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As usual… These aren’t necessarily recommendations; consider it more of an FYI – films we’ve talked about on this site, that are now streaming on Netflix, that you might want to check out for yourselves.

Without further ado, here’s this week’s list of 5:

1 – First, Shank. Synopsis: 

In a London of the future, 2015, the gap between rich and poor has grown to epic proportions and food has replaced drugs and guns as a priceless commodity. Junior (Kedar Williams-Sterling) and his gang the Paper Chaserz trade in ‘munchies’ but stay away from the territory disputes and the violence. A tip-off about a food delivery leads to a conflict with a rival gang and the death of one of their own. Now Junior has to decide whether to stay true to his principles or whether to drag them all into a quest for revenge that could get them killed.

Shank is music video director Mo Ali’s first feature film. It’s from the same company that released Noel Clarke’s Kidulthood.

Here’s its trailer:

2 – Charlie Matthau’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s crime novel Freaky Deaky, starring Michael Jai White, Billy Burke, and Christian Slater.

Starting and ending with a bang, we meet a vivid group of characters who are mainly veterans of the 1960s: Chris Mankowski, 38-year-old Detroit police sergeant, newly transferred from the bomb squad to sex crimes; Donnell Lewis, ex-Black Panther now working as a driver, nursemaid and would-be swindler; Skip Gibbs, now a movie dynamite expert; and others, including Greta Wyatt, stagenamed Ginger Jones, who meets Chris when she reports that she’s been assaulted. When Chris pursues the investigation, he is suspended from the force because the suspect is a man with clout; Now determined to get to the bottom of things, Chris is caught up in a web of scams plotted by Skip and Donnell for starters.

Here’s the trailer:

3 – Well-packaged by the internationally acclaimed South African Theater Company, Dimpho Di Kopane (DDK), U-Carmen is an adaptation of perhaps the world’s most-loved opera, Bizet’s Carmen. Re-imagined in contemporary South Africa, amongst pool halls, bars, courtyards and barracks, U-Carmen tells the story of a cigarette factory-worker, Carmen, (Pauline Malefane) and her doomed love affair with a police sergeant, culminating in a tragic conclusion.

It was directed by Mark Dornford-May – his feature film debut. 

4 – Directed by Aaron Woolfolk, and executive produced by Danny Glover (who also co-stars in the film), The Harimaya Bridge is a drama about an African American man, Daniel (Ben Guillory) who travels to rural Japan to claim some important items belonging to his late son, from whom he was estranged. Daniel struggles to overcome his animosity toward the country, a result of his own father’s death in a Japanese POW camp during WWII, but things get complicated when he learns that his son has left behind some secrets.
Trailer follows below:

5 – A feature film based on the groundbreaking television show, Noah’s Arc, which aired on the Logo cable TV channel, for just 1 season, from 2005 to 2006. The film adaptation, directed by Patrick-Ian Polk, is titled, Noah’s Arc: Jumping The Broom.

Picking up where the show left off, Noah and his friends head off to Martha’s Vineyard for Noah’s (Darryl Stephens) marriage to Wade (Jensen Atwood). Naturally a weekend wedding getaway wouldn’t be complete without ensuing drama, and one by one, the boys’ relationships start to crack under pressure. As the clock counts down to Noah’s marriage, last-minute jitters and rising tensions in the house threaten to ruin everything.

Here’s a trailer: