After last weekend’s influx of movies from big-name directors like Spike Lee and Judd Apatow, the landscape for movies looks to be comparatively calmer this weekend. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fair share of worthwhile releases hitting VOD and streaming services this weekend, from studio movies with big stars, independently produced treasures coming off of buzzy festival runs and projects from major foreign filmmakers being distributed in the United States.
Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried star in Blumhouse Productions’ latest thriller “You Should Have Left.” Following its release strategies for “Trolls World Tour” and “The King of Staten Island,” Universal has decided to give the movie a “home premiere” and price 48-hour digital rentals at $19.99.
Meanwhile, French director Olivier Assayas’ latest film “Wasp Network” is premiering on Netflix nine months after its debut at the Venice Film Festival last September. The primarily Spanish language film reunites Assayas with his “Carlos” star Édgar Ramírez, who plays a Cuban pilot who steals a plane and flees during Fidel Castro’s rule. Other Cuban defectors join him to start a spy network to infiltrate violent anti-Castro organizations on the island. The star-studded cast also includes Penélope Cruz, Gael García Bernal and Ana de Armas.
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Also, numerous films, such as “Miss Juneteenth” and “In(Visible) Portraits” are releasing to align with the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
Here’s a complete rundown of the week’s new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
Studio movie, straight to streaming:
You Should Have Left: (David Koepp)
Distributor: Universal
Where to Find It: Lots of options on Universal’s website.
Koepp, who collaborated with Kevin Bacon once before (on the 1999 paranormal flash-cut vision thriller “Stir of Echoes”), directs this little genre piece with fluid and absorbing skill. The film is cunningly shot (by Angus Hudson) and edited (by Derek Ambrosi), so that you always feel there’s something sinister lurking around the next corner, but when you glance up at the next corner it’s scrubbed and innocuous. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
New to Netflix
Wasp Network:(Olivier Assayas)
Where to Find It: Netflix
That Assayas was given so much access by the Cuban authorities is something of a miracle, and he makes the most of the country’s crumbling beauty without fetishizing the disintegration. In-flight sequences, helicopter shots and majestic drone panoramas look terrific on the big screen thanks to classic, muscular imagery from DPs Yorick Le Saux and Denis Lenoir. There’s no clue as to how much footage there originally was to edit down to just over two hours, but both story and characters feel like they’ve been trimmed beyond the point of cohesion. — Jay Weissberg
Read the full review
Digital Rental and On Demand
Miss Juneteenth:(Channing Godfrey Peoples)
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand services
The movie richly captures the slow pace of ebbing small-town Texas life, even if you might wish there were a bit more narrative momentum to pick up the slack in writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ first feature. She’s got a very relatable heroine in Nicole Beharie’s Turquoise, an erstwhile local beauty queen whose crown proved the peak rather than the kickoff to her dream of a better life — high hopes now transferred to a daughter reluctant to inherit that burden. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review
Independent films, directly on demand:
Babyteeth: (Shannon Murphy)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand services
Murphy and Kalnejais’ collaboration takes a little time to find its tone, beginning as an arch, amusing broken-family comedy that could as easily be titled “Australian Beauty,” before kicking into a richer, less guarded storytelling gear: Any inconsistencies are forgotten by the film’s tear-stained stunner of a final act, which risks high melodrama to honest, lyrical effect. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review
I Am Vengeance: Retaliation: (Ross Boyask)
Distributor: Saban Films
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand services
In the tradition of ’80s and ’90s direct-to-video producers who cut corners and pinched pennies, the makers of “Retaliation” set most of their movie in and around a deserted industrial building setting, so that the virtually nonstop shootouts and fight scenes that fill the void where a plot should be are as visually monotonous as they are numbingly repetitious. To say the movie is strenuously padded would be to give it more credit for substance than it deserves. In fact, if characters weren’t constantly lying down their weapons to engage in extended bouts of hand-to-hand, foot-to-face combat, the movie might be a good 20 minutes shorter than it is. — Joe Leydon
Read the full review
In(Visible) Portraits: (Oge Egbuonu)
Distributor: Self-distributed
Where to Find It: Pre-order on the film’s website
How much audiences find the doc’s first half to be overly didactic may depend on individuals’ personal familiarity with the country’s Jim Crow sins and the ways that popular culture — with its angry Black woman archetypes — has aided and abetted the nation’s crimes against its Black citizens. There is no shortage of horror stories and no paucity of clip-reel evidence of how complicit Hollywood’s dream machine could be in maintaining a white supremacist nightmare. — Lisa Kennedy
Read the full review
