New Movies Streaming on HBO Max, Hulu and Disney Plus This Weekend, October 23-25

Happy weekend. Movie theaters are having a moment. Last week, You Can See Everything premiered with one of the best box office debuts ever for a documentary. Street Fighter is also in theaters. It’s doing well at the box office but not so well with critics. A new batch of releases arrives this weekend, from the DCU’s first horror movie, Clayface, to Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun.

If theaters aren’t your thing, there’s plenty to watch at home on streaming and VOD. The live-action Moana has finally reached Disney Plus. Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is also out, and Polygon calls it one of the best dramas of the year, with an acting showcase for its cast.

Other picks include the British romcom Finding Emily and the stop-motion children’s horror Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, which drew inspiration from classic horror movies like Frankenstein and Wolf Man. Happy watching.

1. Moana

• Available on Disney Plus
• Genre: Adventure
• Run time: 1h 55m
• Director: Thomas Kail
• Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Catherine Laga’aia, Jemaine Clement

The live-action Moana is now streaming. It’s the latest in Disney’s string of live-action remakes, which retell some of the company’s most beloved animated stories with real actors and photorealistic effects. Like many before it, Moana got poor reviews and raised a familiar question: Why does Disney keep making these?

From Polygon’s review:

Virtually every line, beat, and song in the new movie is identical to the 2016 version, apart from a few minor punch-ups or extra comedy tags here and there. At this point, there’s no question why Disney keeps green-lighting these live-action remakes: nearly all of them make huge piles of money. But there’s no artistic or aesthetic reason for the live-action Moana to exist. The best of Disney’s live-action rewrites add some sort of new spin or distinctive conceptual voice into the mix. The 2026 Moana is just a glossy digital clone of the original.

2. The Invite

• Available on HBO Max
• Genre: Comedy
• Run time: 1h 47m
• Director: Olivia Wilde
• Cast: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz

Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) live in San Francisco. Their marriage has grown so distant that the only thing they share is their kid, whom they love very much. On a spur-of-the-moment impulse, Angela invites their sexy upstairs neighbors (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) over for a double date night. The evening quickly turns into a relationship-breaking point.

3. Finding Emily

• Available on Peacock
• Genre: Romantic comedy
• Run time: 1h 50m
• Director: Alicia MacDonald
• Cast: Spike Fearn, Angourie Rice, Saidie Soverall

If you like British romcoms, Finding Emily was made for you. Owen (Spike Fearn) is a hopeless romantic who meets the girl of his dreams at a club. The phone number she gives him is missing a digit. He learns her name is Emily and sends a mass email to every Emily in the area, hoping to find her again. He ends up meeting a different Emily (Angourie Rice), a psychology student who decides to make him the subject of her college dissertation.

4. Love Language

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Romantic comedy
• Run time: 1h 44m
• Director: Joey Power
• Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Anthony Ramos, Manny Jacinto

Love Language follows Lou (Chloë Grace Moretz), a ghostwriter of wedding vows who gets caught up in some romantic drama of her own. A charming guy (Anthony Ramos) starts pursuing her. Then she takes a job ghostwriting for a wealthy businesswoman and discovers that the groom is her college best friend and longtime crush (Manny Jacinto).

5. Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Animation
• Run time: 1h 20m
• Directors: Matthew Walker, Steve Cox
• Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour

Shaun the Sheep keeps winning people over. The character first appeared in the 1995 short Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave and has since launched a successful franchise of silent films. The latest entry, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, follows Shaun as he turns to science to restore a torn-down pumpkin patch. As in all great horror films, a misunderstanding sets things off. The Farmer accidentally takes the potion and turns into a Bigfoot-like monster.

From Polygon’s interview with the film’s directors:

Made by stop-motion studio Aardman, of Wallace and Gromit fame, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom delivers a fun, fast-paced, family-friendly adventure which, just like Shaun’s other adventures, is entirely without dialogue. According to directors Matthew Walker and Steve Cox, both of whom previously worked on the Shaun the Sheep TV series, that is perhaps the biggest challenge in the making of a Shaun the Sheep feature-length movie.

6. By Any Means

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Thriller
• Run time: 1h 47m
• Director: Elegance Bratton
• Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie

Set in 1966, By Any Means follows an unlikely partnership between Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a young and idealistic FBI agent, and Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg, wearing a prosthetic nose), a hitman and informant. They’re forced to work together to solve a Ku Klux Klan murder, and their methods clash.

7. Tiny Fugitives

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Comedy
• Run time: 1h 39m
• Director: Michael Lewen
• Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Benjamin Pajak, Aaron Harris

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg produced Tiny Fugitives, which follows a group of kids in the last weeks of summer camp. Three of them hatch a plan to stay at camp forever. Their biggest obstacle is Bob (Johnny Knoxville), a 50-year-old camp counselor determined to send them back to their normal, boring lives.

8. The Musical

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Comedy
• Run time: 1h 24m
• Director: Giselle Bonilla
• Cast: Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs, Rob Lowe

Doug (Will Brill) is a failed playwright and middle school teacher who has just broken up with his girlfriend, fellow teacher Abigail (Gillian Jacobs). When he learns she’s dating the handsome and charming school principal (Rob Lowe), Doug decides to stage a show meant to destroy the principal’s reputation. That’s the setup of The Musical.

9. The Weight

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Thriller
• Run time: 1h 55m
• Director: Padraic McKinley
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julia Jones, Russell Crowe

The Weight is set in the Great Depression. Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is sent to a convict labor camp run by the controlling Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe). The warden soon puts Murphy in charge of a crew of men and one woman (Julia Jones) on a dangerous six-day trek to transport hundreds of stolen gold bricks.

10. One Spoon of Chocolate

• Available on Hulu
• Genre: Action
• Run time: 1h 54m
• Director: RZA
• Cast: Shameik Moore, Blair Underwood, Paris Jackson

Randy (Shameik Moore) is a U.S. veteran and ex-con who moves to a small town in Ohio. He reconnects with his cousin (RJ Cyler) and hopes to build a normal life. But racist locals run the town, and Randy ends up taking matters into his own hands in One Spoon of Chocolate.

Source: Polygon