After nearly 20 years, the Mission Impossible series (allegedly) came to a close in May with Tom Cruise performing yet another feat of ludicrous stuntwork. This time, that includes jumping between biplanes in Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The flashback-packed finale is nearly three hours long, but now that it’s landed on VOD you can press pause to go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a weekend watch that won’t raise your blood pressure, Pixar pulls at the heart strings with the sci-fi adventure Elio, which is available to rent for the first time. And for a medium amount of stress, Brad Pitt stars as an aging racing driver in F1, which was a smash hit at the box office and speeds onto VOD this weekend.
Here’s a rundown of the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, including the biggest, best, and most popular new movies you can watch at home right now.
New on AMC Plus
Tornado
- Genre: Action drama
- Run time: 1h 31m
- Director: John Maclean
- Cast: Kōki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden
Embracing the connections between Westerns and samurai stories, Tornado is a tale of vengeance set in 1790s Scotland. The film, from Slow West writer-director John Maclean, follows a young woman tracking down the members of a gang who killed her samurai-turned-puppeteer father.
New on Hulu
Eenie Meanie
- Genre: Heist thriller
- Run time: 1h 34m
- Director: Shawn Simmons
- Cast: Samara Weaving, Karl Glusman, Jermaine Fowler
Veteran getaway driver Edie (Samara Weaving) is one of the best in the business, but her greatest weakness is her unreliable on-again, off-again boyfriend John (Karl Glusman). When John winds up deep in debt, Edie has to pull off a casino heist to save his life.
New on Peacock
Night of the Zoopocalypse
- Genre: Horror comedy
- Run time: 1h 31m
- Directors: Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis
- Cast: Gabbi Kosmidis, Scott Thompson, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis), a young timber wolf, thinks her grandma is being paranoid when she trains her to be prepared for disaster despite the fact that they live in a zoo. But when a meteorite starts turning animals into mutated gummy monsters, Gracie gets the chance to put those skills to use as she teams up with a mountain lion (David Harbour) and other critters to survive.
New to rent
Elio
- Genre: Sci-fi adventure
- Run time: 1h 38m
- Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
- Cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly
A lonely, orphaned young boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens gets his wish in Pixar’s ambitious science fiction movie. Mistaken for Earth’s leader, Elio (Yonas Kibreab) is taken to a strange and vibrant world threatened by the warlord Blood Emperor Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) where he has to learn to deal with his grief and let people in.
From our review:
Elio himself is an enjoyable character, the kind of kid who’s meant to be both a bit aspirational for kid audiences, and simultaneously sympathetic and exasperating for adult viewers. His goofy dedication to alien abduction and his willingness to do whatever it takes to stay in the Communiverse are strong story drivers that push the narrative and character-building forward at the same time. But they aren’t always relatable. This is where the risk of weird retro sci-fi stories comes in: Enough of Elio is dedicated to exploring wild animated dreamscapes and bizarre settings and creatures that there isn’t always room to unpack the story points that most need unpacking.
F1 the Movie
- Genre: Sports drama
- Run time: 2h 36m
- Director: Joseph Kosinski
- Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon
Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and co-writer Ehren Kruger reunite for another dad movie. Brad Pitt plays an aging, gambling-addicted Formula One racer leading a team of underdogs. Filming took place during Grand Prix weekends and featured sequences based on real races, with many F1 drivers making cameos.
House on Eden
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 18m
- Director: Kris Collins
- Cast: Kris Collins, Celina Myers, Jason-Christopher Mayer
TikTok star Kris Collins writes, directs, and leads this low-budget found footage film about a team of ghost-hunting vloggers who get more scares than they wanted from their latest outing. Kris, who plays a version of herself, redirects the team from the cemetery they were planning on filming at to an abandoned house in the hopes of spiking her follower count with unscripted content.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
- Genre: Spy action
- Run time: 2h 50m
- Director: Christopher McQuarrie
- Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames
The finale to the nearly 20-year-old franchise connects plots and characters from all its films with callbacks and flashbacks as Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team try to stop the rogue AI known as The Entity from wiping out humanity. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but the stunts are incredible, which is why you’re watching a Mission Impossible movie anyways.
From our review:
The Final Reckoning has it all — including two and a half hours of dead-in-the-water character drama and endless platitudes about Ethan’s destiny. The sheer number of flashbacks to previous franchise installments puts The Final Reckoning in a category with Seinfeld’s notorious clip show finale. Seeing two action-movie geniuses like Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie making a movie that is so often deadly boring, I wondered whether wrapping up the M:I series with a sense of finality was the true impossible mission all along.
Lilly Lives Alone
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 40m
- Director: Martin Melnick
- Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Shannon Beeby, Ryan Jonze
The 10-year anniversary of her daughter’s death sends Lilly (Shannon Beeby) spiraling into drug use and hallucinations. As she grapples with traumatic memories and her lonely present punctuated by meaningless hookups, Lilly struggles to cope with her grief and the expectations of the people around her.
