John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum – Picture: Lionsgate
A new month and a New Year are just around the corner, and with the Christmas season out of the way, you may need a pick-me-up. These eight movies (or ten, if you’re including all the franchise entries in the case of one pick) coming in January 2024 should carry you through to the end of the month.
As always, we’ll split this preview of our most anticipated movies into two halves. First, we’ll cover the Netflix Originals that are coming to the service globally and then focus on some of the licensed titles that’ll be making their way specifically to Netflix in the United States.
For a full look at what’s headed our way on Netflix, check out our January 2024 preview.
Best Netflix Original Movies Coming in January 2024
Lift
Coming to Netflix: January 12th
Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
Netflix’s big new movie for the month is undoubtedly its ensemble heist action comedy, Lift, headlined by Kevin Hart.
Directed by F. Gary Gray, the movie is based on a Black List script that sees an international heist crew hoping to pull off a huge heist by robbing over half a billion in gold from a passenger plane mid-flight.
Also starring in the movie are Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, and Sam Worthington.
The Kitchen
Coming to Netflix: January 19th
Picture: Netflix
New from the United Kingdom is The Kitchen, a sci-fi movie that features Top Boy star Kane Robinson who plays a man on the brink of being able to being able to escape what is essentially a slum and get his own apartment. Still, his links to the place where he calls home run deep.
Now, I must confess, I did get to watch this at the BFI Film Festival in London at its premiere in October and wasn’t a particular fan. While it has some great themes and some impressive CGI, the story can’t quite keep up with the grand ideas it wants to explore. That said, it’s definitely worth a watch.
Read our full preview for Netflix’s The Kitchen here.
Good Grief
Coming to Netflix: January 5th
Daniel Levy, best known for his work on the hit show Schitt’s Creek, heads exclusively to Netflix in January with his new comedy that’s about an artist who is grieving the loss of his famous writer husband who takes his two best friends on a trip to Paris, where they unpack messy secrets and hard truths.
Read more about Good Grief in our full preview for the movie here.
New Licensed Movies Coming to Netflix in the US in January 2024
The Equalizer 3 (2023)
Coming to Netflix: January 1st
Kicking off a year of more Sony movies coming to Netflix following their theatrical runs is the new Denzel Washington entry in the action-thriller movie franchise series The Equalizer.
In this well-reviewed third entry, we’ll see Washington starring alongside Dakota Fanning as they live in a seemingly peaceful town in Southern Italy. However, it soon becomes clear that he needs to return to his previous life, with local crime bosses terrorizing the quaint location.
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Coming to Netflix: January 1st
Picture: Warner Bros. Pictures
As part of the recent deluge of recently released Warner Bros. movies, we’ll be getting the Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone) directed movie that tells the story of a smoke jumper who is now reeling from the deal of the loss of three lives following a historic fire.
The movie received mostly positive reviews from audiences following its release and mixed reviews from critics. Perhaps summarizing those critics’ reviews best is Jo Livingstone for The New Republic, who concluded, “Those Who Wish Me Dead ends up offering something quite radical within its understated package.”
John Wick 1, 2 and 3
Coming to Netflix: January 1st
Lionsgate has been really good at licensing their franchises out altogether as of late. In 2023, we saw them license out The Hunger Games in its entirety and most of the Expendables movies, and next, we’ll see the first three of the utterly fantastic John Wick movies join Netflix for a limited time.
Sadly, the fourth movie remains with Prime Video as part of a first window deal, but hopefully, we’ll see it drop sometime in the future.
The Good Shepherd (2006)
Coming to Netflix: January 18th
Picture: Universal Pictures
Another Angelina Jolie pick now in the form of The Good Shepard, a spy-thriller film that Robert De Niro directed. The cast is rounded out with Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, and Tammy Blanchard.
Set over the course of three decades, with the present day of the movie being in the 1960s, the movie follows CIA officer Edward Bell Wilson, who is recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS.
Train to Busan (2016)
Coming to Netflix: January 23rd
Finally, if you’ve enjoyed the rise of Korean content over the past few years, we think some thanks need to be paid for Train to Busan, which really exploded globally when it was released nearly eight years ago.
Starring Gong Yoo and Ma Dong-Seok, the horror movie is set on a train journey at the beginning of a zombie outbreak.
Yeon Sang-ho, the director of the film, has been involved with Netflix heavily in recent years, so if you’ve enjoyed Hellbound or JUNG_E, we’d highly recommend checking out Train to Busan.
What are you most looking forward to checking out on Netflix in January? Let us know down below.