Yahoo News New Movies to Watch This Week: ‘Radioactive’ on Amazon, ‘The Kissing Booth 2’ on Netflix
Click here to read the full article.
Well, it’s official: Thanks to the coronavirus — and the kind of real-world disaster-movie mayhem that even Hollywood couldn’t invent — summer movie season is canceled. Now that “Tenet” and “Mulan” have both scrapped their summer U.S. theatrical release plans, there’s nothing even remotely resembling a blockbuster on the horizon.
The good news — and there is good news — is that we’re deep enough into this pandemic that distributors have figured out how to release their films virtually, and in some cases, to drive-ins and those few hardtop venues safe (or stubborn) enough to remain open. That means moviegoers can see thrillers “The Rental” and “Amulet,” as well as Vinnie Jones starrer “The Big Ugly,” in select theaters this week, while movie-stayers — those living under lockdown, or simply too cautious to return to cinemas — can order the same movies on demand.
More from Variety
'The Kissing Booth 3' Filmed in Secret, Will Debut on Netflix in 2021
'Animal Crackers' Netflix Debut Caps a Harrowing Legal Ordeal
Meanwhile, the streaming services continue to thrive. Amazon Studios had planned a theatrical release for Marie Curie biopic “Radioactive,” starring Rosamund Pike, but is now offering the film exclusively to Prime members. And Netflix follow up one of its most popular titles, “The Kissing Booth,” with a smoochy sequel.
One odd coincidence: This week sees the release of two 2017 movies that had been languishing in limbo since their film festival debuts. The first, computer-animated “Animal Crackers,” makes its long-delayed premiere on Netflix, while “Retaliation” — an intimate drama featuring a career-best performance from Orlando Bloom — is available on demand, as well as in-person at Los Angeles’ just-christened Arena Cinelounge drive-in.
Here’s a rundown of those films opening this week that Variety has covered, along with links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
Exclusive to Netflix
Animal Crackers (Scott Christian Sava, Tony Bancroft )
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
In this delightfully inventive, frequently hilarious animated feature, a box of enchanted cookies allows big-top couple Buffalo Bob and Talia to shape-shift into a full menagerie of circus animals. In addition to boasting a downright clever idea, “Animal Crackers” is uniquely suited to the medium of animation, considering that live action (even heavily CG-embellished live action) simply wouldn’t support all those dramatic transformations — from two-ounce hamster to 600-pound brown bear, for example — and the wonderfully anthropomorphic behavior each of those species requires. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
The Kissing Booth 2 (Vince Marcello)
Where to Find It: Streaming on Netflix
“The Kissing Booth” spoke to its target audience without speaking down to them, telling the story of a young woman confronted with the challenge of choosing between a longterm relationship with her male best friend or a budding romance with his hotter older brother. Though its sequel hits similar beats, themes and emotional touchstones, it delivers a few refreshing details by giving the heroine more agency in her quest to find happiness — yet not quite enough to justify its interminable run time. — Courtney Howard
Read the full review
Exclusive to Amazon
Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi)
Where to Find It: Streaming on Amazon
Curie has been overdue for a more current biopic, though so many female scientists inspired by her have been even more ignored. As startling as it is to see the beloved scientist hated in her time, that we’re able to see this headstrong legend as a sexual being at all is a credit to how much Rosamund Pike gradually humanizes her as a woman, while never pleading for our pity. The globe has applauded Curie’s creation long after her death, polishing the marble image “Radioactive” works hard to scuff. Instead, says Satrapi, admire her passions — even when they were also the core of her doom. — Amy Nicholson
Read the full review
New Releases on Demand and in Select Theaters
Amulet (Romola Garai)
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Where to Find It: Available in select theaters and via video-on-demand services
Garai makes a distinctive feature directorial debut with “Amulet,” even if this upscale horror drama is ultimately more impressive in the realm of style than substance. It’s some style, though: She hasn’t just created a stylish potboiler, but a densely textured piece that makes for a truly arresting viewing experience to a point. A shame then that the film succumbs somewhat to the more pretentious and silly aspects of Garai’s initially cryptic puzzle of a script. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review
Babysplitters (Sam Friedlander)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand services
