This weekend is a major one for new movies, with the release of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch remake in theaters. But even if you carved out two days for two major blockbusters, good news: Monday is Memorial Day. So why not spend your three-day weekend sneaking in one more movie?
Per usual, a handful of worthwhile titles are leaving Netflix on June 1. Here are five you may want to catch before they’re shipped off to another platform or disappear into the pit of VOD, where you are unlikely to rent them.
Image: Universal Home Entertainment
Is Child’s Play/Chucky the most underestimated horror franchise? Thanks to writer-director Don Mancini’s 37-year commitment to shaking up his slasher formula with each new installment, it’s certainly up there, even in the series’ direct-to-video era.
Cult of Chucky picks up shortly after the events of 2013’s Curse of Chucky, which saw the murderous ginger doll stalk Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif, daughter of Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif!) and slay her whole family. When the police arrive, Nica is ultimately charged with the murders, and hauled away to an institution. In Cult of Chucky, an abusive psychiatrist has convinced her she really was the perpetrator of the crime and Chucky was all in her head — until the doll shows up to kill more people. It’s bloodsplatteringly twisted fun. Mancini finds ways to get multiple Chucky dolls in the mix, and up the gross-out humor a few notches. Enjoy, sickos.
Image: STX Entertainment
If you have yet to meet Big Nick (Gerard Butler), king of the scuzzy cops, hurry up: The terrific Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is also on Netflix, but you only have a week to catch the first installment in the series. Writer-director Christian Gudegast gives Heat a dirtbag makeover, as Butler’s bleary, on-the-verge-of-divorce antihero hunts down a team of ex-Marines who are pulling off elaborate bank heists.
Pablo Schreiber (Halo) is piercing as Ray, the leader of the criminal operation, while O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent give the Ocean’s 11-esque team its needed swagger. But Butler as Nick, bumbling around and failing at life, carries the movie, bringing in an unexpected amount of emotion as the story barrels toward its big Federal Reserve set piece. At 140 grimy, gun-heavy minutes, no one is really making movies like Den of Thieves at the moment.
Image: Universal Pictures
Maaaaaaaaaaaa. Blumhouse understandably pitched this psychological horror film from [checks notes] The Help director Tate Taylor??? as “from the producer of Get Out and Halloween,” but Ma is much goofier and more meme-friendly than either of those movies — and for the better. It all lands thanks to Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer, whose vindictive, violent Sue Ann is on the wavelength of Kathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes in Misery and Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction.
At first, “Ma” is a local legend for buying kids alcohol and giving them a safe haven to party. But Sue Ann has an ulterior motive, and — well, shit goes down. Culture writers have found plenty beneath the surface of Ma over the years, especially in regard to how it grapples with race. But if that sounds heady, good news: the melodramatic horror surface is great, too.
Ramayya Vasthavayya (2013)
Fans of Indian action should check out this revenge thriller starring N.T. Rama Rao Jr. (RRR), who really seems to exist to walk in slow motion while preparing to beat the crap out of someone, so it’s good that we invented movies in time for his arrival on this planet. Compared to the hyper-stylish RRR or the playful action-comedy Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (aka The Man Who Feels No Pain), Ramayya Vasthavayya is pretty basic. Nandu (NTR) is falling hard for Akarsha (played by Indian mega-star Samantha) but he also has some secrets that means he will eventually need to cut people down with a machete. But boy, does director Harish Shankar make NTR look good doing it! Whether he’s getting smacked across the face with a lead pipe or pounding some goons, the actor delivers what the camera needs.
Image: Solstace Studios via Everett Collection
Much like Quentin Tarantino, we here at Polygon endorse Russell Crowe’s released-during-pandemic-times-and-therefore-seen-by-too-few-people movie Unhinged. Crowe is actually the villain in this road-rage horror-thriller, which stars Caren Pistorius as an overworked single mother who crosses paths with the wrong brute while rushing to get her son to school one morning.
The title is apt: Crowe’s “The Man” is quite unhinged! And instead of brushing off the beeping car behind him, he goes full Duel on the unsuspecting mom. Crowe seems as committed to playing an animalistic terror as he was committed to playing Maximus in Gladiator, and yet he surprisingly did not win another Oscar for his work in Unhinged.
