As individual states and the film industry at large begin to think about when the right time to reopen theaters might be, digital and streaming services deliver the strongest weekly slate of new releases since the shutdown.
Many saw it as a sign of the times when HBO acquired critically acclaimed Hugh Jackman drama ”Bad Education” at the Toronto Film Festival last year, never imagining that it would be a blessing for the film that it was bypassing theaters to debut on the premium network. Meanwhile, on Netflix, two new tentpoles — including one from the team behind “Avengers: Infinity War” — give subscribers some studio-caliber entertainment to watch at home.
Here are all the new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them.
Independent films, directly on demand:
Bad Education (Cory Finley) CRITIC’S PICK
Distributor: HBO
Where to Find It: Premieres Sat., April 25 on HBO
Hugh Jackman delivers an acting master class, trading on his charismatic star persona to reveal the rotten core of bad-apple superintendent Frank Tassone. Jackman’s more movie star than character actor, and this role presents him in such an unflattering light — quite literally so, shooting its cast such that their skin looks like raw chicken and every wrinkle casts a shadow — that you’d think his agent would have advised him against it. (George Clooney’s probably did.) That’s what’s so courageous about Jackman’s decision, and one of several reasons that “Bad Education” is the best work he’s ever done.
— Peter Debruge
Read the full review
Robert the Bruce (Richard Gray)
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
It’s the second drama about Robert the Bruce in a little over a year (after David Mackenzie’s muddier, bloodier “Outlaw King”), and it’s theoretically a companion piece to “Braveheart,” since Robert is portrayed by the same actor who played him in Mel Gibson’s film: Angus MacFadyen, who had a dashing presence and the coal-fire eyes of a true believer. Twenty-five years later, MacFadyen, more rounded, with short hair and a less ornate goatee, looks and acts like a chastened monk — or, at crucial points, like Anthony Hopkins if he were a competitor on the Pro Bowlers’ Tour.
— Owen Gleiberman
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Popular on Variety
To the Stars (Martha Stephens)
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
This period drama starts like a slightly cartoonish teenage version of lesbian date-night favorite “Desert Hearts,” then gradually plods toward an excess of retro-potboiler melodrama. It all might have worked if handled as a sort of semi-tongue-in-cheek empowerment fairy tale, and there are moments when director Stephens seems to be aiming thataway. But only moments. Too often, “To the Stars” is earnest in that annoying fashion of movies that at once caricature the past and ignore its norms to accommodate up-to-the-moment social attitudes.
— Dennis Harvey
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The True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel)
Distributor: IFC Films
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
Adapted from Peter Carey’s Man Booker-winning 2000 novel, Kurzel’s roughhousing, ripely acted interpretation does full justice to the book’s rugged dirt-poetry vernacular and rich biographical particulars, while staging Kelly’s criminal rise and fall as a vision all its own: a wildly gyrating sensory assault of blood, velvet and strobe lights. In its brooding tonal menace and the brute beauty of its aesthetic, the result is very much of a piece with Kurzel’s first two films, 2011’s severe true-crime story “The Snowtown Murders” and 2015’s ambient, cut-to-the-bone “Macbeth” — and a welcome career reset after the game-over muddle of 2016’s tortured “Assassin’s Creed.”
— Guy Lodge
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Why Don’t You Just Die! (Kirill Sokolov)
Distributor: Arrow Video
Where to Find It: Rent on iTunes and other on-demand platforms
Set almost entirely in a corrupt cop’s Moscow apartment, this Russian import is a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece — à la the Wachowski siblings’ clockwork-perfect queer-noir “Bound” or Sidney Lumet’s airtight but otherwise diabolical “Deathtrap” — in which a simple setup spirals into unimaginably twisted mayhem. Wrong in all the right ways, the bloody but inventive festival favorite boasts enough secrets and surprises to fuel an HBO limited TV series — except, in this case, it’s all been compressed to about 90 minutes of ultra-stylized and highly efficient storytelling.
— Peter Debruge
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1BR (David Marmor)
Distributor: Dark Sky Films
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
In this thriller, a needy, insecure young woman thinks she’s lucked out in being accepted to an apartment complex where everyone is very, very neighborly. But she gradually learns this little utopia is in fact more of a prison. Writer-director David Marmor’s first feature doesn’t make much of this concept’s potential as a timely political metaphor, nor does he maximize his opportunities in such other departments as suspense, character involvement and cinematic style.
— Dennis Harvey
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Bit (Brad Michael Elmore)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Rent on iTunes and other on-demand platforms
“Supergirl’s” Nicole Maines plays a trans teen who falls in with a sect of intersectional vampires when she moves to the big city.
