It’s a good streaming weekend for animal lovers. The poorly trained Kryptonian pup Krypto flies onto VOD as part of James Gunn’s Superman, where he helps the Man of Steel fight Lex Luthor. Fixed, the raunchy animated comedy about a group of dogs having a wild night out, was shelved by Warner Bros, but Netflix rescued the film from Samurai Jack and Primal creator Genndy Tartakovsky, and it’s streaming now. And in The Legend of Ochi, a teen girl tries to help a mythical apelike creature in a coming-of-age adventure, which finds a home on HBO Max.
There’s more out there to watch this weekend besides cute critters. Kenji Nakamura’s psychedelic horror series continues with the release of Mononoke: The Ashes of Rage on Netflix, while It Feeds latches onto Hulu.
Here’s a rundown of the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, including the biggest, best, and most popular new movies you can watch at home right now.
New on Netflix
Fixed
- Genre: Animated comedy
- Run time: 1h 25m
- Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
- Cast: Adam DeVine, Idris Elba, Kathryn Hahn
A goofy mutt named Bull (voiced by Adam DeVine) learns he’s going to be neutered and decides he needs a big night out with his best friends to say goodbye to his testicles. Leaning on the tropes of a raunchy romantic comedy, the film follows Bull’s antics as he gorges himself at a food festival, gets attacked by cats, and confesses his love to the show dog next door.
Mononoke: The Ashes of Rage
- Genre: Horror anime
- Run time: 1h 14m
- Directors: Kenji Nakamura, Kiyotaka Suzuki
- Cast: Hiroshi Kamiya, Haruka Tomatsu, Tomoyo Kurosawa
A horror-mystery dressed in bright, colorful animation, the sequel to Mononoke: Phantom in the Rain follows a demon-slayer trying to stop supernatural creatures from feeding off the emperor’s handmaidens and concubines. Beyond the monstrous threat, the castle is embroiled in succession drama. A third film in the trilogy will be released next year.
From our review:
Ashes of Rage drops gobsmacking visual hints and puzzles throughout its tightly structured narrative, and they’re wonderful to analyze and pick at, especially on a second viewing. The movie is like a picture book: Scene transitions showcase beautiful tapestry-like art, this time around depicting a maiden on a small boat, surrounded by burning mice and smoke. Fire, in general, is artfully woven throughout the majority of the scenes.
Night Always Comes
- Genre: Crime thriller
- Run time: 1h 48m
- Director: Benjamin Caron
- Cast: Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zack Gottsagen
Facing eviction, Lynette (Fantastic Four: First Steps star Vanessa Kirby) spends a night desperately trying to gather $25,000 to save her home and protect her brother with Down syndrome. Navigating Portland’s underworld becomes increasingly dangerous as Lynette seeks cash through prostitution and car theft.
New on Apple TV Plus
The Instigators
- Genre: Heist comedy
- Run time: 1h 41m
- Director: Doug Liman
- Cast: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau
A former Marine desperate for cash (Matt Damon) teams up with an ex-con (Casey Affleck) to steal the bribes from Boston’s corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman) at his election-night party. But when things don’t go according to plan, the unlikely duo wind up on the run from both the mob and the police.
New on HBO Max
The Legend of Ochi
- Genre: Fantasy adventure
- Run time: 1h 36m
- Director: Isaiah Saxon
- Cast: Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, Willem Dafoe
A24’s family-friendly movie used complex puppetry to bring its adorable monkey-like creature to life. Set in a remote area of the Carpathian Mountains, the film follows lonely 12-year-old Yuri (Helena Zengel) who goes on a quest to return a baby ochi to its family. In the process, she defies her father Maxim (Willem Dafoe), who believes the mythological creatures are vicious beasts that should be hunted down.
From our review:
While Yuri and the ochi are captivating, Saxon doesn’t spend nearly enough time with them. Nor does he spend enough time on the messy family dynamics that motivate Yuri to run away in the first place. That latter lack ends up undermining the movie the most. Yuri’s family has supposedly been broken apart by the ochi, but viewers don’t get much sense of what their family was like before the attack, and their current motives feel unclear and contradictory.
New on Hulu
It Feeds
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 42m
- Director: Chad Archibald
- Cast: Ashley Greene, Ellie O’Brien, Juno Rinaldi
When a panicked young girl shows up at a home psychiatry practice, the owner, Cynthia (Ashley Greene of the Twilight Saga), uses her clairvoyant powers to discover a dark entity has attached itself to the child’s mind. Cynthia plunges into the darkest corners of the girl’s psyche, seeking to banish the monster before it consumes her.
Sharp Corner
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 50m
- Director: Jason Buxton
- Cast: Ben Foster, Cobie Smulders, Gavin Drea
Josh (Ben Foster) and Rachel (Cobie Smulders) thought they had bought their dream house, but a sharp corner on the road outside their front yard turns out to be the stuff of nightmares. After witnessing a series of car crashes, Josh becomes obsessed with the victims and the accidents, imagining ways to both prevent deaths and cause more.
New to rent
Descendent
- Genre: Science fiction thriller
- Run time: 1h 32m
- Director: Peter Cilella
- Cast: Ross Marquand, Sarah Bolger
Sean (Ross Marquand of The Walking Dead) is expecting his first child when he wakes up in the hospital, seemingly having fallen off the roof of the school where he works as a security guard. But Sean is convinced he was actually abducted by aliens and becomes obsessed with protecting his family from the invaders.
Eddington
- Genre: Neo-Western
- Run time: 2h 29m
- Director: Ari Aster
- Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes
Hereditary and Midsommar writer/director Ari Aster delves into the tensions of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests in the town of Eddington, New Mexico, where the anti-mask sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) decides to run for mayor against the incumbent (Pedro Pascal). Conspiracies run wild as Eddington erupts in violence.
Smurfs
- Genre: Animated musical comedy
- Run time: 1h 32m
- Director: Chris Miller
- Cast: Rihanna, James Corden, John Goodman
The reboot of The Smurfs film series is packed with musical numbers and dance routines as the blue guys travel through alternate dimensions animated in different styles. Smurfs doesn’t have a coherent plot, but it’s meant to delight kids while packing in a ridiculously long list of cameos from famous actors to distract their parents.
From our review:
Smurfs is garbage. It’s a randomized assortment of Stuff That Happens in Kids’ Animated Movies, which scriptwriter Pam Brady (Hot Rod) and director Chris Miller (Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots) seem to have organized into a narrative by means of free-association. It’s mostly meaningless, or occasionally mildly offensive, if you stop to think about it. It’s also blandly drawn, stiffly animated, and maddeningly inconsistent in its visual design.
Superman
- Genre: Superhero
- Run time: 2h 9m
- Director: James Gunn
- Cast: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult
James Gunn reboots the DCU by skipping the Man of Steel’s origin story and picking up the action three years after Superman (David Corenswet) started protecting Metropolis. After he loses a fight for the first time, the hero has to rely on his friends and allies to stop a war and unravel the schemes of billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).
From our review:
Corenswet, like so many Superman performers before him, has a difficult line to walk, figuring out how to convey Clark’s essential goodness without coming across like a ramrod-straight parody of an overgrown Boy Scout. Corenswet leans into the dorkiness charmingly, while teasing out some human irritation at the pitfalls of his chosen life. (Superman knows he shouldn’t read the tweets or pay attention to the trending hashtags, and yet…) Though a little bit of Superman’s faith in humanity gets the told-not-shown treatment, with Lois describing him in terms we don’t fully see played out on screen, Corenswet squares the hero’s big (and obviously heavily CG’d) physical feats with a surprising amount of interior conflict.
