Red One, Heretic, Netflix’s Maria, and every movie new to streaming

2 weeks ago 68

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, Maria, Pablo Larraín’s biopic on the life and career of opera singer Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, comes to streaming on Netflix. If virtuoso sopranos aren’t to your liking, not to worry: There are plenty more exciting new releases to watch this week on streaming and VOD. The holiday action comedy Red One starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and J.K. Simmons drops onto Prime Video this week, while the religious horror thriller Heretic starring Hugh Grant comes to VOD. That’s not all — Atlantics director Mati Diop has a new documentary on Mubi, and the Catholic thriller Conclave is available to stream on Peacock!

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Biopic
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Pablo Larraín
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher

Director Pablo Larraín continues his trilogy of biopics about important 20th-century women with opera singer Maria Callas. Starring Angelina Jolie, Maria follows the titular opera singer as she hallucinates a young filmmaker and tells him her life story. Callas was the subject of a number of scandals, including an affair with Aristotle Onassis — Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ husband. Which is fitting, since Larraín directed a biopic about Jackie Kennedy back in 2016.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Romantic drama
Run time: 2h 10m
Director: Justin Baldoni
Cast: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate

Raise your hand if your social media algorithms think that just because you like to read, you must love Colleen Hoover’s books. It Ends with Us is based on Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel, which follows a florist in an abusive relationship who reconnects with her first love. Despite what the TikTok edits would have you think, it’s actually about breaking the cycle of domestic abuse.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 59m
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson

This one’s for all you “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” people out there! In this new Netflix thriller, a TSA agent cheerily shows up for a Christmas Eve shift — only to get threatened by a mysterious stranger into smuggling a dangerous package onto a flight. If he doesn’t follow orders, says the stranger through an earpiece, his girlfriend will be killed. But as the agent continues to defy the stranger, the consequences heighten. Nothing says holiday cheer like high-octane thrillers, apparently!

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Photo: Emily Kassie/Sugarcane Film LLC

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 47m
Directors: Emily Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat
Cast: Julian Brave NoiseCat, Ed Archie NoiseCat, Charlene Belleau

This documentary follows an investigation into the Canadian Indian residential school system, which came under fire in 2021 following the discovery of several unmarked graves on the grounds of a school run by the Catholic Church. Sugarcane documents the national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities, and the efforts by said communities to reconcile with the horrors inflicted upon them.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Max

Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures

Genre: Psychological thriller
Run time: 2h 18m
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is back — and this time, he’s got a girlfriend! Todd Phillips’ sequel to 2019’s Joker picks up two years after the previous film, with Arthur still in custody at Arkham State Hospital awaiting trial for murder. Upon meeting Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga), Arthur finds himself torn between his attraction to her (and her subsequent attraction to the Joker) and his uncertainty as to whether he wants to be the Joker anymore. Question is, does Joker: Folie à Deux land the punchline, or is this curtains for Arthur’s story?

The truth, whether or not Phillips would want to admit it, is that his rapt framing of Phoenix’s performance, his dedicated homage to ’70s grit and ’60s musical fantasy, the smugness of a script that omits the punchline from a knock-knock joke and submits that as smart character commentary — these things are not so distant from the rule-of-cool, Easter-egg-hiding, smug-quip-dropping world of comic book cinema as he would like to imagine. Joker and Folie à Deux are no less indulgent than any other films resting on the legacy of generations of work-for-hire comics artists whose output currently falls under the ownership of the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate. Phillips just wants you to think it is.

Elton John: Never Too Late

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Disney Plus

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 42m
Directors: R.J. Cutler, David Furnish

Disney’s newest musician documentary is all about Elton John. The musician looks back on his career, going back to his really early days to the preparations for his final concert. He gets candid about his mental health, closeted sexuality, and drug abuse. The movie debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Image: Amazon MGM Studios

Genre: Holiday comedy
Run time: 2h 3m
Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Christmas action movie looks a little bit like Rise of the Guardians meets Taken. In Red One, a secret organization protects the balance between the real world and mythological figures like Santa Claus and the Headless Horseman. But when Santa gets kidnapped right before Christmas, one of Santa’s security details enlists a tracker to help him find Father Christmas himself.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Focus Features

Genre: Mystery thriller
Run time: 2h
Director: Edward Berger
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow

Ralph Fiennes stars in All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger’s latest thriller as Thomas Lawrence, a cardinal tasked with convening a secluded conclave in order to decide on the appointment of a new pope. As interfactional disputes between the cardinals amassed give rise to conspiracies and questions, Thomas must weigh the future of the church against the weight of his own conscience.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Mubi US

Image: Mubi

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 8m
Director: Mati Diop
Cast: Gildas Adannou, Morias Agbessi, Maryline Agbossi

Atlantics director Mati Diop returns with a new documentary about colonialism, culture, and history as a living subject. Dahomey chronicles the return of 26 plundered treasures to the Republic of Benin — formerly the African kingdom of Dahomey. Diop’s film asks whether or not the return of these items, which number among thousands of other artifacts taken from Africa, is sufficient restitution for despoilment of the continent and its people.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Criterion Channel

Image: Criterion Channel

Genre: Biographical short
Run time: 41m
Director: Leos Carax
Cast: Leos Carax, Denis Lavant, Nastya Golubeva Carax

Director Leos Carax’s (Holy Motors, Annette) biographical short is a free-form retrospective of his career, looking back over the past 40 years of his life and films to meditate on the nature of time, art, and mortality. Originally intended for an exhibition at the Pompidou Museum that never happened, It’s Not Me is Carax’s answer to the question, “Where are you at, Leos Carax?”

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

Genre: Superhero action
Run time: 1h 50m
Director: Kelly Marcel
Cast: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple

Tom Hardy returns for one last outing as the long-tongued parasitic vigilante. Following the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock (Hardy) and the Venom symbiote are still on the run. Hunted by both the military and a mysterious extraterrestrial threat known as the Xenophage, Eddie and Venom must work together once more to survive and clear their name.

The original Venom found success in the mess of Hardy’s gutsy performance straining against stakes as mundane as Eddie interacting with his ex and her aggressively normal new boyfriend, after they watched him feverishly climb into a restaurant’s lobster tank. Last Dance, however, removes every human consideration from the equation of Eddie’s life — every social tie, every personal goal, every stake smaller than “aliens and the government are trying to kill us.”

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

Image: A24

Genre: Horror thriller
Run time: 1h 51m
Directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Two Mormon missionaries walk into a man’s house right before a snowstorm. After realizing they’ve been trapped, the missionaries are forced to participate in a twisted game for survival or be executed. No, you’ve never heard that one before? Well then, you gotta watch this movie— it’s wild!

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

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

Genre: Holiday comedy
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Dallas Jenkins
Cast: Kynlee Heiman, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Judy Greer

Six unruly siblings suddenly decide to join the church’s Christmas pageant, much to the chagrin of most of the town. But the pageant director is determined to make this show the best Christmas pageant ever (ba-dum tss) and shows the siblings some kindness that they rarely get from the rest of the town. Now that’s the true meaning of Christmas! The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is based on a 1972 children’s book of the same name.