Netflix enters 2021 with a January slate that’s shaped by the lingering weirdness of 2020, as a month that’s typically full of (recently re-licensed) franchise movies and new seasons of “Sex Education” has mutated into a deep grab bag of second-tier Oscar contenders, festival pick-ups, and a handful of comfort food classics that could double as ideal New Year’s Day fare.

On the awards tip, Vanessa Kirby vehicle “Pieces of a Woman” is probably the most anticipated new arrival, and the actress makes the most of this unfathomably tough melodrama about a woman coping in the months after a stillbirth (she’s even better in next month’s “The World to Come”). Rahmin Bahrani’s “The White Tiger” is still under embargo, but his adaptation Aravind Adiga’s whirlwind novel about an Indian driver scraping his way up the social ladder will almost certainly be worth a look when...