By John Corrado

New releases for the week of August 16th, 2024.

Theatrical Releases:

Alien: Romulus (Wide Release): The biggest of this week’s many new releases is Alien: Romulus, director Fede Alvarez’s new addition to the Alien franchise. As I wrote in my review, the film “works because it is trying to be an old school Alien movie, plain and simple.” Alvarez builds a solid amount of tension, with strong performances from leads Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson. It can feel somewhat derivative of the earlier films, but is still a well-crafted sci-fi creature feature that delivers the suspense and grisly alien body horror. (Full Review)

Good One (Limited Release): India Donaldson’s debut feature is an engaging, stripped down character study centred around a camping trip with 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias), her divorced dad (James Le Gros), and his old best friend (Danny McCarthy). As I wrote in my review, “Donaldson takes this fairly simple setup and uses it to offer a minimalist study of human nature and subtly interpreted gender roles.” The approach works due to the naturalistic performances of the leads. (Full Review)

Close to You (Limited Release): Elliot Page delivers his first leading performance post-transition in this deeply personal portrait of a trans man going home to his family for the first time post-transition. I saw this one when it premiered at TIFF last year, and found it to be a moving family drama with very good performances. The film was also largely improvised, which adds a very interesting energy to it. (TIFF 2023 Review)

More Releases: Lost in the Shuffle (Limited), Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Limited), My Penguin Friend (Limited), Skincare (Limited), The Deliverance (TIFF Lightbox)

Streaming Releases:

Daughters (Netflix), The Union (Netflix), Jackpot! (Prime Video), The Union (Netflix),