Mr. Jones: (Agnieszka Holland)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Rent or purchase on digital and on-demand platforms
The powerful contemporary resonance of a story that veritably hinges on the dangers of “fake news” and its devastating consequences hardly needs to be explained. As drama, the movie sometimes struggles to get out of its own way, but its message still lands with concrete force. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review
Queen of Lapa:(Theodore Collatos, Carolina Monnerat)
Distributor: Self-distributed
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
Though the documentary gradually mutes its initial parade of competitive flamboyance to show mutual supportiveness within the “hotel,” there are limits to the insight its subjects will allow. One gets the sense they’ve hardened themselves against pain to survive for too long to let a camera get free access to their innermost thoughts. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review
Selfie Dad: (Brad J. Silverman)
Distributor: Atlas Distribution
Where to Find It: Available on digital and on demand services
The movie is by no means a cluelessly obtuse comedy that has been made to look worse because real-life events have provided a new context (like the 1970 release of the silly campus protest comedy “Getting Straight” just weeks after the Kent State killings). Rather, Silverman has placed, beneath all the funny business, some well-observed truths. It’s just that, right now, those truths may be, well, more than a tad distracting from the story Silverman set out to tell. — Joe Leydon
Read the full review
Tainted: (Brent Cote)
Distributor: Epic Pictures
Where to Find It: Rent on iTunes and other services
Canadian thriller “Tainted” is slow-burning to the extent of never quite starting a fire. Nonetheless, this tale of an ex-convict trying to end his ties to both the Russian mob and Aryan Brotherhood holds attention in writer-director Brent Cote’s somber treatment. It’s compelling enough in its non-hyperbolic take on familiar genre elements, even if the depth of tragedy aimed for proves as much out of reach as any nerve-wracking suspense. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review
Woman on the Beach:(Hong Sang-soo)
Distributor: Grasshopper Film
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the film lies in its rhythms, the way it beautifully captures the natural flow of ongoing conversation, with its inevitable pauses, quicksilver changes of direction and alterations of tone. This rare quality exists within individual scenes as well as across the entire sweep of the story, which is constructed with great care but disguises its formal elements behind a show of utter naturalism. — Todd McCarthy
Read the full review
Only on Amazon Prime Video
7500: (Patrick Vollrath)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Amazon Prime Video
The movie is briskly effective in a cold-sweat sort of way, carrying its audience from a smooth takeoff to the first signs of disturbance to swiftly cranked all-out terror with the kind of nervy efficiency you can admire without exactly taking pleasure in it. In more ways than one, however, Vollrath’s technically adroit film has trouble sticking the landing. As it narrows the onboard crisis to a quivering two-man face-off between pilot and terrorist in the cockpit — from the cramped confines of which, in the director’s most formally striking decision, the on-screen action never strays — sentimental contrivance trickles into the steel-blue vérité of proceedings, leaving the film with a visceral mission to complete but not an awful lot to say. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review
Only on Apple TV Plus
Dads: (Bryce Dallas Howard)
Distributor: Apple TV Plus
Where to Find It: Apple TV Plus
In the documentary, there are no graphs or pie charts about how old-fashioned practices hinder today’s families, or the significant others made to shoulder the burden of nonstop-needy kids all by themselves. Howard favors observation over lecture, anecdotes over numbers, showing instead of telling what equally split primary-caregiving looks like in contemporary households. — Tomris Laffly
Read the full review
Only on HBO
Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn: (Ivy Meeropol)
Distributor: HBO
Where to Find It: HBO
The documentary digs more deeply into the central insanity of the Army-McCarthy hearings — not the fact that American freedom was teetering on the brink, but the fact that Cohn, the ultimate closeted homosexual, exploited his power to the degree that he inadvertently exposed the secret he would have done anything to hide. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review
Only on Netflix
Disclosure: (Sam Feder) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It:
Clearly inspired in its approach by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s definitive 1995 doc “The Celluloid Closet,” which did the same vis-à-vis gay and lesbian characters a quarter-century earlier, “Disclosure” is enormous fun for film fans. Rather than making audiences feel bad about trans-themed movies they may have naively enjoyed in the past, it educates on the larger issues while unpacking a legacy of problematic representation. — Peter Debruge
Read the full review
Other releases debuting on streaming this week
Creating a Character: The Moni Yakim Legacy: (Rauzar Alexander)
Distributor: First Run Features
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
This documentary follows Juilliard acting teacher Moni Yakim exploring his life and featuring interviews that provide insight into his process.
