The Mario movie, Missing on Netflix, Quantumania, and every new movie to watch at home this weekend

Mamma mia, The Super Mario Bros. Movie finally comes to VOD this weekend! The $1 billion box-office success is at the top of this week’s list of films to watch on VOD, and it’s not alone, with plenty of highly anticipated new releases available to choose from this weekend.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the inaugural installment in the MCU’s Phase Five, is finally available to stream on Disney Plus. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves starring Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez arrives on Paramount Plus, the critically acclaimed thriller Missing arrives on Netflix, and the new White Men Can’t Jump reboot starring Sinqua Walls and actor-musician Jack Harlow comes to Hulu. That’s not all: the historical action-thriller Sisu and the action comedy-drama Polite Society are both available to rent or purchase on VOD.

There’s a lot to cover and only so many hours in the weekend. Here are the new releases you have to choose from on VOD and streaming.

New on Netflix

Missing

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Sony Pictures Releasing

Genre: Screenlife thriller
Run time: 1h 51m
Directors: Nicholas D. Johnson, Will Merrick
Cast: Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung

You might know Storm Reid from her starring role in A Wrinkle in Time, or her role as Riley in HBO’s The Last of Us. She also starred in one of the year’s best movies, a psychological thriller all taking place on screens, in which she plays a teenager looking for her missing mother.

A stand-alone sequel to 2018’s Searching, Missing is the feature debut of directing duo Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson. The “screenlife” thriller is an exciting emerging genre in 21st-century filmmaking — the Unfriended movies remain the pinnacle of it, for me — and it’s rare to get to see an aesthetic trend so clearly match changes to our society.

The Son

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Sony Pictures Classics

Genre: Drama
Run time: 2h 3m
Director: Florian Zeller
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby

Award-winning French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller received Oscar nominations for his adaptation of his play The Father starring Anthony Hopkins. It was his directorial debut, and now he’s back with The Son, another adaptation of one of his plays.

In The Son, a newly married man (Hugh Jackman) is told by his ex-wife (Laura Dern) that their son is struggling with depression. This causes the man to reflect on his own troubled upbringing and relationship with his father, and he tries to do better by his boy than his dad did by him.

And yes, Anthony Hopkins does show up as the main character’s father… but not The Father from The Father. Get your father multiverses straight.

New on Disney Plus

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Photo: Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios

Genre: Superhero action
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors

The latest entry in the MCU finally comes to home viewing, as Ant-Man, the Wasp, and the rest of the gang head to the Quantumverse to square off with Kang.

Kang is played by Jonathan Majors, who at one point was set up to be the MCU’s future, but has been dropped from multiple non-MCU projects after being arrested in March on charges of strangulation, assault, and harassment.

From our review:

The film’s world-building is more like world-edificing, the narrative equivalent of building a Hollywood set where the buildings are all flat wooden facades with no interiors. The Quantum Realm needs some people, because if Kang is a conqueror, he needs some people to conquer. Those people need attributes. But screenwriter ​​Jeff Loveness never threads all those details into more than a jokey callback. To be a conqueror, Kang needs an army, and Loveness and returning director Peyton Reed craft a fully faceless, interchangeable legion of… It isn’t clear whether they’re living beings from the Quantum Realm or some kind of robots.

New on Hulu

White Men Can’t Jump

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Photo: Peter Iovino/20th Century Studios

Genre: Sports comedy
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Calmatic
Cast: Sinqua Walls, Jack Harlow, Teyana Taylor

The classic 1992 sports comedy gets a remake this year, with former Division I basketball player Sinqua Walls (Friday Night Lights) and regular NBA Celebrity All-Star Game participant/rapper Jack Harlow taking over the roles previously played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. Directed by Calmatic (best known for the “Old Town Road” music video), the cast is supported by Teyana Taylor, Laura Harrier, Vince Staples, and the late Lance Reddick.

New on HBO Max

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max

Image: HBO Documentary Films

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 47m
Directors: Brooklyn Sudano, Roger Ross Williams
Cast: Donna Summer

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams (Music by Prudence) teamed up with Donna Summer’s daughter, the actress/singer/director Brooklyn Sudano, for this documentary about the music icon.

New on Paramount Plus

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus

Photo: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures

Genre: Fantasy adventure
Run time: 2h 14m
Directors: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page

Chris Pine (Star Trek) stars as Edgin Darvis, a former bard (now thief) who forms an unlikely troupe of adventurers on a quest to recover a powerful lost artifact. When the party runs afoul of a dangerous figure bent on world domination, Edgin and his allies will have to fight, run, and roll for initiative in order to save the day.

From our review:

The film is playful and earnest throughout, focusing on the fact that for the characters, these are serious situations. Rodriguez’s barbarian is still reeling from a broken relationship, and when her storyline pays off, it’s hilarious — but the audience is still invited to feel and empathize with her pain. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t re-create game mechanics or a sense of improvisation as well as, say, The Legend of Vox Machina, but it is the best Dungeons & Dragons movie we could have hoped for. Not only is it a fun fantasy movie, it’s a great adaptation of a gaming session. And it’s an invitation into a new and more visual version of a world dedicated players already love — and that the filmmakers seem to love, too.

