5 Best New Movies on Netflix Instant Streaming

Nightcrawler and The Aviator are among our picks for the new and best flicks to stream this month on Netflix.

As our biggest pre-summer TV series have begun to wind down (au revoir, Mad Men; see you soon, Game of Thrones), our attention can now be consumed by some new narratives. Here are some of our picks for the best and most interesting new offerings from Netflix streaming this month.

The High and the Mighty (1954)

I’m hardly what you would call a John Wayne devotee, but William Wellman’s high-altitude thriller is sharp, and well-constructed. Wayne plays a burned-out co-pilot of a trans-Pacific flight who suddenly has to take over the plane and land it safely when his pilot loses it. If the plot sounds vaguely familiar, you have to imagine it was one of the many inspirations for the ZAZ boys when they made the ribald Airplane! a couple decades later.

Nightcrawler (2014)

Jake Gyllenhaal does his deep-focus bit as a creepy sociopath who pushes his way into the lucrative nighttime crime-and-accident scene shooting footage for a local L.A. news station. Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut (his brother Tony is already a well-established writer/director) is sure-handed and absolutely unrelenting in its grim narrative. Part scathing satire, part unsettling character study, the film holds its dour atmosphere to the very end.

Rosewater (2014)

John Stewart, the comedian and longtime host of The Daily Show, chose this fact-based story as the basis of his feature writing/directing debut. The film concerns Maziar Bahari (played here by Gael García Bernal), a Canadian-Iranian journalist for Newsweek, who was detained and tortured for several months while in Iran covering the country’s elections — in part due to a satiric interview he had done on Stewart’s own show. Despite the grimness of the material, Stewart’s steady hand and unflinching eye give the film a good deal of verve.

The Aviator (2004)

Before Martin Scorsese’s continuing dependence on Leonardo DiCaprio started to yield diminished returns (Shutter Island, anyone?), the young actor’s depiction of legendary billionaire crackpot Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s sweeping bio-pic was suitably wigged out. The film doesn’t quite come together as well as one might have liked, but DiCaprio does good work, and you can imagine what Marty’s cameras do for the Spruce Goose, in all her glory.

Beyond the Lights (2014)

Admittedly, the story — about a desperately unhappy superstar singer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who falls in love with the cop (Nate Parker) who saves her life — sounds straight out of the Lifetime Channel canon. But in the hands of talented filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball), the characters have far more depth and complexity to them than you might expect. The film is also bolstered by a powerhouse performance by the radiant Mbatha-Raw, who carries a great deal of sadness behind her immaculate appearance.

Piers Marchant is a film critic and writer based in Philly. Find more confounding amusements and diversions at his blog, Sweet Smell of Success, or read his further 142-character rants and ravings at @kafkaesque83.