10 New Movies To Watch This Weekend on HBO, Hulu, and Disney Plus (October 23-25)
A tense and hilarious couples drama, a Disney live-action remake, and more
Happy weekend! Movie theaters are having a moment. Last week, You Can See Everything premiered, and it had one of the best box office debuts for a documentary ever. Street Fighter is also out, performing well at the box office but not so well when it comes to critics. This weekend brings a new batch of movies, from the DCU’s first horror movie Clayface, to Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun.
If that’s not enough to get you into theaters, that’s okay. There’s plenty of stuff to watch from home, from streaming to VOD, with the live-action version of Moana finally available to stream on Disney Plus. Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is also out, delivering one of the best dramas of the year and an acting showcase from its talented cast.
Other noteworthy inclusions are the British romcom Finding Emily, the stop-motion children’s horror Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (which delightfully drew inspiration from classical horror movies like Frankenstein and Wolf Man), and much more. 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 version of Moana is out on streaming. It's the latest in Disney's string of live-action remakes, which faithfully retell some of the company's most beloved animated stories with real actors and photorealistic effects. Like many before it, Moana received poor reviews and prompted a familiar question: Why does Disney keep making these?
Per our Polygon 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.
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, and their marriage has grown so distant that the only thing they have in common is their kid, whom they love very much. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Angela invites their sexy upstairs neighbors (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) for a double date night that rapidly devolves 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’re into British romcoms, Finding Emily was made for you. The story follows Owen (Spike Fearn), a hopeless romantic who meets the girl of his dreams at a club, except the phone number he gets from her is missing a digit. He soon learns that the girl's name is Emily and sends out a mass email to every Emily in the area in hopes of reuniting with her. It's then that he meets another 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 for wedding vows, as she gets involved in some romantic drama of her own. The story picks up as a charming guy (Anthony Ramos) starts pursuing her, and she gets a job as the ghostwriter for a wealthy businesswoman, discovering that her college best friend and long-time crush is the groom (Manny Jacinto).
5 Shaun the Sheep: The Beast Mossy Bottom
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Animation
- Run time: 1h 20m
- Director: Matthew Walker, Steve Cox
- Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour
Shaun the Sheep continues to delight people. The character, who first appeared in the 1995 short Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave, has launched a successful franchise of silent films. The latest addition is Shaun the Sheep: The Beast Mossy Bottom, following Shaun as he turns to science to restore a torn-down pumpkin patch. Like all great horror films, there’s a misunderstanding. The Farmer accidentally takes the potion and transforms into a Bigfoot-like monster.
Per our Polygon interview with Shaun the Sheep’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.
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 the unlikely partnership of Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a young and idealistic FBI agent, and Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg and a prosthetic nose), a hitman and informant. The two are forced to collaborate to solve a Ku Klux Klan murder, with their methods clashing.
7 Tiny Fugitives
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Comedy
- Run time: 1h 39m
- Director: Michael Lewen
- Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Benjamin Pajak, Aaron Harris
Produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Tiny Fugitives follows a group of kids in the last weeks of summer camp. As three of them devise a plot to stay at the camp forever, they run into their biggest obstacle: Bob (Johnny Knoxville), a 50-year-old camp counselor determined to get 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
The Musical follows Doug (Will Brill), a failed playwright and middle school teacher who recently broke up with his girlfriend, fellow teacher Abigail (Gillian Jacobs). After learning that Abigail is dating the handsome and charming school principal (Rob Lowe), Doug decides to put on a production of a show that will destroy the principal’s reputation.
9 The Weight
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 55m
- Director: Padraic McKinley
- Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julia Jones, Russell Crowe
Set in the Great Depression, The Weight follows Murphy (Ethan Hawke), a man who’s sent to a convict labor camp managed by the controlling Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe), who soon tasks Murphy with leading 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
One Spoon of Chocolate follows Randy (Shameik Moore), a U.S. veteran and ex-con who relocates to a small town in Ohio, where he reconnects with his cousin (RJ Cyler) and hopes to establish a normal life. The problem is that the town is run by racist locals, pushing Randy to take matters into his own hands.