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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
7 top new movies to stream this week on Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu and more (July 15-21)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It's set to be a quieter week for new movies across the best streaming services. However, that doesn't mean there's nothing worth adding to your watchlist. Netflix is offering a new Korean thriller, while HBO Max has a 'subverse' rom-com and Hulu premieres a sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future. Meanwhile, in the premium streaming space, the live-action 'How to Train Your Dragon' remake and sequel 'M3GAN 2.0' make the switch from theatres to home streaming. However, only one of them is worth the premium video-on-demand rental fee, in my opinion. Cue: It's not the one with a number in its title. It may not be the most packed week of new streaming releases, but there's still a handful of movies you'll want to consider. So, these are the biggest new movies arriving on streaming this week. For more recommendations see our list of the top new TV shows this week and check out this Netflix show with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. 'How to Train Your Dragon' (PVOD) The latest live-action remake of an animated flick doesn't come from Disney. Instead, it's rival DreamWorks reimagining its 2010 family-favorite 'How to Train Your Dragon.' Like several similar projects, 'How to Train Your Dragon' loses some of its charm in the transition, but the heart of the story is largely the same. The extra 20 minutes bolted onto the runtime feel unnecessary and create a movie that drags in spots. Still, the relationship between cowardly Viking Hiccup and dragon Toothless is as heartwarming as it's ever been. Set in a whimsical fantasy universe, 'How to Train Your Dragon' opens with the Vikings of Berk at war with fearsome dragons, but when the timid son of the village's chieftain, Hiccup (Mason Thames), stumbles on a wounded Night Fury, he discovers that these winged monsters might not be so scary after all. Nursing the dragon, whom he names Toothless, back to health, the two team up to fight a new threat that could endanger both dragons and Vikings. And in the process, Hiccup might just prove that dragons can be friends, not foes. Buy or rent on Amazon from July 15 'M3GAN 2.0' (PVOD) Back in 2022, a creepy life-like doll called 'M3GAN' took social media by storm, so a sequel was inevitable. However, it appears that Blumhouse Productions may have overestimated M3GAN's appeal with the average viewer because this sequel flopped at the box office. Now "M3GAN 2.0" arrives on PVOD in the hopes of clawing back some interest, and perhaps maybe even going viral again (there's an extended dance scene that screams 'post this on TikTok, please'). But, unfortunately, this movie has all the hallmarks of a lackluster follow-up. The movie's biggest sin is switching genres, while the first 'M3GAN' was an intentionally silly horror, 'M3GAN 2.0' opts for a more action-oriented route, which feels like a real downgrade. Plus, the bizarrely convoluted plot and mismatched tone don't exactly help matters either. This movie sees 'M3GAN' resurrected to help defeat a military-grade robot known as AMELIA, who is unleashing cyber havoc. Rebuilt to be more lethal than ever, it all leads to a M3GAN vs. AMELIA showdown. This is very much one for the M3GAN superfans only, but considering the box office returns, it would appear that group is a lot smaller than initially believed. Buy or rent on Amazon from July 15 'The Amateur' (Hulu) A spy movie that is perfect for fans of the 'Jason Bourne' franchise, 'The Amateur' is a slightly more grounded take on the world of espionage (though only slightly, it's still pretty unrealistic), and sees Rami Malek prove himself capable of leading an exciting and very engaging globe-trotting thriller. Based on the Robert Littell novel, Malek plays a CIA analyst whose world is shattered when his wife is killed in a terrorist attack while on a trip to London. Using his skills, he identifies those responsible for his wife's murder and blackmails his superiors into giving him a license to hunt them down and get cold-blooded revenge. A novice in the field, Charlie (Malek) is shown the ropes by a gruff mentor, Hendo (Laurence Fishburne). However, even with some training, he's still a fish out of water. Quickly realizing he can't outshoot his enemies, he focuses on outthinking them using his superior intellect. The flick also contains one of my favorite action sequences of the year (so far) involving a glass swimming pool suspended between two skyscrapers. It's just a shame the movie's trailers thoroughly spoil 'The Amateur's' best moment. So perhaps skip them before streaming. Watch on Hulu from July 17 'Wall to Wall' (Netflix) Getting on the property ladder is hard enough for most people, but what if you finally managed to save up enough to buy a place of your own, only for it to turn into a nightmare? That's the compelling pitch for 'Wall to Wall,' Netflix's new South Korean thriller. Woo-sung (played by 'Squid Game' star Kang Ha-neul) moves into his new 84-square-meter apartment and is full of excitement to be a homeowner at long last. But that joy doesn't last very long. The home becomes a waking nightmare of strange noises and oddball neighbors, who are just unnerving enough to be creepy. As tensions within the apartment block bubble over, Woo-sung finds himself caught in the middle of an increasingly heated neighborhood stand-off as he's blamed for being the source of the mysterious disturbances. Netflix has been on a roll lately with loads of fantastic Korean content — not least of which is 'Squid Game' itself — and 'Wall to Wall' looks like it could be another winner from the country. Watch on Netflix from July 18 'I Love You Forever (HBO Max) The romantic-comedy genre is often comforting, but also pretty formulaic, with many entries falling into predictable patterns and leaning on classic tropes. In steps, 'I Love You Forever,' which aims to be a 'subversive' take on a 'girl meets boy' story. The movie premiered in theatres earlier this year and was largely well-received by critics. It currently holds an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising it for tonal shifts and the balance of comedic moments and dramatic beats. It looks well worth streaming now that it's arriving on HBO Max. At the heart of this (anti-)love story is Mackenzie (Sofia Black-D'Elia), a 25-year-old law student whose love life is a blur of hookups without any real commitment. But when she meets a handsome journalist named Finn (Ray Nicholson), she is ready to give proper love a shot. However, the honeymoon phase can't last forever, and as their relationship becomes increasingly tumultuous, Mackenzie must confront Finn's darker side and consider whether 'love true' can actually exist, or if it's just the stuff of fairy tales and sappy rom-coms. Watch on HBO Max from July 18 'The Assessment' (Hulu) 'The Assessment' earned my interest based on its leading stars alone. Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander and Himesh Patel is quite the trio, and factor in its strong reception with a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 'Certifed Fresh' rating from critics, it looks like Hulu might just have a hit on its hand with this sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian future. The feature film debut of director Fleur Fortuné, it focuses on Mia (Olsen) and Aaryan (Patel), a couple hoping to have a child, but in this alternative reality, having kids requires approval from the government. Resources are limited, so reproduction is state-controlled rather than a matter of personal choice. In steps Virginia (Vikander), a government assessor, who moves into Mia and Aaryan's home for seven days, during which she will judge their suitability to be parents. What they hope will be a simple process becomes increasingly nightmarish as they're forced to question the society around them, and even the very fundamentals of what it means to be human. It sounds like an intriguing sci-fi yarn, and I can't wait to stream it when it arrives on Hulu this weekend. Watch on Hulu from July 19 'Bride Hard' (PVOD) Rebel Wilson stars in 'Bride Hard, a crude comedy about an unruly bridal party. No, it's not a seriously late sequel to 2011's 'Bridesmaids,' instead it's a mix between raunchy humor and no-holds-barred action that also features Anna Camp, Anna Chlumsky and Oscar-winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph. On paper, there are enough elements here to think 'Bride Hard' might be worth a trip down the aisle, but the critical reception is less than stellar. The