Driven: (Glenn Payne)
Distributor: Uncork’d
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms.
A cab driver picks up a mysterious passenger who leads him on a quest to stop demons from taking over the world.
Feel the Beat: (Elissa Down)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Netflix
A failed Broadway dancer returns to her hometown and trains a group of young dancers.
Jack & Yaya: (Jennifer Bagley)
Distributor: Freedom Cinema
Where to Find It: Plenty of options on the film’s website
This documentary follows lifelong friends Jack and Yaya, two transgender friends living in South Jersey who supported each others’ coming out.
Kaye Ballard: The Show Goes On!: (Dan Wingate)
Distributor: Abramorama
Where to Find It: Premiered virtually on the film’s Facebook on June 16
This documentary examines the life and work of actress Kaye Ballard, whose career spanned eight decades across Broadway, radio and television.
Looks That Kill:(Kellen Moore)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms.
A teenage boy must deal with the pros and cons of being lethally attractive.
Lost Bullet: (Guillaume Pierret)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Netflix
A brainy mechanic is tasked with tracking down a missing car with only a single bullet as a clue.
The Luring: (Christopher Wells)
Distributor: Wild Eye Releasing
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms.
A man tries to recover a lost memory from his ten birthday when his parents entered a catatonic state and were institutionalized.
The Marshes:(Roger Scott)
Distributor: Shudder
Where to Find It: Shudder and available for rental on other platforms
A doctor committed to saving a marshland on the brink of annihilation is suddenly faced with an evil that defies science.
My Father the Spy:(Gints Grube, Jaak Kilmi)
Distributor: Syndicado Film Sales
Where to Find It: Rent on Vimeo and other platforms
This documentary profiles a young woman confronting her father’s secret life as a Russian spy.
The Pollinators: (Peter Nelson)
Distributor: 1091
Where to Find It:Available on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
The migration of bees is examined in this documentary, following beekeepers on the job and experts warning of the consequences of the insects’ plummeting population.
Runner: (Bill Gallagher)
Distributor: Self-distributed
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
This documentary follows the life of Guor Mading Maker, a refugee of Sudan who had to fight to compete independent of his birthplace in the 2012 Olympics.
Scare Package: (Courtney Andujar, Hillary Andujar, Anthony Cousins, Emily Hagins, Aaron B. Koontz, Chris McInroy, Noah Segan, Baron Vaughn)
Distributor: Shudder
Where to Find It: Shudder
An omnibus movie featuring numerous horror short stories is sewn together by the instructions given by the clerk of a struggling video store.
Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth: (Jeanie Finlay)
Distributor: 1091
Where to Find It: Rent on various on-demand platforms
A documentary follow a trans man’s decision to carry his own baby.
StarDog and TurboCat: (Ben Smith)
Distributor: Viva Pictures
Where to Find It: Rent on iTunes and other on-demand platforms
This animated movie is about two super-powered animals, a dog and a cat, who must learn to work together.
Vampire Dad: (Frankie Ingrassia)
Distributor: Viva Pictures
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
A psychologist is turned into a vampire and begins practicing his profession on creatures of the underworld.
A Whisker Away: (Junichi Sato, Tomotaka Shibayama)
Distributor: Netflix
Where to Find It: Netflix
This anime follow a girl who transforms into a cat to get closer to the boy she has a crush on.
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