Wachowski sci-fi series hits Netflix
What’s new to watch this week on pay-per-view and streaming services:
“Sense8,” a new original series from Netflix, is a sprawling science fiction thriller created by Andy and Lana Wachowski (“The Matrix” films) with J. Michael Straczynski (“Babylon 5”). Daryl Hannah and Naveen Andrews topline the story of eight strangers from around the world who are psychically linked and hunted down by a shadowy organization. Expect something more “Cloud Atlas” than “The Matrix.” All 12 episodes of the first season are available to watch all at once or at your own pace.
Pay-Per-View / Video-On-Demand
Before “Sense8,” the Wachowskis made the lively, silly space opera “Jupiter Ascending” with Mila Kunis as galactic royalty and Channing Tatum as her dog soldier bodyguard. It looks like a pulp sci-fi paperback cover come to life. PG-13 for fantasy violence. Also available in 3-D for those with compatible systems, and on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD.
Disney’s real-life sports drama “McFarland, USA” is an inspirational PG film starring Kevin Costner as a cross-country coach in an impoverished California desert town.
For the younger crowd there’s the animated “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.” It’s also available in 3-D and is, for some reason, rated PG for “rude humor.”
Also new this week: the con artist caper film “Focus” with Will Smith (rated R) and “Wild Horses,” a modern Western mystery from Robert Duvall (rated R).
Netflix
“The Best of Me,” a romantic drama with Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden as former high school sweethearts reunited 20 years later, is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel.
“Hector and the Search for Happiness” is a comedy with Simon Pegg on an odyssey to … well, you read the title.
“ Graceland: Seasons 1-2,” a USA series about undercover agents who work out of a beachside manor in Los Angeles, takes a grittier approach than the usual lightweight USA originals. They don’t like to play by the book.
Amazon Instant Prime
“Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “Apocalypse Now: Redux” (1979/2001) offer both the original, Oscar-nominated version of Francis Ford Coppola’s surreal Vietnam drama and the expanded version released two decades later. The additional footage (50 minutes of it) is interesting, but the more focused original is still superior. Both are rated R.
Ready for an 80s flashback? You can now enjoy the new wave stylings of “Something Wild” (1986), the punk culture of “Sid and Nancy” (1986) with a young Gary Oldman, and Stanley Kubrick’s take on Stephen King’s “The Shining” (1980).