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 March, broken down by release date. Netflix occasionally changes schedules without giving notice.
Movies
‘Phantom Thread’
Starts streaming: March 1
Set in the couture world of 1950s London, Paul Thomas Anderson’s exquisitely beautiful (and delightfully feisty) romantic drama stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a fastidious designer and Vicky Krieps as a foreign waitress who becomes his model, muse and eventual companion. Though Anderson takes particular inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” “Phantom Thread” feels like an unsparing reflection on his own life as an artist, which is marked by the stress of a perfectionist who has to stay true to himself while tailoring his work to the trends and commercial expectations of the time. Lesley Manville is especially juicy as the designer’s sister, who manages his business and personal affairs with a necessary ruthlessness.
‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’
Starts streaming: March 1
Much like his previous screenplays for “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” uses a wacky metaphysical hook to explore much more personal anxieties and matters of the heart. After suffering a painful breakup with his long-term girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet), Joel (Jim Carrey) submits himself to a procedure to erase his memories of her, which sends him reeling through his own dimming consciousness. Amid the surreal comedy that follows, the film makes a touching argument for the preciousness of all romantic experiences, even the ones tinged with bitterness and regret.
‘Drag Me to Hell’
Starts streaming: March 4
After directing three straight “Spider-Man” movies with Tobey Maguire, director Sam Raimi shook off the franchise baggage and returned to his roots with the delightful horror-comedy “Drag Me to Hell,” which brings the gonzo aesthetics of his “Evil Dead” movies to a more mainstream audience. Alison Lohman stars as an inexperienced loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home and gets a supernatural curse in return. She turns to a psychic for help, but discovers that in order to lift the hex, she’s going to have to make some unsavory choices. Beyond the surface fun of the film, Raimi is dealing with the moral ramifications of his heroine’s decisions and whether she may be culpable.
‘Spenser Confidential’
Starts streaming: March 6
Following Michael Bay’s “6 Underground” late last year, Netflix continues to challenge the notion that big, expensive Hollywood action movies can only debut at the multiplex. Re-teaming with Mark Wahlberg, the star of his Boston Marathon bombing thriller “Patriots Day,” director Peter Berg returns to the Beantown backdrop for the story of an ex-cop (Wahlberg) who gets out of prison and back into trouble when two of his former colleagues are found murdered. In order to tie up these loose ends, his old boxing mentor (Alan Arkin) pairs him with an M.M.A. fighter (Winston Duke) and the two punch, kick and shoot their way to vigilante justice.
‘Sitara: Let Girls Dream’
Starts streaming: March 8
Pakistan isn’t a traditional source of animated film, but Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a journalist and filmmaker who has won two Oscars for her documentary shorts, is seeking to change that perception. Through the new production house Waadi Animation, Obaid-Chinoy is returning again to the short form with “Sitara: Let Girls Dream,” a film about a 14-year-old girl whose dreams of becoming a pilot are thwarted by a patriarchal culture, including demands to enter into a child marriage. Obaid-Chinoy’s goal of making films that reflect the experiences of Pakistani girls is supported by some big-name executive producers, too, including the feminist icon Gloria Steinem and the former Pixar producer Darla Anderson.
‘Lost Girls’
Starts streaming: March 13
Arriving on Netflix two months after its Sundance debut, Liz Garbus’s fact-based docudrama starts with a mother (Amy Ryan) searching for her missing 24-year-old daughter, but opens up into a much larger case that involves the unsolved murders of more than a dozen sex workers. As she retraces her daughter’s steps and pressures the detective (Gabriel Byrne) in charge of the investigation, she also becomes a vocal champion for young women whose occupation no doubt adversely affected the level of interest in their cases. The film is Garbus’s first fictional drama after a career making documentaries, including Oscar nominees “What Happened, Miss Simone?” and “The Farm: Angola, USA.”
‘The Platform’
Starts streaming: March 20
Snapped up by Netflix after premiering in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, this satirical science fiction from Spain advances the giant social allegory of a tower-shaped prison where the benefits trickle down. “The Platform” of the title is a concrete banquet table where inmates are allowed to eat whatever they want and as much as they want for a few minutes until it descends to the level below. The system is supposed to give each cell equal time to eat, but in reality, the upper levels get food of much better quality and quantity while the bottom levels get the scraps. Basically, it’s like “Snowpiercer” with a prison instead of a train.
‘Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution’
Starts streaming: March 25
At last year’s Sundance, Barack and Michelle Obama’s company, Higher Ground, snapped up the rights to “American Factory,” which streamed on Netflix and went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The Obamas (and Netflix) have invested similarly in “Crip Camp,” a warmly received documentary about Camp Jened, a summer camp down the road from Woodstock that catered to teenagers with disabilities in the early 1970s. Jim LeBrecht, the co-director and a spina bifida survivor, attended Jened when he was a young man and his personal experience informs a documentary that celebrates the progressive ideals (and wacky fun) of this unusual place.
