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

Christmastime is right here, Polygon readers, and Netflix received you a new Knives Out movie.

Daniel Craig returns with a new ensemble solid in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, one in all fairly just a few new motion pictures touchdown on streaming providers and VOD this week. It’s joined by the Matilda musical on Netflix, whereas Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Plus) and Strange 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 all our high motion pictures of the yr, is now accessible for home viewing, as is the Santa-as-an-action-star flick Violent Night.

Let’s get into it!

Netflix

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: John Wilson/Netflix

Genre: Mystery/comedy
Run time: 2h 20m
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: 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 accessible for streaming at home.

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

From our assessment:

Glass Onion is a brighter, louder, extra extroverted movie than the primary Knives Out. Its themes and vogue flirt with brazen, cartoony silliness. This time round, Johnson goals for large concepts and large laughs — this can be a funnier movie, nearly an outright comedy at occasions, and a broad one at that. Where Knives Out targets the defensive pretension of inherited wealth, Glass Onion mocks the determined peacocking of new 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

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Marcell Piti/Screen Gems

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

Inspired 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 assessment:

One half Get Out, one half Ready 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 make vampires do nearly something in motion pictures, however The Invitation commits the one unforgivable sin: making vampires boring.

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Dan Smith/Netflix

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

The movie 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 movie musicals to disgrace.

Paramount Plus

Top Gun: Maverick

Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action
Run time: 2h 11m
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly

The undisputed box-office champion of 2022 (though The Way of Water lurks), Top Gun: Maverick lastly makes its method to Paramount Plus this week, after many lengthy months of ready. This simply means it’s a good time to watch Top Gun: Maverick once more. Or soar out of a airplane, if you’re Tom Cruise. Up to you.

From our assessment:

If there’s one thing value salvaging from that period — and from Top Gun — it’s the sense of optimism that used to dominate ’80s motion motion pictures. That and the assumption that the only, corniest story, if informed with sufficient talent and conviction, can delight everybody on the planet. Top Gun: Maverick has each these qualities in abundance. They’re embodied in Tom Cruise, who’s the auteur of his personal delusion, and could be the final true movie star. He desires to point out you a great time, and he’ll. But greater than that, he desires to take off and by no means come again down.

Hulu

Mack & Rita

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: Gravitas Ventures

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

A new wrinkle on Big, 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

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: Utopia

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

Lena Dunham already delivered among the finest comedies of the yr in Catherine Called Birdy. Her second 2022 comedy is extra of the R-rated selection, a couple of lady (Kristine Froseth) who begins an affair along 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

Strange World

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Genre: Action/journey
Run time: 1h 42m
Directors: Don Hall, Qui Nguyen
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union

This animated journey was one in all Disney’s largest box-office flops shortly, and now you can test it out for your self from the consolation of your home.

From our assessment:

When the emotional coronary heart of the movie focuses on this group of ragtag explorers desperately attempting to avoid wasting the world they know, it’s a grand and thrilling journey, with stunning surroundings and fantastical creatures at every flip. When the movie focuses on its wider scope, it shines, however when it pulls again all the way down to the overdone relationships, it loses what makes it sparkle. Those father-son dynamics seem to be they have been speculated to anchor the movie in some actuality, however all they do is drag Strange World down when it might’ve soared.

Apple TV Plus

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV

Image: Apple TV

Genre: Family
Run time: 34m
Director: Peter Baynton
Cast: Tom Hollander, Idris Elba, Gabriel Byrne

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

VOD

Aftersun

Where to watch: Available to buy for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play

Image: A24

Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Charlotte Wells
Cast: Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal, Celia Rowlson-Hall

Polygon’s No. 8 finest movie of the yr, a formidable function debut from filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is lastly accessible to watch at home. I’ll let our blurb for Aftersun converse for itself.

The human reminiscence is, famously, unreliable — defective to the purpose of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood reminiscences are maybe one of the best instance of this: Even a small, remoted reminiscence can fully change tone later when seen with the complete spectrum of maturity, filtered by way of 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 seems like a small miracle within the methods it not solely captures that scope however manages to border the entire idea with grace.

Young 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 (at least partially; you know what it’s like handy a child a video digital camera). While that plot is straightforward in development, the execution of it’s way more profound, capturing the wistful vantage factors of each Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on vacation with equal, vivid readability. In Aftersun’s fingers, reminiscence is simply as slippery because it’s all the time been. Sometimes conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; rising up is seeing the complete image of their journey, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its means to seize that. It’s a testomony to the performances at the middle of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the movie manages to counsel a lot with out overstating its level. After all, reminiscence could also be unreliable, however typically reminiscence — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a heat embrace — is all we’ve. —Zosha Millman

Violent Night

Where to watch: Available to hire for $19.99 on Amazon and Vudu

Image: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Beverly D’Angelo

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

From our assessment:

Violent Night works finest when it captures the warped sensibilities of early-’90s Chris Columbus motion pictures, significantly Home Alone. It’s been identified so usually that it barely must be stated 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 objective. The movie has enjoyable lobbing snarky one-liners and outrageous bloodshed at the viewers, however on the entire, Violent Night’s large purple bag of self-aware tips is overstuffed.