The 10 best movies new to streaming to watch in November

Somehow it’s November. Didn’t 2021 just start? The weather is getting chillier, those first bites of frost are beginning to nip at nap of our necks, and Halloween is well and gone. As we prepare to settle in for feasts aplenty and the last big theatrical releases of the years, there’s all new assortment of movies coming to streaming this month on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Shudder, and Criterion Channel to keep us entertained until December rolls around.

From The Babadook director Jennifer Kent’s under-seen revenge drama The Nightingale, to the increasingly relevant Children of Men to what might just be Christopher Nolan’s best movie, November offers a veritable smorgasbord of cinema to choose from on streaming.

Read on for 10 of the best movies new to streaming services in November.

The Bourne Identity

Image: Universal Pictures

Based on Robert Ludlum’s 1980 novel of the same name, Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity is an action spy thriller par excellence, hailed as one of the best examples of the drama for its deft direction, intense fight scenes, and a phenomenal lead performance by Matt Damon as the assassin-turn-amnesiac fugitive Jason Bourne. The first, and frankly best entry, in the critically-acclaimed Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Identity is an absolute must-watch. Don’t fret the shakeycam, which only became the franchise’s defining in the sequels. —TE

The Bourne Identity is available to stream on HBO Max.

Children of Men

Image: Universal Pictures

Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian sci-fi drama Children of Men has been hailed in recent years as a shockingly prescient depiction of contemporary global strife and conflict since its premiere in theaters back in 2006. Set in 2027, almost two decades after the last human child due to inexplicable worldwide infertility, Cuarón’s follows bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen) who is unexpectedly entrusted with ensuring the safe passage of Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), an asylum seeker and the first woman to become pregnant in over 18 years. Children of Men is a engrossing, bleak, and thoroughly convincing depiction of a future in which there seems to be no future, a drama in which the last glimmer of hope for humanity rests in the hands of man who has all but lost faith in it. —TE

Children of Men is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Fargo

Image: Gramercy Pictures

The Coen Brothers’ black comedy crime film Fargo stars Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant police chief investigating the murder of a state trooper and inadvertently set on the trail of an attempted kidnapping orchestrated by a hapless insurance salesman (William H. Macy). Deftly weaving between hilarious tragicomic awkwardness and grisly true crime-adjacent thrills, Fargo is an essential work in the Coen Brothers’ long and illustrious oeuvre that’s as entertaining now as it was back in 1996. —TE

Fargo is available to stream on Hulu.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Image: 20th Century Fox

Based on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion animated comedy Fantastic Mr. Fox follows a sophisticated Fox (George Clooney) who, resorting to his former thieves ways, incurs the wrath of three villainous farmers who will stop at nothing to punish the Fox and his family. Filled with beautiful intricate animation, whimsical dance numbers, and Anderson’s idiosyncratic humor and style, Fantastic Mr. Fox is regularly hailed as one of the best animated films of the early aughts and must-see for fans of children’s films and highly-crafted cinema alike. —TE

Fantastic Mr. Fox is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

The Fifth Element

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Luc Besson’s cult sci-fi action thriller The Fifth Element stars Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, a former special forces commando-turned-cab driver in 23rd century New York City, who finds himself smack dab in the middle of a century’s long conflict between the forces of good and evil. When a mysterious woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) crashes into his cab one day, Korben is charged by the wise space-priest Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm) to protect her from the machinations of industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) who believes Leeloo possesses the key to ancient weapon of untold power. Features creatures, costumes, and designs by legendary French comic artists Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières, The Fifth Element is an outlandishly memorable and action-packed action film bursting with personality. —TE

The Fifth Element is available to stream on Hulu and Paramount Plus.

Great White

Image: RLJE Films/Shudder

In the proud tradition of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, and Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, Martin Wilson offers his own spin on humanity’s never-ending feud with all large things of the ocean that possess teeth in his survival thriller debut Great White. When five seaplane passengers find themselves stranded miles from shore, they’ll have to attempt to make it to back to land before they are overtaken by a relentless cadre of man-eating sharks. The trailer for the film makes it very apparent that not everyone makes it out alive in this situation, and while there’s no clue as to what the supposed “supernatural” twist of the film’s premise might be, it still looks like an enthralling horror experience all the same. —TE

Great White is available to stream on Shudder.

It Follows

David Robert Mitchell’s breakout supernatural horror film It Follows centers on a young teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) who, after a strange sexual encounter, finds herself stalked by a nightmarish entity that no-one else but her can see that intends to kill her. In order to stave off death, Jay and her friends must stay a step ahead of the creature while attempting to find a means of defeating it, or else resort to passing the curse on to another hapless unassuming victim herself. With a terrific score provided by Hyper Light Drifter composer Richard Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace), It Follows is a memorable, unique, and entertaining teen horror drama that flips the script on the genre’s traditionally puritanical framing of sexuality with terrific results. —TE

It Follows is available to stream on Netflix.

The Prestige

Image: Buena Vista Pictures

Nolan’s 2006 The Prestige, much like a magic trick, is (roughly) composed of three parts, or acts. The first part is exposition, where we’re introduced to the film’s protagonists in the form of two rival illusionists played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale vie to become the greatest living magician of their time. The second part is the premise, where things sour in the wake of a devastating on-stage accident, pitting the two men on a life-long collision course that transforms their professional rivalry into a perilous blood feud. The third part is the climax, where the film takes everything we thought we knew about these characters and turns those assumptions on their head to pull off the single greatest cinematic twist of Christopher Nolan’s career. Oh, and David Bowie is here dressed up like Nikola Tesla. Are you watching closely? —TE

The Prestige is available to stream on Hulu.

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation

Image: The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

Love, Cecil director Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s 2021 documentary Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation traces the history of novelist Truman Capote and playwright Tennessee Williams’ correspondence, friendship, and contentious public fallout. Composed entirely of the two men’s words read by Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto, as well as archival footage of the pair’s televised interviews on the subject, Vreeland’s film attempt to examine the relationship between these titans of American literary culture and shed a lot on where and what exactly went so horribly wrong between the two. —TE

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation is available to stream on Criterion Channel.