Elvis Presley in Concert,’ stream ‘Christy’ on HBO Max

Welcome to another edition of Trust Me, I Watch Everything, a weekly guide to all the new movies released on Friday. I’m Brett Arnold, film critic and host of At the Movies Again, a weekly Siskel & Ebert-style movie review show.

In theaters this week: an intelligent modern update on the horror staple Faces of Death, and a light romantic-comedy in You, Me and Tuscany.

At home, you can rent or buy EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert or the critically maligned box-office bomb The Bride!

And on streaming services you’re likely already paying for, consider Sydney Sweeney’s best performance yet in Christy, and a new natural disaster/shark movie in Netflix’s Thrash.

Read on, as there’s a lot more, and there’s always something for everyone.

🎥 What to watch in theaters

My recommendation: Faces of Death

Why you should see it: This cleverly conceived “remake” of the infamous 1978 mondo horror film, which became a video store backroom staple and, as a character in the film describes, “the first viral video, before the internet invented them,” is far better than any movie bearing the Faces of Death title thus far. It’s a genuinely insightful, incredibly dark satire about the nightmare that is our online existence and how desensitized to violence we’ve all become as a result of our algorithm-ruled lives.

In the film from Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei — who are behind the 2018 Netflix film Cam, another smart movie about the internet, as well as the more recent How to Blow Up a Pipeline — a content moderator (Barbie Ferreira) stumbles upon a series of violent videos that appear to re-enact death scenes from the 1978 film Faces of Death. In an online world where nothing can be trusted, she must determine whether the violence is fake or unfolding in real time.

Faces of Death brilliantly incorporates the original film into its text, using the IP as a jumping-off point to craft a suspenseful and upsetting modern slasher movie, leaning into its exploitation origins just enough to satisfy genre fans while also delivering thoughtful commentary on how social media and the “everything is content” era have changed our relationship to horrific imagery.

It’s common nowadays to see actual footage of human suffering and death as you scroll on the app where you watch makeup tutorials and “get ready with me” videos. The movie’s crass juxtaposition of these images isn’t their invention; it’s literally what it’s like to scroll social media, now with the added layer of “is this fake/AI or real,” which the movie also delves into, despite being filmed in 2023, before the current discourse. It’s prophetic!

The film not so subtly suggests that the killer (Dacre Montgomery, who is chilling and totally committed in this role) and the tech companies enabling the spread of gruesome viral content operate under the same principles. There’s a great scene in which the protagonist blocks actually helpful content, such as a Narcan instructional video (flagged for “drug use”) and a video of a woman showing how to put a condom on (flagged for its sexual nature), vs. the footage of actual murders, because the algorithm loves stuff that people can’t resist digitally rubbernecking. “Give the people what they want,” says the boss man at the tech company that hosts the videos, a line also spoken by the film’s killer.

I also appreciated the several ways in which the film provokes and confronts its audience; younger viewers may, unfortunately, relate to the dopamine hit the killer gets as likes and comments pour in on his latest post. It’s quite scary in its depiction of how easily someone with bad intentions can use the internet to their advantage, as in the scene where the killer adds a tracking link to a URL and quickly baits the protagonist.

By the time we get a creepy third-act monologue from the killer explaining his motivations, it hit me that Faces of Death is essentially doing Scream better than the last few Wes Craven-less sequels. It also uses the film’s legacy — specifically, the “is it real or is it fake?” aspect — to great effect.

Faces of Death may be more traditional than you’d expect, solely based on its title, but it’s also far more cogent and relevant than you’d ever expect from a movie in this series. Whatever you consider it to be — a remake, a reimagining or a sequel with meta elements, there’s a roadmap here for filmmakers looking to update memorable works without resorting to the usual tropes and nostalgia. Let’s hope they follow it!

