This week sees the premiere of The Princess, the “Rapunzel meets The Raid” action film starring Joey King on Hulu, as well as the streaming premiere of animated comedy The Bad Guys on Peacock.
That’s not all: Edgar Wright’s giallo-inspired horror thriller Last Night in Soho comes to HBO Max, the Norwegian sci-fi comedy Blasted and the 2022 drama Beauty premiere on Netflix, the 2009 Japanese fantasy drama Air Doll streams on Criterion Channel, and there tons of new VOD releases including a 4K restoration of the 1956 epic Ilya Muromets: The Sword and the Dragon.
To help you get a handle on what’s new and available, here are the new movies you can watch on streaming and VOD this weekend.
The Princess
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Image: Hulu
Joey King (The Kissing Booth) stars in Le-Van Kiet’s “Rapunzel meets The Raid” action movie as a strong-willed princess who, after refusing to marry the cruel suitor to whom she is betrothed, is abducted and locked away in a remote tower of her father’s castle. Determined to undermine her would-be husband’s malevolent schemes, she’ll have to cut a bloody swath of carnage to escape and save her kingdom.
From our review:
It’s intrinsically satisfying to see a fantasy princess in a ripped, bloody wedding dress, stabbing the men who seek to control her. Princesses and other wealthy women shedding their constraining dresses and corsets for more battle-ready looks isn’t new: See again, Merida’s dress bursting at the seams as she readies her bow, Elizabeth trading her gowns for more practical fighting attire in Pirates of the Caribbean, or more recently, Grace battling her predatory new in-laws in Ready or Not.
The Bad Guys
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: DreamWorks
This animated heist movie follows a group of anthropomorphic animal criminals who get caught, pretend to be reformed, and then find themselves actually wanting to be the thing they’re pretending to be. With an ensemble cast featuring Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, and more, we can all agree on one thing: Yes, Mr. Wolf is pretty hot.
From our review:
It’s all pretty lightweight stuff, and after recent mainstream triumphs like Turning Red and Encanto from two different arms of Disney, The Bad Guys may well shore up DreamWorks’ status as the B-squad of contemporary American animation, where spectacle is the default and emotional growth is a little pat. But the better DreamWorks cartoons come alive when they’re liberated from Disney formulas, rather than chasing after or self-consciously spoofing them. Even when The Bad Guys resembles other movies, it’s stealing from them gracefully, with its own sensibility and energy.
Last Night in Soho
Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max
Image: Focus Features
Edgar Wright’s giallo-inspired psychological thriller stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise, a 1960s-obsessed young woman who moves to London to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. After she begins to experience startling dreams where she is transported to a Soho nightclub in the body of an aspiring singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), Eloise’s dreams become increasingly more vivid and violent, blurring the line between hallucinations and reality.
From our review:
Centrally, as a study of Wright’s own nostalgic proclivities, Soho is a fascinating cultural object. He’s demonstrated an interest in the frailty of nostalgia in previous works. In Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, characters are beholden to, and castigated for, unrealistic nostalgia. Stylistically, though, he’s always leaned into homage, again going as far back as Spaced, with its myriad visual and textual references to Hollywood and more esoteric cinema. Homage in itself is adjacent to nostalgia: It’s the celebration, in Wright’s case, of past styles and aesthetics, and deep, wistful love for decades-old cinema percolates through his filmography.
Soho feels like Wright’s most explicit interrogation of his own sentimental impulses, and simultaneously, his most stylistically grandiose work. But central to this story, too, is the violent and lurid exploitation of women. This is certainly Edgar Wright at his Edgar Wright-iest, but even as he’s arguing against celebrating the past in Last Night in Soho, he’s celebrating it himself, in ways that are hard to escape, and at times, harder still to enjoy.
Blasted
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Photo: Julianne Leikanger/Netflix
The Norwegian sci-fi comedy Blasted follows the story of two childhood friends, Sebastian (Axel Bøyum) and Mikkel (Fredrik Skogsrud), who, upon reuniting for a laser tag-themed bachelor party, find themselves on the front lines of a battle against alien invaders. Akin to Edgar Wright’s 2013 film The World’s End, Blasted appears to tackle similar subject matter with regard to its themes of lifelong friendship, maturity, and arrested development.
Beauty
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Photo: Stephanie Meiling/Netflix
Niecy Nash stars in the 2022 drama Beauty as a gifted young singer who struggles to maintain her identity after accepting a lucrative recording contract, sparking a fierce conflict between her, her family, the label, and her girlfriend as she attempts to forge her career.
Air Doll
Where to watch: Available to stream on Criterion Channel
Image: The Criterion Channel
Shoplifters director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2009 drama tells the story of an inflatable doll (Bae Doona) that develops consciousness and falls in love while her owner is away at work.
The Long Night
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder
Image: Shudder
A New York transplant (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her boyfriend (Nolan Gerard Funk) return to her childhood home in the South to search for clues regarding her birth parents. Shortly after arriving, however, a supernatural cult terrorizes the pair as part of their esoteric plot to bring about the apocalypse.
Ilya Muromets: The Sword and the Dragon
Where to watch: Available to rent for $4.99 on Amazon and Apple
Image: Vinegar Syndrome/Deaf Crocodile
Legendary fantasy filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko’s sweeping 1956 epic Ilya Muromets: The Sword and the Dragon stars Boris Andreyev as a bogatyr (“knight”) who inherits a sword from an aging giant and embarks on a decades-long battle against Tugar invaders who threaten his homeland and his family. Re-edited for television in the 1960s by Roger Corman, and infamously riffed on in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this new version of the original film has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm negative.
Doula
Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Universal Pictures
When an LA couple expecting a baby is suddenly confronted with the death of their midwife, they hire her son to take over in this irreverent comedy.
Mothering Sunday
Where to watch: Available to rent for $4.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
Based on Graham Swift’s novel of the same name, Mothering Sunday follows the story of Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), a maid living in post-WWI England who carries on a clandestine love affair with the son of a neighboring manor who is engaged to be wed to another woman. The film follow three distinct eras of Jane’s life as an unexpected turn of events sets her on a journey to become a writer.
Down with the King
Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Stage 6 Films
Rapper and musician Freddie Gibbs stars in 2021’s Down with the King as Mercury Maxwell, a famous rapper who, disillusioned with the pressures of being a celebrity, leaves his career behind to find a new life as part of a small-town farming community.
Cryo
Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Saban Films
The 2022 sci-fi horror thriller Cryo follows five scientists who prematurely wake from cryosleep with no memory of who they are or how long they’ve been asleep. When the group learns that a killer is hiding in their midst, they’ll have to solve the mystery of how they got there and why they were awoken in the first place.
Rubikon
Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon; $6.99 on Apple, Vudu
Image: IFC Midnight
The 2022 sci-fi thriller Rubikon follows the crew of a space station who, following a catastrophe that engulfs the surface of the Earth, believes themselves to be the sole humans left alive. When an SOS message breaks through the planet’s clouded surface requesting food and aid, the astronauts and scientists aboard the Rubikon are faced with the hard decision of what, or who, is worth living or dying for.
From our review:
On an emotional level, Rubikon is a film about how isolation breeds insular attitudes, and how easy it is for your horizons to shrink, even when you can see the curvature of the Earth from your bedroom window. We can all relate. On a moral level, however — and this is very much a morality play in the guise of a contained, pressure-cooker thriller — it’s about weighing your responsibility to yourself and your family against your responsibility to society. The trouble is, its metaphor is so starkly exaggerated, with the future of humanity on one side of the scale and three people in a tin can on the other, that it never fully makes sense.
