Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week, Civil War, the new dystopian thriller from Ex Machina director Alex Garland and starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Alien: Romulus), is finally available to stream on Max. That’s not all, as the new reboot of The Crow starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs comes to VOD this week alongside Robot Dreams and the Irish comedy Kneecap, two of our favorites of the year. And those are just a few of the exciting new releases you can choose to watch from home this week!
Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Sci-fi adventure
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: McG
Cast: Joey King, Chase Stokes, Laverne Cox
Based on Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel of the same name, Uglies comes a full decade after the initial YA dystopia boom. It takes place in a world where everyone gets mandated plastic surgery at the age of 16 and goes on to lead glamorous yet frivolous lives. One scrappy teenager (played by Joey King) gets denied her surgery till she chases after her rebellious friend and takes down a renegade group. But she soon learns that there’s a cost to becoming Pretty.
Visually, Uglies is completely uninspired. The nameless futuristic city is so generic that it feels like a default Windows XP screensaver, and the wilderness where the rebel group hides out is also deeply uninteresting. Nothing about the costume design stands out, not even whatever high fashion the Prettys are supposedly wearing. The only unique set-piece is the rusted remnants of a theme park where Shay and Tally sneak off to ride their hoverboards, but it’s only used briefly. (And even though the Uglies book did it first, a ruined Ferris wheel was a big set-piece in Divergent.)
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Action comedy
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: Jason Kim
Cast: Kim Woo-bin, Kim Sung-kyun
This Korean buddy cop movie follows Lee Jung-do (Kim Woo-bin), a justice-minded martial artist with a black belt in taekwondo, kendo, and judo who is recruited to become a “martial arts officer” by Kim Sun-min (Kim Sung-kyun), an overworked probation officer. Tasked with tracking down errant criminals wearing electronic ankle bracelets, Jung-do has fun and kicks butt as he learns what it means to help people within the bounds of the law.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Image: Roadside Attractions/Everett Collection
Genre: Dystopian action comedy
Run time: 1h 51m
Director: Moritz Mohr
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery
A young man in a gritty dystopian future who has a love of video games is sent on a mission to destroy the city’s totalitarian ruler. From our review:
The film was largely built strictly for a specific brand of video game movie fans: It’s a checklist of retro beat-’em-up references and meta comedy tropes that some audiences are inevitably going to find broad, excessive, and off-putting, and some are going to find playful and energizing.
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Image: Magnolia Pictures/Everett Collection
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 1h 28m
Director: Joanna Arnow
Cast: Joanna Arnow, Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti
50 Shades of Grey gets a more mundane twist. A listless young woman drifts through life, looking for a more fulfilling sexual connection when her on-again-off-again BDSM relationship doesn’t tickle her fancy anymore.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Max
Image: A24
Genre: Dystopian thriller
Run time: 1h 49m
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
Alex Garland’s thriller stays away from present-day political themes to instead focus on war correspondents and journalism.
The entire film is paced and planned with that dynamic involved. It’s a particularly gorgeous drama, shot with a loving warmth that reflects its point of view, through the eyes of two photographers used to conceiving of everything around them in terms of vivid, compelling images. A late-film sequence shot as the group drives through a forest fire is especially beautiful, but the movie in general seems designed to impress viewers on a visual level.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder
Photo: Pierce Derks/IFC Films
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Chris Nash
Cast: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love
What if there was a slasher movie where everything was seen from the perspective of the killer? Wonder no more, because that’s exactly what director Chris Nash’s new film delivers. In a Violent Nature is easily one of the gnarliest horror movies of the year, with enough gruesome gore to keep your eyes glued to the screen and your hands firmly gripped on your seat.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Arcadia Motion Pictures
Genre: Tragicomedy
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Pablo Berger
The surprise entry in this year’s Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars is a bittersweet ode to old friends. Director Pablo Berger was so moved by Sara Varon’s graphic novel that he started an animation studio just to adapt it. It’s entirely without dialogue and follows a lonely dog who befriends a robot, the blissful summer they share together, and what happens after outside forces separate them. Robot Dreams is beautifully animated and deeply evocative — and will have you sobbing 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
Run time: 1h 51m
Director: Rupert Sanders
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs, Danny Huston
Director Rupert Sanders (2017’s Ghost in the Shell) is back with a reboot of 1994’s The Crow. Aren’t you excited?
Bill Skarsgård (Barbarian) stars as Eric, a young addict who meets and falls in love with Shelly (FKA Twigs), a troubled musician who is also struggling with addiction. When the pair are gunned down by the henchmen of a powerful crime lord (Danny Huston) who has made a pact with the devil to secure his own immortality, Eric is resurrected as a vengeful supernatural warrior who is tasked with killing the crime lord in order to be reunited with his lost love.
Polygon spoke with Sanders about the challenges that came with the opportunity of making a modern adaptation of the comic series.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
Genre: Comedy drama
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Rich Peppiatt
Cast: Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, JJ Ó Dochartaigh
This irreverent comedy drama stars the members of Kneecap, a Belfast-based hip-hop trio of native Irish-speaking rappers, recreating the story of how they met in the early 2010s and started making music. From run-ins with 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
Run time: 1h 18m
Director: Mary Dauterman
Cast: Grace Glowicki, Garrick Bernard, Heather Matarazzo
Grief is a difficult emotion to navigate, especially if you happen to be transforming into a monster while you’re experiencing it. When Anna (Grace Glowicki) learns of the shocking death of her best friend and roommate, Izzy, she adopts a runaway cat as an outlet for her grieving process. After being bitten by the cat, however, Anna begins to notice unsettling changes in her behavior and begins to suspect that she might be turning into something… inhuman.
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