It’s awards season, and you know what that means: More and more awards contenders are making their way onto streaming services.
This week, Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness lands on Hulu, animated nominee Marcel the Shell With Shoes On shuffles its way to Showtime, and multiple nominee Living, adapted from an all-time great movie, arrives on VOD.
That’s not all — there’s a new rom-com on Netflix, the House Party remake on HBO Max, Tom Hanks’ A Man Called Otto, and plenty more for you to choose from this week when deciding what to watch at home.
Let’s get into it.
New on Netflix
Love at First Kiss
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Genre: Romantic comedy
Run time: 1h 36m
Director: Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
Cast: Álvaro Cervantes, Silvia Alonso, Gorka Otxoa
This romantic comedy from Spain follows a young man who discovers as a teenager that he can see his entire future with someone play out just from their first kiss. Now an adult running a struggling book publisher, he continues his search for his soulmate.
New on Hulu
Triangle of Sadness
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Genre: Dramedy
Run time: 2h 27m
Director: Ruben Östlund
Cast: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon
One of quite a few satires of the rich and powerful that came out in 2022, Triangle of Sadness is Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s second Palme d’Or winner at Cannes (The Square, although I prefer Force Majeure). This one follows a group of wealthy people on a luxury cruise, and what happens when things go terribly awry.
New on HBO Max
House Party
Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Calmatic
Cast: Tosin Cole, Jacob Latimore, Karen Obilom
This remake of the 1990 Kid ’n Play classic is the feature debut of music video director Calmatic (best known for the “Old Town Road” music video), and stars Tosin Cole and Jacob Latimore as two young friends who get hired to clean LeBron James’ mansion. When they instead throw a party, things get wild. The litany of celebrity cameos includes Kid Cudi, Snoop Dogg, LeBron James and teammate Anthony Davis, and, of course, Kid ’n Play.
New on Showtime
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
Where to watch: Available to stream on Showtime
Genre: Comedy drama
Run time: 1h 30m
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Cast: Jenny Slate, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann
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-size 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.
New on Shudder
Spoonful of Sugar
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder and AMC Plus
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Cast: Morgan Saylor, Kat Foster, Myko Olivier
Millicent (Morgan Saylor), a suspiciously young-looking woman, is hired to babysit Johnny (Danilo Crovetti), a young mute boy who suffers from a medley of maladies and life-threatening allergies. When Millicent grows to learn more about the dark secrets of the child’s family and develops an unhealthy attraction to the boy’s father (Myko Olivier), she begins to take matters into her own hands to ensure that she’ll never be separated from the family again — ever. From the looks of the trailer, Spoonful of Sugar seems like the sort of horror film that lands somewhere between Orphan, Saint Maud, and A Cure for Wellness.
New on VOD
Magic Mike’s Last Dance
Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Genre: Comedy-drama
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek, Ayub Khan Din
One of cinema’s sexiest franchises comes to a close with this final installment of the Magic Mike trilogy. Steven Soderbergh returns to the director’s chair for this one, which sees Channing Tatum’s Mike become a “kept man” for a very wealthy Salma Hayek.
From our review:
On the whole, Magic Mike’s Last Dance has the feel of a stage musical, complete with big emotions expressed through song — or a half-naked interpretive dance in the fake rain, as the case may be. It’s a lusty, aspirational fairy tale, featuring heightened scenarios, luxe wardrobe choices, and a London where working-class Adonises stage impromptu flash mobs on double-decker buses. (This scene briefly turns the movie into a jazzy caper à la The Italian Job, but with the intent of seducing an uptight bureaucrat, rather than stealing $4 million in gold bullion.) But allowing both love and money to complicate the primal enjoyment of watching muscular men in sweatpants gyrate ends up diluting the film’s once-simple pleasures. Maybe you can’t have it all.
A Man Called Otto
Where to watch: Available to purchase for $14.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Genre: Comedy-drama
Run time: 2h 6m
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, Rachel Keller
Tom Hanks plays against type in this comedy-drama adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel A Man Called Ove as a grumpy, lonely widower who — against his own antisocial nature — inadvertently sparks a friendship with his new next-door neighbor and their child.
Living
Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp
Nominated for two Oscars (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor), Living is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece drama Ikiru. Nighy plays an office worker who receives a harsh medical diagnosis and sets out to make the most of his time left.