New Movies to Watch This Week: ‘Eurovision Song Contest,’ ‘Irresistible’

J. Kim Murphy
·9 min read

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This weekend sees a trio of new comedies arriving to streaming and video-on-demand platforms, taking viewers to the disparate worlds of European music competitions to the campaign trail to tactical espionage.

Six years after his debut feature “Rosewater” was released, Jon Stewart has re-emerged with his second film, “Irresistible,” and reunited with “The Daily Show” correspondent Steve Carell. The cast also includes Rose Byrne, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace and Natasha Lyonne. Since most theaters across the country remain closed due to social distancing regulations, Focus Features has decided to give the movie a home premiere and price 48-hour digital rentals at $19.99.

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Both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are debuting exclusive comedies. Netflix’s “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” features Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic musical duo trying to make it big while competing in one of the largest music contests in the world. Meanwhile, the long-delayed “My Spy” has finally been released in the United States on Amazon Prime Video. The film features Dave Bautista as an espionage expert who gets saddled with watching over a grade schooler who is threatening to reveal his secret identity.

Meanwhile, independent and foreign films continue to debut through virtual cinemas, giving viewers plenty of opportunities to support theaters across the country, even without in-person screenings.

Here’s a complete rundown of the week’s new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.

Studio movie, straight to streaming:

Irresistible (Jon Stewart)
Distributor: Focus Features
Where to Find It: Lots of options on Focus Features’ website.
“Irresistible” scores points yet feels behind the curve. You wish it were a bold satirical bulletin, or maybe just Stewart’s pricelessly amusing version of a Christopher Guest movie. Instead, the film is a lot like a politician: It makes a big show of leading the viewer, but without rocking the boat. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review

New to Netflix

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)
Where to Find It: Netflix
It’s a badly shot one-joke movie that sits there and goes thud. “Eurovision Song Contest” is an example of what can happen when Netflix gives too much unsupervised leeway to an artist (as it has several times with Adam Sandler), to the point that the company becomes the artist’s enabler. They’re giving a green light, and a handsome budget, to an idea that needed far more hands-on development to get to a place called funny. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review

Athlete A (Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk)
Where to Find It: Netflix
“Athlete A,” Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s disturbing and illuminating documentary about the sexual-abuse scandal that struck the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team in 2016, is centered around an individual who was, in certain ways, a similar kind of serial abuser: Dr. Larry Nassar, the osteopathic physician who served, for 29 years, as the doctor for the USA Gymnastics women’s team. — Owen Gleiberman
Read the full review

Nobody Knows I'm Here (Gaspar Antillo)
Where to Find It: Netflix
Opposing impulses — sweet and sinister — sometimes threaten to break the film apart, but Jorge Garcia’s performance always pulls the two halves back together. In fact his Memo is such a vivid character, with such a clearly enunciated inner life (despite having a total of maybe 20 words of dialogue), that we can just about plausibly imagine the gloomy cast of the movie’s reality is simply the projection of how he sees the unfriendly, ill-intentioned outside world. — Jessica Kiang
Read the full review

Only on Amazon Prime Video

My Spy (Peter Segal)
Distributor: Amazon Studios
Where to Find It: Amazon Prime Video
There’s hardly a surprise along the way but Dave Bautista’s gruff charm and winning chemistry with talented young co-star Chloe Coleman (“Big Little Lies”) do just enough to carry a script by “RED” writers Jon and Erich Hoeber that pokes some good fun at action movie tropes but is hampered by too many groan-worthy gags. — Richard Kuipers
Read the full review

Independent films at virtual cinemas:

The Audition (Ina Weisse)
Distributor: Strand Releasing
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
The film rushes its notes a little as it gathers momentum: Hoss, at least, is calmly credible enough to sell some pretty tight emotional turnarounds. Otherwise, Weisse’s own form is unobtrusively immaculate, with Judith Kaufmann’s sober, autumn-toned lensing perfectly matching the stately tone of the Bach-heavy soundtrack: “The Audition” is often lovely to listen to, though you can never forget the human strain behind those strings. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review

Beats (Brian Welsh)
Distributor: Music Box Films
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
The movie is an alternately wistful and furious period piece — looking back at an unstable, exciting era of Cool Britannia and incipient cultural liberation that stalled somewhere along the way to Brexit Britain. That’s the subtext, at least: the surface is a rollicking buddy movie, both funny and stomach-churning as it follows two gawky 15-year-old lads seeking a debauched sendoff to childhood. — Guy Lodge
Read the full review

