Once upon a time in the early ’00s, France led the world in onscreen depravity, the many displays of violent taboo-pushing collected under the informal label of New Extremity. The hip-hop bent of the musical numbers sometimes clashes with the overall tone, not to mention the already robust musical heritages of the area, but they’re energetic and verbally dextrous enough to overcome that friction. Though Sony’s designs for its human characters remain off-putting, it’s mastered the many animals and the scenery they inhabit, drawing the fantasy out from the traditional cultural aesthetics of Havana and Miami. The Cuba/southern Florida region proves a felicitous setting for an adventure bearing more than a little similarity to Coco, in which another musician - a cuddly guitar-playing kinkajou also voiced by Miranda - must embark on a comic journey to share his song, in this case while evading menacing Girl Scouts.

Read on for a selection of this month’s under-the-radar highlights:īetween the original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the sugar-rush physical comedy, and the often dazzling visual artistry, there’s a lot to like in this adoptee discarded by Sony Animation. That just means we can direct our attention more fully to deserving selections off the beaten path, including a winningly upbeat musical spanning the Straits of Florida, a supersized samurai epic, and a skin-crawling French creature feature. The Big Red N has been having a quiet August, however, seemingly clustering its big names in the end of the year Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jane Campion, Paolo Sorrentino, Antoine Fuqua, and Adam McKay are all on the docket for the next few months. By this time last year, it’d already released one of 2020’s major films with Da 5 Bloods, and was a couple short weeks away from premiering a critically adored documentary ( Dick Johnson Is Dead) and a polarizing work from an essential auteur (Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things). Taking a bird’s-eye view of the calendar for 2021, it looks like Netflix has been pacing itself.

Top movies on netflix august 2021