The Invisible Man, available on-demand
Thanks to the virus closing movie theaters, Hollywood studios have decided to basically cut their losses and throw some of their new films online. One of these is horror experts Blumhouse's modern-day take on the classic Universal monster character The Invisible Man. Director Leigh Whannell, who wrote the original Saw, turns the premise into a tense, claustrophobic slasher where Elizabeth Moss' heroine must evade the title character, her abusive, mad-scientist ex who has turned invisible to torment her. Moss is best known for her role as Peggy Olson on Mad Men, but her leading role in the little-seen indie psychodrama Queen of Earth proves she's very capable of playing up paranoia. The Invisible Man is available to rent on Amazon and iTunes for $20. The Plot Against America on HBO
Inspired by the 2004 novel of the same name by Philip Roth, HBO’s latest marquee miniseries follows a very simple alternate-history premise: What if the U.S. government became explicitly fascist? Roth’s story takes us back to his suburban New Jersey in 1940, with one crucial change: Charles Lindbergh, the man who flew the first transatlantic flight, has defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency by campaigning on a far-right platform of isolationism and anti-Semitism, casting the young Roth and his family into a world of fear and uncertainty. Much of this fictional story is based in fact, as Lindbergh really was part of the, ahem, “America First” movement. There’s a small chance the show could lose sight of Jewish-American Roth’s vision and stray into the same Trump-era, liberal-baiting Nazisploitation of, say, Amazon’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Man in the High Castle, but HBO has recruited an all-star cast — Winona Ryder, John Turturro, and Zoe Kazan are among the featured players — led by none other than David Simon of The Wire and The Deuce fame. New episodes premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO, HBO Go, and HBO Now. Onward, available on-demand
Pixar's latest movie release was also curtailed by the coronavirus crisis, so Disney threw it up online after just two weeks in theaters. Featuring the voice talents of Chris Pratt and Tom Holland — gotta get that Marvel Studios synergy going — as well as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the heralded animation studio's latest uses a high fantasy-meets-modern society setting to tell a story about elven brothers trying to reunite with their father. Pixar has certainly seen better days — it's coming off a string of so-so sequels including Finding Dory and Incredibles 2 — but this film and the upcoming Soul will hopefully see the CG pioneer return to the high quality and creativity of its 2000s height. Onward is available to rent on Amazon and iTunes for $20. Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu
Celeste Ng's novel is one of those books that seems to pop up everywhere — book clubs, bookstore recommendation walls, your mom's nightstand — so it's natural that Hulu has decided to turn it into a TV miniseries. Set during the '90s in suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio, the story follows the wealthy, white Richardson family, led by matriarch Elena (Reese Witherspoon), who rents an apartment to itinerant artist Mia (Kerry Washington) and her daughter, who are black. As the two families interact, the racial and class boundaries between them come into sharper focus, and viewers learn how a crime committed early in the show came to happen. The first three episodes are available now, with new episodes released on Wednesdays, on Hulu.