True North Streaming is a semi-regular column highlighting some of the best new additions to Netflix’s Canadian service. Like many of you, every so often I get a pleasant surprise when I discover a cool movie or TV show that’s just popped up on Netflix’s often-maligned sister platform. These posts will help you filter through the often quirky mix of Netflix Canada’s offerings and find the most valuable ways to waste some time.

And with that, in no particular order...

Studio Ghibli catalogue

In an age where almost every bit of content you could want (and much more you don’t) is available to stream, it’s odd to think that the animated masterpieces of Studio Ghibli weren’t available at all on services like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. Starting in February of this year, that finally changed when Netflix secured the rights to stream a catalogue of 21 Ghibli films in certain countries outside North America.

Animation fans in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico were understandably disappointed. But just over a week ago, Netflix Canada revealed they’d secured a license to stream the same 21-film collection, including titles like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. As someone who had only seen a handful of the studio’s movies over the years but hasn’t stopped hearing about their genius, I know what I’ll be binging in the months to come.

Tully

Film fans often bemoan the death of “mid-budget dramas for adults”, a category that has been steadily squeezed out of movie theatres by blockbuster cinematic universes and the ease of streaming services. Tully is exactly that kind of movie: a 2018 release by Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) that follows Marlo (Charlize Theron), an exhausted mother of three who reluctantly agrees to take on the services of a night nanny named Tully (Mackenzie Davis). Tully initially swoops in and helps Marlo achieve some much-needed rest and stability, but Tully’s influence also causes Marlo to daydream about her pre-children lifestyle, bringing up emotions that may be more unhealthy than any sleep deprivation.

The movie features some great work by Theron and Davis, and uses Reitman’s straightforward style of wry, observational details to ground his characters. It’s the sort of movie that Netflix would jump to acquire as an Original these days - just think of all those overworked parents who might actually stay awake through it after hustling the kids to bed.

Noah

Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical epic was met with its fair share of head-scratching when it came out in 2014. No one would have pegged Aronofsky to make an outwardly religious movie, despite some of the allusions to religious ideology in movies like The Fountain or The Wrestler. But yet here he was with a retelling of the Noah’s Ark story, albeit with a heavy focus on the supernatural elements: fallen angels trapped in bodies of stone, entire forests growing seemingly overnight, and infertility being magically cured. Oh, and Russell Crowe going full drunken caveman.

Aronofsky and his screenwriting partner Ari Handel aren’t shy about their motivations in the script: this Noah has an obvious environmental message and includes a lot more questioning of faith than some religious audiences had the stomach for. But the visuals alone, especially some truly mind-melting time lapse imagery, are worth the ham-fisted writing. Usually movies based on the Bible are played annoyingly safe; by comparison, Crowe’s Noah might as well be dumping the animals into the ark with a helicopter.

Troy

With the success of Gladiator in 2000, some critics thought we might see a Hollywood resurgence of the sword-and-sandal genre, which had been on life support since the infamous 1963 Cleopatra adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor. Ancient Greeks and Romans did end up filling our screens here and there, on cable TV shows like Spartacus and the Dwayne Johnson-starring Hercules from 2014. But the closest we got to a truly epic-scale film set in the ancient world was Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, an adaptation of The Iliad from 2004 starring Brad Pitt.

I remember being a huge fan of the movie when it came out, partially due to teenaged me loving the opening scene with Pitt’s Achilles taking down a giant enemy with a single sword stroke. Troy is packed with talent, including Brian Cox as Agamemnon, Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus, Orlando Bloom as Paris, Eric Bana as Hector, and Diane Kruger as Helen. As time went by, I ended up being a bit disappointed that Petersen’s team stripped out almost all the mythology from the source poem, especially the influence of the Olympian gods, focusing instead on a purely “historical” interpretation. Nevertheless, the scale of the production isn’t to be sniffed at, and Troy remains a notable early-2000s addition to “movies with big armies smashing into each other”.

Zodiac

David Fincher’s 1970s-set thriller has done a circuit of the various streaming services over the years, but if you missed it since its initial release (and would like to know how Robert Downey Jr. became one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood), the movie is now back on Netflix Canada, and is just as effective as it was 13 years ago.

Zodiac charts the investigation of the titular unsolved killings in the San Francisco Bay area in the 60s and 70s, centering on the stymied police detectives on the case (fronted by Mark Ruffalo as Dave Toschi), as well as political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and reporter Paul Avery (Downey). Fincher’s expert grasp of tension and coiled camerawork makes the movie almost as terrifying as the knowledge that the real-life case is still cold. If you got hooked on Mindhunter without being super familiar with Fincher’s film work, you’ll feel instantly at home.

Limelight

Most often, when people think of Charlie Chaplin, his silent-era misadventures as The Tramp spring to mind. But Chaplin’s career lasted well into the talkies and beyond, and many of the highlights, including The Great Dictator, Modern Times, and The Gold Rush have all hit Netflix Canada simultaneously, part of a distribution deal that also brought over the Kieślowski trilogy mentioned below. Also on the list is Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight, notable for being one of Chaplin’s most personal films and for not achieving much appreciation until decades after its initial release.

Limelight is all about the dark side of showbiz. Chaplin plays a stage clown living in London in 1914 named Calvero, who saves a dancer named Thereza from a suicide attempt. They resolve to try to reboot their careers, but continue to struggle against an uncaring public and personal disappointment. It’s a big departure from the physical comedy of the Tramp films, and perhaps that helps explain the chilly response the movie got on release. However, the “struggling performer” subgenre is alive and well in 2020, when maybe we’re a little bit more sympathetic to the souls who choose to entertain for a living.

Three Colours trilogy

In the land of film snobbery, the famous trilogy of movies named after the colours of the French flag and directed by an art-house Polish cinéaste is often held up as a rite of passage. So perhaps I can finally ascend to a higher rank of film fandom, now that Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy is available to stream. Each installment, Blue, White, and Red, follows a different set of characters, but there are some common themes: obsessive connections to the past, a loose echo of the French motto “liberty, equality, fraternity” and the film’s attempts to satirize their apparent genres of romance, comedy, and tragedy.

The trilogy helped propel the careers of several familiar French actors: Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, and Irène Jacob each lead one of the films, and led to Binoche receiving her first César award. For those looking to fill out their world cinema bona fides (including myself), easy access to Three Colours is a helpful shortcut, and much appreciated from a company that also launched Floor is Lava last month.

What did you think of this list of Netflix recommendations? Are there any notable recent uploads on the Canadian service that I missed? Join the discussion in the comments section, and if you liked this post, share it with your friends and followers!

True North Streaming: The Best New Titles on Netflix Canada, July 4/20