Fall is almost, which means that spooky season is also just around the corner.
And while we’ve got a couple of good Halloween-adjacent options for our September rundown, there are plenty of other great movies hitting Netflix this month, including a bunch of original films that look absolutely incredible — including a long-in-the-works Marilyn Monroe biopic and the new film from French director Romain Gavras.
So whether you want to revisit a cult favorite (“Road House”), watch two of your favorite TV stars team up in a movie (“Do Revenge”) or enjoy one of the odder films in the grand Adam Sandler catalog (“Little Nicky”), there’s something for everybody on the streaming service this month.
“Road House”
Jake Gyllenhaal recently shared a photo from the first day of photography on his “Road House” remake with director Doug Liman. While waiting for that film to drop next year, why not revisit the original? If, by some cosmic fluke you have never seen “Road House,” it’s time to change that. Simply put, it is a kitsch masterpiece. Patrick Swayze, at his dreamiest, plays Dalton, who is hired by a rowdy roadside bar to be a “cooler;” his main job is to temper the establishment’s violent outbursts, make friends with the rougher clientele and to make sure everybody has a good time. Easier said than done. Especially when he gets entangled with a smalltown hood (played, with scenery-chewing aplomb, by a clearly slumming Ben Gazzara). It would be easy to write off “Road House” as nonsense, were it not for the pedigree behind and in front of the camera (including producer Joel Silver, cinematographer Dean Cundey and sturdy character actors like Sam Elliott and Kevin Tighe) and fact that it is relentlessly entertaining.
“Do Revenge”
This looks delightful! A super bitchy, high school-set variation on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train,” in “Do Revenge” Camila Mendes (from “Riverdale”) and Maya Hawke (from “Stranger Things”) play picked-on high schoolers who make a pact to go after each other’s bullies. (They have very, very bad exes.) The trailer for “Do Revenge” is killer (it helps that it’s soundtracked by Mazie’s great “Dumb Dumb”), suggesting a razor-sharp, R-rated high school thriller along the lines of “Jennifer’s Body” or “Heathers.” (Bonus cool points for Este Haim co-composing the soundtrack.) And with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, co-writer of this summer’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” co-writing and directing “Do Revenge,” you can bet it’s going to be laugh-out-loud funny. Put it on your to-do list.
“Athena”
The son of director Costa-Gavras (“Z,” “State of Siege”), Romain Gavras has grown from a music video wunderkind (with his memorable clips for artists like M.I.A. and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne project) to one of international cinema’s most exciting modern filmmakers while holding firm to those pop sensibilities (he always has the coolest artists contribute to his scores). 2018’s “The World is Yours” felt like the filmmaker reaching a new plateau; it felt wholly original while still acknowledging its forebearers (the title is a reference to “Scarface”). It was one of the best films of that year but was unceremoniously dumped on Netflix. Hopefully, the same fate doesn’t await “Athena.” While the logline and early marketing materials err on the side of the nebulous (“Hours after the tragic death of their youngest brother in unexplained circumstances, three siblings have their lives thrown into chaos”) but early word is that his scope has widened and his political edge sharpened. It’s not just one of the most anticipated movies of September – it’s one of the most anticipated movies of this year.
“Lou”
If you had “Allison Janney killing a guy with an empty can of soup” on your 2022 bingo card, congrats! “Lou” is the movie for you! In the 1980s Pacific Northwest, Jurnee Smollett (from “Lovecraft Country”) plays a single mom who teams up with Janney to find her kidnapped daughter, who has been taken by her estranged husband (Logan Marshall-Green). Together they seek out some very bad dudes. The trailer makes the movie looks like some gender-flipped, “John Wick”-adjacent fun but there’s some meat on “Lou’s” bones. J.J. Abrams produced the movie, and you know he loves a good mystery. Come to see Janney beat the hell out of dudes, stay for something altogether more intriguing.
“Blonde”
A glitzy Netflix biopic of Marilyn Monroe sounds straightforward right? Well, not so fast. “Blonde,” adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name by Australian writer/director Andrew Dominik, is so provocative that the Motion Picture Associate gave it an NC-17 rating, a rating meant for explicitly adult material that has become synonymous with the X-ratings fancied by pornographers and grindhouse theaters. (It joins the ranks of “Showgirls,” “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education” and standup specials from Martin Lawrence and Andrew “Dice” Clay.) “Blonde” stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, with Adrien Brody as Arthur Miller and Bobby Cannavale as Joe DiMaggio. Dominik’s close collaborators Nick Cave and Warren Ellis provide the movie’s score. Dominik hasn’t directed a narrative feature since “Killing Them Softly” which came out an entire decade ago. It’s been too long. Bring on the controversy.
“The Munsters”
Whew boy. Few trailers have generated the kind of discussion that the spot for Rob Zombie’s “The Munsters” did when it debuted online earlier this year. And honestly, that trailer was bizarre and wonky, but given Zombie’s history as an adventurous and highly literate filmmaker, we’re hoping for the best here. “The Munsters” is based on the goofy, monster-themed sitcom that ran on NBC in the 1960s. If the trailer is truthful, Zombie has maintained a lot of that series’ kitschy aesthetic, serving as something of a prequel to the original show. While the cast isn’t exactly inspiring (it includes a bunch of Zombie regulars, including Jeff Daniel Phillips, Sheri Moon Zombie, Daniel Roebuck and Richard Blake), the idea of the director of “The Devil’s Rejects” taking on such an agreeably campy property certainly is.
“Little Nicky”
Yes, “Hubie Halloween” (made for Netflix) is Adam Sandler’s spooky season crowning achievement (it will be an even more essential re-watch this year to honor fallen co-star Ray Liotta), but we should forget Sandler’s earlier attempt to mix scares and laughs – “Little Nicky.” Arguably the most bizarre movie that Sandler has ever starred in he plays Little Nicky, the youngest son of Satan (played by Harvey Keitel). Little Nicky, who has a slicked-down hairstyle and talks out of the side of his mouth, travels to New York City, falls in love with Patricia Arquette and seeks to prevent his brothers (Tiny Lester and Rhys Ifans) from causing too much trouble. This movie really has it all – a talking dog (voiced by Robert Smigel, obviously), an incredibly grating Quentin Tarantino cameo, a cast that somehow includes Rodney Dangerfield, Ozzy Osbourne and Reese Witherspoon, and some pretty impressive make-up effects. Is “Little Nicky” for everybody? Absolutely not. But if you can get on its particular wavelength, it’s a ton of fun.
