Each month, streaming solutions in Australia include a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our selections for July.
New to Netflix
JULY 1
'Unsolved Mysteries'
The long-running docu-series"Unsolved Mysteries" debuted in 1987 and was canceled -- for the first time -- ten decades later. Since then, the show's been restored several times in many formats, as TV audiences have continued to clamor for authoritative-sounding reports on ghosts, UFOs, shadowy conspiracies and cold cases. Unlike its predecessors, the most recent version lacks a host. It does contains similar stories, left in a style that is less punchy and more somber, similar to the contemporary true-crime documentaries already popular on Netflix.
JULY 3
'The Baby-Sitters Club'
Anyone who grew up reading"The Baby-Sitters Club" series of young adult books should be delighted to hear that the new Netflix adaptation stays true to the books. The TV version is largely episodic, telling short, tween-appropriate stories about a diverse group of middle-school classmates with strong characters, who overcome their differences to run a child-care business in suburban Connecticut. This isn't some edgy reimagining; it is a bright, earnest, optimistic series about great children.
Image'Mucho Mucho Amor'Credit...Netflix
JULY 8
'Mucho Mucho Amor'
You do not need to be a lover of the elaborately attired Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado to delight in the biographical documentary"Mucho Mucho Amor." Before Mercado died late last year, a team of filmmakers lured the flamboyant television character to tell his story, about the way the love of theater and a few lucky breaks led to him becoming one of the most popular celebrities on Spanish-language TV for almost 40 years. This doc doesn't only cover the details of its subject's life; it also gets into how meaningful it was to see such a warmly favorable, sex fluid personality in the Latinx pop culture mainstream.
JULY 10
'The Old Guard'
The summer blockbuster movie season has been closed down because of COVID-19, but"The Old Guard" could help ease a few of the feelings of withdrawal. Written by the veteran comic book creator Greg Rucka -- and based on his 2017 Image Comics series --"The Old Guard" is a explosive science-fiction adventure, starring Charlize Theron as one of a select team of immortals who for centuries have hired themselves out as mercenaries. The film was led by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who's best-known for the sensitive and moving dramas"Love & Basketball" and"Beyond the Lights," and that should have a unique spin on the macho action genre.
JULY 17
Katherine Langford plays the Arthurian"Lady of the Lake" at"Cursed," an action-packed fantasy series that reframes the sword-and-sorcery legend from the perspective of the sorceress Nimue. Based on a young adult novel by the show's producer Tom Wheeler (whose creative partner in the the book and the TV series is the comic book artist Frank Miller),"Cursed" has the look and heft of string like"Game of Thrones." Nonetheless, it's less grim in its depiction of this heavily stratified society, contested by a woman who is often underestimated from the powers that be.
JULY 24
'The Kissing Booth two'
The 2018 film adaptation of Beth Reekles' young adult novel"The Kissing Booth" (written when the writer was a teenager) overcame some savage reviews to become one of Netflix's most buzzed-about romantic comedies. The sequel,"The Kissing Booth two," is based on a Reekles publication, composed roughly a decade later. The narrative picks up where its predecessor left off, with Elle Evans (Joey King) trying to keep a long-distance relationship moving with the college-bound Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi). Complications ensue, as Noah befriends a female classmate while Elle becomes attracted to a new boy in college.
Also arriving:
"Berlin Syndrome" (July 1),"Deadwind" Season 2 (July 1),"Grease" (July 1),"Pitch Perfect" (July 1),"Say I Do" (July 1),"Top End Wedding" (July 1),"Warrior Nun" (July 2),"Cable Girls" Closing Season: Part two (July 3),"Desperados" (July 3),"Ju-On: Origins" (July 3),"Southern Survival" (July 3),"Japan Sinks: 2020" (July 9),"The Protector" Season 4 (July 9),"The Claudia Kishi Club" (July 10),"O Crush Perfeito" (July 10),"The Twelve" (July 10),"The Business of Drugs" (July 14),"Urzila Carlson: Overqualified Loser" (July 14),"Deadly Affair" (July 16),"How to Sell Drugs Online (Quickly )" Season 2 (July 21),"Jack Whitehall: I'm Just Joking" (July 21),"Stress City: New York vs. the Mafia" (July 22),"Norsemen" Season 3 (July 22),"Good Girls" Season 3 (July 26),"Last Chance U: Laney" (July 28),"The Hater" (July 29),"The Rate Cubers" (July 29),"The Umbrella Academy" Season 2 (July 31).
New to Amazon
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'Vivarium'Credit...Amazon
JULY 3
'Hanna' Season Two
JULY 11
'Vivarium'
JULY 24
'Radioactive'
The comic book artist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (best known for her memoir"Persepolis") attempts something different with her latest movie, a biopic starring Rosamund Pike as the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Marie Curie. Based on a Lauren Redniss picture book, and adapted to the screen by the writer Jack Thorne,"Radioactive" covers the fundamental details of Curie's life including her relationship with her husband and spouse Pierre Curie (Sam Riley). But it also takes a big-picture perspective, revealing how Curie's influence rippled through the world in ways both amazing and destructive.
Additionally arriving:
JULY 5
The five-part true-crime series"Outcry" covers the case of Greg Kelley, a former Texas high school soccer player whose promising career was cut short when he had been convicted of sexually assaulting a four-year-old boy. The fee is gruesome, but the show posits that the prosecution might have been hasty. The documentarian Pat Kondelis investigates what happened after some people in the area started rallying on Kelley's behalf, and considers whether the essence of the offense itself made it more difficult to get a definitive answer about what happened.
JULY 10
Well-received in the Sundance Film Festival when it debuted earlier this year, the supernatural horror movie"Relic" stars Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote as a mom and daughter who become concerned when the aging matriarch of their family, Edna -- played by Robyn Nevin -- begins to show signs of dementia. When the younger girls arrive at Edna's dark, creaky old home to give a hand, they wonder if what is actually bothering grandma is something unnatural. The first time feature filmmaker Natalie Erika James builds tension through quiet scenes of everyday life, made more ominous by the conditions.
JULY 12
'P-Valley' Season 1
According to a Katori Hall stage drama, the provocative drama"P-Valley" is placed among the clientele and staff of a little town strip club, situated deep in the American south. The emphasis here is less on cheap thrills than on complicated characters -- male and female -- who have rich pasts informing their motives for coming to this location. Every one of the first year's directors is a girl, and while sex and desire are certainly elements of the show, they notify a far bigger narrative.
JULY 31
'The Trip to Greece'
With"The visit to Greece," Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon continue one of the most beautiful movie series in recent memory: a mostly improvised travelogue in which the two comic actors play exaggerated versions of these. As the title suggests, in this chapter that the boys tour the Greek isles, following the route of Homer's"Odyssey" while stopping to eat in the finest restaurants. As always, both also try to outdo each other with both their celebrity impressions and their hurtful remarks about early civilization.