Avatar 2, Netflix’s Murder Mystery 2, and every new movie to watch at home

It’s finally here: Avatar: The Way of Water is at last available for home viewing. James Cameron’s latest epic blockbuster won hearts, minds, and the box office in late 2022, and while audiences still have to wait a bit longer for its Disney Plus (or maybe HBO Max) premiere, you can now watch The Way of Water at home.

That’s not all that’s new to streaming this week: The sequel to the fun Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston Netflix romantic comedy Murder Mystery drops this week, Tetris arrives on Apple TV, and Creed III also makes its way to digital storefronts for rent and purchase.

New on Netflix

Murder Mystery 2

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Genre: Romantic comedy/mystery
Run time: 1h 29m
Director: Jeremy Garelick
Cast: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Mark Strong

The first Murder Mystery was a delightful surprise, as far as Netflix original movies go — a charming and funny romantic comedy that doubled as a crime movie, with very game movie stars in the leading roles and veteran TV director Kyle Newacheck pulling it all together. The sequel sees the reins passed off from Newacheck to newcomer Jeremy Garelick, and our leading couple traveling to their friend’s wedding only to encounter more murders and kidnappings.

Kill Boksoon

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix

Genre: Action
Run time: 2h 17m
Director: Sung-hyun Byun
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Hwang Jung-min, Fahim Fazli

A top-level assassin has to balance her two lives: that of an elite killer, and that of a mother of a teenage girl. When she makes a career-defining decision to repair her relationship with her daughter that puts her job in question, she becomes hunted by the people she’s spent her life working for.

New on Hulu

Rye Lane

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Photo: Chris Harris/Searchlight Pictures

Genre: Romantic comedy
Run time: 1h 22m
Director: Raine Allen-Miller
Cast: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Poppy Allen-Quarmby

Two young people recovering from tough breakups find connection in each other in this London-set romance. Rye Lane is the feature debut of director Raine Allen-Miller, and was nominated for Best Feature Film in the International Narrative Competition at the Cleveland International Film Festival.

Hunt

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: Magnet Releasing

Genre: Spy thriller
Run time: 2h 11m
Director: Lee Jung-jae
Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Jung Woo-sung, Jeon Hye-jin

Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae directed and starred in this period-piece spy thriller. It’s a complex mystery with plenty of drama, so you might want to consider touching up on 1980s Korean politics first in order to follow the complicated narrative.

From our review:

This isn’t a simple good-guy/bad-guy story: It’s about the limited choices in a fascist regime, for citizens and enforcers alike, and about the extremes it drives them to. Both men are rats in the same trap, looking for every possible path where they might chew their way out. It turns them against each other, but also makes them alike in more ways than they’d want to admit. The results are intense, engaging, and sometimes hard to watch, given that the real victims here are the people caught in the crossfire. But for fans of action cinema and espionage drama in particular, Hunt is a must-see. The tone and execution are highly different from Squid Game, but it’s just as much a murderous battle for supremacy where the outcome is never obvious.

New on Apple

Tetris

Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus

Image: Apple

Genre: Biographical film
Run time: 1h 58m
Director: Jon S. Baird
Cast: Taron Egerton, Mara Huf, Miles Barrow

No, this isn’t an adaptation of the game itself, as fun as that might be. Instead, Tetris tells the story of how the iconic game came to be one of the most popular video games across the globe. It appears to play out more like a spy movie than a business story.

From our review:

Tetris’ creation and its worldwide spread is a great story, but the complexities of its thorny rights issues and lawsuits don’t fit with the cartoon villainy and heavy dramatization of Apple’s new film. Despite Baird and Pink’s best attempts at cinematic tension and surprise twists, this story plays better elsewhere, in the retellings with a firmer grip on reality.

New on Showtime

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Where to watch: Available to stream on Showtime

Photo: Gwen Capistran/A24

Genre: Black-comedy horror
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Halina Reijn
Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha’la Herrold

A young woman named Bee (Maria Bakalova) and her girlfriend, Sophie (Amandla Stenberg), are invited out to a hurricane party at a secluded mansion by Sophie’s friends: a spoiled group of rich 20-somethings with a penchant for drama. Upon playing a find-the-killer murder-mystery party game, the group quickly learns that a real killer is in their midst.

From our review:

Bodies Bodies Bodies starts to play like a compressed Scream, sped up as if the filmmakers believe they’re playing to a generation that can’t keep both eyes on a full-length feature film. The filmmakers make the compelling choice to ratchet up both the bloodshed and the absurdity in tandem. Rather than letting satire give way to horror-movie tension, they make the recriminations and defensiveness increasingly louder and more ridiculous as the characters feel more endangered. At one point, mortal peril is interrupted by the equally shocking betrayal that one friend may be hate-listening to another’s podcast.

