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, two of the biggest new releases of the year are available to rent: Inside Out 2 And Long-legged. These films probably couldn’t be more different, but there’s sure to be a household that will rent both films this weekend. Also worth mentioning: John Woo’s remake of his classic hitman film The Killer launches on Peacock, an exciting new anime film appears on Netflix and Kevin Costner’s western odyssey Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 Premiere on Max.
Here’s everything new to see this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Image: Netflix
Genre: comedy
Duration: 1 hour 31 minutes
Directors: John Chernin, Dave Chernin
Pour: Mason Thames, Ramon Reed, Raphael Alejandro
A teen comedy about a wild night in the first week of high school, Incoming follows four college freshmen who crash a party… with unexpected results. It is the directorial debut of brothers John and Dave Chernin, who It’s always sunny in Philadelphia together and co-designed The Mick.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix from August 25th
Image: Toei Animation/GKIDS
Genre: Sports drama
Duration: 2h 4m
Director: Takehiko Inoue
Pour: Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichiro Kamio
The legendary mangaka Takehiko Inoue (rover, Slam Dunk) will direct his feature film debut based on his critically acclaimed coming-of-age sports manga. Picking up directly after the end of the 1993 anime, The first slam dunk accompanies the Shohoku High School basketball team as they prepare for their biggest challenge yet: the duel against Sannoh Kogyo High in the battle for the inter-high school basketball championship.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Genre: comedy
Duration: 1 hour 35 minutes
Director: Theda Hamel
Pour: John Early, Qaher Harhash, Elizabeth Dement
A bizarre and ridiculous comedy about a man named Terry (John Early) who spends quarantine at his ex-husband’s house in Brooklyn while trying to deal with a parade of uninvited visitors.
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Genre: comedy
Duration: 2h 4m
Director: Tina Mabry
Pour: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, Uzo Aduba
Based on Edward Kelsey Moore’s 2013 novel, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat follows three lifelong best friends who have been through it all and now face new challenges. The star-studded cast includes Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan and Uzo Aduba in the roles of these three friends, along with Mekhi Phifer, Julian McMahon and Vondie Curtis-Hall.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
Where to watch: Available to stream on Max
Image: Warner Bros.
Genre: western
Duration: 3h 1m
Director: Kevin Costner
Pour: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington
Ready, set, partners – Kevin Costner is back in the saddle with the first part of a planned four-part western epic! Horizon: An American Saga follows the lives of a group of families, pioneers and missionaries over 15 years that span the expansion of the American West before and after the Civil War. It looks like the second film in the tetralogy a little longer than expected until release, so you have plenty of time to learn about Costner’s ambitious dream project!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: Peacock
Genre: Action thriller
Duration: 2h 6m
Director: John Woo
Pour: Nathalie Emmanuel, Omar Sy, Sam Worthington
Legendary action director John Woo returns with an English-language reinterpretation of his 1989 action thriller The Killerthis time with Nathalie Emmanuel (game of Thrones) and Omar Sy (lupine). Emmanuel plays Zee, a notorious assassin known and feared in the Paris underworld as the “Queen of the Dead.” After refusing to kill a witness who was blinded on her last job, Zee becomes the target of her former employers. Her escapades attract the attention of Sey (Sy), a skilled police detective with whom she reluctantly forms an alliance.
It is certainly a departure from the original film starring Chow Yun-fat, but hey: If Olivier Assayas can successfully make a remake Irma Vep Why shouldn’t Woo be able to do the same with his own work almost 26 years after the events?
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder
Image: Shudder
Genre: horror
Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes
Directors: John Adams, Toby Poser
Pour: Olivera Perunicic, Bruno Veljanovski, John Adams
This new and extremely disgusting horror film comes from the directing duo behind the excellent Hellbender. The plot revolves around a fracking crew that discovers the frozen remains of a French soldier from the Napoleonic Wars, whose flesh happens to be home to some sort of mysterious parasitic monster. Once the monster breaks free from its original host, it wreaks all sorts of disgusting, fantastically bloody havoc on anything in its path.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Disney/Pixar
Genre: Coming-of-age fantasy
Duration: 1 hour 36 minutes
Director: Kelsey Mann
Pour: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman
Almost ten years after Everything is upside down became one of the most popular Pixar films of all time, the sequel broke box office records and became the highest-grossing Pixar film of all time and by far the highest-grossing film of 2024. Set two years after the original, Inside Out 2 follows Riley as a 13-year-old with new challenges and new emotions.
Pixar purists are certainly justified in worrying about the studio’s recent approach to sequels and franchises, and how many of its newer originals lack the old emotional magic that made the studio its reputation and spawned a spate of indelible, unforgettable hits. But Inside Out 2 is a good sign that the company is refocusing on its core strengths. It is a sequel to a film that didn’t ask for it, and an extension of a setting that derived its original power primarily from the simplicity of its structure: five emotions caught in conflict over an unprecedented new challenge. But the new film earns its place in the Pixar pantheon with its creativity, craft and soulful script. It’s almost enough to Inside Out 3: The College Years seem to be a promising pitch.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Neon/Everett Collection
Genre: Horror thriller
Duration: 1 hour 46 minutes
Director: Osgood “Oz” Perkins
Pour: Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, Nicolas Cage
Long-legged‘The Movie’s’ promotional campaign may have touted the film’s incredible awfulness, but the best surprise of this Nicolas Cage-directed horror film is that it’s also incredibly funny. The film follows Maika Monroe as an intrepid FBI agent tasked with solving a series of unsolved cases involving a serial killer who never seems to actually visit the families he kills. Monroe is excellent in her role, but of course it’s Cage’s portrayal of the bizarre and titular killer Longlegs that steals the show.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Sideshow and Janus Films
Genre: drama
Duration: 1 hour 46 minutes
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Pour: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka
Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns with a sequel to his Oscar-nominated 2021 drama Drive my carHis latest film, Evil does not existtells the story of a widower and his eight-year-old daughter living in a remote village whose way of life is threatened by the arrival of a company that wants to build a glamorous campsite in the nearby area. Does evil exist and if so, in what ways does evil take shape in our everyday lives?
Evil does not exist leans into the tradition of folk horror as Hamaguchi slowly moves away from dispassionate naturalism and works toward an impressionistic, opaque finale. The provocation of the film’s title echoes through the forest, which the film views from below at the beginning and end. Perhaps that is what the title is trying to express. Perhaps it is a whisper echoing through and from the ground itself, about how foolish it is to believe that the earth, even in its silence and beauty, respects our moral stance toward it. Perhaps we should tread more carefully, be fearful in our taking. Perhaps evil only matters because we are here to think about it, and when we are no longer here, so it will.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Genre: horror
Duration: 1 hour 38 minutes
Director: Damian McCarthy
Pour: Carolyn Bracken, Johnny French, Steve Wall
curiosity follows Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), a blind psychic medium who is grieving the recent death of her sister (also Carolyn Bracken). Not entirely satisfied with the official version of the murder, Darcy returns to the crime scene and uses a (very creepy-looking) wooden mannequin to psychically discover what really happened the night her twin sister died.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple and Vudu
Image: Metro Films/Astute Films
Genre: drama
Duration: 2h 32m
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Pour: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok
The film by Polish director Agnieszka Holland won the Special Jury Prize at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and was sharply criticized by Polish government officials. Its refreshing portrayal of the Belarusian border crisis and the story of refugees seeking a better life in Poland and the steps the government is taking to stop them have left a mark.
