The 7 Best Movies New to Netflix in October 2019

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7. “Breaking Bad: El Camino” (2019)

In recent months, we’ve sometimes reserved the last spot on this list for a movie that we haven’t actually seen yet; Netflix Originals aren’t always available in advance, but a handful of these titles have such obvious appeal that it’s worth calling attention to them all the same. With September’s “Between Two Ferns: The Movie,” the finished product didn’t quite fulfill our expectations. And yet here we are just a few weeks later getting all hot and bothered about another feature-length adaptation of a beloved show. 

Truth be told, there’s something about a “Breaking Bad” movie that has our hopes up. The enormously popular AMC series may not have stood the test of time like “Mad Men” or “Halt and Catch Fire,” but its seedy, serialized energy has made it tempting — and worthwhile — for creator Vince Gilligan to return to the well. “Better Call Saul” has found all manner of fun stories under the crust left behind by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, and “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” takes things a step further by bringing those very characters back from the great beyond (one of them died, the other was just relegated to DVD).

Little is known about the plot of this semi-inevitable continuation, but fingers crossed that the film isn’t just a glorified commercial for its stars’ new brand of mezcal.

Available to stream on October 11.

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6. “Bad Boys II” (2003)

“Bad Boys II” may not be the best Michael Bay movie ever made — that honor will always be held by “The Rock” — but this nearly “Irishman”-sized testopera of shootouts, car chases, and masculinity in crisis might be the most Michael Bay movie ever made, and that has to count for something. Kind of? Maybe? …Your mileage will vary.

That being said, the steroidal panache of Bay’s sunbaked action sequel is simply not up for debate. This is Bay at the height of his impotent powers, the volatile director screaming down anyone who dared to tell him “no” about opening the film with a “funny” scene at a KKK cross-burning, or about the corpse-riddled car chase in the second act, or about the decision to destroy half of Cuba in the third. The carnage here is as cleanly shot as it is disgustingly rendered, as each scene coheres into a blood-soaked and bittersweet reminder that Bay used to direct movies like his camera was loaded with dynamite. 

Available to stream on October 1.

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5. “The Laundromat” (2019)

Steven Soderbergh’s second Netflix movie of the year hasn’t been quite as well-received as his first, but just because “High Flying Bird” was lightning in a bottle doesn’t mean that “The Laundromat” isn’t worth a wash. Here’s what IndieWire’s Eric Kohn had to say about the winking political comedy when it premiered in Venice last month:

Steven Soderbergh excels at exploring the complex systems governing modern society with a delicious ironic tone. With “The Laundromat,” that tendency reaches a grandiloquent extreme. The director’s funny, searing look at the Panama Papers scandal unleashes a cavalcade of goofy fourth-wall-breaking explanations about shell companies, corporate tax laws, and offshore accounts. It has a gun-toting Meryl Streep shooting up a fraudulent insurance company, primitive cavemen to explore the origins of supply and demand, and a cameo by Will Forte as “Doomed Gringo #1.” There’s no telling where this movie will go in its quest to shake up a dense subject.

Needless to say, “The Laundromat” stuffs a lot of information into 95 minutes. The slapdash narrative doesn’t always click, and some of the devices are so on-the-nose one can practically hear Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns cackling at their cleverness. At the same time, the frisky energy of “The Laundromat” turns its “money-laundering for dummies” conceit into a robust anti-capitalist screed, so that even the dopey cameos and cartoonish metaphors come tinged with the queasy sense that the bad guys are laughing hardest at every joke.

Available to stream on October 18.

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4. “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019)

A breezy, joyful, balls-to-the-wall biopic about the making of Rudy Roy Moore’s DIY blaxploitation masterpiece, “Dolemite Is My Name” may not detonate with the same earthshaking force as the film that inspired it, but it’s exactly the kind of movie that Moore always had in mind for his target audience: Raw, unapologetically black, and filled to the motherfuckin’ brim with “titties, action, and kung-fu.” Well, maybe not the brim, but there’s enough of each ingredient to keep anyone from getting bored.

