Thor: Love and Thunder, Morbius, and every other new movie you can stream from home this weekend

This week has plenty of new movies premiering for home viewing. There are huge releases like Thor: Love and Thunder, Morbius morbin’ its way to Netflix, and one of the three upcoming Pinocchio adaptations.

Look beyond those big-ticket items, however, and you’ll find some great under-the-radar gems. The Senegalese genre mashup Saloum, which is genuinely fantastic, premieres on Shudder. The beloved anime series Odd Taxi (which has one of the coolest OPs around, by the way) has a movie adaptation out on Crunchyroll, and highly praised recent releases Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and Petite Maman are finally available to watch at home.

Here’s everything new you can watch at home this weekend.

Thor: Love and Thunder

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Marvel Studios

Taika Waititi returns to the Thor franchise after the success of Thor: Ragnarok, this time writing as well as directing. Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, and Natalie Portman (making her long-awaited return to the MCU) all reprise their roles from the franchise, while Christian Bale and Russell Crowe join in on the fun.

From our review:

Unfortunately, what might have been a terrific road-trip film is undercut by characters who somehow lost their entire personalities after Thanos’ snap. Thor is strangely inconsistent throughout the film — the Thor at the beginning of the movie is different from the Thor who appears 20 minutes later, who is also different from the Thor we say goodbye to again when the credits roll. Jane Foster, largely absent from the franchise for the better part of a decade, has a lot of fun relishing her new godlike powers, but there’s a tension between her newfound superhuman life and her dire normal one, and the film is too glib to sustain the tonal whiplash between the two.

Morbius

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Sony Pictures

Morbius Summer continues on into Morbius Fall, as the most memed movie of the year is now on Netflix. Jared Leto stars as the antihero vampire doctor Dr. Mr. Michael Morbius (please, his father is Michael Morbius, call him Doctor Mister), while House of the Dragon’s Matt Smith plays the villainous Loxias Crown.

From our review:

Plainly shot, with a score (and a scene or two) that shamelessly ape Batman Begins, Morbius comes across as algorithmically calibrated to enter the blockbuster market as smoothly as possible. Its action is unimaginative, complete with exhausting slow-mo pauses. Its violence is toned down and defanged, even though it’s about, y’know, vampires. In spite of direction from Daniel Espinosa, who previously made 2017’s surprisingly creepy Life, Morbius does not convey any real atmosphere. If Instagram had a “blockbuster” filter, this film would use it the whole time.

Pinocchio

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Disney

Disney’s latest live-action adaptation of a beloved animated property comes via Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto.

From our review:

The story’s outline will still be extremely recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with the animated film or Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. Because this is a modern film, though, apparently someone felt the film needed to scoff a bit at its own flights of fancy. When Pinocchio, stuck in a cage by the evil Stromboli, begins to tell a lie and his wooden nose grows, Jiminy says, “A bit on the nose, I’d say.” When Pinocchio rattles off his various adventures late in the film, a bemused character asks, “You did all that in one day?” Simultaneously copycatting a classic and smugly mocking it comes across as crass, as if Zemeckis and company are afraid of real emotion, and determined to safeguard audiences against any sense of authenticity or sincerity.

Saloum

Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder

Image: Shudder

It’s quite difficult to describe Saloum without giving away what makes it so special, but I will say this: The Senegalese spaghetti Western action thriller is a breezy genre mashup with evocative characterization, beautiful scenery, and a slick 84-minute run time.

From our recommendation that you watch it:

Something is not exactly right in the village they land in, and [director] Herbulot (and the cast) expertly ratchet up the tension over the 84-minute running time. That tension explodes into a series of Western-style gunfights with revolvers, all with a beautiful score reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s work on Sergio Leone’s movies. I will leave the rest for you to discover for yourself, but I will say there’s a reason this movie is on a horror-centric streaming service.

