It’s awards season, and a bunch of great Oscar-winning and -nominated films are leaving this month. Check them out while you can.
The Academy Awards arrive at the end of March, and the titles leaving Netflix in the United States this month are steeped in Oscar glory, including multiple nominees and winners for best picture, actor, actress and more. They also include hit comedies, erotic thrillers and family favorites. Queue up these 13 movies before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.) This 1992 adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, and is a quintessential example of the “Merchant-Ivory film”: a period literary adaptation of impeccable design and intelligent craft. But Merchant-Ivory productions were too often inaccurately dismissed as airless, stuffy, overly intellectual affairs; “Howards End” is a robust, energetic picture, rife with familial betrayal, long-simmering attractions and class resentment. Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham-Carter are all excellent, but the standout is Emma Thompson, who won her first Oscar for her searing work as the protagonist Margaret Schlegel. Stream it here. The British comic actor Steve Coogan — best known for his long-running turns as Alan Partridge and as a fictionalized version of himself in the “Trip” movies and BBC series — did a surprising shift to the serious when he co-wrote and co-starred in Stephen Frears’s adaptation of the nonfiction book “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.” Judi Dench received an Oscar nomination for best actress for her heart-wrenching performance as the title character, an Irishwoman who sought out the son she was forced to give up for adoption a half-century earlier. Coogan (nominated for best screenplay) is the journalist who assists her and uncovers a horrifying story of religious hypocrisy. Stream it here. The director John Hillcoat and the musician and screenwriter Nick Cave, who first collaborated on the unforgettable outback Western “The Proposition,” re-teamed for this story of bootlegging brothers in Depression Era Virginia. The cast is jaw-dropping: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Noah Taylor and Mia Wasikowska all get a chance to shine, and if nothing else, “Lawless” is a priceless opportunity to watch some of our finest thespians rub elbows. But it’s thoughtful and entertaining besides; its Australian auteurs might seem an odd fit for such an inherently American tale, but their outsider perspective keeps them from overly romanticizing this criminal family’s “entrepreneurial” exploits. Stream it here. The “Wire” star Idris Elba is in top form in this handsome biopic of Nelson Mandela, tracking his journey from childhood in Apartheid-era South Africa through his protest, imprisonment, release and triumphant election as the nation’s first democratically elected president. The film is plagued by the issues of brevity so common to the biopic form, but the electrifying performances of Elba and Naomie Harris as Mandela’s wife, Winnie, give the picture its forward momentum and a sense of urgency.
