21 Jump Street (2012)

This stops streaming on Netflix today, hence my prioritization. All I knew going in was that it's a buddy cop action comedy based loosely on a same-name TV series -- a dramatic one, oddly enough. That didn't work well for Dragnet, but the movie and show of 21JS have the same moderately high IMDb rating. Hey, the central premise does sound ripe for laughs.

In an unspecified modern U.S. city, wimpy geek Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and book-dumb jock Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) become unlikely friends as twenty-something cops. After an abortive drug bust, they are assigned to the titular address, a Korean church appropriated by the undercover division. Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) orders them to pose as high school students to trace the source of a dangerous new drug among the students. Since the duo don't study enough in advance, they accidentally swap aliases, so Schmidt takes an acting class and run track while Jenko has to learn AP chemistry. This works out better than you'd think, but they have trouble coordinating with each other, and Dickson is losing what little patience he had with them.

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

My Netflix list has gotten too samey. I poked around for something short (85 minutes) and unlike what I'd seen lately. It occurred to me that not only had I not seen a documentary in months; I hadn't seen a nature documentary in years. Why not one with an intriguing title?

In 2018, naturalist Craig Foster goes diving near Cape Town and discovers a common octopus covered in shells for deception. He decides to watch her daily for a year. At first she shies away from him; then she sometimes clings to him in apparent playfulness. He is tempted to protect her from predation and starvation, despite the widely accepted rule against interference. Of course, a year is a long time for an octopus....

Snowpiercer (2013)

This stops streaming on Netflix at the end of the month, but I hadn't noticed that when I chose it. Mainly, it was about the highest-profile title left on my list. And with the current weather, it seemed appropriate.

The starting event happens only the year after the film's release, so you might think of it as alternate history now: An anti-global-warming measure goes horribly right, rendering the earth nigh uninhabitably frozen. Fortunately, businessman Wilford (Ed Harris) had the foresight to create a somehow self-sustaining train that harvests water by plowing through snow, and it houses more life than you might expect. Unfortunately, those in the rear cars are impoverished and tyrannized, with small children taken away for secret purposes. Hard to retain gratitude for lifesaving at that point. After 17 years of this, Curtis (Chris Evans) leads the biggest lower-class revolt yet, heading for the engine room to seize control. Given the length of the train, the locked doors, and the brutal guards, this will take a while, but they enlist the help of a stoned lock specialist (Song Kang-ho) and his seemingly clairvoyant daughter (Go Ah-sung).

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

I did not know until last night that this was a biopic, nor was I familiar with the fictitious Dolemite or his actor/creator, Rudy Ray Moore. My prior knowledge of blaxploitation flicks was largely limited to the original Shaft and the genre parody Black Dynamite. If nothing else, I'd learn a few things herein.

In '70s L.A., Moore (Eddie Murphy) struggles to make a name for himself in show business, whether singing or standup. His first success comes from inspiration by street poets, telling naughty stories in rhyme over instrumental music. He develops his Dolemite persona and grows popular enough to launch the career of partner Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph). Then he decides to star in an action comedy movie, Dolemite, which doesn't come together easily without major studio support.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

I had enjoyed all the WaG shorts as well as The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Alas, their only outing since (Shaun the Sheep doesn't count) had been World of Invention, a 2010 documentary miniseries that doesn't match the rest in humor, let alone adventure. Well, my parents wasted little time in inviting me to see this new addition to Netflix with them, and I wasted little time in saying yes.

In case you need a refresher on The Wrong Trousers from 1993, goofy inventor Wallace (Ben Whitehead, replacing the late Peter Sallis) and especially his mute but hypercompetent pooch, Gromit, foiled thieving penguin Feathers McGraw, who got sent to a zoo. Now Wallace has created a mechanical gnome, Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), who does well enough at gardening to make local news, gaining Feathers' attention. Thanks to both overreaching and lax policing, Feathers can hack Norbot remotely, making him build a platoon of gnomes who pretend to help the neighborhood but swipe yard implements for machine parts. The scheme is to bust Feathers out, steal the soon-to-be-exhibited Blue Diamond again, and frame Wallace.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

This has the same IMDb rating as The Last Jedi, which puts it a little below the median for the franchise. For years, if anyone in my circles talked about it, they were complaining. Since the stand-alone prequel wasn't integral to understanding the overarching story, I saw no need to tune in. Then I heard a positive review from someone I trust, so I finally gave it a try.

The film begins with Han (Alden Ehrenreich) as a young adult street thief for a harsh gang leader. He pays his way off planet with loot, but crush Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) gets apprehended. Han joins the Imperial Navy -- where, being an orphan, he is assigned the surname Solo -- in order to learn pilot skills and use them to rescue Qi'ra. Of course, he's too unruly for a good soldier and finds the missions questionable, so that's another group to escape. For much of the plot, he's involved in a heist with fellow ex-soldier Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) for Crimson Dawn, a syndicate under Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), who just so happens to have enlisted Qi'ra. But once again, Han has more of a moral compass than he likes to let on....