The best new movies to watch at home this weekend, including Emancipation starring Will Smith on Apple TV Plus, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio on Netflix.
Pinocchio (no, not that one… no, not that one either), the new stop-motion musical fantasy from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox), finally arrives on Netflix. If an animated children’s film set in 1930s Fascist Italy doesn’t quite jibe with your vibe this weekend, not to worry — there’s tons of other new movies to stream on Netflix, like Emily the Criminal and The Boss Baby: Christmas Bonus, not to mention all the other releases on VOD and streaming.
Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wook’s new neo-noir mystery thriller about an insomniac detective with a chainmail glove and the No. 2 film on our best movies of 2022 list, comes to stream on Mubi. David O. Russell’s irreverent historical thriller Amsterdam comes to HBO Max, while Emancipation, the Civil War period drama starring Will Smith, is now streaming on Apple TV Plus, while a new Christmas horror comedy arrives on Shudder.
Here are the best new movies to stream and rent this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Musical/fantasy
Run time: 1h 57m
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
Cast: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann
Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) and animation director Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) team up to reinvent the story of Pinocchio as a stop-motion musical fantasy set in 1930s Italy amid the rise of Benito Mussolini. The core of the story remains the same, focusing on the story of a heartbroken woodcarver (David Bradley) who, overcome with grief, crafts a wooden puppet to serve as his surrogate son. The puppet (Gregory Mann), brought to life by a magical blue fairy, is faced with the challenge of navigating a strange and uncertain world with only his conscience — a cricket named Sebastian (Ewan McGregor) — to guide him.
From our review:
There’s no doubt that this is, technically and artistically, one of the great works of stop motion, a rarefied and quixotic art form. Within its stubbornly practical world of rubber and clay, paper and paint, joints and wires and levers, this is as ambitious an undertaking as Avatar. But del Toro’s greatest achievement is not to let all the artistry overwhelm the art. It’s an unruly, wild, and tender film that sometimes gets lost but, by the end, finds its way to a very moving state of grace.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 45m
Director: Christo Stamboliev, Matt Engstrom
Cast: JP Karliak, Pierce Gagnon, George Lopez
The Boss Baby is back, and this time, he’s accidentally swapped places with one of Santa’s elves. Oh Boss Baby, you incorrigible facsimile of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 37m
Director: John Patton Ford
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke
A college student struggling with debt problems takes a not-exactly-legal job as a part of a credit card scam.
From our review:
Ford’s color palette for this film — an industrial composite of gunmetal grays and navy blues that recall glass-paneled skyscrapers on a cloudy day — is reminiscent of Michael Mann’s crime classic Heat. And the amoral Emily would fit right in with Mann’s roster of hardened pros.
