‘I Am Mother’ & ‘Beats’: Add These Netflix Original Films to Your Queue

I Am Mother - Hillary Swank
Netflix

I Am Mother

After the near extinction of humanity, the fate of our species rests with Mother, a thinking, feeling robot (voiced by Rose Byrne) whose high-tech lab houses tens of thousands of human embryos.

The artificially intelligent being has harvested one and raised her into a teen (Clara Rugaard) — but is this mommy dearest teaching her daughter to be a good person…or a machine? That’s a question of life or death when a woman (Hilary Swank) shows up claiming robots are evil — and need to be destroyed.

Director and cowriter Grant Sputore calls the thriller “a love letter to the sci-fi films I grew up watching. Our motivation was movies like Blade Runner, Alien and The Matrix that have a mythology and deep questions behind them.”

I am Mother, Streaming now, Netflix

(Credit: Netflix)

Beats

Black-ish star Anthony Anderson drops the beat in this drama set on Chicago’s South Side. When a former music producer (Anderson), who’s now a school security guard, discovers a student (Khalil Everage) is a musical prodigy, he comes up with a plan to make them both stars. But they face heavy odds.

“The music [in the movie] is a combination of local Chicago artists and producers that were handpicked to create a feeling of authenticity,” director Chris Robinson says. “The story is inspired by artists that innovate every day. Usually the rappers get the spotlight, but this story centers around a producer. His music represents the brilliance of youth.”

Beats, Premieres Wednesday, June 19, Netflix