Braking for Whales (Sean McEwen)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
Tom Felton and Tammin Sursok play siblings on a road trip, determined to scatter their late mother’s ashes in the body of a whale.
Enemy Lines (Anders Banke)
Distributor: Good Deed Entertainment
Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon and other on-demand platforms
War movie fans may appreciate this story of a high-risk Allied mission to retrieve a rocket scientist from Nazi clutches.
New to Netflix
The Willoughbys (Kris Pearn) CRITIC’S PICK
Where to Find It: Netflix
This is certainly not the cartoon any child would picture in his or her mind’s eye when reading Lois Lowry’s “The Willoughbys,” a self-conscious parody of a parody about a clutch of urchins so underappreciated by their parents that they decide to “orphan themselves” — a euphemism for scheming to bump off their folks. Rather, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2” director Kris Pearn takes a surprising yet all-around more satisfying approach, applying a candy-coated palette and high-fructose energy to what might have been a gloomy Gothic affair in the Tim Burton or Charles Addams tradition.
— Peter Debruge
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Extraction (Sam Hargrave)
Where to Find It: Netflix
The white-savior version of “Man on Fire,” in which a gruff mercenary (Chris Hemsworth) is hired to rescue a kidnapped rich kid from a dark-skinned drug lord, “Extraction” isn’t the smartest movie you’ll see during lockdown, but it’s liable to be the most kinetic. It’s Netflix’s big tentpole of the season, a dumbed-down bit of blow-uppy distraction. Director Sam Hargrave also choreographed the fight scenes on David Leitch’s “Atomic Blonde,” and it’s safe to assume that’s where he got the idea for “Extraction’s” big set-piece: a spectacular 11½-minute single-shot action scene that seems to be the film’s entire raison d’être.
— Peter Debruge
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Circus of Books (Rachel Mason)
Where to Find It: Netlflix
Now a documentary filmmaker, Rachel Mason grew up believing that her parents ran a small bookstore in Los Angeles. She wasn’t entirely mistaken, although she never imagined that, as her mother Karen bluntly tells her on camera, “at one point, we were probably the biggest distributor of hardcore gay films in the United States.” Named for the now-defunct SoCal fixture, “Circus of Books” is an affectionate look at one of the most unusual mom and pop businesses in America, directed by the person who knew Mom and Pop best.
— Peter Debruge
Read the full review
The Plagues of Breslau (Patryk Vega)
Where to Find It: Netflix
This Polish procedural pits a police officer against a thriller who kills on a daily schedule.
Only on Apple TV Plus
Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)
Distributor: Apple TV Plus
Where to Find It: Apple TV Plus
Though the show doesn’t feature any full-on musical numbers, in its cheeky smashed-beer-can and MTV-video-shot-in-my-rec-room way it feels like it could almost be a companion piece to “Springsteen on Broadway.” It’s one more saga of older-and-wiser pop stars filtering their tales of the rock ‘n’ roll circus through everything they know now. “Beastie Boys Story” is less seamless, but more personal, than a classic documentary. Horovitz and Diamond are infectious company, and the film does a meticulous job of presenting the evolution of Adam Yauch, who was always on the edge of technology, as well as postmodern pranksterism.
— Owen Gleiberman
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Documentaries On Demand
Planet of the Humans (Jeff Gibbs)
Distributor: Self-distributed
Where to Find It: Watch for free on YouTube
A flashing red light to the green power movement, “Planet of the Humans” offers disillusioning evidence that much of what’s currently promoted as renewable energy is ineffectual, wasteful and far from “clean.” It’s a provocative if straight-up depressing takedown of brand-name environmentalism that offers much bad news with scant constructive upside. This debut directorial feature for executive producer Michael Moore’s longtime producer and composer Gibbs is also the first documentary project under their Rumble Media banner.
— Dennis Harvey
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Pahokee (Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan)
Distributor: Monument Releasing
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
Taking the form of a cinematic yearbook, documenting the trials of four senior-year students as they seek the most secure path to graduation and beyond, “Pahokee” alternates between Wiseman-style community observation and less detached, more affectionate character portraiture, notably via the subjects’ cellphone video diaries. The result is uneven as a social study, skipping abruptly past certain key local events, but lively and rousing as a generational snapshot, buoyed by the lovable, resilient kids at its heart.
— Guy Lodge
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Eating Up Easter (Sergio Mata’u Rapu)
Distributor: Music Box StreamLocal
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
Filmmaker Rapu crafts a letter to his son — and future generations — cautioning about the modernization of Rapanui (Easter Island).
Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story (Adam Dubin)
Distributor: 1091 Media
Where to Find It: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vimeo and other on-demand platforms
The title says it all.