Movies still aren’t back, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down theaters and pushed some movies back until later in the year (or until 2021), but the film industry sees light at the end of the tunnel. This week, the Russell Crowe thriller Unhinged received a theatrical release date of July 1, and is being touted as the first post-pandemic movie.
Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, set to hit theaters on July 17, still hasn’t moved on the calendar. Global film production is slowly making its comeback, too, as Wong Kar-Wai’s new film Blossoms ramps up to shoot in mainland China in July. Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller has also confirmed that a prequel to the hit film is underway, focusing on the younger version of Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa.
For now, however, movies are still best watched at home. Here are the new titles you can watch this weekend, including some of the bigger titles that are new on Netflix in May, and where to find them.
Capone
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $9.99 on Google Play, Amazon and Apple
Photo: Vertical Entertainment
After the disaster that was Fantastic Four, Josh Trank returns with Capone, a biopic of the 1920s mob boss Al Capone in his final year of life. Tom Hardy stars as Capone, and it might just be his wildest performance yet. From our review:
Trank’s Fantastic Four was meddled with beyond recognition, and crashed in its attempt at appealing to every lowest common denominator. Capone, by contrast, doesn’t make any concession toward what an audience might want to see from a gangster biopic. It’s a bold comeback for Trank. Hardy’s outsized performance could easily have fit into a biopic of a hale, healthy, and active Capone. Instead, Trank matches that vigor with inventiveness, finding an unusual new way of addressing an iconic figure.
Seberg
Where to watch it: Streaming free for subscribers on Amazon Video
Photo: Amazon Studios
Kristen Stewart stars as Jean Seberg in a film about the actress’ involvement with the civil rights movement and the FBI’s resulting interest in her. The story begins when she meets Black Panther activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) on a flight. When the FBI photographs them together at the airport, she becomes a subject of surveillance and harassment to a degree that threatens her career, her personal life, and her mental health.
Scoob!
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $19.99 on Google Play, Amazon and Apple
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Scoob! is meant to be a reboot of the franchise’s film series, bringing in an entirely new cast of voice actors for the human characters — Will Forte as Shaggy, Gina Rodriguez as Velma, Zac Efron as Fred, and Amanda Seyfried as Daphne — but keeping Frank Welker as the voice of the famous dog detective Scooby-Doo. The new film pits the gang against the villainous Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) and his dog Muttley (Billy West).
Uncut Gems
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $0.99 on Google Play, Amazon and Apple
A24
One of the best movies of last year is available to rent for less than a dollar, which Howard Ratner himself would definitely call a good deal. The Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, which stars Adam Sandler as Ratner in his best performance ever, is a marvel, pushing the limit for just how stressful one movie can be as Ratner makes the biggest gamble of his life. From our review:
Even as Howard screws himself over with blustery bravado, it’s hard not to root for him. It’s a testament to Sandler’s performance, categorically the best of his career, but also to the Safdies’ skill behind the camera. They use tight close-ups, quick cuts, overlapping lines of dialogue, and an electronic soundtrack, by turns buzzy and blaring, to create a sense of claustrophobia. It serves as a kind of extended cinematic anxiety attack, leaving the audience as overwhelmed as Howard. And yet the sheer stakes of his reckless gambles may push them to empathize with him even as he descends into mania.
New on Netflix this weekend
And here’s what dropped last Friday:
The Lodge
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $3.99 on Google Play, Amazon and Apple
Image: Neon
The Lodge stars Riley Keough as a young woman stranded with her new boyfriend’s two young children, both of whom mistrust her and blame her for their mother’s suicide. As time passes, stranger things start occurring, and it becomes less and less clear if they’re experiencing something supernatural or losing their minds in isolation. Here’s a rundown from our review:
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s horror movie/psychological thriller The Lodge attempts a magic trick. It’s easiest to understand in terms of how Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige explains stage magic in three acts: In the first act, “the pledge,” the audience is presented with something ordinary. In the second, “the turn,” that ordinary thing becomes extraordinary. In the third, “the prestige,” a bigger reveal or flourish occurs. The Lodge only nails the first two acts.
Spaceship Earth
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $1.99 on Google Play, $3.99 on Apple
Photo: Philippe Plailly/Sundance Institute
A 1991 research experiment called “Biosphere 2” aimed to see if humans could colonize space by sealing a group of researchers inside a biosphere that mimicked ecosystems on Earth. As the experiment continued, controversies and accidents began cropping up. The documentary Spaceship Earth digs through them to find a larger truth. From our review out of the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie opened to loads of praise:
In almost a true-crime-documentary mode, Wolf rips a stranger-than-fiction moment from historical headlines, then peels back the surface to get to the bottom of the debacle. Even Spaceship Earth’s opening, a salvo of talking-head interviews that introduce John through the mesmerized young women and men who followed his lead, has an air of cultiness that could be mistaken for the intro to Wild Wild County season 2. But the twist is that there’s nothing nefarious about Synergia: a few wayward souls discovered one another, finding faith in their shared ambition. The artists and the art are inspiring.
Hope Gap
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $9.99 on Google Play and Apple
Photo: Curzon Artificial Eye
Annette Bening stars in this family drama, which begins as her husband (Bill Nighy) tells her he’s leaving her for another woman after 29 years of marriage. She comes to rely upon her son (Josh O’Connor) for emotional support as the two of them try to rebuild their family. The film, written and directed by William Nicholson, is based on Nicholson’s play The Retreat from Moscow.
How to Build a Girl
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $5.99 on Amazon, $6.99 on Google Play and Apple
Photo: IFC Films
How to Build a Girl, based on Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, stars Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart) as Johanna Morrigan, a teenage girl who sees music journalism as her ticket out of her humdrum life. As her fame grows, however, so does the complexity of the world she’s found herself in, especially as she comes up with a new persona for herself (“Dolly Wilde”) and gets involved with drugs, sex, and rock and roll.
Greed
Where to watch it: Rent on digital $5.99 on Google Play, Amazon, and Apple
Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing
Director Michael Winterbottom (The Trip, Tristram Shandy) and Steve Coogan reunite for Greed, in which Coogan plays self-made British billionaire Sir Richard McCreadie, loosely based on real-life Arcadia Group chairman Philip Green. When McCreadie’s retail empire goes into crisis and a public inquiry threatens to ruin his reputation, McCreadie decides that the best course of action is to throw the most lavish 60th birthday party ever.
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