Glass Onion, Top Gun: Maverick, and every new movie you can watch at home

Christmastime is right here, Polygon readers, and Netflix obtained you a brand new Knives Out film.

Daniel Craig returns with a brand new ensemble forged in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Thriller, one in every of fairly just a few new films touchdown on streaming companies and VOD this week. It’s joined by the Matilda musical on Netflix, whereas High Gun: Maverick (Paramount Plus) and Unusual World (Disney Plus) look to make splashes on competing platforms.

It’s an thrilling week in VOD releases, too. The indie darling Aftersun, one in every of our prime films of the yr, is now out there for residence viewing, as is the Santa-as-an-action-star flick Violent Evening.

Let’s get into it!

Netflix

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Thriller

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Netflix

Photograph: John Wilson/Netflix

Style: Thriller/comedy
Run time: 2h 20m
Director: Rian Johnson
Solid: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Dave Bautista

Rian Johnson’s sequel to his 2019 ensemble thriller now finds itself as part of a franchise. The as soon as upstart, non-IP style piece is now a Netflix tentpole, launched first in theaters and now out there for streaming at residence.

Daniel Craig returns to reprise his function because the detective Benoit Blanc, now confronted with a brand new group of rich individuals performed by very well-known individuals, as he makes an attempt to unravel a brand new homicide. This time it’s in Greece, when a tech billionaire (Edward Norton) invitations his pals for a celebration and one in every of them finally ends up useless.

From our evaluation:

Glass Onion is a brighter, louder, extra extroverted film than the primary Knives Out. Its themes and trend flirt with brazen, cartoony silliness. This time round, Johnson goals for giant concepts and massive laughs — this can be a funnier film, virtually an outright comedy at occasions, and a broad one at that. The place Knives Out targets the defensive pretension of inherited wealth, Glass Onion mocks the determined peacocking of latest cash, in a world of tech billionaires, influencers, and flash-in-the-pan politicians. As earlier than, although, the gentlemanly Benoit Blanc is right here to strip these individuals’s illusions away with comedian courtesy.

The Invitation

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Netflix

Photograph: Marcell Piti/Display screen Gems

Style: Horror
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Jessica M. Thompson
Solid: Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty, Sean Pertwee

Impressed by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Invitation follows a younger lady who meets her prolonged household after her mom’s demise, solely to find they’re… vampires!

From our evaluation:

One half Get Out, one half Prepared or Not, and too few components Dracula, The Invitation is a pastiche of infinitely higher horror tales that it by no means measures as much as. You can also make vampires do virtually something in films, however The Invitation commits the one unforgivable sin: making vampires boring.

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Netflix

Photograph: Dan Smith/Netflix

Style: Musical/fantasy
Run time: 1h 57m
Director: Matthew Warchus
Solid: Alisha Weir, Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch

The film adaption of the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda went semi-viral just a few weeks again, with eye-catching choreography that places many different trendy film musicals to disgrace.

Paramount Plus

High Gun: Maverick

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Paramount Plus

Photograph: Scott Garfield/Paramount Photos

Style: Motion
Run time: 2h 11m
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Solid: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly

The undisputed box-office champion of 2022 (though The Approach of Water lurks), High Gun: Maverick lastly makes its strategy to Paramount Plus this week, after many lengthy months of ready. This simply means it’s a good time to look at High Gun: Maverick once more. Or soar out of a airplane, in case you’re Tom Cruise. As much as you.

From our evaluation:

If there’s one thing value salvaging from that period — and from High Gun — it’s the sense of optimism that used to dominate ’80s motion films. That and the assumption that the best, corniest story, if instructed with sufficient ability and conviction, can delight everybody on this planet. High Gun: Maverick has each these qualities in abundance. They’re embodied in Tom Cruise, who’s the auteur of his personal fable, and is perhaps the final true film star. He desires to point out you a very good time, and he’ll. However greater than that, he desires to take off and by no means come again down.

Hulu

Mack & Rita

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Hulu

Picture: Gravitas Ventures

Style: Comedy
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Katie Aselton
Solid: Diane Keaton, Elizabeth Lail, Molly Duplass

A brand new wrinkle on Huge, Freaky Friday, and different body-swap comedies, Mack & Rita follows a younger author (Elizabeth Lail) who someday wakes up as her 70-year-old self (Diane Keaton).

