Best new movies and TV series on Disney+ New Zealand: January 2023

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Disney+’s New Zealand library. Here’s Eliza Janssen’s recommendations for the titles most worth watching. Scroll down for the full list of everything arriving on the platform.

Top picks

Barbarian (January 4)

Get ready for the subterranean downward spiral of your wildest nightmares. Directed and written by Zach Cregger, Barbarian was one of my favourite scary movies of last year, starting as a fairly conventional AirBNB horror story and then devolving into layers of comedy, nastiness, and some layered themes of white flight and women’s intuition being thwarted and ignored. Each act turn makes the film more fascinating and entertaining, with a brilliantly deployed Bill Skarsgård cast to thrown seasoned genre viewers off its scent. If you’ve avoided spoilers thus far, now might be the time for your descent.

Koala Man (January 9)

That zany Adult Swim style animation meets your average Australian suburb in renegade animator Michael Cusack’s silly new comedy. There’s big Aussie names (Sarah Snook! Hugo Weaving! Hugh Jackman as recurring character Big Greg, a “local fishing celebrity”!), a sneaky Conchord (Jemaine Clement!) and one of my favourite comedians, Demi Lardner, as Koala Man’s daughter. For you see, this Down Under superhero is just a slightly unhinged dad, trying and failing to improve his family’s modest lives by whacking on a shoddy koala helmet. Looks pretty fair dinkum.

Extraordinary (January 25)

Chuck together Netflix’s renaissance of young Brit rom-coms like Sex Education and the X-Men and you get something like this: the charming sitcom shenanigans of a powerless young woman in a world where everyone else has sick superheroic abilities. Her hook-up can fly, and her mates can time-travel, channel the dead, and turn into pets. All she can do is hope that, at age 25, she’s a late bloomer…and that the real superpower is “being yourself”. Luckily, because this is a snappy and self-aware comedy, other characters quickly shut that dumb idea down in the promising show’s trailer.

All new titles arriving on Disney+ New Zealand in January

January 4

The French Mans: Season 2
Barbarian
Atlanta: Seasons 1-3
Taiwan Crime Stories: Season 1

January 6

If These Walls Could Sing
Ghost Rider
The Punisher
Soul of a Nation Presents: Mi Gente
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration