February 12, 2022

Spencer, Kimi, Netflix romcoms, and 12 new movies to watch at home

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This weekend spencer, Pablo Larraín’s psychological biopic drama starring Kristen Stewart as the late Diana, Princess of Wales, comes to Hulu right on the tail of its 2022 Oscar nomination for Best Actress. That’s not the only Oscar-nominated film to land on streaming, as the animated documentary Flee also comes to Hulu this week along with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s music documentary summer of soul, which also arrives on Disney Plus. There’s a tone to watch this weekend, including Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon CitySteven Soderbergh’s Kimi starring Zoë Kravitz on HBO Max, Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s robot uprising comedy big bug on Netflix, a bunch of new romcoms on Netflix, and much, much more.

To help you get a handle on what’s new and available, here are all the new movies you can watch on streaming and VOD this weekend.

spencer

Where to watch: Available to stream on hulu

Pablo Larrain’s (jackie) latest takes a different angle at a biopic of a woman in the public eye: instead of attempting to tell the story of her life, it focuses in on one horrible weekend. Kristen Stewart’s incredible performance as the near-mythic Princess Diana grounds the now larger-than-life figure with an incredibly human and raw portrayal. Seamlessly blending in horror aesthetics to heighten the anxiety-provoking atmosphere of a weekend getaway with the Royal Family, Larraín and Stewart both manage to evoke the feelings of being surrounded, being perceived at all times, and of standing out while also being completely ignored. From our review,

Stewart’s absolutely outstanding performance is what pulls together Diana’s lore and Larraín’s conception of her, creating a fleshed-out version of the princess that isn’t reliant on broad or showy instincts. Stewart folds in her body to actualize Diana’s nervousness, tips her head in a familiar way, and gets the princess’ voice pitch-perfect. But beyond that, her performance comes down to the eyes. Stewart’s eyes swing like switchblades through the grass. And each glance claims another victim, displaying either a kind of forlornness or a shyness, depending on the situation. It’s her eyes that jump her over the line of performance to a totally lived-in aura. There’s never a moment where it’s Kristen Stewart as Diana. She is Diana.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple; $4.99 on Vudu

Johannes Roberts takes the Resident Evil film franchise back to its roots with his 2021 reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Set in 1998, the film follows Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) hitchhiking back to her hometown of Raccoon City to visit her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) right as a series of bizarre and horrific incidents throws the town into chaos. Meanwhile, the members of the elite STARS Alpha Team journey to the remote Spencer Mansion due to reports of violence, only to discover a terror beyond their wildest imagination. From our review,

For all of its limitations and points of departure from the previous series, though, Racoon City maintains that lineage of B-movies made with skill. Roberts presents familiar images in novel ways. He uses orange lighting to give his movie an eerie warmth. He stages one zombie attack in abstract flashes. A climactic monster mutation is memorably grotesque. Even a simple shot that seems designed to mimic a game’s first-person-shooter vantage cleverly replaces a weapon with an unadorned lighter. His style keeps the movie entertaining even as the story moves in circles: investigate zombies, run from zombies, look for other people investigating zombies, shoot zombies, repeat.

Flee

Where to watch: Available to stream on hulu

Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, and Best International Feature Film for the 2022 Oscars, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated docudrama Flee Follows Amin Nawabi, a man recounting the story of fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to Denmark as a child on the cusp of marrying his husband Kasper. As Noel Murray wrote in his piece on the best documentaries of 2021, “what really makes Flee so gripping is the contrast between the flat ‘everyman’ character design and the specificity of Amin’s story, which isn’t just about a kid running and hiding , but about someone who did all this while struggling with secrets he was afraid to share even with his loved ones.”

Kimi

Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max

Steven Soderbergh’s latest HBO Max release is an intriguing tech thriller. Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) works for a tech company that makes a Siri/Alexa-type virtual assistant, but with a human touch. While reviewing data, Angela hears what sounds like evidence of a crime. Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agoraphobic Angela leaves her apartment to try and get to the bottom of what she heard, as her bosses try to keep it all quiet. Rita Wilson and Jaime Camil also feature in the cast.