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Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better.
Best New Movie to Stream This Weekend
It should not be as much of a surprise that the Mark Osborne, director of Kung Fu Panda and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, made something as highbrow as The Little Prince. Both those previous movies were smarter than their titles (and concepts) suggested. Now, he’s directed the latest film version of the beloved French novella The Little Prince. This version of it places the novella’s story within a frame story — filmed in a more modern, Pixar-ish style — of a young girl (voiced by Interstellar‘s Mackenzie Foy) discovering the book to begin with. Osborne told the Los Angeles Times that he made the character a little girl after seeing research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media about the gender disparity in animated films, which you have you admit is pretty boss. The story of The Little Prince itself is told in a breathtakingly gorgeous stop-motion style, and the contrast between both types of animation is jarring at first, but it tells a story.
Featuring an all-star voice cast that includes Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Benicio Del Toro, James Franco, and Ricky Gervais, it’s following a premiere at last May’s Cannes Film Festival with a Netflix premiere. It’s already won a César Award (essentially the French Oscars), so who are you to resist it?
[Stream The Little Prince on Netflix.]
Also Streaming on Netflix
Remember Clive Owen? How great he was in movies like Closer and Children of Men and Gosford Park? Remember how he lost out on the James Bond role to Daniel Craig, and then Hollywood promptly forgot what to do with him, and after making one too many box-office bombs — some of which, like, Duplicity with Julia Roberts, are actually excellent — he was sent to television, where he’s going great work that nobody is watching on The Knick. My point is that we shouldn’t let Clive Owen fade into that good night. So click on over to The Confirmation on Netflix, where Owen plays a crappy father who has to reconnect with his son. That son is played by Jared Lieberher, and while you don’t know his name, there’s a good chance you know his face, since he was the lead kid in both Midnight Special and St. Vincent, and he’s going to next be in a movie directed by Jurassic World‘s Colin Trevorrow.
