The best movies to watch on Peacock right now

In contrast to the 1957 version of 3:10 To Yuma, the 50-year-anniversary remake directed by Walk The Line’s James Mangold jumps into a different action scene that establishes the desperate situation of Arizona rancher Christian Bale, in debt and about to lose his land. Screenwriting team Michael Brandt and Derek Haas (2 Fast 2 Furious) spend more time digging into their characters than Leonard did, as if determined to make sure viewers know and care about all of them before they start facing hails of bullets. It’s hard to tell, since Bale and Crowe both play their cards close to the chest, embracing the Western aesthetic with tight, controlled performances. The film itself is more expressive, with its gory murders, big chase scenes, explosions, and other major expansions of the originally short tale. Brandt and Haas go too far in trying to pack their characters with extra humanizing characteristics—Bale has a peg leg, Crowe likes to sketch his surroundings—and their version of the ending seems ridiculously improbable. But Mangold delivers a taut modern take on a lesser classic, preserving the High Noon themes about doing the right thing against all odds, and injecting a more modern pacing and urgency without going overboard. His film isn’t Leonard’s classic, but it’s a solid, genre-respecting Western in its own right. [Tasha Robinson]

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Asteroid City will feel familiar to anyone who has seen any of his previous movies. It has many eccentric characters who all speak in monotone and a few carry around a precious prop that obviously means much to them and defines their character. A camera around the neck or a notebook and pen in the hand or back pocket. There’s some sort of narrator only tangentially related to the film’s main story. That plot is many layered; it’s about a play within a TV show within the film. The sets and costumes are intricately detailed and there’s always something sumptuous to look at on screen. Fully detailed and ravishing to the eye, every frame looks like a tableau come to life. Anderson builds gorgeous worlds. They are filled with such detail that there’s always something to marvel at. Yet narratively Asteroid City doesn’t fully come together. It remains a beautiful artifact but, despite a few moments of resonant storytelling, is too easily forgettable. [Murtada Elfadl]

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Vin Diesel is the entire organizing principle of the Fast & Furious movies—if they can even be said to have one. In Fast X, he isn’t onscreen overmuch, but when he’s not there the others talk about “Dom” the way Nathaniel Hawthorne’s parsons talked about God. What’s he doing? What should we do to please him? What would he do if he were me? It must be psychologically exhausting to be Dom Toretto’s friend. That’s especially true in Fast X, where the villain’s sole purpose is to get revenge on Dom by knocking off enough of his “family” to make Dom suffer grievously before he gets popped too. The villain in question is a way-over-the-top Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes, psychotic son of Fast Five villain Hernan (Joaquim de Almeida), and heir to not much of anything. Dom and company wiped Hernan out when they memorably stole his hotel-sized vault in Buenos Aires by dragging it away behind their cars. Dom then used it to bash the man and his mercenary armies to death on a freeway that does not exist, in a scene that arguably launched the demented lunacy phase of the Fast franchise, and which is recapitulated here both in flashback and in a new variation involving a rolling neutron bomb. But the focus inside the avalanche of stunts, asymmetrical plot elements, and mismatched genre tropes is still what Vin, and his alter ego Dom, would call “values.” Faith. Family. Honor. Loyalty. Because Dom is the last of a dying breed. He’s seen things a man shouldn’t had oughta seen, and done things a man shouldn’t had oughta done. He chuckles a lot when he’s with his family, but he rarely makes a joke and he almost never laughs. He’s in a grief state all the time, attentive to what’s missing, like a war veteran who’s lost too many comrades to the enemy, except Dom’s enemy is Life. And Diesel believes in Dom so hard that for two hours and 10 minutes, he makes you believe in him too. [Ray Greene]

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At a mere 130 minutes, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is the shortest of the eight films in the Harry Potter series. But for better and worse, it never feels like it. Director David Yates (who helmed the previous three installments of the series as well) and screenwriter Steve Kloves (who scripted all the films except Order Of The Phoenix) start the film exactly where Part 1 left off, and with the same moody, somber, unrushed tone. But what dragged endlessly in Part 1 simply seems appropriate here, as the story gently reabsorbs viewers before taking off. Then Yates and Kloves ramp the action up to manic levels—even including two cartoonishly brash sequences at the Gringotts bank that hearken back to Chris Columbus’ two Potter films—and find ways to draw out the final battle, extending it beyond J.K. Rowling’s original novel. [Tasha Robinson]

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Whannell’s The Invisible Man is a sleek upgrade of his past horror work—and, for that matter, of Upgrade, the fun genre exercise he concocted a couple of years ago. As bloodier mayhem ramps up, the scares feel less jumpy and cheap than in an Insidious sequel; the cinematography by Stefan Duscio and musical score by Benjamin Wallfisch are polished to a particularly unnerving gleam to match Adrian’s glassy, shadowy compound. That said, the smooth surfaces don’t quite reach the edges of the film, where some of the supporting characters have a B-movie roughness in both their writing and performance. The Invisible Man is striking and tense, but not exactly rich; even some of the warmer characters like James and Sydney are mostly just peril fodder.

