Matrix 4, Encanto, Netflix’s newest, and 13 new movies to now watch at home

This weekend Resurrections of the Matrix, Spider-Man has no way homePeople who are struggling to get by Nightmare Alley West Side StoryThey want to get people into movies during the holiday season and out of their homes. They may face a combination of family guilt and COVID worries. Resurrections is available on HBO Max) — but luckily there is plenty of new stuff to watch at home.

Netflix movies to Oscar-friendly dramas. Resident EvilYou’ve seen the movie reboot but were too lazy to go to the theaters. Now you can rent it from home-viewing sites. And if you’re spending the holidays cooped up at home, consider a remote watching party with friends of family: they’re easier than ever to pull off.

On that note, to help you get a handle on what’s new and available, here are the new movies you can watch with the click of a button this weekend.

Resurrections of the Matrix

What to Watch: You can stream HBO Max on your computer.

Warner Bros. Pictures

18 years have passed since the two-peat of Reloaded The Matrix RevolutionsThis is Resurrections of the Matrix, a mind-bender from original mastemind Lana Wachowski that works as both commentary on the franchise’s legacy and a damn good heist movie set inside The Matrix. Our outstanding review will take you deeper. Here’s a taste:

Resurrections of the MatrixIt’s about doing what is impossible. On a very basic level, it’s about the insurmountable and inherently cynical task of making a follow-up to the Matrix trilogy, one that breaks technical and narrative ground the way the first film did. On a thematic one, it’s an agitprop romance, one of the most effective mass media diagnoses of the current moment that finds countless things to be angry about, and proposes fighting them all with radical, reckless love. On top of all that, it is also a kick-ass work of sci-fi action — propulsive, gorgeous, and yet still intimate — that revisits the familiar to show audiences something very new.

Encanto

What to Watch: Disney Plus is available to stream

Image: Disney

Disney’s final animated feature of the year made our list of the best movies of 2021. Here’s why:

It’s always a strange year when Walt Disney Animation Studios outdoes Pixar on color, emotion, and innovation, but that happened in 2021. Pixar’s film Luca is a low-key and generally low-stakes charmer about friendship and family, but Disney’s Encanto The story explores the same themes of belonging, connection and raises them to feverish heights. The story, about a magical home, the magical family it houses, and the one family member who doesn’t have a special gift, draws heavily on Colombian art and design for its richly textured characters and setting. But Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dizzyingly dense songs are the centerpiece of the film — they’re authentic earworms that function as important parts of the story instead of tacked-on interludes.

And the movie’s big emotions are compelling and powerful. Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) accepts her place as the family’s powerless black sheep with grace and humility for a long time, but eventually, the unfairness of the world catches up with her, and the seething hurt she’s been holding back for so long is palpable. Encanto is visually sumptuous, but it also cuts to the same kind of dark inner demons that the best Pixar movies reach, and offers some catharsis for anyone who’s ever felt at odds with their family, or the world in general.

Don’t Look Up

What to Watch: Netflix streaming available

Photo: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

The Big Short ViceDirector Adam McKay combines with Step Brothers AnchormanDirector Adam McKay stars in this hilarious comedy about the end. McKay locked up an all-star cast for his first outing for Netflix, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, and Timothée Chalamet, but based on reviews, it seems to be polarizing the audience, even in its noble quest to shake up the conversation on climate change. Here’s a bit from our take:

Don’t Look Up This becomes a well-acted work of exhaustion. It’s not very interesting to see this cycle play out in a hypothetical context because this particular media circus is already repeated ad nauseum. McKay makes a pity of his talent by making them do nothing. The film is very little about McKay. Why? we are trapped in these cycles, and it doesn’t seem to offer anything beyond the greatest hits of a bad few months online. It would be a lot easier to accept jokes about political ineptitude, memes on the internet, and daytime television. Humor can be subjective. Here’s an example: Don’t Look Up’s specific jokes feels like a spoiler, depriving you of one of the three times you’ll likely experience a genuine laugh.

