While Netflix continues to pump out new shows, movies and documentaries at a furious rate, it can’t quite keep up with all the content that’s leaving the platform.
When Netflix first pivoted from mailing out DVDs to a streaming service, almost all of its content belonged to other providers. Now, those providers want their stuff back for their own streaming platforms – or, at least, they don’t want to help a rival. This means that every month a load of movies depart Netflix, annoying those of us who never make it to the bottom of our to-be-watched list.
The list of departures in July is not as long as most other months during the year, but some great movies are fleeing the platform. We’ve rounded up three of them for you here. Make sure you don’t miss out…
Inception
Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller is one of those movies that can stand up to being watched over and over and over again.
This is partly due to a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Elliot Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But it’s also because, in many ways, Inception is a classic heist movie. DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb is a thief, he’s on the run from the authorities, but he’s trying to keep his head now. Tempted back for one last job, he’s tasked with stealing secrets for a big payday, and he needs to put together a crack team to do it.
The only difference from your usual heist movie is Cobb steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. For a mega payday and the chance to have his convictions erased, he’s asked to implant another person's idea into the target's subconscious. The target is a successful CEO and very much protected, so this heist will be a tricky one.
Inception is a visual feast with daring spectacle, incredible effects and a light touch that belies its weighty plot synopsis, we recommend giving this one more watch before it skips Netflix.
When is it leaving Netflix?
July 31
Django Unchained
We recently ranked everything in Quentin Tarantino’s back catalog and Django Unchained came in a very respectable third position, beating Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown. It’s a movie well worth watching.
This 2012 movie stars Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave who unexpectedly finds freedom when Christoph Waltz’s Dr King Schultz, a German bounty hunter, offers him the chance to work with him. Once their mission is complete, Django reveals he wants to reunite with his long-lost wife and the pair set off together.
The movie is Tarantino’s ode to spaghetti westerns and has the same cartoonish feel to many of its action sequences, which dangle on the high-wire right between slapstick comedy and bloody violence. It’s brilliantly done, very funny and hangs together superbly.
When is it leaving Netflix?
July 24
My Girl
A rather different flavor to Nolan’s mind-bending thriller and Tarantino’s corpse-strewn western, this 1993 coming-of-age comedy-drama could serve as a nice palette cleanser after all that violence and head-scratching.
Starring Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, Macaulay Culkin, and Anna Chlumsky (who you might have seen investigating Julia Garner's Anna Delvey earlier this year in Netflix's Inventing Anna) the movie is a real rollercoaster of emotions.
Set in 1972, it follows Chlumsky’s Vada Sultenfuss, who is still grieving the death of her mother and trying to negotiate adolescence and life with her mortician father, Harry. She finds comfort in a new friendship with Culkin's Thomas J. Sennett, but then, one day, her father hires a new receptionist named Shelly and everything changes...
When is it leaving Netflix?
July 31
Looking for more Netflix movie recommendations? We've got our ultimate guide here.
