When it comes to movie recommendations here at TechRadar, we often like to focus on the adult stuff – the dramatic thrillers, gruesome crime sagas and decidedly not-safe-for-kids documentaries (we’re looking at you, Netflix ).
But, among all the new horror movies and Oscar-nominated pictures in 2022, there are plenty of family-focused features available to watch on streaming services – and Disney Plus , in particular, boasts the best of the lot.
This weekend, then, we’re dialling down the violence and turning up the sense of adventure. Below, you’ll find our pick of the best Disney Plus movies to enjoy with all the family (and don’t worry – all of the films we’ve chosen are available to watch wherever you are in the world).
Turning Red
Let’s kick off with Turning Red, the latest (and 25th!) animated picture from perennial magic-maker Pixar Studios. Directed by Domee Shi (best known for helming the Oscar-winning Pixar short Bao), the movie tells the story of a young Toronto-dwelling girl, Meilin “Mei” Lee (Rosalie Chiang), who transforms into a giant red panda whenever her emotions come to the boil.
To say much more about Turning Red’s plot, though, risks spoiling the film's most powerful moments. It makes some brave storytelling choices about adolescence and family responsibility, which director Shi and producer Lindsey Collins spoke with us about in March . However, viewers should know that they can expect a beautifully-rendered melting pot of anime influences, 90s culture and typical Pixar charm with something to offer all ages.
A making-of special, Embrace the Panda, is also available to stream on Disney Plus for those interested in seeing how this furry creation came to be (oh, and you’ll be adding 4*TOWN’s Nobody Like U track to your Spotify playlist immediately after watching).
Jungle Cruise
Ever been to Disneyland? If so, you’re probably familiar with the Jungle Cruise, a riverboat ride that sends punters down a stream full of animatronic animals and lost explorers. Well, Disney decided to turn that ride into a feature film – as it did with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise – and the result is the not-so-imaginatively-named Jungle Cruise .
Starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, the movie follows a doctor and boat captain on their search for an ancient tree with healing powers. If that doesn’t sound like the most original premise, that’s because it isn’t – but a great cast and high production values mean Jungle Cruise is still a mighty fun adventure (think of it as an expensive mix of The Mummy, Uncharted and Journey to the Center of the Earth).
As with Black Widow before it, Jungle Cruise initially came to Disney Plus via the streamer’s Premier Access service , but the movie has since been unshackled from its former paywall and is now streaming for free.
Encanto Sing-Along
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in 2022, you’ll have already heard Encanto’s record-breaking earworm , We Don’t Talk About Bruno. In all likelihood, you’ll probably know some of the lyrics, too – but to help you out, the kind folks over at Disney have now added a sing-along version of the movie to Disney Plus.
After struggling to make waves in theaters against the might of Spider-Man: No Way Home in November last year, Encanto came to Disney’s streamer a month later and became a near-instant hit. It tells the tale of the Madrigals, an extraordinary family who live in a magic-imbued house known as the Casita. Each child in the family has been blessed with a magical gift, except for Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz), who is called into action when the Casita is threatened by a mysterious force.
Its catchy song book notwithstanding, Encanto is a top-tier Disney animation in its own right, combining color and culture – in a fashion similar to Pixar’s Coco – to mesmerizing effect. For our money, Ratatouille is still the best of Disney Plus’ modern animations , but Encanto is certainly among the most beautiful.
West Side Story
Although not one for the youngest family members, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story provides a rare excuse for you and yours to wallow on the couch for nearly three hours this weekend.
A big-budget re-telling of the 1957 stage musical of the same name (and the second movie adaptation after the 1961 classic), this fresh-faced version of Arthur Laurent’s iconic story stars Ansel Elgot as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria, whose forbidden romance is stifled by warring (and singing, and dancing…) gangs in 1950s New York City.
Spielberg’s latest picture performed poorly at the global box office upon release last year, but excellent reviews and a handful of Oscar nominations made West Side Story an instant Disney Plus recommendation when it popped up on the streamer’s library in March.
Cruella
Emma Stone stars as the titular villain in this origin tale of Cruella de Vil, the infamous dog-napper who first terrorized the spotted pooches of 101 Dalmatians back in 1961.
Rather than painting Cruella as the frightening fashionista audiences came to know, though, director Craig Gillespie’s movie puts a refreshing anti-hero spin on proceedings (rather like 2019’s Joker – though that’s certainly not a family film). Set in London at the height of the 1970s punk rock movement, this story finds a young Cruella – or Estella, to start – thieving her way through the city before landing a dream job designing dresses for an established fashion house. However, it doesn’t take long for Cruella to realize that she should be the one running the show.
In our review of the movie, we said Cruella is “truly notable as a ‘premake’ that does a notorious Disney villain justice, coming packed with fresh and outlandish ideas to prevent it feeling like a box-ticking origin story.” Beyond those reasons, though, Cruella’s Oscar-winning costumes make it one of the most visually-dazzling films in recent memory.
Critics are raving about Netflix's latest documentary – but viewers aren't convinced
Netflix has a real thing for con artists at the moment, and the streamer’s latest true-crime documentary lifts the lid on a very specific type of fraudster.
