It’s an exciting week of new releases to watch at home, including a few on streaming services you might already be paying for.
Action-comedy Novocaine starring Jack Quaid, which is as gory as it is funny, is now available at home, as is Magazine Dreams, a buzzy movie that earned praise out of 2023’s Sundance Film Festival before it was delayed following its leading man’s arrest on domestic violence-related charges. There’s also In the Lost Lands, the latest action film from husband-and-wife duo director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich, adapted from a short story by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.
On Hulu, a pair of underrated and under-seen flicks are now streaming or coming soon: the darkly twisted Magpie, starring Daisy Ridley, and Small Things Like These, an adaptation of the book of the same name starring Cillian Murphy, in a performance that may best his award-winning turn as J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Here’s what to know about the movies newly available to stream as of this week and where you can find them.
Click on the links below to jump straight to a specific movie:
Novocaine
You may recognize Jack Quaid, the son of actors Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, from the hit Prime Video series The Boys. Maybe you know him from Scream 5 or Companion, but either way, the actor is having a moment.
Novocaine is an action-comedy star vehicle for Quaid, with a high-concept premise that the movie thankfully lives up to: Nathan Caine is incapable of feeling physical pain. When Sherry (Amber Midthunder), the girl of his dreams, is kidnapped, he turns this rare physical condition into an unexpected advantage to rescue her.
The movie is at its most charming and effective in its setup as we watch Nathan fall for Sherry. The two have terrific chemistry, and the romantic elements work far better than you’d expect for a movie that also features people getting killed in some of the most disgusting ways imaginable.
It’s an exciting blend of action, comedy and gross-out gore that also gets a laugh with the sheer audacity of the violence. Ray Nicholson, son of Jack Nicholson, is appropriately scary as the villain. It’s worth a watch for anyone who’s not too squeamish — but take that warning seriously, as things do get pretty nasty!
How to watch: Novocaine is now available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms.
Magpie
Magpie is “based on an original idea by Daisy Ridley.” By the end of the film, you’re likely to be tickled that she’s the one that dreamed up this surprising and twisty piece of pulp entertainment.
A father chaperones his daughter, who is co-starring in a film with a popular actress, to the set of the movie while his wife is at home with their newborn baby. He soon finds himself falling in love with the actress.
It’s a tongue-in-cheek psychological thriller of sorts, full of tension brewing between its characters. It’s an unexpectedly salacious piece of work that has fun toying with the audience’s expectations if only so they can pull the rug, so to speak, and make everyone gasp with a reveal. It works!
How to watch: Magpie is now streaming on Hulu.
Magazine Dreams
Jonathan Majors is undeniably very good in Magazine Dreams, a movie that isn’t quite as strong as its central performance. It’s about an aspiring bodybuilder struggling to find human connection in the world. Nothing deters him from his fiercely protected dream of superstardom, not even the doctors who warn him of the permanent damage he causes to himself with his quest to achieve greatness.
It would be easy to compare the movie to something akin to Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy (or Joker, which itself was heavily inspired by those two Martin Scorsese pictures), but where it lands is more like a feature-length version of Eminem’s music video for “Stan,” a work so well known that the song title is now a slang term. It’s a fascinating exploration of celebrity worship and how average people, or especially people who may have mental issues, can get caught up in that world.
Majors really sinks into the role, which is sadly rendered a bit uncomfortable by real-life allegations that hew closely to the aggression exhibited by his character. It’s a terrific performance in a movie that has its moments but ultimately doesn’t feel true to its central character by the end.
How to watch: Magazine Dreams is now available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms.
Small Things Like These
Small Things Like These is about as quiet as movies can be; it’s a film entirely focused on an internal struggle its lead character is facing. It stars Cillian Murphy, who’s able to convey worlds of meaning with simply a look, as his character doesn’t say much.
In 1985, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill Furlong (Murphy) discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own, forcing him to confront his past and the silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.
It’s a simple movie about a good man trying to do his best, and Murphy is able to bring that depth of feeling to a mostly interior performance in such a captivating way; it’s a shock he didn’t get back-to-back nominations. Small Things Like These is a masterclass in small-scale drama, underplaying nearly every moment to the point where it somehow coalesces into an impactful emotional wallop.
How to watch: Small Things Like These starts streaming on Hulu this Tuesday, and is now available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms.
In the Lost Lands
In the Lost Lands is, in a word, insane.
Using more words, it’s a post-apocalyptic Western in which Milla Jovovich stars as an omniscient witch, and Dave Bautista plays a bounty hunter she teams up with to journey into dangerous territories on a job hunting down a shape-shifting werewolf for a power-hungry queen.
It’s got the palace intrigue of Game of Thrones, the wackiness of something like the Wachowskis’ 2015 movie Jupiter Ascending and the pure genre expressionism that action fans and director Paul W.S. Anderson enthusiasts have come to appreciate in his work.
It also features digital backgrounds like any number of major action blockbusters these days, but they’re rendered using Unreal Engine, which is typically for video games. It gives the movie a strikingly uncanny feel that looks more compelling than, say, the computerized landscapes in Marvel fare.
If you read any of this and go, “That sounds awesome,” you must check it out. If you rolled your eyes, stay far away; this wild ride is not for you!
How to watch: In the Lost Lands is now available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms.
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