The Last Duel

What to Watch: Vudu, Apple, Amazon and Amazon are available to rent

Photograph by 20th Century Studios

Ridley Scott’s medieval epic, starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adam Driver, and Eve is killed’s Jodie Cormer, pretty much bombed in theaters this fall, despite promising reviews. Our colleague Zosha Millman caught it after a few weeks in theaters, and walked out having had one of her best movie experiences of the year, suggesting the movie’s themes on sexual violence and human strife were worth the challenge. “The absolute high of digesting such a complicated, thorny narrative in a theater all to myself is something I’ve been chasing ever since.”

Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City

What to Watch: Rentable for as low as $19.99 at Amazon, Apple and Vudu

Photo: Shane Mahood/Sony Pictures

A reboot of the Resident Evil movie franchise that skews closer to the games turned out to not be what fans wanted — no one showed up to theaters when the movie bowed in November and, after bombing, it quickly departed screens for premium home video rental. But here’s the thing: it’s pretty solid! Johannes Roberts, despite being full of Easter eggs delivers an authentic horror movie in the style James Wan. On the scale of this year’s biggest surprises, Raccoon City is your home You are up there.

Lamb

What to Watch:Amazon, Apple and Vudu are available to rent at $5.99

Photo: A24

LambA24 imported the drama “Starring” Prometheus’ Noomi Rapace, has a number of turns that would be egregious to spoil. But let’s just say Rapace’s character adopts Ada, a mysterious half-lamb half-human child, and that the director was ReallyConsider filming live lamb births.

Benedetta

What to Watch: Amazon, Apple, Vudu and Vudu are all available for rent at $6.99

IFC Films Photo

“Paul Verhoeven, you horny motherfucker, you’ve done it again.”

Joshua Rivera (our critic) has drank the Robocop Elle director’s erotic drama about nuns in 17th century Italy. From an early age, Benedetta (Virginie Efira) has believed that she’s been touched by God. When Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) arrives to her convent, Benedetta’s touched … by much more. The sexual and spiritual intertwine in ways that seem like a perfect fit for Verhoeven’s daring brand of cinema. Here’s more from Joshua:

Some might find it. BenedettaIt is too exploitative to be taken seriously. That criticism has its merits: The movie’s lasciviousness can be read as being meant for the camera as much as it is for the characters. The movie’s queerness could be seen as a purely titillating device for straight men. But in the context of the rigid confines of Catholicism at the peak of its powers, Verhoeven’s argument for Benedetta’s extremes is compelling. He presses against the profane and calls into question the religious rejection of human experience.

C’mon C’mon

What to Watch: Rentable for as low as $19.99 at Amazon, Apple and Vudu

Image: A24

Mike Mills’ latest news (For Beginners, Women in the 20th CenturyJoaquin Phoenix plays Johnny in “The Movie.” He is an uncle who assumes the role of father figure for his nephew without any guidance. It’s simple, straightforward, black and white, but it seems quite stirring. Vulture is our friend:

Johnny nurtures his 9-year-old nephew, Jesse (Woody Norman), taking him from his home in Los Angeles to the different cities he visits for work, while his novelist sister, Viv (Gabby Hoffman), helps Jesse’s father Paul (Scoot McNairy) during a manic bipolar disorder episode in the Bay Area.

In there is not much to report C’mon C’mon. There’s no overly grand gestures of love. There’s no arch monologues. There’s no teary reappraisals underscored by irrevocable shifts in the characters’ lives. As Johnny travels with Jesse in tow and Viv wrestles with Paul’s refusal to heal in the linear fashion people who don’t struggle with mental illness expect, the film finds a raw beauty in the wonders and heartbreaks of everyday life. It’s a humble portrait of a family’s deepening connections supported by a number of cinematic pleasures — expert sound design and cinematography; touching performances by Norman and Hoffman; and a tremendous showing from Joaquin Phoenix, operating at a register he’s rarely found before. It’s a career best for him — lovely, empathetic, humane.