Good friends often split restaurant checks, but can they split child-raising duties? That’s the catchy premise of this outrageous comedy. Combining the DNA of “She’s Having a Baby” and “Indecent Proposal,” Friedlander’s audacious hook is sure to spur thought-provoking discussions about its progressive parenting ideas. The trials and travails of impending parenthood are captured through Friedlander’s highly comedic filter, giving birth to enough dazzling wit to sustain the gimmick. — Courtney Howard
Read the full review
Days of the Whale (Catalina Arroyave Restrepo)
Distributor: Outsider Pictures
Where to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support
For all the peril that darkens its fringes, there’s an indomitable youthful exuberance that thrums through Restrepo’s debut feature “Days of the Whale.” It makes the slight, and somewhat familiar, small-scale story, following a few days in the lives of a pair of Medellín-based graffiti artists, feel fresh enough as to be wet to the touch — a neon-colorful, if not hugely deep, manifesto of optimistic defiance spray-stenciled on a newly white-washed wall. — Jessica Kiang
Read the full review
Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Gero von Boehm)
Distributor: Kino Marquee
Where to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support
When you look at the photographs of Helmut Newton, and you try to imagine the man behind the camera (it’s sort of hard not to), you tend to picture him as a figure every bit as kinky and forbidding as the outrageous things he’s photographing. But in this engaging and surprisingly playful documentary about the man who was arguably the most transgressive photographer to emerge from the 1960s and ’70s, Newton emerges as friendlier and more “normal” than you’d expect — though he does have a mischievous twinkle that suggests a lot. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
Most Wanted (Daniel Roby)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Available in select theaters and via Amazon and other video-on-demand services
The hard-headed reporter who doesn’t play by the rules is a stock character of films that invariably do. So it proves, again, in this fact-based Canadian procedural of police skulduggery and journalistic derring-do that does its own job with proficient integrity. Writer-director Roby has fictionalized the grim story of Alain Olivier, a small-time drug dealer tricked in 1989 by Canuck police into traveling to Thailand to orchestrate a major heroin score, landing him several years in a local prison. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review
The Rental (Dave Franco)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: Available in select theaters and via video-on-demand services
In just 88 minutes the film exploits, and exhausts, more or less every possibility of the late-night-domestic-bull-session-in-hell pressure-cooker genre. It starts off as a shrewdly arresting four-hander about two couples spending a weekend getaway at a fabulous cliffside cottage along the Pacific Ocean — a kind of dark-and-stormy indie soap-opera noir on ecstasy. Then it evolves into a suspense drama of sex, lies, and (secret) videotape. There’s a murder, and therefore a corpse, at which point the film enters a Hitchcock zone of ordinary people scrambling to get away with extraordinary crime. The saga is then overrun by — yes — an omniscient masked slasher. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
Retaliation (Ludwig Shammasian, Paul Shammasian) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Available in select theaters and via Amazon and other video-on-demand services
Malky’s a mama’s boy with serious intimacy issues and a vicious temper, triggered by the return of the respected priest who molested him a quarter-century earlier. Such roles typically fall to character actors, not a matinee idol like Bloom, who delivers the best performance of his career in this tough, tiny British drama. “Retaliation” is neither what we think of as “faith-based” movie nor a condemnation of those who put their faith in such a fallible institution. Screenwriter Geoff Thompson puts Malky’s psychology ahead of any form of proselytizing, whether for or against organized religion. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Select a virtual cinema to support
You don’t have to be Catholic, lapsed or otherwise, to be amused by “Yes, God, Yes,” writer-director Karen Maine’s semi-autobiographical account of a Catholic high school girl’s coming-of-age experiences with self-discovery and self-gratification. On the other hand, the gentle shocks of recognition afforded by this engaging indie comedy likely will be all the more enjoyable (when they aren’t mildly discomforting) for anyone, male or female, who remembers having to confess impure thoughts to an inquisitive priest, or fearing the consequences of actions so forcefully proscribed by nuns and lay teachers during religion (and, sometimes, biology) classes. — Joe Leydon
Read the full review
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