After The Tinder Swindler and lavish drama Inventing Anna centered on crooks extracting wealth by feigning romantic interest and social status, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. charts the exploits of a vegan restaurateur and her mysterious husband.
The four-part series reveals how Sarma Melngailis, the owner and founder of New York City's now-defunct Pure Food and Wine, swindled almost $2 million from unsuspecting employees and investors throughout the noughties with her allegedly manipulative partner, Anthony Strangis.
You can check out the trailer for the new documentary below:
But does Bad Vegan, like The Tinder Swindler before it, rank among the best Netflix documentaries ? Online critical reactions suggest so – but audiences aren’t convinced.
Netflix’s latest docuseries currently boasts a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes – based on 13 reviews from publications including Variety , Time and The Wall Street Journal – with commentators describing Bad Vegan as a “meaty tale in four courses.”
But a mere 28% audience score, from 39 user ratings, tells a very different tale.
“This is enough of a story to last one hour, but the filmmakers chose to drag it out for hours [...] Avoid this stinker,” one user wrote, while another called Bad Vegan the “perfect example of a car wreck.” Ouch.
In truth, the docuseries’ 100% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t mean 100% of critics awarded Bad Vegan full marks in the quality department. When reviewing a new movie or TV show, industry-credited commentators are asked to assign a binary degree of freshness – in this case, all 13 reviewers considered Bad Vegan Fresh, rather than Rotten.
There’s no in-between option for reviewers, which we suspect might have been a more appropriate measure of Bad Vegan’s success. In the aforementioned Variety review, for instance, critic Daniel D’Addario said “the elusiveness of answers about ‘why’ make the docuseries grow, eventually, frustrating.”
The Wall Street Journal’s John Anderson had almost exactly the same criticism: “exactly why it all happened still may seem as cloudy as a quart of kombucha [at the series’ end].”
By most accounts, then, Bad Vegan is not one of the best documentaries on Netflix – which is a shame, considering it comes from director Chris Smith, who executive produced Tiger King and also helmed Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
That’s not to say the streamer’s latest factual feature is bad, by any means – unless you’re willing to take the word of NetflixHater_2000 as gospel (that’s a joke).
A fascination with fraud
We opened this article by suggesting Netflix has a particular fancy for fraudsters of late, but the streamer almost always – Inventing Anna notwithstanding – seems to prefer telling these tales through documentaries, rather than full-blown dramatizations.
Other streaming services , though, have been applying the A-list treatment to similar stories, with the rise and fall of startup CEOs proving the TV trend of 2022 so far.
Showtime Anytime, for instance, recently added Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber to its library; a seven-part drama charting the demise of Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Kalanick was ousted from the company in a boardroom coup following allegations of harassment and bullying in 2017.
Disney Plus and Hulu have The Dropout, which stars Amanda Seyfried as disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who was recently convicted of defrauding investors through her company’s phoney medical machines in the early noughties.
Then there’s WeCrashed on Apple TV Plus , an eight-episode skewering of property rental startup WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, whose success came undone when evidence of his hard-partying lifestyle (funded by the company’s dime) came to light.
All of these series, in addition to Netflix’s non-fiction offerings like The Tinder Swindler and Bad Vegan, suggest a growing interest on the part of audiences in seeing once-successful tricksters come undone.
To go a little academic on the matter, schadenfreude is the entertainment flavor of the month – Bad Vegan is simply the latest example.
Gmail is getting a sleek new look - but you may not like it
Your work Gmail client is set for a major makeover within the next few weeks as Google begins to roll out its new view of the future of working.
The company has announced that its new approach to email will be available for users to experience from the end of February 2022, ahead of a wider release by April 2022.
The approach looks to provide users with a one-stop shop for all their communication needs - whether via email, video conferencing , or just good old-fashioned instant messaging - without them having to open up extra tabs or windows.
Gmail integrated view
"We’re introducing a new, integrated view for Gmail, making it easy to move between critical applications like Gmail, Chat and Meet in one unified location," a Google Workspace update blog noted.
When logged in, users will still see emails displayed front and centre, but shifted significantly over to the right-hand side of the display. This is to make way for a new sidebar on the left side that contains quick links to Chat, Spaces and Meet, shifting your email folders and label options over slightly.
Google says that the new "integrated view" and navigation menu allows users to easily switch between their inbox, important conversations, and also join meetings without having to switch between tabs or open a new window. To demonstrate, it showed how a Spaces chat let the user jump straight into a Google Sheets without leaving the Gmail window.
The company adds that you'll also see all your notifications in one place, with bubbles flagging when you have a new message or chat to engage with.
Google is also working on the ability to see email and chat results when using the search bar, making it easier to find what you need by eliminating the need to search within a specific product.
"We hope this new experience makes it easier for you to stay on top of what’s important and get work done faster in a single, focused location," the company added.
The new-look Gmail will start rolling out to users in the rapid release pipeline from February 8 2022, with other customers following soon after. The new view will become the standard look by the end of Q2 2022.
It will be available to all Google Workspace user accounts (except Google Workspace Essentials customers) as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers.