Yahoo Movies New Movies to Watch This Week: ‘Jockey,’ ‘The Lost Daughter’
Holiday movie season is upon us — though the release schedule has never been more confusing, with some blockbusters heading directly to streaming, others in theaters only and various independent films mixing up strategies between theaters, streaming and VOD releases.
It’s a quiet week for new releases, with only a couple fresh titles hitting theaters — including Sundance award winner “Jockey” and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” now on Netflix — though the following guide also features coverage of such Oscar contenders as “West Side Story,” “Nightmare Alley” and “Parallel Mothers.”
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Here’s a rundown of the films opening this week that Variety has covered, along with information on where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
New Releases for the Week of Dec. 31
Exclusively in Theaters
Jockey (Clint Bentley) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Where to Find It: In theaters
“Jockey” gives Clifton Collins Jr. the role of his career, and he leans into it with all he’s got. As the film opens, it’s clear that Collins’ Jackson is a few races away from being put out to pasture. He’s the best jockey riding at Phoenix’s Turf Paradise, but he’s broken his back at least three times. Just as Jackson is facing the prospect of retirement, two new arrivals appear to complicate his choices. The first is an exceptional steed, whom Jackson describes as “the horse I never thought I’d get to ride.” The second is a 19-year-old prodigy (Moisés Arias), who idolizes Jackson and wants to follow in his footsteps. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
Munich: The Edge of War (Christian Schwochow)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: In theaters, then on Netflix on Jan. 21
Immersively crafted but never emotionally involving, this handsome imagining of underground attempts to prevent war during the 1938 Munich conference flip-flops between the perspectives of George MacKay’s English political aide and Jannis Niewöhner’s German turncoat, spreading its sympathies between them. Based on a novel by wartime fiction specialist Robert Harris, the film’s stern, businesslike demeanor and rich period detail lend it a ring of truth, though its ticking-clock timeline is only a notch less outlandish than the wildly ahistorical remix of First World War lore in “The King’s Man.” — Guy Lodge
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In theaters and on Netflix
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: In theaters and on Netflix
“I’m an unnatural mother,” Leda confesses at one point, saying aloud that which women aren’t typically allowed to admit about motherhood — that such a precious gift can be an unwelcome burden for some, and that by extension, not everyone is cut out for the job — in a film that gives any who may have felt this way a rare sense of being seen. That acknowledgement, jagged and potentially confrontational though it may be, is first-time helmer Maggie Gyllenhaal’s offering to audiences accustomed to a more conventional depiction of the female experience. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
New Releases for the Week of Dec. 24
In Theaters and on HBO Max
The Matrix Resurrections (Lana Wachowski)
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Where to Find It: In theaters and on HBO Max
Essentially a greatest hits concert and a cover version rolled into one (complete with flashback clips to high points from past installments), the new movie is slick but considerably less ambitious in scope than the two previous sequels. Where those films set out to break sound barriers in our brains — the way “bullet time,” the highway sequence and Neo’s final battle against an apparently infinite number of Agents Smith did — this one largely eschews innovation. Rather, “Resurrections” takes comfort in the familiar, fleshing out the emotional core of a world that always felt a little hollow. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
In Theaters and on Netflix
Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: In theaters and on Netflix
Humans are stupid and can’t be expected to agree on anything, even if their existence depends on it. That’s the “hilarious” insight Adam McKay wants to impart with “Don’t Look Up,” a smug, easy-target political satire in which two earnest astronomers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) have one hell of a time trying to convince an attention-deficit president (Meryl Streep, clearly having more fun than we are) or bobblehead media (repped by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) that there’s a comet hurtling toward Earth. — Peter Debruge
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In Theaters and on Amazon Prime Video
Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video
But “Being the Ricardos,” his movie about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (played to wry perfection by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem), is very much a heady helping of Sorkinese — and a beautiful illustration of what can be intoxicating about it. The entire movie takes place in one pressure-cooker week during the shooting of the CBS sitcom “I Love Lucy.” It’s 1952, the show is in its second season (there have been a total of 37 episodes), and it’s the most popular program in America, with 60 million viewers every week. It’s also a revolutionary show: the first to use the three-camera system that would allow sitcoms, going forward, to be filmed live; and also a mainstream TV comedy about a cross-cultural marriage, starring two actors who, in playing Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, were (it was implied) portraying a stylized version of themselves. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
In Theaters and on Disney Plus
Encanto (Jared Bush and Byron Howard)
Distributor: Disney
Where to find it: In theaters and on Disney Plus
“Encanto” is a lively, lovely, lushly enveloping digitally animated musical fairy tale. It’s the 60th animated feature produced by the Walt Disney company, and to borrow a phrase from the old Disney TV series, it’s set in a wonderful world of color — a rapturously imagined, rainbow-gorgeous village tucked inside the misty green mountains of Colombia, where the members of the Madrigal family lead a magical existence. The ornate designer tiles of La Casa Madrigal, their idyllic mansion, turn into a synchronized army of domestic helpers, and each family member is endowed with his or her own superhuman gift. Actually, one of them has no gift. That would be the heroine, Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), who is just like us — which means, within her family, that she’s the odd girl out. – Owen Gleiberman
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Exclusively in Theaters
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen)
Distributor: A24/Apple
Where to find it: In theaters and on Apple TV Plus starting January 14
Coen has trimmed down this already trim (at least for Shakespeare) play, and that was a smart move. He has made a “Macbeth” that is sure to seduce audiences — one that, for all its darkness of import, is light-spirited, fleet, and intoxicating. It shows you, through the ironic empathy summoned by Washington’s performance, just how fast the human race can slip off the tracks. And it brings that drama into ravishing deep focus. – Owen Gleiberman
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Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Distributor: Neon
Where to find it: In theaters only
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” starts with a bang, which is not at all typical of the infamously understated Thai auteur, making his return to Cannes competition 11 years after winning the Palme d’Or for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” Nor is working with an internationally recognized movie star, which the director does this time around, enlisting Tilda Swinton as a kind of stand-in for himself in this oblique and sometimes taxing excursion into the jungles of Colombia. – Peter Debruge
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Sing 2 (Garth Jennings)
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Where to Find It: In theaters only
True to its brand, Illumination has engineered another easy-to-swallow confection designed to maximize audience delight, whether on first or 40th viewing, although this time, there’s almost zero nutritional value. In fact, “Sing 2” just might be the most corporate animated product since the days of “My Little Pony,” “He-Man” and other children’s toy tie-ins getting half-hour commercial space on TV. Here, it’s not necessarily merch that Universal-owned Illumination is pushing (though there’s plenty of it out there) so much as the entire pop-music establishment, led by artists and tunes from its own catalog — that and fashion, as the crew partnered with Rodarte to design the CG costumes. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review.
The King’s Man (Matthew Vaughn)
Distributor: 20th Century Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters only
The movie, the third in Matthew Vaughn’s popular “Kingsman” series (drawn from the comic books of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons), is a prequel to “Kingsman: The Secret Service” (2015) and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017). Since this one is set in an earlier period, with the decorous Ralph Fiennes now in charge (Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Julianne Moore, Mark Strong, Samuel. L Jackson, Michael Caine, Halle Berry, and Channing Tatum have all left the Savile Row building), it flirts, at moments, with having a more restrained tone, as if it were the “Masterpiece Theatre” chapter of the series. The film oscillates, rather awkwardly, between grandiose cartoon heroics and a kind of dutiful flatness. Fiennes, as a widower (we see his wife killed during the Boer War in the movie’s prologue), plays his character totally straight, which means that we’re supposed to be caught up in the drama of the fearfully overprotective attitude he has toward his adult son. But the film’s emotional center is basically a cream filling. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review.
A Journal for Jordan (Denzel Washington)
Distributor: Sony
Where to Find It: In theaters only
A Journal for Jordan,” which opens on Christmas Day, is not a tragedy. Or, rather, it’s a movie that looks at tragedy — at sacrifice — through a lens that’s both sentimental and stirring. And since Dana is played by Chanté Adams, the brilliant actor from “Roxanne Roxanne” and “The Photograph,” and King is played by Michael B. Jordan, who is a movie star to his bones (and a whale of an actor himself), the doom quickly recedes. “A Journal for Jordan” dives into the drama of two people falling in love: the hope and the beauty, the bumps in the road that nearly derail the relationship, the emotional anchor that holds it together, and the thing we’re left with on the other side — the feeling of a life having been lived. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review.
American Underdog (Andrew and Jon Erwin)
Distributor: Lionsgate
Where to Find It: In theaters only
“American Underdog” comes to us by way of Jon and Andrew Erwin, the sibling filmmakers who bill themselves as the Erwin Brothers, and specialize in well-crafted faith-based movies such as “Woodlawn,” “I Still Believe” and the 2018 sleeper hit “I Can Only Imagine.” They uncharacteristically but effectively underplay their religious themes here — indeed, audiences unfamiliar with the Erwins’ previous output might simply assume Warner is no more eager to implore and thank God than many if not most NFL players. — Joe Leydon
Read the full review.
The Tender Bar (George Clooney)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video
What makes films like this work isn’t sincerity but specificity: those details that someone couldn’t just make up, or that we’d never believe if they did. The family in “The Tender Bar” reminded me of the feisty Eklund clan in David O. Russell’s “The Fighter,” minus a lot of the tornado-unleashed-indoors energy that made them seem so alive. Still, there are glimpses of that same kind of spunk here, as when Dad — aka The Voice — comes over the radio and someone hastily shoves the device off a shelf. J.R. spends a good deal of his childhood listening to the radio, trying to imagine some kind of connection with the man on the other end, although the few times they do interact mostly serve to reinforce what a scumbag the guy is. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review.
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Where to Find It: In theaters only
In “Parallel Mothers,” Almodóvar is a master storyteller who looks at single motherhood through a lens of domestic suspense. There’s no false conflict, no hyping of the action. “Parallel Mothers” recognizes that Janis and Ana are each taking on an immense burden, and as their situations unfold, the film keeps us in touch with how the passion, the anxiety, and the logistics of motherhood are all intertwined. Cruz acts this part with a mood-shifting immediacy that leaves you breathless. First she’s an I-am-woman warrior who will meet every challenge. Then she’s a testy multitasker with a flaky au pair who never seems to do enough. Then she’s a loving but desperate parent who feels abandoned by fate. Then, after Arturo visits and comes away somehow feeling that he’s not the father of this swarthy baby girl (does she look so dark because of Janis’s Venezuelan grandfather?), Janis learns why that might be, and both she and the audience are in for a shock. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review.
New Releases for the Week of Dec. 17
Exclusively in Theaters
Cyrano (Joe Wright) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: MGM
Where to Find It: In theaters only
The splendid new adaptation presents “Cyrano” as 21st-century MGM musical. By enlisting Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National to compose the songs — lovely, wistful pop ballads for which Matt Berninger and Carin Besser supplied the lyrics — “Cyrano” restores the show’s sense of poetry. At the same time, Wright, back on form and evidently reinvigorated by the pandemic, once again displays the kind of radical creativity that made early-career stunners “Pride and Prejudice” and “Atonement” so electrifying in their time. — Peter Debruge
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Minamata (Andrew Levitas)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: In theaters only
If it weren’t for the work he’d done in the Japanese fishing village of Minamata, W. Eugene Smith’s legacy would likely be that of a war photographer, or else as one of the leading contributors to Life magazine, whose immersive approach to his subjects helped pioneer the concept of the photo essay. But Smith did go to Minamata, and the images he sent home in late 1971 — especially a wrenching, pietà-like portrait of a mother bathing her mercury-poisoned daughter — defined not only his career but the human impact of industrial pollution as the public knows it today. — Peter Debruge
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Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Where to Find It: In theaters only
The world is one big carnival, and we’re all just suckers — or marks, in the parlance of the traveling grifters so effective at fleecing those poor rubes who are not with it — in del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley.” A perfect match of material to auteur, William Lindsay Gresham’s pulpy 1946 novel and the shockingly dark studio picture it inspired give the helmer, hot off his Oscar win for “The Shape of Water,” a chance to go full film noir, resulting in a gorgeous, fantastically sinister moral fable about the cruel predictability of human nature and the way entire systems are engineered to exploit it — from carnies and con men to shrinks and Sunday preachers. — Peter Debruge
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President (Camilla Nielsson)
Distributor: Greenwich
Where to Find It: In theaters only
Those who haven’t checked any headlines from Harare in the interim could hardly be prepared for the gut-punch of “President,” Nielsson’s galvanizing, epic-scale docuthriller tracking Zimbabwe’s corruption-riddled 2018 presidential election — presented here as a brazen feat of hijacked democracy to make Donald Trump positively chartreuse with envy. “President” may hit especially hard with audiences who have recently become all too familiar with talk of stolen elections — as it depicts a scenario in which such accusations are backed by disturbing numeric discrepancies rather than wounded ego and bluster. — Guy Lodge
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Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts)
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Where to Find It: In theaters only
What do you call the opposite of a reboot? The “system overload” of “Spider-Man” movies, Sony’s ninth (and almost certainly not last) feature-length riff on the friendly neighborhood superhero, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” seeks to connect Tom Holland’s spin on the web-slinger with the previous live-action versions of the character by first reassembling a rogue’s gallery of all the villains Peter Parker has vanquished to date. Returning director Watts — whose bright, slightly dorky touch lends a welcome continuity to this latest trilogy — wrangles the unwieldy premise into a consistently entertaining superhero entry, tying up two decades of loose ends in the process. — Peter Debruge
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The Tender Bar (George Clooney)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters only, followed by Amazon Prime Video Jan. 7, 2022
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in Pulitzer-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer’s case, a Long Island pub will do. A broadly appealing, only slightly sentimental personal history adapted from Moehringer’s memoir by Clooney and “The Departed” screenwriter Bill Monahan, “The Tender Bar” acknowledges how, growing up without a father, the young J.R. found the next best thing, if not better, in his blue-collar uncle Charlie (a terrific Ben Affleck, who, between this and “The Way Back,” could well be entering a new chapter in his career). — Peter Debruge
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In Theaters and on Apple TV Plus
Swan Song (Benjamin Cleary)
Distributor: Apple TV Plus
Where to Find It: Apple TV Plus
You’ve never seen Udo Kier like this before. The heavily accented German character actor, who got his start in Andy Warhol’s “Flesh for Frankenstein” and was finally accepted as a member of the Motion Picture Academy this past year, has spent the intervening decades alternating between art films and exploitation movies, appearing as Nazis and nutjobs in everything from “Iron Sky” to “Nymphomaniac.” In Stephens’ “Swan Song,” he plays a flaming small-town Ohio hairdresser who burns brighter than a dying star — which is precisely the way his character, Pat Pitsenbarger, sees himself. — Peter Debruge
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In Theaters and On Demand
Margrete: Queen of the North (Charlotte Sieling)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn
Where to Find It: In theaters and on demand
The film is a glossy period drama that amounts to a what-if expansion on an incident from medieval Scandinavian history. Anyone missing their weekly dose of sumptuously recreated George R. R. Martin will have their itch lightly scratched by the courtly power-plays, passageway mutterings and spies-in-the-bedchamber aspects of Sieling’s well-upholstered film, even if dragons and ice zombies are notable by their absence. The slower stretches have a tendency to plod, which gives ample opportunity to feast your eyes on Søren Schwarzberg’s grandly gloomy production design and Manon Rasmussen’s superb, elaborate costuming, but also makes the story rather too easy to disengage from. — Jessica Kiang
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The Novice (Lauren Hadaway)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: In theaters and on demand
The film is a dark-side-of-sports thriller. It’s a movie that a lot of star athletes will probably be able to relate to, but it’s also a movie for anyone who ever felt existentially uncomfortable in gym class. The central character — and that’s no exaggeration, since her moody, relentless thousand-yard stare anchors every scene — is Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), a freshman at Wellington University, an overcast dystopian oasis of modernist concrete slabs, who decides to join the rowing team there. She’s not looking for an athletic scholarship (she was second in her high-school class and has won a full ride), and it’s a sport she has no experience in. — Owen Gleiberman
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Exclusively on Hulu
Mother/Android (Mattson Tomlin)
Distributor: Hulu
Where to Find It: On Hulu
This sci-fi thriller offers a sobersided survival tale set in an imminent future where humanity’s artificial helpmates have turned against their creators. It’s lent sufficient engrossing urgency by Tomlin in his commercial-feature directorial debut, inspired by the Romanian biological parents who apparently gave him up as an infant amidst the turmoil of that nation’s 1989 revolution. But “Mother/Android” falls short when it attempts to grasp a similar degree of tragic parental sacrifice later on, faring best in the straightforward fugitive suspense of its first half. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review
New Releases for the Week of Dec. 10
Exclusively in Theaters
Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters only, followed by Amazon Prime Video Dec. 21
The film is very much a heady helping of Sorkinese — and a beautiful illustration of what can be intoxicating about it. The entire movie takes place in one pressure-cooker week during the shooting of the CBS sitcom “I Love Lucy.” It’s 1952, the show is in its second season, and it’s the most popular program in America, with 60 million viewers every week. It’s also a revolutionary show: the first to use the three-camera system that would allow sitcoms, going forward, to be filmed live; and also a mainstream TV comedy about a cross-cultural marriage, starring two actors who, in playing Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, were (it was implied) portraying a stylized version of themselves. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
France (Bruno Dumont)
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Where to Find It: In theaters only
By far the most biting and ironic satire to premiere in Cannes competition this year — a divisive comedy whose cynicism was met with boos at the press screening — this film doesn’t want to be liked. That’s more than can be said of its eponymous protagonist, France de Meurs, the country’s top news anchor and a damning representation of the journalist-as-star phenomenon. Picture a cross between Anderson Cooper and Megyn Kelly, an attention-thirsty TV personality who beams when her followers tweet “France for president,” but tears up when a politician insults her backstage, reducing her to nothing more than “a pretty tool” for a profit-seeking news network. — Peter Debruge
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Last and First Men (Jóhann Jóhannsson)
Distributor: Metrograph
Where to Find It: In theaters only
The last and first film directed by the late, revered Iceland composer Jóhannsson, the film is loosely adapted from British author Olaf Stapledon’s influential 1930 novel of the same title, though its expansive, era-leaping narrative has been refashioned as a ravishing 70-minute audiovisual essay on human mortality, extinction and legacy — all the more poignant for being its maker’s final creative statement. — Guy Lodge
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National Champions (Ric Roman Waugh)
Distributor: STX Films
Where to Find It: In theaters only
The film adroitly avoids most of the pitfalls common to conventional “message movies” by raising and debating issues in the context of a solid and involving drama that can be enjoyed even by people who couldn’t tell an offside kick from a cheerleader’s cartwheel. It’s intent on exposing the inner workings of college football, but don’t expect a lot of gridiron action here. Except for a few highlight clips sprinkled here and there, the focus remains on the interactions of players, coaches, media scrums, well-heeled boosters, freelance fixers, and NCAA movers and shakers during the countdown to the fictional Snickers College Football Championship. — Joe Leydon
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Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
Distributor: A24
Where to Find It: In theaters only
There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of American indie films about young people escaping a dead end like Texas City and heading east or west, where opportunity lies. Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket” (the director’s first film to compete for the top prize at Cannes) is about an unlikely case of just such a runaway returning home and trying to rustle up some fresh opportunity there. Once upon a time, shooting porn would have been the fastest form of sabotage. But in this fractured fairy tale, it could well be the path to his redemption. — Peter Debruge
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West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
Distributor: 20th Century Studios
Where to Find It: In theaters only
Spielberg gives the story a fresh coat of desaturated, bombed-out-city-block, gritty-as-reality paint. He makes it his own. At the same time, he stays reverently true to what generations have loved about “West Side Story”: the swoon factor, the yearning beauty of those songs, the hypnotic jackknife ballet of ’50s delinquents dancing out their aggression on the New York streets. There are scenes in Spielberg’s version that will melt you, scenes that will make your pulse race, and scenes where you simply sit back and revel in the big-spirited grandeur of it all. — Owen Gleiberman
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In Theaters and On Demand
Agnes (Mickey Reece)
Distributor: Magnet
Where to Find It: In theaters and on demand
The film is half exorcism thriller, half character drama of lost faith. But those two sharply differentiated parts add up to much less than a coherent whole, in addition to being too underdeveloped and tonally wobbly to satisfy in themselves when a young nun suddenly begins ranting obscenities in a “demonic” voice at a Carmelite convent, leaving Father Donaghue to attend to the situation. Despite a polished surface, “Agnes” winds up feeling like an ungainly home craft project that maybe should have been taken apart and reshaped into some entirely different, more purposefully cohesive form. — Dennis Harvey
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The Last Son (Tim Sutton)
Distributor: VMI Worldwide
Where to Find It: In theaters and on demand
The film finds fresh life in a well-worn genre: Its striking visuals are accompanied by an oddly appropriate score led by droning, heavily distorted guitars; its occasional narration is winsome in a way that Westerns do best; and its evocation of an endlessly mythologized era feels authentic. But then Sutton goes and overplays his hand, the effects of which aren’t as disastrous as being caught cheating in a poker saloon, but they do leave you wondering what might have been. — Michael Nordine
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Dear Evan Hansen (Stephen Chbosky)
Distributor: Universal
Where to Find It: In Theaters
“‘Dear Evan Hansen’ is the farthest below average in terms of actual merit: a curve-crashing after-school special, dressed up with so-so songs (not so much show tunes as lightweight pop-music imitations), about how people process tragedy in the age of oversharing. Some audiences feel seen, others are bound to take offense, and that split is what makes the Steven Levenson-written show (with music and lyrics by “La La Land” duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) such a fascinating phenomenon. The team behind the film haven’t necessarily fixed all that was wrong with the show, but they’ve been listening, at least, and that’s a start.” — Peter Debruge
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The Guilty (Antoine Fuqua)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: In theaters now, then on Netflix Oct. 1
Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance is impressive, but “The Guilty” almost certainly would have been more effective if he’d dialed down the intensity a bit. We see Joe wound up like this, and we don’t think, “Oh wow, some cops really take their role seriously” — we think, “This guy’s mental.” Like one of those young Army recruits, remote-controlling lethal drones from halfway around the world, he’s got more power than makes sense. And the idea that all the excitement of this one night might lead him to make the call he does in his own life pushes the fantasy just one step too far. — Peter Debruge
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I’m Your Man (Maria Schrader) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Where to Find It: In theaters
German filmmaker Maria Schrader has, one suspects, given the matter some thought, though her cool, grown-up romantic fantasy “I’m Your Man” twists the scenario’s gender politics and significantly changes the stakes — presenting an independent, idiosyncratic female protagonist with a robot man so perfectly tailored to her needs that she just can’t stand it. Taking inspiration from a short story by German writer Emma Braslavsky, Schrader and co-writer Jan Schomburg serve up a rich panoply of questions, answers and stray ideas. Rarely are these assembled into neat combinations, even if the script veers too far into thematic explication in the final third. — Guy Lodge
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In Select Theaters and On Demand
Apache Junction (Justin Lee)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where To Find It: In Limited Theaters
“Lee prefers to canter rather than gallop as he spins his storyline, allowing his well-cast leads enough time to reveal themselves in sometimes leisurely, sometimes suspenseful dialogue exchanges. “Apache Junction” provides the requisite amount of gunplay, fisticuffs, distressing of damsels and other Western tropes. But there’s a twist or two to the conventions.” — Joe Leydon
Exclusively on Netflix
Birds of Paradise (Sarah Adina Smith)
Distributor: Netflix
Where To Find It: Netflix
“In ‘Birds of Prey,’ writer-director Sarah Adina Smith (“Legion”) tells a scrumptious and entertaining tale about the go-for-broke nature of youthful companionship, spinning a cunning yarn of female enmity and camaraderie set against the backdrop of Paris’ ultra-competitive professional ballet scene. Most impressively, Smith demonstrates that she deeply grasps both the fluid eroticism and the emotional openness that are inherent to ballet.” — Tomris Laffly
Intrusion (Adam Salky)
Distributor: Netflix
Where To Find It: Netflix
“Nonetheless, the film is just slick, pacy and intriguing enough for us to suspend sufficient disbelief while it’s going — never mind afterward, when it all evaporates from the memory in a trice. Salky doesn’t get to demonstrate the more nuanced dramatic touch of his prior features. Still, he works up an acceptable froth of urgency in suspense or action when required.They might’ve packed more punch in a film with greater attention to atmosphere and character.” — Dennis Harvey
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