New on Peacock

A Thousand and One

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Focus Features

Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 57m
Director: A.V. Rockwell
Cast: Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Josiah Cross

Set in 1994, A.V. Rockwell’s drama stars singer-actress Teyana Taylor (Coming 2 America) as Inez, a fiery-tempered woman who, after being released from Rikers Island, kidnaps her 6-year-old son in an attempt to both reconcile with him and provide an upbringing for him better than the one she had.

New on Showtime

Pearl

Where to watch: Available to stream on Showtime

Photo: Christopher Moss/A24

Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright

Mia Goth returns in the prequel to Ti West’s 2022 slasher X as Pearl, a bright-eyed yet violently repressed woman with dreams of escaping her family’s Texas farm to become a movie star in Hollywood. When Pearl’s path to stardom is stymied, she resorts to increasingly more desperate means of getting what she wants — at any cost.

From our review:

The primary reason to see Pearl is Mia Goth’s mesmerizing, tour-de-force performance. She infuses the role with enough innocence and wishfulness to make viewers root for her, even if they already know about her future crimes and are appalled by her choices in the present. While the look of the film may be inspired by Technicolor wonders like The Wizard of Oz, Goth’s performance is straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, kind and charming one minute, terrifying and deranged the next.

New on Crunchyroll

The Legend of Hei

Where to watch: Available to stream on Crunchyroll

Image: HMCH/Shout! Studios

Genre: Fantasy adventure
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Ping Zhang (aka MTJJ)
Cast: Shan Xin, Yunto Cao

This 2019 donghua film follows Luo Xiaohei, an anthropomorphic spirit with the ability to transform into a cat, who embarks on a journey in search of a new home after his forest is destroyed by humans. Meeting friends and enemies alike, Xiaohei must decide whether to side with his own kind or befriend humanity in spite of their faults.

New on VOD

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Where to watch: Available to rent for $24.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Nintendo, Illumination/Universal Pictures

Genre: Adventure fantasy
Run time: 1h 32m
Directors: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day

Based on Nintendo’s massively popular video game characters, The Super Mario Bros. Movie follows Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), two Italian American brothers and plumbers who are transported to the Mushroom Kingdom. With Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Mario must save Luigi and the kingdom from the nefarious Bowser (Jack Black).

From our review:

It’s a breezy plot that’s mostly meant to take viewers on a scenic tour of Mario locales, with some slapstick along the way. Illumination’s rendering of Nintendo’s worlds and characters, as imagined by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, is overwhelmingly gorgeous and painstakingly faithful, packing every corner of the screen with something interesting to look at. Everything else about the movie is serviceable, with frustratingly brief moments of idiosyncrasy that would arguably make The Super Mario Bros. Movie a more memorable film.

Polite Society

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features

Genre: Action comedy-drama
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Nida Manzoor
Cast: Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya

When a teenage girl on her path to being a stuntwoman learns that her sister is betrothed to a man, she suspects the man and his mother are up to no good. So she does the only thing you can in such a situation: try to sabotage the relationship and beat the shit out of the guy in the process.

Polite Society sounds like an uproarious fun time, and it’s one of the movies I’ve most been looking forward to this year. After you see it, make sure to read this interview with the director about Polite Society’s varied influences.

Sisu

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Lionsgate

Genre: Historical action
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan

This historical vengeance thriller centers on the story of a Finnish prospector who fights to protect his land and gold from a Nazi death squad. From the image above, you can probably guess how well that goes for the Nazis.

From our review:

A significant tonal clash holds Sisu back from being the kind of fun midnight action fare the relentless advertising campaign promises. Tommila’s grounded, silent performance as Aatami, along with the fairly conventional way director Jalmari Helander, cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos, and editor Juho Virolainen frame the action, suggest a more serious revenge thriller. At the same time, the booming music, the cheesy chapter titles (“The Legend,” “The Nazis,” “Kill ’Em All”), and some ridiculously silly action beats (such as Aatami hitching a ride on the bottom of a plane by lodging his prospecting pick into it as it takes off) place it more firmly in the area of ludicrously fun action fare.

Giving Birth to a Butterfly

Where to watch: Available to purchase for $9.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu, and streaming on Fandor

Image: Cinedigm

Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 17m
Director: Theodore Schaefer
Cast: Annie Parisse, Gus Birney, Rachel Resheff

Feature debuts are always exciting, and this one is no different, from We’re All Going to the World’s Fair executive producer Theodore Schaefer. Shot on 16mm, Giving Birth to a Butterfly follows a mom (Annie Parisse) and her son’s girlfriend (Gus Birney), who go on a road trip together after the mom’s identity is stolen.