The best new movies to watch at home this weekend, including the streaming debut of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the new Minions movie on Netflix, Skinamarink on Shudder, Plane on VOD, and more.
This week Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the highly anticipated follow-up to Ryan Coogler’s 2018 superhero film Black Panther, is finally available to stream on Disney Plus. There’s plenty more new releases to discover and enjoy via streaming this weekend, let alone rent or purchase on VOD.
We’ve got the experimental horror film Skinamarink streaming on Shudder in the wake of grossing more than $1.5 million at the box office, we’ve got a new musical comedy on Netflix about a singing crocodile who lives in New York City and loves bubble baths, and we’ve got the romantic comedy-drama Sam & Kate starring Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek on Hulu. That’s not all — on VOD this week we have the release of Alice, Darling, the new psychological thriller starring Anna Kendrick; Bones and All for a reduced price; and Plane, the explosive action thriller starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter (Evil) as two unlikely allies forced to take up arms against a band of mercenary kidnappers when their plane crash-lands in the Philippines.
Here are the new movies available for you to watch at home this weekend.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Musical comedy
Run time: 1h 46m
Directors: Will Speck, Josh Gordon
Cast: Javier Bardem, Constance Wu, Winslow Fegley
Based on Bernard Waber’s bestselling book series, Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s live-action CG musical comedy follows Josh (Winslow Fegley), a lonely boy who moves to New York City with his family and meets and adopts a singing crocodile that loves baths. When Mr. Grumps, the resident neighborhood curmudgeon, plots to have Josh’s family evicted, they’ll will have to band together to stop him and save Lyle. If that’s not enough to move the needle for you, at one point Javier Bardem shows up in the film looking like this.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Family comedy
Run time: 1h 27m
Director: Kyle Balda
Cast: Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Michelle Yeoh
The minions are back in this sequel to 2015’s prequel Minions, and they have plenty of new friends along for the ride. Michelle Yeoh, Alan Arkin, Taraji P. Henson, Julie Andrews, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Dolph Lundgren are among the many legendary performers who lent their voice talents to this one, which follows an 11-year-old Gru (Steve Carell) as he hopes to achieve his dreams of becoming a supervillain.
From our review:
In the final moments of Minions: The Rise of Gru, the vast array of Minions sing a garbled version of The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which is perhaps a bit too much, creatively speaking, in a summer when the family-movie options have been both infrequent and unsatisfying. Minions: The Rise of Gru is a dutiful brand deposit, a spinoff that does indeed give us more of an idea of how a little kid with a Boris Badenov-style accent turned into a supervillain. Like the song implies, the film doesn’t give grown-ups what we want, in that The Rise of Gru isn’t notably entertaining or hilarious. It isn’t really what we need, either. But in a summer movie season with paltry pickings, it’ll do in terms of a providing brief balm from the outside heat, even if it’s just a very quick fix.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus
Genre: Superhero action/drama
Run time: 2h 41m
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira
Ryan Coogler’s follow-up to 2018’s Black Panther follows the Wakandan princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Queen-Mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) as they mourn the sudden death of King T’Challa — and with him the loss of Wakanda’s ancestral protector, the Black Panther. When a powerful new force arises from the ocean to threaten war against the surface world, Shuri and her allies will have to fight to protect Wakanda from certain destruction.
From our review:
Coogler’s sequel is a more somber affair than 2018’s Black Panther, but it has its moments of levity, which arguably shine brighter here because of that darkness. In the absence of T’Challa, Shuri finds camaraderie in the company of Okoye (Danai Gurira), the general of the Dora Milaje honor guard, and T’Challa’s former lover Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), an older-sister figure who offers consolation and commiseration. Shuri’s rapid bond with Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), an MIT student and fellow child prodigy, offers her something she’s never had before: a friend who understands what it’s like to be young, Black, and exceptional in a world that casually resents people who are any of those things, let alone all three.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: William Brent Bell
Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Matthew Finlan
One of the best entries in an excellent year of horror movies, Orphan: First Kill is the delayed follow-up to 2009’s Orphan, with Isabelle Fuhrman returning to play one of the most delightful killers in modern horror.
From our review:
In spite of all conventional wisdom, Orphan: First Kill is a phenomenal slasher sequel. By finding the pitch-perfect tonal balance between bloodshed and fun, without ever slipping into outright comedy, First Kill winds up as a better, smarter, and more fully realized film than the original, and one of the best horror movies of the year.
