We’re nearing the end of another month, and that means quite a few great movies are leaving their current streaming services. Thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday in America, you’re likely to have a little extra free time at the end of November, so we’ve collected a few of the best movies to catch up on before they vanish.
This month’s selections include a horror sequel that’s way better than it has any right to be, a biopic to satisfy the boxing itch you definitely didn’t get anywhere else this month, a thriller full of questions about AI, and one of the best bank robbery movies of all time.
Here are the best movies leaving streaming at the end of November.
Editor’s pick: Doctor Sleep: Director’s Cut
Director: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran
Leaving Prime Video: Nov. 31
The Shining has a very complicated history. Both Stephen King’s original novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation are absolute horror classics, but the relationship between the two is somewhat antagonistic, thanks in part to the fact that King spent years absolutely hating Kubrick’s movie. So the fact that director Mike Flanagan managed to build a bridge between the book version of the story and the movie version with his film Doctor Sleep is remarkable. But the fact that he also managed to make a great movie in the process is a minor miracle.
Doctor Sleep: Director’s Cut, the only version of the movie worth watching, follows Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), the young hero of the original story, years after his ordeal at the Overlook Hotel. Danny’s lost touch with his ability to shine, he battles the same disease of alcoholism that his father struggled against, and he feels generally adrift in his life, numbing himself to everything around him just to avoid the scars of his childhood. But when a group of vampires who feed on kids who shine starts to threaten a young girl (Kyliegh Curran), Danny has to confront the ghosts of his past.
What truly makes the movie sing is McGregor’s absolutely incredible performance as Danny, turning in career-best work showing Danny’s struggle to move forward with his life alongside his drive to save someone he can’t help but relate to. Meanwhile, Flanagan’s direction is excellent, evoking bits and pieces of Kubrick’s original masterpiece without ever lowering itself into cheap imitation, right up until facsimile becomes a necessary tool. All of this makes for an excellent movie that not only manages to stand alongside its predecessors, but makes them both stronger by its existence. —Austen Goslin
Movies leaving Netflix
Ali
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight
Leaving Netflix: Nov. 31
Based on the viewing numbers, there’s a pretty good chance that you watched a boxing event in the last week or so. And there’s a good chance that viewing left you at least a little bit disappointed and maybe even feeling ever so slightly tricked — you weren’t, it was just good marketing, but I certainly understand the feeling. But no matter how you felt, there’s probably a boxing glove-shaped hole in your heart right now that needs filling. Thankfully, Michael Mann and Will Smith are here to help with their 2001 collaboration Ali, a biopic of boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
Ali is absolutely everything that boxing should be: brutal, intimate, clever, and at once both deeply physical and human and something bigger. The movie is a titanic portrait of a person who was larger than life, a boxer, a champion, an activist, an icon, and a person who couldn’t possibly be contained just by the four corners of the ring or by one single movie. Instead, Mann employs every editing and formal trick in the book to create something bigger and more ambitious than a traditional biopic. And yes, like all boxing, Ali is technically mostly marketing, but it’s marketing in service of mythmaking for one of the most interesting and important figures of the 20th century. So if you’re feeling a little burned and want to see what boxing really can and should be, both inside and outside the ring, then look no further than Ali. —AG
Movies leaving Prime Video
Ex Machina
Director: Alex Garland
Stars: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Leaving Prime Video: Nov. 31
In the cinematic canon of “insufferable tech bros who turn out to be latent sociopaths,” Oscar Isaac’s portrayal of Nathan in Alex Garland’s 2014 sci-fi thriller Ex Machina certainly ranks among the top. The reclusive CEO of Blue Book, a fictional search engine conglomerate that’s essentially the film’s stand-in for Google, Nathan is the catalyst for much of the horror that comes to pass throughout the film’s run time. Having invited Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), one of his employees, to visit him at his isolated estate to take part in an experiment, Nathan initially comes across as an unassuming, albeit ambitious, thought leader who treats Caleb with the sort of deferential respect one would afford to a colleague. It’s only later that it becomes clear how much contempt Nathan has, not just for Caleb, but for the human species as a whole. —Toussaint Egan
Movies leaving Criterion Channel
Dog Day Afternoon
Director: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Penelope Allen
Leaving Criterion Channel: Nov. 31
Dog Day Afternoon, or as I like to call it, “Sonny Wortzik and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Bank Robbery,” is one of the most critically well-regarded films of legendary director Sidney Lumet’s storied career. Considering that career also included such venerable classics as 12 Angry Men and Network — which, along with Dog Day Afternoon, were inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry — that’s really saying something.
Based on the real-life story of John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile, Lumet’s film stars Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik, a first-time thief who, with the help of his friends Sal Naturile (John Cazale) and Stevie (Gary Springer), attempts to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank. As you can probably guess, the situation doesn’t go quite as anyone would expect, resulting in Stevie losing his nerve and Sonny and Sal being left to navigate a fraught hostage situation against an army of police officers assembled around the building. Dog Day Afternoon is a tremendous and iconic film, one that tapped directly into the zeitgeist of 1970s American culture and traced the uneasy connection between financial desperation, the attention economy of televised news, and the societal plight of the LGBTQ community. —TE
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