What other critics are saying: It’s getting great marks! Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times writes, “The most terrifying element in a web-based thriller isn’t the people onscreen. It’s the desensitized, anonymous messages in the chat box devouring the carnage.” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich says, “It’s to the credit of Goldhaber’s film that Faces of Death is able to satisfy on a basic, audience-forward level even as its concept has clear priority over the more visceral expectations of its genre.”

How to watch: Faces of Death is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Get tickets

But that’s not all …

• Exit 8: This Japanese adaptation of a puzzle-based video game is creepy and compelling until it reveals itself, like most modern horror films, to be About Something. A man trapped in an endless subway passageway sets out for the exit. The rules of his quest are simple: If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don’t, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. Even a single oversight will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor? And yes, that’s a metaphor! It’s appropriately disorienting and a smart way to adapt a video game, but whenever it veered into deeper meaning, it lost me. Get tickets.

• You, Me & Tuscany: It’s nice to see a proper romantic-comedy in theaters again, even if this one isn’t particularly good. Halle Bailey (from Disney’s The Little Mermaid reboot) and Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton fame star in this light and breezy Italy-set trifle about an American woman and a reserved British man embarking on a whirlwind romance during a destination wedding in coastal Italy. The movie bends over backward to make Bailey’s character redeemable, sanding off the edges of the character and providing an excuse for every far-fetched scenario she finds herself in. If the movie leaned into the fact that she’s a con artist who falls in love — she is a housesitter for rich people who steals their clothes and pretends to be them — it’d work far better than the one in which she is quietly doing a sketchy thing but actually also has a bunch of reasons we should root for her, including a dead mom and a dream of being a chef. It is also a bit chaste for the genre, feeling more like the Disney Channel family-friendly version of the story than a sexy or romantic one. Get tickets.

💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy

My recommendation: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert

Why you should see it: Baz Luhrmann’s cinematic obsession with Elvis Presley continues. Years after his Austin Butler-starring biopic made a bunch of money, the filmmaker has returned with an excellent documentary-concert film hybrid that showcases not only the sheer power of Presley performing live, but also the endearing goofball he appeared to be.

The film features never-before-seen footage and recordings of Presley in concert during his Las Vegas residency at the later stage of his career, as well as candid rehearsal clips that play a lot like Peter Jackson’s illuminating The Beatles: Get Back, in which you see the band interact privately in a way that fans rarely get to see. (Presley actually covers a number of Beatles tunes in this.)

It’s a delight to watch, and it’s impressive as an example of the work that went into making his live show so terrific. He comes off not only as incredibly talented, but as a master capital-E Entertainer — one of the best to ever live — and I particularly loved the exploration of his relationship with his audience, which was rivaled maybe only by … well, the Beatles.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a real treat for fans of the man and/or his music, and the film is at its best when it forgoes the documentary stuff to just let the show itself shine.

What other critics are saying: It’s beloved! Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times writes, “I think Luhrmann is praying that in a thousand years, some alien civilization will discover this footage and build a whole religion around the thrall Elvis’s hip thrusts had over a crowd.” The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney says, “It’s as if Luhrmann were conducting a séance, awakening Elvis from the afterlife with a raw vitality and outsize energy that are rare even among the living.”

How to watch: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

My not-a-recommendation: The Bride!

Why you should skip it: Maggie Gylenhaal’s primal scream of a film, The Bride!, really earns that exclamation point, though it ultimately leaves you with the impression that a question mark would’ve been more fitting. It’s one of those films critics talk about as “ambitious” or a “big swing,” which is code for “it cost a ton of money and is an absolute mess in every way.”

This reimagining of Bride of Frankenstein opens with newly minted Oscar winner Jessie Buckley portraying Mary Shelley, the long-deceased author of Frankenstein, as a sort of vengeful ghost here to introduce a sequel that’s worthy of her. It then sets up the convoluted actual story, which involves Shelley inhabiting, by way of possession, a 1930s flapper/gangster’s moll named Ida, who is dead a scene after she’s introduced.

