The 7 Best Movies New to Netflix in December 2020



Netflix

After a lackluster November that left Netflix scrambling to rescue its award season ambitions after “Hillbilly Elegy” didn’t quite hit the mark, the streaming giant is showing its full strength with a December lineup that pairs unmissable Originals like “Mank” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” with quintessential library titles like “E.T.” and “Jurassic Park.” Add a bearded George Clooney and a rapping Meryl Streep into the mix, and you’ve got the kind of holiday viewing slate that only Netflix has the chutzpah to put out into the world.

Here are the seven most exciting movies coming to the platform this month.

7. “The Prom” (2020)



Future historians will note that 2020 ended the only way this cursed year possibly could: With Meryl Streep rapping on camera in a Netflix musical directed by Ryan Murphy. And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, it seems “The Prom” might be just the party we’ve all been waiting for over these last nine months.

In their approving review of this glitzy and Golden Globes-ready Broadway adaptation, IndieWire’s Jude Dry writes that “‘The Prom’ has all the makings of a classic Hollywood musical,” and that the story — about a quartet of washed-up theater legends who hoof it to a conservative Indiana town in order to support a lesbian teen who was banned from bringing her girlfriend to the big dance — unfolds as if “the strivers from ‘The Philadelphia Story’ went to Allentown to help Peggy Swayer find her way to ‘42nd Street.’”

Calling the movie “exactly the kind of feel-good entertainment we needed,” Dry observes that while Murphy may not be the second coming of Busby Berkeley, he gets all the help he needs from costume designer Lou Eyrich, virtuosic cinematographer Matthew Libatique, choreographer Casey Nicholaw, and an all-singing, all-dancing, all-smiling-until-their-faces-crease-that-way-forever cast of mega-stars likes Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Keegan-Michael Key, Kerry Washington, and more. If you’re looking for love, acceptance, a renewed sense of purpose, and enough sequins to single-handedly revive disco, “The Prom” is sure to be the safest party in town, and everyone’s invited.

Available to stream December 11.

6. “The Midnight Sky” (2020)



George Clooney’s directorial career went a little sideways after the success of “Good Night, and Good Luck” (though “Leatherheads” remains a minor screwball delight), but even in the aftermath of misfires like “The Monuments Men” and “Suburbicon,” it’s still easy to root for him and chalk up the existence of “The Midnight Sky” to perseverance instead of privilege, or at least perseverance and privilege instead of just privilege alone. This is a guy who could live 100 comfortable lifetimes on his tequila money alone, and yet he still seems fully invested in everything he does, whether it’s a happy-go-lucky Nespresso commercial or a Netflix epic about a lonely Arctic scientist who’s desperately trying to stop a team of astronauts from returning to a ruined Earth.

Adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s “Good Morning, Midnight” and supposedly more of a heartfelt sci-fi epic than the Oscar contender its release date and Alexandre Desplat score might suggest, “The Midnight Sky” finds an immaculately bearded Clooney pulling double duty as both director and leading man, while Felicity Jones plays the space-bound aeronaut who he’s so urgently trying to reach.

The film hasn’t screened for critics at the time this article is being published, but word around the campfire is that “The Midnight Sky” is an earnest and satisfying return to form for its biggest star, and might be the closest thing that any of us get to an adult-oriented blockbuster this holiday season.

Available to stream December 23.

5. “Rango” (2005)



Pixar’s imminent “Soul” may not re-write the rule book of what’s possible or commercially palatable in terms of mainstream CGI animation, but its different and ambitious enough to make you wish that other Hollywood studios would spend more time thinking outside the box when it comes to dreaming up kid-friendly movies. Mass appeal doesn’t always have to mean simplicity and superheroes and babies who are bosses; there’s plenty of room for big ideas, and for auteurism, and for the kind of weirdness that’s usually consigned to the wee hours of Adult Swim.

There is definitely room for Gore Verbinski’s delirious “Rango,” an acid-washed pseudo-Western about a chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a town called Dirt after his terrarium falls out of his owner’s car somewhere in the desert. Scored by Hans Zimmer, featuring cinematography by Roger Deakins, and altogether so inspired that it’s possible to skirt over the Johnny Depp of it all (even if Rango himself is a blinkered caricature of the actor’s Hunter S. Thompson screen image), “Rango” raked in $245 million on its way to winning an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Not only does it hold up, it leaves the last 15 years of Hollywood animation in the dust.

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