More to the point, it’s an Eddie Murphy comeback vehicle that forces the long-slumping actor to fight and scrape for every frame; a movie that winds him up before it starts and just lets him go off for two full hours; a movie that’s eager to evoke the manic genius that made him a star, the physical comedy that made him rich, and the wounded vulnerability that made him irreplaceable. By the time it’s over, “Dolemite Is My Name” feels like as much a tribute to Eddie Murphy as it is to Rudy Ray Moore. But there’s plenty of love to go around.

Available to stream on October 25.

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3. “Men in Black” (1997)

A week after “Gemini Man” lands in theaters and finds Will Smith (and his young doppelganger) racing towards an uncertain future, “Men in Black” arrives on Netflix and finds Will Smith joyfully epitomizing the pleasures of our recent past. Barry Sonnenfeld’s summer blockbuster may not be the best studio tentpole of the ’90s, but few other films so perfectly epitomize what made those pre-Willennium years into the golden age of multiplex entertainment. Tight, well-engineered, and powered by the electric chemistry of its all-star cast (Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are like a Clinton-era Laurel and Hardy), “Men in Black” is the kind of four-quadrant powerhouse that doesn’t just feel like a corporate product. It’s charming as hell, it’s told with a sense of real purpose, and it features Vincent D’Onofrio in an Oscar-worthy performance as a giant alien bug who wears a sack of human flesh like a suit. We didn’t know how good we had it — fortunately, modern Hollywood seems hellbent on reminding us.

Available to stream on October 19.

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2. “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004)

Steven Soderbergh has always thought of himself as more of a synthesist than an originator, more of a collage artist than a bonafide auteur. Unlike Quentin Tarantino, Soderbergh tends to be more in service to his influences than his influences are in service to him. But if that’s true — as the filmmaker humbly swears that it is — why do so many of his best movies feel like they couldn’t possibly have been made by anyone else?

How fitting, then, that the most idiosyncratic studio picture Soderbergh has ever made was actually based on the script for a different film. Retrofitting George Nolfi’s “Honor Among Thieves” into a dazzling, go-for-broke sequel about the difficulty of making sequels, “Ocean’s Twelve” was a victim of its own ingenuity (a fate to which its director can certainly relate). Less of a heist movie than it is an abstract investigation of the genre and its expectations, this immensely fun caper has the audacity to make the audience into its primary mark, and that pissed off a lot of people. They’ll come around.

Once you’re in on the joke, it’s so much fun to watch Soderbergh weaponize the glitz and glamor of his most incredible cast, using all of that plutonium-grade charisma as a means to distract us from the con at hand; not only is the Julia Roberts sequence the hilarious coup de grâce of a blockbuster that plays inside baseball better than “Full Frontal” ever could, it also gets to the heart of what the “Ocean’s” movies are all about: the seduction of star power.

Available to stream on October 1.

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1. “Raging Bull” (1980)

Next month, Netflix will release Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” a rapturously reviewed crime epic starring Robert De Niro. But — and this is true — Scorsese and De Niro have actually worked together before! None of their previous collaborations have been quite as long as their latest project, but all of them have been just as good. And several of them are now (or will soon be) available to watch on Netflix, as “Raging Bull” joins “Taxi Driver” and “Mean Streets” at the end of the month in order to whet appetites for the magnum opus that will be added to the service at the end of November. 

An invaluable force in the world of film preservation and a pure-hearted evangelist for the holiness of the theatrical experience, Scorsese has become one of the streaming service’s most unexpected allies. Of course, it might be more accurate to say that Netflix has gone out of its way to support the legendary filmmaker where other, more traditional studios have not. Regardless, it’s been a mutually beneficial arrangement; Scorsese may not have intended for his bitter and bruising Jake LaMotta biopic to be seen on an Apple Watch or whatever, but that indignity is a small price to pay in order to secure funding for “Rolling Thunder Revue” and “The Irishman.”

If you haven’t seen “Raging Bull” before, De Niro’s doughy wrecking ball of a lead performance should prove arresting on a screen of any size, while those revisiting the movie for the umpteenth time might find new resonance to the haunted sense of guilt that links this Oscar-winning classic to Scorsese’s latest work. 

Available to stream on October 31.