New on Shudder

The Unheard

Image: AMC Networks

Genre: Horror
Run time: 2h 5m
Director: Jeffrey A. Brown
Cast: Lachlan Watson, Michele Hicks, Brendan Meyer

When a young woman decides to try out an experimental procedure for her hearing loss, she ends up hearing things. Spooky things! Things related to the disappearance of her missing mother. It’s an interesting premise, and the second feature film from director Jeffrey A. Brown (The Beach House).

New on VOD

Avatar: The Way of Water

Where to watch: Available to purchase for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: 20th Century Studios

Genre: Sci-fi adventure
Run time: 3h 12m
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver

James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to his 2009 Academy Award-winning sci-fi adventure epic Avatar has finally arrived.

Set 16 years after the original film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Na’vi lover Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are forced to flee their home with their family to seek refuge with the aquatic Metkayina Na’vi tribe after a human army — led by a resurrected Na’vi Avatar clone of Jake’s nemesis, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) — returns to Pandora to despoil the planet of its natural resources… and eradicate any Na’vi who stand in their path.

From our review:

Avatar: The Way of Water tells a simple but engaging story in an imaginative, beautiful environment. It’s more than three hours long, and it unfortunately takes close to a full third of that time to get rolling. But once it does — once former human Marine turned Pandoran native Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their brood of four half-Na’vi, half-Avatar children take refuge from the forest in a watery part of the world — the sense of wonder hits like a tidal wave.

Creed III

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Eli Ade/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

Genre: Sports drama
Run time: 1h 56m
Director: Michael B. Jordan
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors

Michael B. Jordan makes his directorial debut with the third installment of the highly acclaimed spinoff of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky series. Creed III sees Adonis Creed (Jordan), the long-lost son of Rocky’s onetime rival, Apollo Creed, at the top of the world having retired as heavyweight boxing champion. That all changes, however, when Adonis comes face to face with his childhood friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), who has his own long-held aspirations of becoming a heavyweight champ.

From our review:

Creed III faces the unique challenge of bringing the Rocky series out of Sylvester Stallone’s shadow. The ninth installment of the franchise that started with 1976’s Rocky is the first to feature Stallone neither on screen nor in a creative capacity. This time, the directorial reins have been handed to Michael B. Jordan, who plays Rocky’s protege Adonis in the Creed movies. In his directorial debut, Jordan, a self-professed anime and manga fan, imbues the spinoff/threequel with a cinematic zest the series has never seen before, expanding the visual language of the Hollywood boxing movie in remarkable ways.

Smoking Causes Coughing

Where to watch: Available to rent for $7.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Magnet Releasing

Genre: Fantasy comedy
Run time: 1h 20m
Director: Quentin Dupieux
Cast: Gilles Lellouche, Vincent Lacoste, Anaïs Demoustier

The new film from director Quentin Dupieux (Rubber), also known by his musical alias Mr. Oizo, is an irreverent parody of Japanese sci-fi tokusatsu (“special effects”) films and the iconic Super Sentai (aka Power Rangers) TV franchise.

After getting their asses kicked by an alien turtle monster, the five superheroes known as “the Tobacco Force” are sent to a team-building retreat to improve their working relationships. Things, as you can probably expect, do not go exactly according to plan.

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham

Where to watch: Available to rent for $14.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Warner Bros. Animation

Genre: Superhero fantasy/horror
Run time: 1h 26m
Directors: Christopher Berkeley, Sam Liu
Cast: David Giuntoli, Gideon Adlon, Karan Brar

Set in 1920s Gotham, this supernatural spin on Batman sees an “ancient evil” awaken that Batman must thwart. The voice cast includes Gideon Adlon (Sick), David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad), John DiMaggio (Futurama), and Patrick Fabian (Better Call Saul), among others.

Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

Where to watch: Available to rent for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Sony Pictures Classics

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Lizzie Gottlieb
Cast: Robert Caro, Robert Gottlieb, Bill Clinton

This documentary follows the story of acclaimed journalist and biographer Robert Caro, author of 1974’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and his longtime editor, Robert Gottlieb. The film focuses on both Caro’s and Gottlieb’s lives, the impact of their work together, and the former’s goal to complete the final volume of a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson before he dies.

Champions

Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Shauna Townley/Focus Features

Genre: Sports comedy
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Bobby Farrelly
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Kaitlin Olson, Ernie Hudson

Bobby Farrelly, better known as one half of the Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary) makes his solo directing debut in this remake of a Spanish movie from 2018. Champions follows Woody Harrelson’s character, Marcus Marakovich, a hotheaded minor league basketball coach who gets arrested and ends up coaching a team of players with intellectual disabilities as a part of his community service.