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One month down, 11 more to go — but the end of January shouldn’t pass without some sort of celebration.
If you have a Hulu subscription, treat yourself to some of the streamer’s best new movies.
Action movie fans are in for a wild ride — literally — when they watch Liam Neeson take out bad guys from his car in Retribution.
Fans of Bridgerton or period romances will swoon over The Invisible Woman, which is based on a true story involving the famous English author Charles Dickens.
Finally, stream one of the Coen Brothers’ most underrated movies ever, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
‘Retribution’ (2023)
Matt Turner (Liam Neeson) is a financier whose day starts pretty ordinarily by driving his two kids to school. Things take a dramatic turn when Matt receives a call from an unknown person, who claims that each seat in his car is rigged with an explosive that will detonate if the occupant leaves. After witnessing another car blow up as a result of the bomber, Matt believes him and follows his orders to retrieve money from a safety deposit box at a nearby bank. But the bomber wants more than Matt’s money — he wants to tarnish his reputation so the public believes he’s a criminal.
What makes Retribution stand out from all the other Liam Neeson action pictures is its unique premise — for most of the movie, the Taken actor is confined to a snazzy four-door sedan. That means the intensity is dialed up to 100 as Neeson drives throughout Berlin doing the bidding of a man who can wipe out most of his family in an instant. Retribution is surprisingly suspenseful, with a final twist so obvious, you’ll slap yourself for not catching it earlier. (I know I did.) The movie is silly and illogical, but what else would you expect from a late-stage Neeson movie?
Retribution is streaming on Hulu.
‘The Invisible Woman’ (2013)
No, it’s not a sequel to The Invisible Man — The Invisible Woman refers to Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), a real-life actress who lived in London during the 1850s. When she was 18, she met and started a lifelong relationship with Charles Dickens (Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes), who was already famous for his novels Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Dickens is also married with children when the two first meet, which results in an affair that’s carefully hidden from public view. But how long can Nelly be Dickens’ “invisible woman” before her own reputation suffers permanent damage in an era that frowned upon adultery?
The Invisible Woman is less a biopic of Dickens as a Great Author and more a snapshot of a particular time and place that prevented these two people from being together. Stuck in a dead marriage, Dickens wants to divorce his wife and marry Nelly, but the resulting scandal would hurt Nelly and sully his reputation. Image was everything in the Victorian era, and the movie faithfully captures the clandestine nature of Charles and Nelly’s forbidden love affair. Costume dramas run the risk of being dry and polite, but the passions run deep in The Invisible Woman, resulting in a surprisingly lively period piece with more parallels to our modern age than you’d think.
The Invisible Woman is streaming on Hulu.
‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ (2000)
Later this year, Christopher Nolan will unveil his take on Homer’s classic tale, The Odyssey, but if you can’t wait until July 17, try watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? Directed by the Coen Brothers, this version is set in Mississippi during the late 1930s and follows three escaped convicts — Ulysses (George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) as they try to make their way home while avoiding the authorities. Along the way, they befriend a blues musician, record a hit song under the pseudonym “the Soggy Bottom Boys,” meet notorious gangster Babyface Nelson and escape a deadly Klu Klux Klan rally. There’s also a cyclops of sorts and three alluring women who act similarly to The Odyssey’s lethal sirens of the sea.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a very loose adaptation of The Odyssey that uses the best parts of Homer’s epic work to tell a fun and freewheeling story of three dim-witted Southern guys who just want to get back home. Filled with toe-tappin’ tunes from T Bone Burnett, who won a Grammy for Best Album for his work, and lush, sepia-toned cinematography from Roger Deakins, the movie evokes a lost era of American life and filmmaking. Only the Coen Brothers could’ve conceived of a musical comedy about racism that’s massively entertaining while not being offensive in the slightest.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is streaming on Hulu.
