrote “Being John Malkovich” with the actor in mind, and Malkovich liked the script enough to agree to a mercilessly self-deprecating turn as himself. In the movie, John Cusack stars as a file clerk who discovers a portal into Malkovich’s head where people can occupy his consciousness for 15 minutes before getting deposited near the New Jersey Turnpike. Within this wacky scenario, the film expresses touching sentiments about human desire and the transcendent power of love.
‘Dunkirk’
Starts streaming: Aug. 12
The one knock against “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s rendering of a crucial Allied retreat from a French beach during World War II, is that the dialogue is nearly indecipherable. But that seems partly by design: Nolan wants the images and sound to be so transporting and persuasive that words are not necessary. Actions are what really matter. Though Nolan engages in some of the temporal trickery of past films like “Memento” — the film alternates among three periods of time (one week, one day, one hour) — “Dunkirk” focuses on the simple problem of evacuating Allied soldiers who are trapped on a beach, utterly exposed to German attacks.
‘American Factory’
Starts streaming: Aug. 21
In this outstanding pickup from the documentary slate at Sundance, the directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert take their cameras into a former General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio, that has been occupied by Fuyao, a Chinese car-window manufacturer. The merging of ex-G.M. employees with workers brought over from China results in some strange and often hilarious and touching encounters, but differences in corporate culture, particularly the diminished salary and safety conditions, create long-term headaches. Without editorializing, “American Factory” shows globalism at its best and worst, exposing a sharp contrast in work ethic and individual rights.
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TV
‘Basketball or Nothing’
Starts streaming: Aug. 2
There has been an ongoing debate in N.B.A. circles over the effectiveness of “small ball,” a strategy that involves giving up size to an opponent in order to beat them with speed, agility and outside shooting. For the Chinle Wildcats, a high school team from the Navajo Nation reservation in Chinle, Ariz., their drastically undersized players give them no other choice. The documentary series “Basketball or Nothing” follows the Wildcats in their run for the state championship, tying their struggles and triumphs to a community where the median annual household income is less than $30,000 and the essentials of running water and electricity are not guaranteed.
‘Dear White People’: Season 3
Starts streaming: Aug. 2
Justin Simien’s satire “Dear White People” won a jury award and a major distribution deal out of the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, but if anything, the series has found a more comfortable home as a series on Netflix, where its collegiate slice of life has more room to breathe. Focusing again on a small community of black students at Winchester College, a mostly white institution, the new season follows Sam (Logan Browning) as she shifts from radio to film, working on a thesis project that seeks to find the good that surrounds her. Almost needless to say, this mission proves to be harder than it seems.
‘The Naked Director’
Starts streaming: Aug. 8
The adult filmmaker Toru Muranishi is credited with revolutionizing the porn industry in Japan, but in challenging societal norms, he faced controversy and numerous legal setbacks. Set in the 1980s, when Muranishi and the business flourished amid an economic boom, the 10-episode series “The Naked Director” looks like a Japanese “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” a stylized portrait of smut peddlers and censorious prigs, built around a character whose innovations, for better or worse, are still relevant. It also gives time to young women who press for sexual liberation, often at a steep personal cost.
‘Wu Assassins’
Starts streaming: Aug. 8
In the martial arts series “Wu Assassins,” Kai Jin (Iko Uwais) is an aspiring young chef in San Francisco’s Chinatown whose knife skills are about to be useful for more than chopping scallions. Long ago, 1,000 monks sacrificed themselves to empower his chosen-one hero to stop ancient warlords from destroying the world — so, you know, no pressure. Kai Jin does enjoy the benefits of mystical powers and a team of attractive, dynamic fighters, but his chief adversary is a Chinese Triad boss, who also happens to be his father. Martial arts fans will recognize Uwais as the Indonesian dynamo at the center of “The Raid” movies, and hope that this series has a similar punch.
‘The Family’
Starts streaming: Aug. 9
Controversy seems certain to follow the five-episode documentary series “The Family,” about a secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship that has long been engaged in dismantling the separation of church and state in Washington. The Fellowship has sponsored the National Prayer Breakfast since the Dwight Eisenhower administration and every president since has participated, addressing a room of over 3,000 guests. That gathering is symbolic of a larger mission to influence policymakers and steer the country toward fundamentalist values, even through an “imperfect vessel” like Donald J. Trump. “The Family” brings the Fellowship into the light with surprising access to its members.