The dynamic here is best described as “Ida is Gollum, and Mary Shelley is Smeagol,” which is a sentence I can’t believe I’m typing, and a concept I can’t believe made it from script to screen in this mega-budget movie. It’s a big choice that doesn’t work, and Buckley’s overacting is off-putting. It’s not all her fault, though, as the role was doomed on a script level, and nobody could’ve made those histrioinics palatable.

We are soon introduced to Christian Bale’s Frankenstein’s monster, aka Frank, as he seeks out a new doctor to help make him a companion. He’s spent many years as a lonely drifter and would like to have “intercourse.” Bale gives the best and perhaps only grounded performance in the film, really making you feel that loneliness and yearning for a partner in crime. That sentiment gets literal when the pair become lovers on the lam in a Bonnie and Clyde subplot that leads to a half-assed detective yarn featuring Gylenhaal’s real-life husband, Peter Sarsgaard, as a crime-solving buffoon and Penélope Cruz playing the tired cliché of the secretary who proves to be a more competent detective than he is.

All of this nonsense is meant to serve the feminist ideals at its center, which may be well-meaning but come off as completely dated and first-thought. The messaging often manifests in very literal ways, like when Buckley shouts “Me too!” over and over, or when their crime spree inspires women across the country to don the Bride’s ink-splotched look, for reasons that are never explained and are never mentioned again. There’s no shortage of ideas presented here; the problem is that none of them are fleshed out in any meaningful way, so the movie doesn’t seem to know what it’s actually trying to say beyond sneaking in some buzzwords.

No matter how badly you want to support risky big-budget filmmaking and/or feminist reinterpretations of iconic texts, The Bride! shows the limits of conceiving a project messaging-first and figuring out the rest afterward. It’s a mess, no matter how impressive it may be on a visual and aesthetic level.

What other critics are saying: It’s been universally panned. Time magazine’s Stephanie Zacharek calls it “an intellectual joyride without the joy.” Rolling Stone’s David Fear, however, has a more forgiving take, writing, “The more you watch the actors give life to the central idea of a meeting of scarred bodies and equal minds, the more you feel like you’re watching something not just perversely over-the-top but personal.”

How to watch: The Bride! is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

But that’s not all …

• Psycho Killer: In the procedural horror-thriller Psycho Killer, Cold Storage producer turned filmmaker Gavin Polone’s feature directorial debut, budding scream queen Georgina Campbell plays a police officer who is tasked with locating a serial killer after witnessing her husband’s murder. It’s meant to be a cat-and-mouse thriller, with Campbell’s character going after the killer herself, but the movie is an incoherent mess, clearly edited to oblivion so that alleged key plot threads don’t rear their heads until the final minutes, leaving the viewer with questions rather than answers. The selling point here is that it’s written by Andrew Kevin Walker of Seven fame, and the movie absolutely feels pulled from that era, when every other movie was a knockoff of it. This isn’t a particularly good one of those, despite the writer’s pedigree. Rent or buy.

📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

My recommendation: Christy

Why you should watch it: Sydney Sweeney gives the best performance of her budding career in Christy.

Based on shocking true events, Christy Martin (Sweeney) never imagined life beyond her small-town roots in West Virginia until she discovered a knack for punching people. Fueled by grit, raw determination and an unshakable desire to win, she charges into the world of boxing under the guidance of her trainer and manager turned husband, Jim (Ben Foster). But while Christy flaunts a fiery persona in the ring, her toughest battles unfold outside it — confronting family, identity and a relationship that just might become life-or-death.

What starts as a typical sports rags-to-riches drama transforms into a terrifying look at long-term domestic abuse. Foster is positively evil as Jim, who wants to control every aspect of his wife’s life, including who she spends time with, which has deeper implications, given that Christy is essentially forced back into the closet by her conservative family. It all builds to an unfortunate situation that feels both inevitable and avoidable, though Martin’s story is not without hope.

