Oppenheimer, Netflix’s Thanksgiving, The Iron Claw, and every new movie to watch

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Oppenheimer, the Oscar-nominated biopic from director Christopher Nolan starring Cillian Murphy, finally comes to Peacock after making its debut on VOD last November. That’s not all this week has to offer, as a whole slew of new and exciting releases has arrived on streaming and VOD.

The Iron Claw, Sean Durkin’s wrestling biopic about the Von Erich brothers, finally comes to VOD this weekend alongside the French murder farce The Crime Is Mine, the Southern Gothic drama Miller’s Girl, and Pedro Almodóvar’s queer Western short film Strange Way of Life starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. There’s more: Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is now streaming on Netflix, while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is now available to stream on Prime Video.

Here’s everything new to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

Thanksgiving

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Slasher horror
Run time: 1h 46m
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Gina Gershon

Eli Roth is back with a new holiday-themed slasher. After a tragic Black Friday riot, the quiet town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, is terrorized by a Thanksgiving-inspired killer wearing a ghoulish John Carver mask.

From our review:

Comedic slashers where both halves complement each other are rare, even among the genre’s most entertaining offerings. Movies like Totally Killer or Happy Death Day are too funny and lighthearted to ever really earn a genuine scare, while a movie like House of 1000 Corpses is so dark and gross that the humor isn’t likely to land on a first viewing. Few movies have ever struck that balance quite as well as Craven’s four Scream movies. Thanksgiving doesn’t quite reach that series’ meteoric heights, but it comes far closer than anything else in recent years — including the Scream franchise itself.

Players

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

A group of young people standing next to a glass door and smiling.

Genre: Romantic comedy
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Trish Sie
Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Tom Ellis

Gina Rodriguez stars in this new rom-com as a sports writer in New York City who helps her best friend, Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.), pull off various hookup schemes. After crossing paths with Nick (Tom Ellis), a handsome and single colleague, she’ll have to make the hard decision of whether to settle down or keep hooking up.

New on Hulu

The Pod Generation

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Genre: Sci-fi romance
Run time: 1h 49m
Director: Sophie Barthes
Cast: Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rosalie Craig

What if Gattaca wasn’t a dystopian retrofuturistic drama starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, but instead a quirky sci-fi romance drama starring Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor? That’s essentially what director Sophie Barthes’ latest film is in a nutshell: A couple is offered the opportunity to conceive a child through an artificial womb (or pod), only to discover that parenthood and life are more unpredictable than they imagined.

Next Goal Wins

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Genre: Sports comedy-drama
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana

Michael Fassbender (The Killer) stars in Taika Waititi’s sports movie based on the real-life American Samoa national football team and their qualification attempt for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Fassbender portrays Thomas Rongen, the Dutch American coach who agrees to help shape the once notoriously bad team into a competitive qualifier.

From our review:

Next Goal Wins fails to properly capture what made the story of the American Samoa national football team so compelling, by attempting to make a film so universal that it discards the sport itself as unimportant. Which it might be in terms of letting the audience relate to the team as individuals. But it’s such a cookie-cutter underdog story that it rarely moves past the most superficial “Care because this movie says you need to care” level.

New on Max

The Color Purple

Where to watch: Available to stream on Max

Genre: Coming-of-age musical
Run time: 2h 21m
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo

Based on Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, this musical adaptation follows the story of Celie (Fantasia Barrino), a woman in an abusive marriage torn from her sister and children, who finds strength through her friendship with Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), a singer with an indomitable spirit.

New on Prime Video

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, weapons drawn, are ready to mess you up in Mutant Mayhem

Genre: Animated superhero action comedy
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Jeff Rowe
Cast: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon

This Seth Rogen-produced animated reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reimagines the origin story of Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Leonardo, four turtles mutated by a mysterious ooze who grow up under the tutelage of their adoptive father Splinter (Jackie Chan). When the turtle brothers cross paths with April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), an aspiring high school journalist, the turtles decide to help her in uncovering a shadowy crime syndicate led by a mysterious crime boss who goes by the name “Superfly.”

