AI anxieties are dominating streaming this week. Tron: Ares gets 3D printed onto video on demand, continuing the franchise about programmers getting sucked into the digital world of the Grid with a story of an AI soldier going rogue. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the final installment of the nearly 30-year-old Mission Impossible franchise, follows Tom Cruise as he tries to save the world from an AI that’s taken control of all nukes.
For some good old-fashioned monsters, head to Netflix to watch giant trolls duke it out in Troll 2. Aaron Eckhart returns as a K-9 officer fighting gangs with his pup in Muzzle: City of Wolves, which you can sniff out on VOD.
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 Netflix
Troll 2
Genre: Monster
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Roar Uthaug
Cast: Ine Marie Wilmann, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen
Norway’s answer to Godzilla is back as a new giant troll emerges to terrorize the country. The heroes of the 2022 film have to reunite to deal with the threat with the help of a friendly troll. The goofy B-movie is from the same writer, director, and producers as the original, which became the most popular non-English-language film on Netflix.
New on MGM Plus
She Rides Shotgun
Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 2h
Director: Nick Rowland
Cast: Taron Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Rob Yang
After being released from prison, Nate (Taron Egerton of Kingsman: The Secret Service) is hunted by a gang and corrupt cops and forced to go on the run with his estranged 11-year-old daughter (Ana Sophia Heger). As they reconnect, Nate tries to figure out who he can trust while fighting to protect his child’s life and innocence.
New on Paramount Plus
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Genre: Spy action
Run time: 2h 50m
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames
The finale to the nearly 30-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.
New on Shudder
Reflection in a Dead Diamond
Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1h 27m
Director: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Cast: Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw
A grindhouse riff on James Bond, Reflection in a Dead Diamond follows John Diman (Fabio Testi), a 70-year-old retired spy living in luxury in the French Riviera. When his neighbor goes missing, John gets caught up in memories of his dangerous and glamorous life in the ‘60s and loses his grip on what’s real.
New to rent
Frontier Crucible
Genre: Western
Run time: 2h 5m
Director: Travis Mills
Cast: Myles Clohessy, Thomas Jane, Ryan Masson
When a wagon full of medical supplies needed to treat a fever epidemic is captured by Apaches in 1874 Arizona, Merrick Beckford (Myles Clohessy) is asked to recover it and transport it south. He enlists a group of outlaws for help, but their journey gets even more dangerous after they accidentally kill an Apache scout.
Hunting Season
Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 33m
Director: Raja Collins
Cast: Mel Gibson, Shelley Hennig, Sofia Hublitz
When 12-year-old Tag (Sofia Hublitz) finds a severely wounded woman on the shore of the river near the isolated cabin she shares with her overprotective, survivalist dad Bowdrie (Mel Gibson), they learn that a vicious drug lord is operating nearby. Bowdrie will have to use all his skills and weapons to protect them.
Man Finds Tape
Genre: Supernatural horror
Run time: 1h 24m
Director: Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman
Cast: Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnuson, John Gholson
Lucas Page (William Magnuson) runs the viral YouTube channel “Man Finds Tape,” where he posts creepy home videos. But when Lucas finds surveillance footage that shows a murder in his hometown, he asks his sister Lynn (Kelsey Pribilski) to investigate the crime. The two discover supernatural phenomena tied to their own family.
Muzzle: City of Wolves
Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 30m
Director: John Stalberg Jr.
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Tanya van Graan
After taking down the cartel responsible for killing his partner in John Stalberg Jr.’s 2023 thriller Muzzle, Jake Rosser (Aaron Eckhart) just wants to live a quiet life with his wife, kid, and dog. But when they’re targeted by a brutal cartel, Jake and his new canine partner wage war against drug traffickers and corrupt officials.
Play Dirty
Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 2h 5m
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar
Mark Wahlberg plays Parker, the expert thief from Richard Stark’s book series, in a new caper where he assembles a crew to take on the New York mob and an entire country in order to steal a recovered sunken treasure worth $1 billion. The ambitious scheme involves plenty of shooting and double crosses.
Tron: Ares
Genre: Science fiction action
Run time: 1h 59m
Director: Joachim Rønning
Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters
Rival tech CEOs Eve Kim (Greta Lee) and Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) are racing to find a way to make digital constructs permanent in the real world. When Julian sends his AI super-soldier Ares (Jared Leto) to steal code from Eve, he winds up losing control of his creations. Since this is a Tron film, expect light cycle racing, a Jeff Bridges cameo, and lots of CGI.
From our review:
As thin as the characters and plot are, Tron: Ares’ action sequences are stunning. The 29-minute time limit for game constructs imported into the physical world forces the story to move at a frantic pace, as AIs race to reach their targets before they disintegrate. It also allows numerous fights to have clever resolutions, with characters working to run out the clock or prevent the digital constructs from respawning.
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