What’s New to Stream on Hulu for November 2021

Crossing the Streams is our look at all the offerings hitting the big streaming services each month, and this time we’re checking out what’s new on Hulu for November 2021, including a ton of mindless Christmas fare, genre gems from the 70s and 80s, new Nicolas Cage, and more!

Hulu Pick of the Month for November 2021

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Nicolas Cage is a talent unlike any other in that he’s a clearly skilled actor who resists the urge to temper his performances regardless of the material. A direct-to-video action movie that no one will care about? He’s still all in. (Take a note, Bruce Willis…) It’s even better when the material actually warrants his performance, and that’s the case with Pig (2021, premieres November 26th). Cage plays an ex-chef who’s retreated from society to live in the woods with his beloved pig, but when big-city folks kidnap the porker he’s forced into action to rescue the animal. It sounds like the setup for a riff on a Tony Jaa classic, but this is no action film. Instead, it’s a sweetly affecting tale of one man’s life choices and the simple pleasures of interspecies friendship. It’s a very good film, a quiet, contemplative movie with a restrained but emotionally effective Cage at its heart.

Underseen 70s Gems!

Doc Holliday is a famed character from both American history and western cinema, but Frank Perry’s Doc (1971) gives the man a far more well-rounded portrayal than you’ll find elsewhere. Stacy Keach brings him to vibrant, morally conflicted life, and as the film’s central character he offers a depth well beyond what viewers are used to. He’s met beat for beat by Harris Yulin’s Wyatt Earp, and together with Faye Dunaway, they craft an engaging look at the creation of a legend. The gunfight at the OK Corral still thrills, but the specifics will have you looking at it in a whole new light.

Even lesser-seen than the western above, Tony Luraschi’s The Outsider (1979) sends a Vietnam veteran to Ireland to lift up his family’s honor by helping the IRA fight the good fight. Craig Wasson plays the young man who’s surprised to discover that the values he thought he was signing up for aren’t exactly in line with his own. More drama than action/exploitation, the film is a smart, thought-provoking look at ideals, blind loyalty, and the lies that tear us apart. Wasson gives a strong performance here, and the film manages to deliver one last blow in its final minutes.

Okay, this one’s a bit of a cheat seeing as the film was released in the early 80s, but few non-70s movies feel as 70s as Cutter’s Way (1981). Jeff Bridges and John Heard star as best friends, struggling to get by each in their own way. One is something of a flashy bum, the other a less agreeable and still angry Vietnam veteran. When Bridges witnesses a crime the pair set off to capture the villains both because it’s the right thing to do and because their target is a man — the kind of man — responsible for their lots in life. What a glorious downer this is — a neo-noir offering a cynical look at the American Dream. Watch it.

B-Movie Action from the 80s!

Franco Nero as a ninja? Bless the 80s and Cannon Films! Enter the Ninja (1981) sends Nero to the Philippines where he discovers his friend’s plantation is being targeted by a mean businessman played by Christopher George. Negotiations don’t work, so the only option left is to bust out the ninja gear and kick some ass. Sho Kosugi and Susan George join in on the fun, and the film delivers exactly what you’re expecting — serious ninja action!

Sho Kosugi returns in Revenge of the Ninja (1983), but this time he’s a different ninja… a good ninja! He and his son move to the United States after their family is slaughtered back in Japan, but rather than leave their troubles behind them they instead find a whole new batch of problems. Drugs, violence, and sleaze await him in the glorious US of A, and soon he’s busting out the ninja gear and laying down the law.

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) set a new standard in terror, but for the follow-up, Hooper decided to take things in a decidedly different direction. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (1986) eschews the low-budget starkness of the original for bigger, flashier, weirder thrills. Dennis Hopper stars as a relative of the first film’s most annoying character who comes looking for justice, and when he locates the offending family he busts out his ninja gear and strikes. Okay, no ninja gear, but Hopper does give a wonderfully over-the-top performance.

Dark Thrills in the 90s!

Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan were a Hollywood power couple for a brief while there, at least until Russell Crowe showed up, but for all their fun moments and collaborations, one film stands out for its utter darkness. Flesh and Bone (1993) is a grim, somber tale of a woman who lost her entire family to murder when she was just an infant. Years later she crosses paths with the pair responsible and unknowingly falls for the man who was just a boy when it happened. James Caan stars as Quaid’s father, the cruel killer responsible for all of the film’s pain, and it’s just a terrifically dark but engaging watch.

From the grim and dour to the slick and sexy, China Moon (1994) is the epitome of a 90s thriller for adults who never took the time to watch it. Ed Harris stars as a detective whose latest case leaves him infatuated with the woman at its center. Madeleine Stowe is the woman, an abused wife who finally offed her husband, but as the romance between the two heats up so does the attention of another detective. Harris and Stowe steam up the screen together, and the various turns and twists leave plenty of reasons to keep watching through to the end.

While ostensibly billed as a saucy slice of exploitation in its own right, The Babysitter (1995) turns out to have a bit more up its sleeve than mere titillation. Alicia Silverstone plays a teen hired to babysit for a family, but the man of the house — a wonderfully sleazy and sad JT Walsh — develops a crush on her. (Curiously, Silverstone starred in The Crush two years earlier in which she plays a teen preying on an older man…) The film turns that attention inward to point a finger of condemnation towards the sexual expectations of men and boys who view women as property. It’s not subtle, but it is upsetting.

The Complete Hulu List for November 2021

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