Odd Taxi: In the Woods

Where to watch: Available to stream on Crunchyroll

Image: OLM/Crunchyroll

The feature film adaptation of one of the best anime of 2021 follows the adventures of a walrus taxi driver who becomes embroiled in a mystery when a girl goes missing.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

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

Image: A24

This is a feature adaptation of the beloved YouTube series following a tiny shell who wears shoes (voiced by Jenny Slate) and waxes philosophical from a pint-sized view of the world.

From our review:

Saying casually profound things in a charmingly direct way is kind of Marcel’s thing. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On gets a remarkable amount of mileage out of Marcel making simple, off-kilter observations about the people and things around him. Considering that the original Marcel videos clocked in at less than 12 minutes total, it’s a testament to the script’s strengths that the feature-length version of his schtick never gets old. (The film is also relatively slight, at 89 minutes long, but still.) The dramatic arc of this magical-realist comedy is gentle: Dean’s YouTube videos about Marcel bring them viral fame, which excites and frightens them both. The jokes are tender and amiable as well.

Petite Maman

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: NEON

Céline Sciamma is one of the great modern filmmakers — her films have been pretty universally praised, and Girlhood is a stone-cold masterpiece (I’ve heard the same about Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but I haven’t had the chance to watch it myself yet).

Her latest film is a 72-minute time-travel fantasy about a young girl who bonds with her young mother (as in, her mother as a child) after the loss of her grandmother.

From our review:

The most romantic thing about Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the way the characters look at each other. Like that film, Petite Maman expresses love through meaningful glances and small gestures. It’s just that the type of affection being explored in this film is the love between mothers and daughters, a bond that can be extremely close and unknowably distant at the same time. Petite Maman is the work of an unusually sensitive filmmaker, and it speaks to Sciamma’s skill as a director that she’s able to express the nuances of this complicated dynamic through such simple actions and words.

Moonfall

Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max

Image: Lionsgate

Roland Emmerich’s latest big disaster movie takes to space, with an ensemble cast featuring Patrick Wilson, Halle Berry, Donald Sutherland, and more.

From our review:

But Moonfall’s script buries its lede, committing the storyteller’s sin of not opening with the most interesting stuff first. Instead, the film spends its first half on Brian’s fractured family, his troubled son, his wife’s asshole new husband, that sort of thing. These digressions continue to be a distraction throughout, as Harper’s family is the Earthbound half of Moonfall, the eyes through which we see the tides overwhelm dry land and skyscrapers uprooted by the Moon’s gravity. Unfortunately for the audience, the devastation is only a small part of the cast’s struggle. Most of their concerns are more mundane compared to the alien shenanigans in orbit, like thieves and avalanches. And The cast’s performances — even from Wilson, who always fully commits to his roles — cannot make much of a script that feels algorithmic.

Flight/Risk

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Image: Prime Video

This documentary follows family members and whistleblowers as they attempt to find answers after a pair of deadly plane crashes.

Destination Paris

Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus

Photo: Xinhua via Getty Images

This documentary charts the journeys of various teams, players, and other soccer personnel as they prepare for the 2021-22 Champions League.

Burial

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: IFC Midnight

Not to be confused with the genre-defining U.K. dubstep artist, Burial is a 2022 horror mystery-thriller that centers on a small band of Russian soldiers who are charged with retrieving Adolf Hitler’s newly discovered remains and taking them back to Moscow. When the group comes under attack by an elite squad of German “Werewolf” soldiers, Russian intelligence officer Brana Vasilyeva (Charlotte Vega) must fight to preserve and transport the body at all costs.

About Fate

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon and Vudu

Image: American International Pictures

This romantic comedy stars Emma Roberts and Thomas Mann as two people who seem perfect for each other… if only they weren’t both already engaged. Lewis Tan and Madelaine Petsch co-star as their respective current partners.

End of the Road

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Ursula Coyote/Netflix

Queen Latifah has been cementing her place as an action star with the television show The Equalizer, and continues that here with this road trip thriller about a family who is hunted by a mysterious killer. The movie comes from veteran TV director Millicent Shelton (30 Rock, Insecure, Titans).

No Limit

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Netflix

This French romantic drama is about a “deep, destructive love” (per Netflix’s official synopsis) between a young woman and her diving instructor.