Sharp Stick

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Hulu

Picture: Utopia

Style: Comedy
Run time: 1h 32m
Director: Lena Dunham
Solid: Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Luka Sabbat

Lena Dunham already delivered top-of-the-line comedies of the yr in Catherine Known as Birdy. Her second 2022 comedy is extra of the R-rated selection, a couple of lady (Kristine Froseth) who begins an affair together with her employer (Jon Bernthal). Dunham additionally co-stars on this one, as do Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, Andor).

Disney Plus

Unusual World

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Disney Plus

Picture: Walt Disney Animation

Style: Motion/journey
Run time: 1h 42m
Administrators: Don Corridor, Qui Nguyen
Solid: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Younger-White, Gabrielle Union

This animated journey was one in every of Disney’s largest box-office flops shortly, and now you’ll be able to test it out for your self from the consolation of your property.

From our evaluation:

When the emotional coronary heart of the film focuses on this group of ragtag explorers desperately attempting to save lots of the world they know, it’s a grand and thrilling journey, with lovely surroundings and fantastical creatures at each flip. When the film focuses on its wider scope, it shines, however when it pulls again right down to the overdone relationships, it loses what makes it sparkle. These father-son dynamics look like they had been purported to anchor the film in some actuality, however all they do is drag Unusual World down when it may’ve soared.

Apple TV Plus

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

The place to look at: Accessible to stream on Apple TV

Picture: Apple TV

Style: Household
Run time: 34m
Director: Peter Baynton
Solid: Tom Hollander, Idris Elba, Gabriel Byrne

Charlie Mackesy’s 2019 youngsters’s novel will get a beautiful hand-drawn animated adaptation, with Idris Elba, Tom Hollander, and Gabriel Byrne offering voice appearing.

VOD

Aftersun

The place to look at: Accessible to buy for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play

Picture: A24

Style: Drama
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Charlotte Wells
Solid: Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal, Celia Rowlson-Corridor

Polygon’s No. 8 greatest film of the yr, a formidable function debut from filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is lastly out there to look at at residence. I’ll let our blurb for Aftersun communicate for itself.

The human reminiscence is, famously, unreliable — defective to the purpose of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood recollections are maybe one of the best instance of this: Even a small, remoted reminiscence can utterly change tone later when seen with the total spectrum of maturity, filtered via the prism of concern and care that comes with it. It’s a tricky idea to wrap your mind round at occasions. And so Aftersun looks like a small miracle within the methods it not solely captures that scope however manages to border the entire idea with grace.

Younger father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on a uncommon resort trip, a fading second captured by her on a clunky camcorder (not less than partially; you already know what it’s like at hand a child a video digicam). Whereas that plot is straightforward in building, the execution of it’s much more profound, capturing the wistful vantage factors of each Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on vacation with equal, vivid readability. In Aftersun’s palms, reminiscence is simply as slippery because it’s all the time been. Typically conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; rising up is seeing the total image of their journey, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its potential to seize that. It’s a testomony to the performances on the heart of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the movie manages to recommend a lot with out overstating its level. In spite of everything, reminiscence could also be unreliable, however generally reminiscence — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a heat embrace — is all we now have. —Zosha Millman

Violent Evening

The place to look at: Accessible to lease for $19.99 on Amazon and Vudu

Picture: Common Photos

Style: Motion
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Solid: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Beverly D’Angelo

David Harbour stars as Santa Claus on this motion film from 87North Productions, the legendary Hollywood motion studio that introduced you a lot of your favourite components of John Wick and different current motion classics.

From our evaluation:

Violent Evening works greatest when it captures the warped sensibilities of early-’90s Chris Columbus films, significantly Residence Alone. It’s been identified so typically that it barely must be mentioned that the occasions of that movie are literally horrifically traumatizing and violent, and that Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister is a pint-size sociopath. Little Trudy Lightstone has a sadistic streak in her, too, and the movie’s most demented scenes are performed with an outsized sense of cheer that successfully creates a way of giggly discomfort. The distinction right here is that these moments are being engineered on function. The movie has enjoyable lobbing snarky one-liners and outrageous bloodshed on the viewers, however on the entire, Violent Evening’s huge pink bag of self-aware tips is overstuffed.