movie currently holds a miserable 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I'm doubting this Simon West-directed comedy is worth the rental fee. If the poor reviews haven't put you off, here's the gist: Sam (Wilson) is a secret agent and also the maid of honor for the upcoming wedding of her best childhood friend (Camp). But after blowing off bridal duties to save the world, she's demoted to merely a bridesmaid. However, her shot at redemption comes swiftly when armed mercenaries spoil the big day, and only Sam can take them down. Consider this one only for Rebel Wilson superfans. Buy or rent on Amazon from July 18 More from Tom's Guide 5 top new shows to stream this week Netflix top 10 movies — here's the 3 worth watching 7 new shows and movies I'd stream on Netflix this week
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Rihanna and James Corden team up for one of the worst films I've ever seen
Readers familiar with the comic book characters the Smurfs will be aware that one of their most longstanding customs is swapping in the word 'Smurf' for various nouns in their ordinary speech. It's a habit which can also be usefully adopted by anyone trying to review the little blue forest sprites' latest film in a way suitable for publication in a family newspaper, because it allows one to succinctly spell out just what a colossal pile of 'Smurf' the whole thing is. The trailers suggested a sylvan singalong adventure in the same vein as the (rather fun and lovely) Trolls films from DreamWorks: alas, Smurfs makes even the middling Trolls 3 (Trolls Band Together) look like late-period Hayao Miyazaki by comparison. It has all the charm and personality of a dented traffic cone and features perhaps the single most tin-eared screenplay – in which Papa Smurf is kidnapped by the villainous wizard Gargamel, and Smurfette leads a globe-trotting mission to free him – that I have ever encountered in my two decades as a critic. 'Well, that was quite the successful spite mission,' says Gargamel in one scene (spite mission?) – while elsewhere a sentient spell book called Jaunty keeps saying 'cha cha cha!', very annoyingly, for no discernible reason, and a second sidekick character, a slow-witted turtle, uses 'what the shell?' as a mild surrogate expletive not once, but twice. Did ChatGPT take a pass at the script? And if not, should it have? You'd pity the cast, if not for the fact that – easy cheque aside – it's unclear why any of them are in it. John Goodman, Nick Offerman and Kurt Russell play various Smurf elders (naturally the Smurfs are no longer just playful magical creatures but are descended from ancient guardians of the blah blah blah), while Smurfette, the village's lone female Smurf, is voiced in a husky contralto by the R&B singer Rihanna: perhaps the person who sounds least like a Smurf on all of planet Earth, with the arguable exception of Tom Waits. James Corden, formerly of the first two Trolls films, co-stars as the bluntly named No Name, who has yet to work out his signature Smurf ability – like Hefty Smurf, Brainy Smurf and the others. The upshot of this is much unfortunate (and unintentional?) double-entendre-laden dialogue in which Corden constantly complains about 'not being able to find [his] thing', conjuring mental images to freeze the blood. The plot involves a handful of Smurfs boomeranging around a few seemingly randomly selected live-action locations – Paris, the Australian Outback, a motorway just outside of Munich – while Gargamel's brother Razamel (JP Karliak) tries to catch them in the hope of stealing the sentient spell book (he's welcome to it) and thereby restoring the power of an ancient wizarding cabal. The animated characters mesh quite nicely with these real-world backdrops – and the artists generally find workable ways to replicate the classic spirited comic strip style in three-dimensional space. But a baleful cut-price air looms over the whole exercise: even a conceptually imaginative dash through a number of alternative stylistic dimensions – claymation, 8-bit video game, anime and so on – looks like an afterthought, hastily cobbled together to give the trailer more juice. (And was also transparently cribbed from the 'abstract thought' sequence in Inside Out.) But will it keep the kids quiet for an hour and a half? Probably not, though it is loud enough that you won't be able to hear them complain.