And here’s what dropped last Friday:

French Dispatch

You can rent a watch for as low as $19.99 from Amazon, Apple, or Vudu

Image: Searchlight Pictures

Wes Anderson’sFrench Dispatch is a self-proclaimed “love letter to journalists,” and a comedy anthology following the misadventures of a group of hapless columnists working for the eccentric editor of an American newspaper in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé (Boredom-upon-Apathy). Anderson’s proclivity for fastidiously detailed set, bright colors, irreverent deadpan humor, and quirky characters has won him both acclaim and criticism throughout his career. What does Anderson do? French DispatchCompare his work with ours? Based on our review

This film can be divided into five vignettes. Each one is a report column that belongs to a certain newspaper section. Like many anthology films, certain sections perform better than others. Anderson’s penchant for dry comedy used to explain grief, the inner workings of dysfunctional people, and children experiencing the loss of innocence comes to the forefront once again. And yet this is the director’s least digestible work. It’s supposedly a love letter to the New YorkerOf yore but while French Dispatch features Anderson’s familiar aesthetic style, it’s often a distant omnibus that might appeal only to his most ardent fans.

Venom: There Must Be Carnage

What to Watch:Amazon, Apple, Vudu and Vudu are all available for rent at $5.99

Image: Sony Pictures

Andy Serkis’ follow-up to 2018’s antihero action comedy Venom follows Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), investigative journalist-turned-human-host of the alien symbiote Venom, as he attempts to rejuvenate his career by interviewing Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a psychotic serial killer with an infatuation for Venom. Eddie and Venom will need to cooperate to overcome the new threat to their relationship and to heal their conflicted relationship when Kasady hosts Carnage. According to our review

A lean 97 minute workout Venom: There Must Be Carnage doesn’t suffer from the kind of slack mid-section that weighs down so many action-forward superhero movies. The second act, however, is where Venom shines as a character. He’s fed up with living in a host that doesn’t appreciate what he does for him and won’t let him eat the criminals they stop, so he decides to take his gifts elsewhere. Full of self-righteous anger, Venom digs his claws into the side of Eddie’s pretty little souped-up two-wheel drive and explores the city on his own, jumping from body to body and presumably killing each new host along the way.

God’s Hand

What to Watch:Netflix is available to stream

Gianni Fiorito

The Young Pope director Paolo Sorrentino’s 2021 drama God’s HandThe story of Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scati), an eighteen-year-old boy who grew up in Naples during turbulent 1980s, follows. With few friends and no lover to call his own, Fabietto’s maturation into young adulthood is punctuated by both serendipitous joys and startling tragedies, culminating in a story that’s as achingly poignant as it is deeply relatable.

Mother/Android

What to Watch:Hulu streamable

Image: Hulu

Chloë Grace Moretz (Allow Me to InAlgee Smith and ).You Hate U GiveMother/Android (played by ) stars as Georgia and Sam. They are expecting parents on a dangerous journey to survival in an android-dominated world. The couple is just days away from their first baby and must travel through treacherous territory to locate a safe place where their child can be raised. The trailer looks exciting and oddly reminiscent of the modern Planet of the Apes trilogy, albeit with androids that resemble the robots in 2018’s Detroit: Become Human.

Swan Song

What to Watch:Apple TV Plus can stream the video

Photo: Apple TV Plus

Mahershala Ali (True DetectiveStarring as Cameron Turner in sci-fi drama Swan Song, Cameron Turner is a father and husband who learns that his terminal illness has taken him to hospital. Cameron feels helpless and depressed at the idea of having to leave his wife Poppy (Naomie Harris) and their baby without a husband. Glenn Close, his doctor offers an alternate solution: make a carbon copy of yourself so that he can continue his life. As Cameron struggles with the emotional toll of his decision, he’ll come to learn more about life, love, grief, and happiness than he had ever imagined.

The Novice

Watch: Rentable for $5.99 at Amazon, $6.99 at Apple and Vudu

Image: IFC Films

Think about it Whiplash Oder Black Swan, but instead of jazz drumming or ballet, if it was a film about a queer college freshman’s arduous physical and psychological ordeal to become the best novice rower on her school’s varsity boat team. Trailer for The NoviceIsabelle Fuhrman, who feels unnerving and claustrophobic (OrphanAlex Dall is portrayed by ) in a riveting performance.