Each week at Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies you can watch at home.
This week, Civil Warthe new dystopian thriller from Ex Machina Directed by Alex Garland and starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Alien: Romulus), is finally available to stream on Max. That’s not all, because the new reboot of The Crow starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs is released this week as VOD alongside Robot dreams and Irish comedy kneecaptwo of our favorites of the year. And these are just a few of the exciting new releases you can watch from home this week!
Here’s everything new to see this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Sci-Fi adventure
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes
Director: McG
Pour: Joey King, Chase Stokes, Laverne Cox
Based on Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel of the same name. Ugly comes a full decade after the first YA dystopia boom. It’s set in a world where everyone gets plastic surgery at age 16 and lives a glamorous but frivolous life afterward. A scrappy teenager (played by Joey King) is denied her surgery until she chases after her rebellious friend and takes down a renegade group. But she soon learns that getting pretty comes at a price.
Visually, Ugly is completely uninspired. The nameless futuristic city is so generic that it feels like a standard Windows XP screensaver, and the wilderness where the rebel group hides out is also profoundly uninteresting. Nothing about the costume design stands out, not even the haute couture the Prettys are supposedly wearing. The only unique set piece is the rusted remains of an amusement park that Shay and Tally sneak into to ride their hoverboards, but it’s only used briefly. (And although the Ugly Book did it first, a destroyed Ferris wheel was a big set piece in Divergent.)
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Action comedy
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes
Director: Jason Kim
Pour: Kim Woo-bin, Kim Sung-kyun
This Korean buddy cop film follows Lee Jung-do (Kim Woo-bin), a justice-loving martial artist with a black belt in taekwondo, kendo and judo, who is recruited by Kim Sun-min (Kim Sung-kyun), an overworked parole officer, to be a “martial arts officer.” Tasked with tracking down errant criminals wearing electronic ankle bracelets, Jung-do has fun and kicks some serious butt while learning what it means to help people within the law.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Image: Roadside Attractions/Everett Collection
Genre: Dystopian action comedy
Duration: 1 hour 51 minutes
Director: Moritz Mohr
Pour: Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery
In a grim dystopian future, a young man who loves video games is sent on a mission to overthrow the city’s totalitarian ruler. From our review:
The film is, for the most part, only intended for a certain group of video game movie fans: it’s a checklist of references to retro beat-’em-up films and meta-comedy cliches that some viewers will inevitably find broad, over-the-top, and off-putting, while others will find playful and engaging.
The feeling that the time to do something is over
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Image: Magnolia Pictures/Everett Collection
Genre: comedy
Duration: 1 hour 28 minutes
Director: Joanna Arnow
Pour: Joanna Arnow, Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti
50 Shades of Grey takes a more mundane turn. A listless young woman drifts through life, searching for a more fulfilling sexual connection when her on-off BDSM relationship no longer excites her.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Max
Image: A24
Genre: Dystopian thriller
Duration: 1 hour 49 minutes
Director: Alex Garland
Pour: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
Alex Garland’s thriller avoids current political issues and instead focuses on war correspondents and journalism.
The entire film is paced and planned to involve this dynamic. It’s a particularly beautiful drama, shot with a loving warmth that reflects its point of view, through the eyes of two photographers accustomed to capturing everything around them in the form of vivid, captivating images. A sequence at the end of the film, in which the group drives through a forest fire, is particularly beautiful, but the film as a whole seems designed to impress viewers on a visual level.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder
Photo: Pierce Derks/IFC Films
Genre: horror
Duration: 1h 34m
Director: Chris Nash
Pour: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love
What if there was a slasher film where everything was seen from the killer’s perspective? That question no longer needs to be asked, because that’s exactly what director Chris Nash’s new film delivers. In a violent nature is undoubtedly one of the nastiest horror films of the year, with enough gruesome gore to keep your eyes glued to the screen and your hands firmly in your seat.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Arcadia Motion Pictures
Genre: tragicomedy
Duration: 1 hour 43 minutes
Director: Pablo Berger
The surprise entry for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Oscars is a bittersweet ode to old friends. Director Pablo Berger was so moved by Sara Varon’s graphic novel that he founded an animation studio specifically to adapt it. The film, which has no dialogue at all, is about a lonely dog who befriends a robot, the blissful summer they spend together, and what happens when outside forces separate them. Robot dreams is beautifully animated and deeply evocative – and will have you sobbing the next time you hear Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September.”
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Photo: Larry Horricks/Lionsgate
Genre: Superhero drama
Duration: 1 hour 51 minutes
Director: Rupert Sanders
Pour: Bill Skarsgard, FKA Twigs, Danny Huston
Director Rupert Sanders (2017) Ghost in the Shell) is back with a reboot of 1994 The Crow. Aren’t you excited?
Bill Skarsgard (Barbar) plays Eric, a young drug addict who meets and falls in love with Shelly (FKA Twigs), a musician also battling addiction. When the two are gunned down by the henchmen of a powerful crime boss (Danny Huston) who has made a pact with the devil to ensure his own immortality, Eric is reincarnated as a vengeful supernatural warrior tasked with killing the crime boss in order to be reunited with his lost love.
Polygon spoke to Sanders about the challenges that came with the possibility of a modern adaptation of the comic series.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
Genre: comedy
Duration: 1 hour 45 minutes
Director: Rich Peppiatt
Pour: Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh
This irreverent comedy-drama stars the members of Kneecap, a hip-hop trio of Irish-speaking rappers from Belfast, as they tell the story of how they met and started making music in the early 2010s, from run-ins with the British authorities to their rise to fame across the country. kneecap is a comedy about the power of music as a form of expression and a means of shaping one’s own identity.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Dark Sky Films
Genre: Body horror comedy
Duration: 1 hour 18 minutes
Director: Mary Dauterman
Pour: Grace Glowicki, Garrick Bernard, Heather Matarazzo
Grief is a difficult feeling, especially when you’re turning into a monster while you’re doing it. When Anna (Grace Glowicki) learns of the shocking death of her best friend and roommate Izzy, she adopts a lost cat to help her cope with her grief. However, after being bitten by the cat, Anna notices disturbing changes in her behavior and begins to suspect that she might be turning into something… inhuman.
