The Dungeons & Dragons movie, A Man Called Otto on Netflix, and every other new movie to watch at home this week

The Dungeons & Dragons movie, A Man Called Otto on Netflix, and every other new movie to watch at home this week

Time Stamp: May 5, 2023 6:15 PM

This weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the latest (and presumably final) MCU movie from director-turned-DC Studios head honcho James Gunn, finally comes to theaters. If the adventures of Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and his merry band of vigilante mercenaries isn’t quite your speed, don’t sweat it: There are plenty of new releases to stream and rent from the comfort of your home.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, starring Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez, leads the VOD offerings. But The Pope’s Exorcist, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and Renfield, starring Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult, are also new available for home rental. Looking to save some money this weekend on what to watch? We got you: The psychological thriller Inside (not to be confused with the Bo Burnham comedy special) starring Willem Dafoe is streaming on Peacock, the comedic drama A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks comes to Netflix, and the cannibal road-movie romance Bones and All, starring Timothée “Muad’dib” Chalamet, is finally available to stream on MGM Plus.

There’s a smorgasbord of movies to choose from, so let’s dive in and see what’s next on the menu.

New on Netflix

A Man Called Otto

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Otto (Tom Hanks) sitting on his porch holding a cat with a barely visible smirk on his face. Image: Niko Tavernise/Columbia Pictures

Genre: Dramedy
Run time: 2h 6m
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, Rachel Keller

Tom Hanks goes against type in this dark comedy adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel A Man Called Ove, playing a grumpy, lonely widower who — against his own antisocial nature — inadvertently sparks a friendship with his new next-door neighbor and their child. Content warning: this movie contains quite a few gags about suicide.

New on Peacock

Inside

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

A naked, disheveled man in boxer briefs (Willem Dafoe) sits cross legged in front of a glass table in a darkened living room with light pouring in from a window offscreen in Inside. Image: Focus Features

Genre: Psychological thriller
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Vasilis Katsoupis
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Gene Bervoets, Eliza Stuyck

Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man, The Lighthouse) stars in this psychological thriller as a high-end art thief who gets trapped in a New York penthouse mid-robbery. Running low on food, with no way to contact the outside world, he’ll have to devise a way to escape to safety, or risk coming undone by his own madness.

New on MGM Plus

Bones and All

Where to watch: Available to stream on MGM Plus

A young woman (Taylor Russell) places her forehead against a young man (Timothee Chalamet) with streaks of pink dye in his hair. Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/MGM

Genre: Horror/romance
Run time: 2h 10m
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg

Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino and star Timothée Chalamet team up once again for a romantic-horror road movie about love and cannibalism. Chalamet co-stars as Lee, an intense young drifter with a hunger for human flesh, but the main focus is on his fellow “Eater” Maren (Taylor Russell), who’s searching for belonging and certainty in a harsh and uncertain world.

From our review:

Beyond going in prepared for tremendous amounts of blood and some brief, intense violence, Bones and All is the kind of film that’s better experienced in the moment than in descriptions. Each new revelation about Maren’s past and present is unfolded carefully, in part because she doesn’t really understand her own nature, and has to learn about it alongside the audience. Screenwriter David Kajganich (a writer-producer-developer on the much-beloved horror series The Terror) never feels like he’s in a hurry to get to any particular part of the story. He and Guadagnino make plenty of room for Maren learning through conversations, first with new acquaintance Sully (Bridge of Spies’ Mark Rylance, once again disappearing into an incredible performance), then with newer acquaintance Lee (Chalamet), a world-wise boy about her age.

New on VOD

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

(L-R) The half-elf sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), the human Bard Edgin (Chris Pine), the tiefling druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), and the Barbarian warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) standing in a valley flanked by solemn looking statues in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Image: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures

Genre: Fantasy adventure
Run time: 2h 14m
Director: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page

Chris Pine (Star Trek) stars as Edgin Darvis, a former bard-turned-thief who forms an unlikely troupe of adventurers on a quest to recover a powerful lost artifact. When the party runs afoul of a dangerous figure bent on world domination, Edgin and his allies will have to fight, run, and roll for initiative in order to save the day.

From our review,

The film is playful and earnest throughout, focusing on the fact that for the characters, these are serious situations. Rodriguez’s barbarian is still reeling from a broken relationship, and when her storyline pays off, it’s hilarious — but the audience is still invited to feel and empathize with her pain. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t re-create game mechanics or a sense of improvisation as well as, say, The Legend of Vox Machina, but it is the best Dungeons & Dragons movie we could have hoped for. Not only is it a fun fantasy movie, it’s a great adaptation of a gaming session. And it’s an invitation into a new and more visual version of a world dedicated players already love — and that the filmmakers seem to love, too.

The Pope’s Exorcist

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Russell Crowe holds up a cross with flames behind him in The Pope’s Exorcist. Image: Sony Pictures

Genre: Supernatural horror
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Julius Avery
Cast: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe

Russell Crowe has played a lot of larger-than-life roles throughout his career: A Roman general-turned-gladiator, a Royal Navy admiral fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, Superman’s dad, that one guy who built a really big boat, Robin Hood, et cetera. In Julius Avery’s new supernatural horror movie, Crowe dons the black robes and white collar of an exorcist — the Pope’s exorcist, no less — as he fights against the forces of the underworld to save the life of a possessed child.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Two people wearing gas masks work with chemicals, while one points, in How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Image: Neon

Genre: Environmental heist thriller
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Cast: Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage

Director Daniel Goldhaber (Cam) adapts Andreas Malm’s incendiary 2021 non-fiction book, following a group of climate activists who, disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of divestment movements and the inaction of government regulation, band together to pull off a politically charged act of property damage-as-environmental protest: blowing up an oil pipeline in West Texas.

From our review,

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the rare movie that effectively weaponizes a radical political message by marrying it to conventional genre storytelling. It feels like a game-changer: the kind of movie that will inspire artists and budding activists alike for generations to come. It’s exciting, tense entertainment with an explosive, memorable final line of dialogue. 2023 has been a great year in movies so far, but this one will be hard to beat.

Renfield

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

A gleeful, grinning Dracula (Nicolas Cage) looms over a depressed-looking Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) in Renfield Photo: Michele K. Short/Universal Pictures

Genre: Comedy horror
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Chris McKay
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina

Nicolas Cage stars as Dracula in this comedic take on the legendary vampire, which sees his servant Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) attempting to reckon with the toxic relationship he has with his immortal boss.

From our review:

Hoult is appropriately doe-eyed and self-effacing as Renfield — he’s probably the most sincere part of an otherwise cynical project — but he’s the only actor who seems to have been allowed to tap into anything resembling a comedic or dramatic soul. He’s also the only one not saddled with dialogue that plays like amateur improv. He isn’t grating to watch. That’s the bare minimum for an actor on screen, yet it’s a prerequisite that nearly every other facet of Renfield fails to meet, from its mind-numbing action that refuses to luxuriate in thrills or gross hilarity to its scattered tale of a man finding ways to tell off his asshole boss. In that vein, it ought to be the most relatable comedy in the world. Instead, it’s just a series of disconnected images, strung together by half-baked quips that you could place in the mouth of practically any other character. The result would feel just as defeating.

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