House of Hummingbird (Bora Kim)
Distributor: Well Go USA
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support
A touch overlong, the film doesn’t leave the most powerful emotional mark. Still, it lands on a poignant aftertaste through Kim’s serene attentiveness to the rhythms and details of everyday life with a peaceful style reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda. — Tomris Laffly
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No Small Matter (Daniel Alpert, Greg Jacobs, Jon Siskel)
Distributor: Abramorama
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
While the stylistic, factual and emotional substance is there, the net result is tilted more toward educating rather than entertaining. Overarching thematic content remains at surface level. There’s little that goes understated, especially in the classroom observation portions where the camera takes a passive role capturing preschoolers in their natural habitat. The filmmakers don’t seem to trust their audience to comprehend what’s being shown, so additional narration is layered on top to tell us about the science behind the behavior. — Courtney Howard
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A Regular Woman (Sherry Hormann)
Distributor: Corinth Films
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
The film owes much to its fine cast and impeccable technical package. Screenwriter Florian Oeller’s experience with German TV police procedurals such as “Tatort” and “Polizeiruf 110” stand him in good stead as he humanizes and develops his main character while still suspensefully deploying details of the case. — Alissa Simon
Read the full review

At Drive-In Theaters Nationwide

Followed (Antoine Le)
Distributor: Global View Entertainment
Where to Find It: Check drive-in theater listings on film’s official website
Purportedly inspired by the real-life Cecil Hotel’s violent history (though it was not used as a location), there are too many past hotel traumas and potential ghoulies raised here, none developed into a primary or particularly effective menace. By default, “Followed” becomes a pileup of attempted jump scares that seldom work because we rarely get a good look at them. — Dennis Harvey
Read the full review

Other releases debuting on streaming this week

The 11th Green (Christopher Munch)
Distributor: Antarctic Pictures
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
A journalist uncovers the truth behind President Eisenhower’s alleged involvement in extraterrestrial events.

All I Can Say Is (Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, Colleen Hennessy, Shannon Hoon)
Distributor: Oscilloscope
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
This documentary follows Shannon Hoon, the late lead singer of alt-rock band Blind Melon, who documented herself via video-diary documentary in the 1990s.

Aquaslash (Renaud Gauthier)
Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
A group of high school students have their water park weekend party interrupted by a slasher.

aTypical Wednesday (J. Lee)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
A Black man’s weekly therapy session takes a turn when a white kid is left behind and he tries to help the child get home.

Blade the Iron Cross (John Lechago)
Distributor: Full Moon Features
Where to Find It: Available on Full Moon Features
A psychic journalist awakens an angel of death. Together, they set out to defeat a Nazi scientist.

Daddy Issues (Laura Holliday)
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
A 20-something stand-up comic moves to Los Angeles to take over the fmaily business when her emotionally distant father dies.

Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things (Leslie Woodhead)
Distributor: Eagle Rock
Where to Find It: Choose a virtual cinema to support.
This documentary follows the unique life and times of Ella Fitzgerald

The Ghost of Peter Sellers (Peter Medak)
Distributor: 1091 Media
Where to Find It: Plenty of options on the film’s official website
This documentary offers a retrospective on comedy icon Peter Sellers and his ill-fated 1973 vehicle “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.”

The Last Tree (Shola Amoo)
Distributor: ArtMattan Productions
Where to Find It: Choose a video-on-demand service on the film’s website
A young man must decide where to settle when he returns to London from rural Lincolnshire to live with his birth mother.

Manchild: The Schea Cotton Story (Eric ‘Ptah’ Herbert)
Distributor: 1091
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
This documentary chronicles Los Angeles hoops star Schea Cotton through intimate accounts and people that knew him on an off the court.

Run with the Hunted (John Swab)
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
Fifteen years after the boy who saved her life ran away from home, a woman sets out to rediscover him.

Two Heads Creek (Jesse O’Brien)
Distributor: The Horror Collective
Where to Find It: Available on Amazon and other video-on-demand platforms
A butcher and his twin sister go searching for their birthmother and discover their hometown is hiding a secret.

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