Dark Harvest

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Genre: Fantasy horror
Run time: 1h 33m
Director: David Slade
Cast: Casey Likes, E’myri Crutchfield, Dustin Ceithamer

Director David Slade (30 Days of Night) returns with an all-new fantasy horror movie based on Norman Partridge’s 2006 novel. In a sleepy unnamed Midwestern hamlet, the teenage boys gather for a yearly ritual every October: to hunt down “Sawtooth Jack,” a vicious creature with a pumpkin for a head, and kill him before midnight to ensure that the town will be free from misfortune. Will they be able to succeed this year, and what other dark secrets lurk behind this bizarre tradition?

This Is Me…Now: A Love Story

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Genre: Musical film
Run time: 1h 5m
Director: Dave Meyers
Cast: Sofia Vergara, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez

This feature-length companion music video to Jennifer Lopez’s first album in over a decade stars the actress-songwriter in a fairy-tale saga about star-crossed lovers from opposing tribes who are reincarnated into a red flower and a blue hummingbird. Also, Ben Affleck is here!

New on Peacock

Oppenheimer

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Genre: Historical biopic
Run time: 3h
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon

Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” in Christopher Nolan’s biopic chronicling the scientist’s tenure at a clandestine research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and his embattled reputation and public disgrace in the years following World War II.

From our review:

In its final stretch, Oppenheimer uses the political campaign to discredit the physicist and unpick his legacy as a way to get under the skin of a man whose stance on his awful creation remained contradictory and enigmatic. After the overpowering bomb sequences, that’s a surprisingly subtle and complex tack for Nolan to take, but it works because the story is driven by the historical record and the characters, rather than by dogma, with the appalling moral consequences emerging naturally from the details. Nolan is not one to let any member of the audience miss his point, and the film’s final scene does ram it home. But first, he builds out the web of ambition, compromise, dreams, politics, jealousy, and inspiration — in a word, humanity — that unleashed the forces he stands in awe of. In Oppenheimer, man is the most dreadful machine of all.

New to rent

The Iron Claw

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

A wrestler diving at another wrestler in a ring.

Genre: Biographical sports drama
Run time: 2h 12m
Director: Sean Durkin
Cast: Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson

Zac Efron (Hairspray), Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), and Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness) star in this thrilling dramatization of the lives of the Von Erich brothers, a trio of professional wrestlers whose larger-than-life careers and success during the 1980s were marred by tragedy and struggle.

From our review:

The biopicification of such a horrendous, personal series of tragedies will sound crass to some. But Durkin doesn’t dilute the Von Erich story into direct-to-cable fluff. He’s performing a balancing act, aware that a sad story is only useful if people have the desire (and fortitude) to stay until the credits.

Miller’s Girl

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

An older man (Martin Freeman) sitting close next to a younger woman (Jenna Ortega) holding a cup.

Genre: Black comedy drama
Run time: 1h 33m
Director: Jade Halley Bartlett
Cast: Martin Freeman, Jenna Ortega, Dagmara Domińczyk

Martin Freeman (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) star in this thriller about a high school writing teacher who is seduced by a rich, bored, and manipulative young student. Things obviously go very, very badly.

The Crime Is Mine

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

Two women in green coats and hats sitting next to one another at a table.

Genre: Crime comedy
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert

Director François Ozon’s latest film follows the story of Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), an actress who is imprisoned for murdering a lecherous producer only to be acquitted for self-defense. With the help of her lawyer friend Pauline (Rebecca Marder), Madeleine puts on the performance of a lifetime and gains notoriety and infamy like nothing she’s experienced before.

Strange Way of Life

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

Genre: Western drama
Run time: 31m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal

This Western short film from director Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her) follows the story of two gunslingers (and former lovers) who reunite after 25 years apart.

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