Moss, though, classes things up considerably. If there’s something a little bit queasy about turning a Universal monster movie into a domestic abuse/stalker thriller in the Sleeping With The Enemy vein, her performance functions as a dose of anti-nausea medicine. As with her less genre-friendly work with Alex Ross Perry, Moss combines skittish vulnerability with mesmerizing steeliness, the former stabilizing into the latter for moments of cornered resourcefulness. Her targets include some additional non-rampaging men who still earn Cecilia’s ire: She memorably describes one as the “jellyfish version” of her hateful ex. Moss also strengthens the notion that this is a monster movie unusually interested in looking past the toxic-male machinations of its famous character and toward the lasting horrors left in his wake. In other words, the stuff that previous movies, and real life, have sometimes tried to turn invisible. [Jesse Hassenger]

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The Northman is still a lot of fun scene by scene, even without a strong through line connecting them all. Though lacking a well-realized emotional register, the film achieves an elemental, opulent vibe that splits the difference between Braveheart and Gladiator, or maybe The Revenant and The Lion King. Meanwhile, director Robert Eggers infuses the dialogue with a light, giggly touch that leavens the film’s heavy visuals with self-conscious humor. Consequently, Eggers’ immersive approach and stylistic flair creates one wild, applause-worthy combat scene after another, reminding viewers why he’s one of the most unique visual artists working today. While The Northman isn’t his best film, it’s probably his most, putting absolutely everything on screen at the biggest scale to tell the most brutal, and beautiful, story possible. [Tomris Laffly]

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Hugh Grant blinks compulsively at another impenetrable American woman in Notting Hill, a companion piece to 1994's Four Weddings And A Funeral. This time out, Grant plays the owner of a failing bookshop cozily entrenched in London’s fashionable Notting Hill neighborhood. Somewhat recently divorced and shuffling through life behind a stiff upper lip, Grant’s existence becomes disrupted following a chance encounter with an American movie star played by Julia Roberts. They fall in love, maybe, but encounter a good number of obstacles as the possible romance stretches out over the course of a couple of years. It may boil down to little more than a minor variation on Four Weddings’ formula, but it’s an interesting and entertaining one. Literate, witty, and allowing for the possibility of real unhappiness, writer Richard Curtis’ romantic comedies have invented a better formula. [Keith Phipps]

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Renfield is set in New Orleans, but it’s mostly shot on soundstages and generic slum streets. That’s okay. In fact, what makes this movie a charmer is its fealty to the type of horror flick you’d rent on VHS from a drug store in 1987. That means it doesn’t take itself too seriously, is not weighted down by a complicated plot, and is primarily concerned with packing in as many gross-outs as it can into its 93 minutes. Though Nicholas Hoult is charming as he struggles to find his inner strength as a goth English boy stuck in derelict New Orleans, Renfield lives or dies by Nic Cage camping it up. And he delivers. (This is not the first time he’s gone vampire batty, of course, if you remember 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss.) Cage in celadon-colored makeup craving the blood of cheerleaders “not for sexual reasons” is a cheap laugh, but a good laugh. The Academy Award-winning actor is well aware of what he’s bringing to the table these days, and sometimes a band should get out there and play the hits. If this movie is successful, and there’s no reason to think it won’t be, it might inspire a sequel or two. There are far worse curses. [Jordan Hoffman]

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The uncertainty that ran rampant during the first wave of COVID-19 offered plenty of day-to-day horror—a banal trip to the grocery store suddenly felt rife with things to feel afraid of. But in a new thriller from Blumhouse (and written by Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer scribe Kevin Williamson), COVID-19 exposure is a far less fearsome fate than being trapped in quarantine with a mysterious assailant.

Directed by Alone’s John Hyams and co-written by Katelyn Crabb, Sick follows two best friends, Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Bethlehem Million), travel to a secluded lake house in April 2020 to wait out a quarantine period. Soon enough, a few more friends join the group, hoping to bring some levity to their isolation period. “Quarantine can be fun,” Parker’s love interest DJ (Dylan Sprayberry) opines.

As it turns out, DJ really should have knocked on wood. When a killer silently slips into the home and begins terrorizing the group, the walls of a mansion that once felt enormous start closing in—but hey, at least he’s wearing a mask! [Hattie Lindert]

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Perhaps The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s greatest asset is its clever reliance on the treasure trove of IP that Nintendo has to offer. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (the duo behind Teen Titans Go!) string together Easter eggs and witty references in a quantity that rivals Steven Spielberg’s 2018 adventure Ready Player One; Mario eats at “Punch-Out Pizza,” an “antique store” in Toadstool Kingdom sells pixelated coins, Donkey Kong is introduced with the DK Rap, and a duel between DK and Mario is attended by a hoard of past Kongs. The Super Mario 64 eel, King Bomb-omb, Baby Luigi, and Rosalina’s blue Luma all make appearances. The film includes sequences that look like the old side-scroll Mario games and it even pays homage to the Mario Kart 64 Rainbow Road shortcut. The most ingenious element of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, however, is easily the score from Brian Tyler, which brilliantly ties in dozens of iconic sound cues from the games with ’80s chart toppers and fresh new music. Ultimately, Nintendo fans are sure to find the second Mario film (unlike the first) well worth a look, and with a runtime of only 92 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. [Matthew Huff]

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in Terrifier, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) terrorized a small town, targeting several women, including Tara (Jenna Kanell), her sister Vicky (Samantha Scaffidi), and Tara’s friend, Dawn (Catherine Corcoran). He chopped one naked victim in half, mutilated a couple of pizza shop employees and, after putting Vicky through the ringer, ate her face. Writer-producer-director-practical effects wizard Damien Leone never cut away from the gore in his slasher comedy, and Thornton sent chills up people’s spines as the nonspeaking, demented, seemingly unkillable boogeyman. And thus was born a cult favorite film and character (though Leone actually introduced Art, played by a different actor, in a couple of shorts that he later folded into his 2013 horror anthology film, All Hallow’s Eve). [Ian Spelling]

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