‘Step Brothers’
Starts streaming: March 31
Despite opening to mixed reviews in 2008, Adam McKay’s raunchy buddy comedy has become a highly quotable cult favorite in the years since, pushing the man-child archetype of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and many other arrested development comedies to its absurdist limit. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly star as middle-aged adults who still live at home with their parents — a situation that becomes especially awkward when those parents (Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen) get married and move in together. At first, the two are petulant and violently at odds, but they soon discover they have everything in common.
TV
‘Ugly Delicious: Season 2’
Starts streaming: March 6
In the spirt of Anthony Bourdain shows like “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown,” David Chang’s “Ugly Delicious” is not merely a globe-trotting travelogue for foodies, but is about the cultural context that account for these culinary delights. The Momofuku chef and restaurateur has a sillier, sunnier personality than the late Bourdain, but they share an underlying respect and enthusiasm for the people they encounter. No details have been given yet about what to expect from the second season, but Chang’s method is to highlight a single food item or cooking style per episode — last season touched on pizza, tacos and home cooking, for example — and approach it from myriad angles.
‘Dirty Money: Season 2’
Starts streaming: March 11
The prolific Alex Gibney may have turned the journalistic exposé into documentary formula, but he’s helped draw attention to large-scale fraud with compelling docs about Enron (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), Theranos (“The Inventor: Out of Blood in Silicon Valley”) and Scientology (“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”). The first season of Gibney’s “Dirty Money” offered more bite-size episodes on other white-collar crimes, like the Volkswagen emissions scandal and HSBC’s laundering of cartel money. The full slate of second season episodes haven’t been announced, but they will include an examination of Jared Kushner’s real estate empire.
‘Dare Me’
Starts streaming: March 20
The state of the cheer-ocracy is strong, thanks to the recent Netflix sensation “Cheer” and now this deliciously sinister series, which originally aired on the USA Network. Based on the book by Megan Abbott, who also serves as a co-showrunner with Gina Fattore, “Dare Me” delves into a hypercompetitive world of high-school cheerleading, focusing on the friendship between a college hopeful (Herizen Guardiola) and a squad leader (Marlo Kelly) with a nose for trouble. Their tenuous bond is upended by the arrival of a new coach (Willa Fitzgerald) who shakes up the team but gets embroiled in blackmail-friendly extracurriculars of her own.
‘Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker’
Starts streaming: March 20
Eulogized as the first female self-made millionaire when she died in 1919 — in actuality, the figure was more like $600,000, which was still extravagantly wealthy for the time — Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a. Madam C.J. Walker, made her fortune on a line of hair care and cosmetics for African-American women. In this four-part limited series, based on a biography by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Leila Bundles, Octavia Spencer stars as Walker, who naturally faced racial obstacles to the upper class, on top of hostile competitors in the field. The A-list cast includes Tiffany Haddish, Carmen Ejogo and Blair Underwood, and the pilot was directed by Kasi Lemmons, who recently made the biopic “Harriet.”
‘Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness’
Starts streaming: March 20
Joe Maldonado, better known as “Joe Exotic,” was long understood as an eccentric, a gun-toting polygamist and big-cat enthusiast who presided over an Oklahoma animal park and ran two unsuccessful campaigns for governor. Then he was sentenced to prison for 22 months for a murder-for-hire plot gone wrong. Maldonado was convicted of twice putting a hit out on Carole Baskin, a Florida animal sanctuary operator who had successfully sued him for $1 million for trademark infringement and other offenses. The documentary series “Tiger King” gets into the whole sordid affair, which gets stranger and more twisted the deeper it goes.
‘Ozark: Season 3’
Starts streaming: March 27
Though it bears more than a little in common with “Breaking Bad,” another series about a normal suburban family sucked into the drug business, “Ozark” has established a hick-noir seediness of its own, thanks to a Missouri lakeshore setting that’s filled with treacherous schemers. In the first season, Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) moved their family from Chicago to Osage Beach after Marty’s money-laundering operation for a Mexican cartel went awry. The two have since been squeezed by the cartel and by local criminals who don’t want them impeding on their territory. The new season picks up mid-conflict with the Kansas City mob.
Also of interest: “High Noon” (March 1), “Isle of Dogs” (March 1), “Moneyball” (March 1), “Ready Player One” (March 3), “I am Jonas” (March 6), “The Circle Brazil” (March 11), “Bloodride” (March 13), “Go Karts” (March 13), “Feel Good” (March 19), “A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story” (March 20), “Ultras” (March 20), “Sense and Sensibility” (March 31)
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