‘Jane the Virgin’: Seasons 1-5 (Sept. 5)
Our CW trifecta concludes with this sparkling and screwy telenovela spoof, which ran on the network from 2014 to 2019. Gina Rodriguez found her breakthrough role as the title character, a waitress and would-be writer who takes a vow of chastity until marriage, then finds herself in a state of near-constant challenge to that vow. Rodriguez is a spark plug, playing Jane with equal emphasis on the heart, mind and libido, while Jennie Snyder Urman, the creator and showrunner, introduces endless and frequently preposterous romantic entanglements without subverting the genuine warmth at the story’s center.
‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ (Sept. 19)
The director Halina Reijn assembles a gifted ensemble cast — including Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace, Rachel Sennott, Amandla Stenberg and Chase Sui Wonders — in this inspired mash-up of locked-room whodunit and “Spring Breakers”-style party movie. Davidson is a spoiled-rotten trust fund kid who hosts a rager for his friends as they ride out an incoming hurricane, and it’s all fun and games and drunken revelry until guests start turning up dead. Reijn threads a delicate needle here, making her characters flawed but not quite loathsome, and sending up current trends of online activism and halfhearted wokeness without punching down.
‘Dune’ (Sept. 30)
Before Denis Villeneuve cracked the code on adapting Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic for the screen, David Lynch, fresh of the success of “The Elephant Man,” took a turn; the results are not quite successful, but they aren’t boring either. Unsurprisingly, Lynch embraces the freakishness of Herbert’s tale, creating a frequently unnerving experience that audiences were not quite ready for. But all’s well that end’s well: The negative experience led Lynch to re-team with his leading man Kyle MacLachlan for a much smaller and more personal follow-up, “Blue Velvet ” (1986).
‘How to Get Away With Murder’: Seasons 1-6 (Sept. 30)
Shonda Rhimes followed up the triumphs of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” with this six-season success and created a defining role for Viola Davis to match Ellen Pompeo’s and Kerry Washington’s in those earlier series. Davis stars as the criminal defense lawyer and law professor Annalise Keating, a brilliant litigator and teacher who also struggles with alcoholism, childhood trauma and her own moral flexibility in matters of morality and legality. She is an antihero as complicated as Walter White or Claire Underwood, and Davis plays her to the hilt.
‘The Lego Movie’ (Sept. 30)
The directors of “21 Jump Street,” Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, confirmed their ability to make terrific movies out of less-than-promising ideas with this wily and inventive cinematic riff on the long-running toy line. It sounds like pure branding, a feature-length commercial, but Lord and Miller (who both wrote and directed) tap into a child’s sense of no-rules-allowed play, cooking up an imaginative story line about a Lego laborer (voiced by Chris Pratt) who is sucked into a world-cracking adventure featuring cameos from the DC, “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” franchises. It’s fast-paced and funny, with a third-act twist that turns into a thoughtful exploration of the magic of childhood.
Read More: Stream These 12 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in September
