Every film and series leaving Netflix this week: July 2024
One of the most helpful recent additions to the Netflix interface was the label warning subscribers of when a movie and TV series was on borrowed time as part of the content library, placing a finite date on the last chance any viewer had to check it off their watch-list.
There’s only one major departure from the streaming service in the coming seven days, but it’s a notable one. Hailing from one of the most distinctive auteurs of their generation and boasting a pair of awards-laden heavyweights in the lead roles, Tim Burton’s Big Eyes will be gone as of July 23rd.
The project came somewhere out of left field for Burton, if only for the fact it’s a biographical drama. The filmmaker has been virtually synonymous with gothic fantasy since the beginning of his career, and the majority of his best and most successful movies have read from that exact playbook.
Beetlejuice and its incoming sequel, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows are almost the embodiment of Burton-esque cinema, but he has been known to wade into relatively uncharted waters in the past.
The last time before Big Eyes he helmed a biographical drama saw Walter Matthau earn an Academy Award win for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in Ed Wood, so it’s not like he doesn’t have previous with the genre. That film was about one of Hollywood’s worst-ever directors, but his next biopic was even stranger.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Walter Keane became famous for painting portraits of people packing the titular hefty peepers. However, the art world was none the wiser that his wife Margaret was actually the one responsible. When their marriage reaches a state of dissolution, the two engage in a courtroom battle where the truth comes to light, with Walter making the disastrous decision to represent himself.
Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz and six-time nominee Amy Adams play the two central roles, and their performances are every bit as solid as anyone would expect from talents of such renown. They each earned Golden Globe nominations, too, with Adams being named ‘Best Actress’ winner in the ‘Musical or Comedy’ category.
It was a refreshing change of pace for Burton, but the downside for anyone who shells out their monthly subscription fee to Netflix and hasn’t seen Big Eyes yet is that time is running out to get it done.