Malay Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
‘How To Train Your Dragon' flies high again: Director, star on pressure, puppets and bringing Toothless to life
LONDON, July 15 — How To Train Your Dragon writer and director Dean DeBlois says he feels both relief and pressure embarking on its sequel following the live-action remake's box office success. The fantasy adventure, which has grossed US$560 million (RM2.4 billion) worldwide since its release in June, came out some 15 years after the DreamWorks animation, which DeBlois co-wrote and co-directed. DeBlois also directed the two subsequent animations. Staying loyal to the original, the live-action follows kind-hearted young Viking Hiccup, played by Mason Thames, who secretly befriends a dragon he names Toothless. In an interview with Reuters ahead of the film's release on digital platforms on Tuesday, which includes behind-the-scenes vignettes, DeBlois and Thames spoke about bringing the animation to life. Below are excerpts edited for length and clarity. Q: What was it like revisiting this world and bringing it to life? DeBlois: 'It was certainly a fun challenge to take a story that I had basically put to bed after spending a decade of my life on it and to sort of dive back into the world but through the live action lens, which meant we could present a ... very grounded, a very credible version of this world. And that meant being able to scout locations in Iceland and the Faroe Islands and Scotland to start to design and build actual sets ... where we could walk around and touch things.' Q: What was it like stepping into the franchise? Thames: 'It was very daunting and slightly terrifying because ... so many people care about this world and these characters ... I really wanted to do Hiccup as a character justice ... and finding my version was a lot of fun.' Q: How did you bring to life some of the animation's famous scenes, like Forbidden Friendship and Test Flight? DeBlois on Forbidden Friendship: 'Our solution was to give Mason a dragon and we did so by creating foam versions of Toothless ... that would be puppeteered by Tom Wilton ... And so they worked out the choreography, the drawing in the sand, the sort of stepping around lines and coming to touch for the first time in this beautiful way set to John Powell's music.' Thames on Test Flight: 'It's just me on ... a giant mechanical bull with wind machines in my face ... I had the music playing in the background, which was really cool.' Q: Given the film's success, how do you feel going into the sequel? DeBlois: 'I feel relieved that the movie is being embraced, that audiences are showing up and they're definitely demonstrating that there's still an appetite for this world and these characters. And I also feel the pressure to deliver at the highest level we can ... No instalment of How to Train Your Dragon should feel like a disappointment that stains the franchise. So I always feel that pressure, for sure.' — Reuters
Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘How to Train Your Dragon' Hits Digital Tomorrow With Tons of Extras
If you missed How to Train Your Dragon on the big screen—or more likely, saw it and want to watch it again, based on its box-office haul—tomorrow's your lucky day. The hit live-action adaptation of the hit animated film arrives on digital July 15, with a physical version coming August 12. Best of all for fans, the home release is jam-packed with over 75 minutes of extras, including deleted scenes and multiple making-of featurettes, as well as a look at the film's new theme park experience. Here's the full list of special features. As expected, given the excitement about the first How to Train Your Dragon live-action reboot, a sequel is already on the way. How to Train Your Dragon stars Gerard Butler—who also starred in the animated films—along with Nick Frost, Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, and Peter Serafinowicz. Head to digital platforms July 15 to buy or rent the movie; if you prefer physical media, it'll hit 4K UHD and Blu-ray August 12. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
UPI
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
'How to Train Your Dragon,' 'M3gan 2.0' on VOD Tuesday
1 of 5 | Gerard Butler, seen at the 2019 premiere of "Angel Has Fallen" in Los Angeles, stars in "How to Train Your Dragon." File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo July 14 (UPI) -- Universal Pictures Home Entertainment announced the video-on-demand premiere dates for How to Train Your Dragon and M3gan 2.0 on Monday. Both are available to own or rent digitally Tuesday. Dragon will also be available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Aug. 12, while M3gan reaches those formats Sept. 23. Dragon is the live-action adaptation of the 2010 DreamWorks animated film. It premiered June 13 and was No. 1 for two weeks in a row. Its home release will include deleted scenes and bonus features about adapting the film in live-action, set building and technology. M3gan opened June 27 and turned the robot doll into a heroine battling military artificial intelligence. The home release promises an unrated cut as the theatrical was rated PG-13, and additional interviews with cast and crew.