‘GLOW’: Season 3
Starts streaming: Aug. 9
Though inspired by the rise and fall of the ’80s syndicated women’s wrestling circuit, “GLOW” has never been interested in historical fidelity so much as mining what it needs from the past and discarding the rest. Each season has been a quick, pleasurable binge of 10 half-hour episodes, following a constantly exasperated director (Marc Maron) and a coterie of failed actresses and misfits as they produce a cheap, down-the-dial mix of action, titillation and broad comedy. The second season reserved an entire episode for a complete “GLOW” broadcast, and the third takes the gang to Las Vegas for a live show at the Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino.
‘Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready’
Starts streaming: Aug. 13
A month after her spectacularly filthy performance in “Girls Trip” put her on the map, Tiffany Haddish told her story in the hourlong Showtime stand-up performance “Tiffany Haddish: She Ready! From the Hood to Hollywood.” Now Haddish is elevating a handpicked selection of six female comics with “They Ready,” each getting her own half-hour set. All of the performers have experience on showcases like “Wild ’n Out,” “Last Comic Standing” and “Def Comedy Jam,” but none are household names. Yet.
‘Diagnosis’
Starts streaming: Aug. 16
In her New York Times Magazine column, “Diagnosis,” Dr. Lisa Sanders, a Yale University associate professor, focuses on solving medical mysteries, rounding up patients who have unusual symptoms and searching the globe for diagnoses. This seven-episode series reveals the results of an experiment in which Dr. Sanders chose various subjects — a gulf war veteran with memory loss, a little girl beset by paralyzing seizures, a young woman with chronic and unaccountable pain — and had them share their stories on video, in the hope that they would find useful information from readers. “Diagnosis” follows every step of the process, often to inspirational ends.
‘Mindhunter’: Season 2
Starts streaming: Aug. 16
Set in 1977, the first season of this David Fincher-produced series followed the F.B.I. agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), and a Boston University psychology professor, Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), as they formalized the study of serial killers. Gathering data from interviews with incarcerated murderers, they worked on creating a Behavioral Science Unit within the F.B.I. while applying their knowledge in the field. Details about the second season have been shrouded in mystery, but it’s expected to cover the Atlanta child murders case, when 28 children and teenagers, all of them African-American, were murdered between 1979 and 1981. The three leads developed a frisky chemistry throughout the first season, and it seems likely that tensions among them will rise in the face of this difficult case.
‘Hyperdrive’
Starts streaming: Aug. 21
The executive producer Charlize Theron lends her name and seal of approval to this 10-episode car racing series, which has been described as an “American Ninja Warrior” for cars. At Eastman Business Park in Rochester, a crew constructed a massive obstacle course to host a competition between elite street racers in customized vehicles. Narrow military bridges, a giant teeter-totter and water hazards are among the challenges faced by the drivers, who have been culled from racetracks and drag strips around the world.
‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’
Starts streaming: Aug. 30
The 1982 fantasy “The Dark Crystal” was Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s attempt to bring the puppeteering wizardry of “The Muppet Show” into a more technically ambitious and dramatic realm, even if it meant leaving younger children behind. Though it struggled to turn a profit, its cult reputation has grown as the fantasy genre itself has burst into the mainstream. Now Netflix has invested significant resources into “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,” a 10-episode prequel series that attempts to recreate the tactility of Henson’s handcrafted creatures and sets. Taron Egerton and Mark Hamill are among the voices that bring life to a war between the good Gelflings and the evil Skeksis over the powerful force that holds together the world of Thra.
Also of interest: “Logan Lucky” (Aug. 1), “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (Aug. 1), “Training Day” (Aug. 1), “Derry Girls”: Season 2 (Aug. 2), “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj”: Volume 4 (Aug. 4), “The LEGO Ninjago Movie” (Aug. 5), “Bridget Jones’s Diary (Aug. 15), “45 rpm” (Aug. 16), “Better Than Us” (Aug. 16), “The Little Switzerland” (Aug. 16), “Blade Runner 2046” (Aug. 26), “Styling Hollywood” (Aug. 30).
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