The Best TV Shows And Movies Leaving Netflix In January 2024

Films are available. Then they aren't. Entire film series can be accessed on one day, and then are nowhere to be found the next. The tides roll in, the tides recede. The sun rises, the sun sets. So it goes with streaming. 

Thanks to the Writers Strike of 2023, and the revelation that exclusive in-studio streaming services aren't an entirely viable business model, it's become more important than ever to keep tabs on what might be available on notable services in any given week. Sadly, no streaming service purports to be a permanent archive of film and TV, and even the most deeply branded properties are now being shopped around outside of their home studios; to some, it may feel strange that "Merry Little Batman" debuted on Prime Video rather than the expected Warner Bros.-owned Max streaming service. It seems that the most logical way streaming services can move forward might be to recapture the "wild video store" ethos of about a decade ago. Remember when Netflix was used merely for re-watching episodes of "The Office," and not the home of expensive TV shows and high-end prestige pictures? 

Actually, keep the high-end prestige pictures. I like those. 

For the rest, Netflix has recently released what films and TV shows will be leaving their service in January of 2024, and some great, notable films are thereafter moving to unknown pastures. Best to catch them now before the landscape shifts again and the films vanish for an unknown amount of time. 

Spike Lee's forthright and outraged crime drama tells the true story of Ron Stallworth (played in the film by John David Washington), a cop in Colorado Springs who, thanks to phone conversations and correspondence, managed to infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in 1972. Stallworth has phone conversations with David Duke (Topher Grace), a man who served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992, despite being a KKK Grand Wizard. When Stallworth requires an in-person avatar to appear at Klan meetings, he enlists his white co-worker, the Jewish Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). Lee, as is his idiom, doesn't shy away from hard conversations about racism in America and the stubborn persistence of mealy-mouthed, pathetic, ignorant, idiotic hate groups like the KKK. Lee even allows his characters to have conversations about the role of the police and how being a Black cop might be antithetical to civil rights causes. 

Lee also points out how D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation" has long been used as a rallying cry for white supremacists, even a century after its release. Lee ends the film with up-to-the-minute footage of recent racial attacks and speeches by Donald Trump. "BlacKkKlansman" is a historical film, but is sadly incredibly timely. 

"BlacKkKlansman" won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards, and is leaving Netflix on January 5.

Jordan Peele's directorial debut feature "Get Out" hit the horror community first, but spread quickly to a mainstream audience with its chilling "Stepford Wives" tale of a young Black man named Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) entering the money-soaked spaces occupied by her wealthy white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams). At first, Chris encounters a litany of race-based microaggressions and bizarre claims of allyship ("We would have voted for Obama a third time if we could!"). He begins to notice that the only other Black people in the community are in the employ of the white people. He eventually finds that something even more sinister is afoot, and this community of wealthy white people is exploiting Black bodies in ways that he never could have imagined. 

It's a horror film and a sociology essay at the same time. That's no easy feat. "Get Out" won Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. 

"Get Out" ultimately ends well for the protagonists, but it came at a time when open racism from American politicians appeared to be on the rise. Like "BlacKkKlansman," it came at just the right time and remains timely. 

"The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is a horror film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos ("Poor Things") and it's just as bitter and disturbing as you might expect. Barry Keoghan, a proven expert at playing inscrutable creeps, plays Martin, a young man whose father recently died during heart surgery. The surgeon, Steven (Colin Farrell) reaches out to Martin in hopes of comforting the kid, but Martin will have nothing of it. Without saying how, Martin announces that Steven's family is mysteriously cursed. Each member of his family will become paralyzed, bleed from their eyes, and refuse to eat. The curse will be lifted if Steven murders at least one member of his family. 

There is a supernatural undercurrent, but Lanthimos stages the film's drama in plain, suburban rooms, leaving the curse in the realm of the surreal. The film is off-kilter and harrowing. The bulk of Lanthimos' films are cynical about human nature, and "Sacred Deer" points out that fear and animosity are the primary motivating factors of our species. 

Michael Bay's 2016 military thriller "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" might be the best film in the notorious director's famously overblown filmography, and it's likely not for the reasons he intended. Looking over Bay's films finds a mile-wide streak of military fetishism, and most of his movies feature loving, attentive shots of soldiers mobilizing to take on the oncoming threat of alien robots. Through these shots, one might assume that Bay has a great deal of adolescent, fanboy-like admiration of the American military, largely because they get to shoot guns, fly fast planes, and drive big vroom-vroom cars. 

"13 Hours" is a movie about the 2012 Benghazi attack, and the American soldiers that were involved. The film's tagline is "When everything went wrong, six men had the courage to do what was right," but "13 Hours" is not a tale of bravery or heroism. Indeed, at 144 minutes, the film is about endurance. It's about how exhausting and futile American "military might" can feel. Bay may have thought he was making a film about patriotism, but unwittingly made a subtle criticism of it. 

Leaving 1/5/23

• BlacKkKlansman
• Get Out
• Love Island USA: Season 2
• Ma

Leaving 1/12/23

• Spy Kids
• Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
• Spy Kids 3: Game Over

Leaving 1/14/23

• The Doll
• The Doll 2
• Uncharted

Leaving 1/19/23

• The Real World: Season 28

Leaving 1/22/23

• The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Leaving 1/24/23

• Begin Again

Leaving 1/31/23

• 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
• Baby Mama
• The Bling Ring
• Call Me by Your Name
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Season 1
• Eat Pray Love
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• La La Land
• Survivor: Season 32: Kaôh Rōng