There are certainly cliché elements — Merritt Wever as the doting mother feels plucked out of an archetype catalog, and the training montage stuff is pretty routine. What sets it apart from a typical boxing film is Sweeney’s ferocious lead performance, which sells both the badass and vulnerable sides of the character.

What other critics are saying: The response is very mixed. Kristy Puchko at Mashable warns, “Don’t buy into the hype. This movie is a mess,” though IndieWire’s Kate Erbland was more on my side of things, writing that “Sweeney disappears into the role, not just changing her hair color, eye color, accent and way of moving, but her general air, her overall mien, the space she takes up in a room.”

How to watch: Christy is now streaming on HBO Max.

Watch on HBO Max

My not-quite-a-recommendation: Thrash

Why you should watch it: No, this isn’t a sequel to the 2019 alligator movie Crawl, which boasts an eerily similar premise; it’s just a movie that pretty blatantly rips it off!

When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks. The main protagonist is a pregnant woman played by Phoebe Dynevor, but it’s more of an ensemble piece, cutting between multiple perspectives as the storm hits the town.

Simply put, “the woman is pregnant now” isn’t enough of a twist to differentiate this from Crawl, and that movie was directed by French genre filmmaker Alexandra Aja and sported more memorable and genuinely tense sequences than this one, helmed by Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola, the guy behind such films as Violent Night and Dead Snow.

It’s so bland and devoid of personality that it’s hard not to compare it to the far better Crawl at every turn, which is the same movie if you sub in alligators for the sharks, and Barry Pepper for Djimon Hounsou. The worst part is the cheap-looking CGI that mars the entire thing, undercutting every action sequence. Beyond that, it’s way too self-serious and attempts to be a metaphor for climate change, if Adam McKay’s producer credit didn’t already tip you off to that.

Thrash goes down easy — it’s under 80 minutes before credits — but never really provides you any reason to sink your teeth into it.

What other critics are saying: Reviews are very mixed. William Bibbiani at TheWrap dug it well enough, writing, “If logic had anything to do with it, that would mean Thrash was a bad movie. But logic has no place in these soggy halls. Thrash may be arbitrary but it’s too energetic to be bad.” The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee, however, writes “Dynevor … is stuck with a character so comically careless that it’s hard to spend much time fretting over what happens to her.”

How to watch: Thrash is now streaming on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix

But that’s not all …

• Outcome: This bizarre comedy from writer-director Jonah Hill stars Keanu Reeves as a beloved actor with a dark secret, out to make amends with those he’s wronged before an unseedy revelation about his life is made public. There’s not much more to it than that, and it’s impossible not to place its filmmaker in Reeves’s shoes and feel that this is some sort of apology from Hill, who has faced public scrutiny in recent years. It’s an extremely cynical film, a Hollywood satire about image laundering, how celebrities are presented to the public, and how manufactured and fake that facade can be. None of the film’s ideas are new, and the comedy mostly comes from one-liners spouted from Hill himself, or Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer, who play Reeves’s close friends who aren’t ever really honest with him. Casting Reeves, no matter how strong his performance in the film, feels off, like Hill is hiding behind an extremely beloved figure. The stand-out of the film, strangely, is Martin Scorsese’s performance in a small but impactful role that actually gets at what the rest of the movie struggles to. Stream on Apple TV

• Sirāt: This Oscar-nominated foreign film is critically acclaimed, but I found it to be a tedious pastiche of some of my favorite stuff; Gaspar Noé’s Climax by way of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer in the desert sounds awesome, but it’s so boring. despite the occasional “holy shit” moment. A man and his son arrive at a rave lost in the mountains of Morocco. They are looking for Marina, their daughter and sister, who disappeared months ago at another rave. Driven by fate, they decide to follow a group of ravers in search of one last party, in hopes Marina will be there. It attempts to be upsetting and clearly evokes the October 7 attacks, but is too flippant to make an impact. Ultimately, like all movies, it’s about found family. Stream on Hulu

That’s all for this week — we’ll see you next week at the movies!

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily list of the most popular movies of the year.