Every month, we’ll highlight the biggest and most interesting movies coming to services like Apple TV, Amazon, and Fandango at Home, usually available for rent around $19.99. All release dates subject to change. To see last month’s selections, click here.
The holiday season has shifted from Halloween to Thanksgiving, but horror films that dominated the box office during spooky season are now finding their way home to premium video on demand, including iconic monsters like the Smile Demon, Art the Clown, and Donald J. Trump. There’s a bit of something for everyone this November on PVOD, and everyone could use an escape this particular November for, well, reasons. Here are the best new movies coming to your living room this month.
Directed by Ali Abbasi, 122 minutes
It’s not a coincidence that this one is coming home just four days before the most important election of your lifetime. It’s the controversial story of Donald J. Trump, charting his ascendance from ordinary real-estate mogul in the ’70s to king of New York in the ’80s. It’s basically a riff on Frankenstein with Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn playing the good doctor to Sebastian Stan’s monster. Abbasi’s film reveals how Trump took Cohn’s philosophies and built his entire persona on them, including elements like refusing to concede defeat and fighting long after you’ve lost.
Directed by Aaron Schimberg, 112 minutes
Double the Stan! Even better here than he is in The Apprentice, a very different Sebastian Stan plays a man with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a radical procedure to make him look like the Winter Soldier instead. Of course, he learns that our inner character doesn’t change with our appearance, a truth showcased by the arrival of the phenomenal Adam Pearson as someone so charming and comfortable in his own skin that he brings all of the film’s themes home. Pearson just landed a Gotham Award nomination this week, hopefully starting an awards-season run that will bring him the attention he deserves.
November 12
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Megalopolis
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 138 minutes
One of the most beloved directors of all time finally brought his dream project to the screen in 2024 … and it totally freaked people out. Spending over $100 million of his own money to make it, Coppola’s vision is that of a future in which an architect (Adam Driver) can stop time and shift reality — not unlike a filmmaker. The themes of Megalopolis are undeniably muddled, and some of the acting is laughable, but one has to admire the commitment to craft on the part of everyone involved. Coppola takes wild, huge swings with the movie, and he misses often, but it’s nice to know there are artists out there still willing to swing for the fences.
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Saturday Night
Directed by Jason Reitman, 109 minutes
The director of Up in the Air loosely chronicles the 100 or so minutes before the premiere episode of the most influential TV show in history: Saturday Night Live. Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans) plays an anxious Lorne Michaels, trying to wrangle his cast of not-ready-for-prime-time players into a cohesive whole before the cameras go live. Cory Michael Smith, Lamorne Morris, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and many more fill out a massive ensemble of people playing some of the most famous comic personalities of all time.
November 19
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Smile 2
Directed by Parker Finn, 127 minutes
The rare horror sequel that’s better than the original, Parker Finn’s follow-up to his surprise hit is more ambitious, terrifying, and successful. One of the reasons for that is the stunning work from Naomi Scott as a pop singer who’s terrorized by what is basically an emotional parasite, a supernatural force that feeds on fear, trauma, anxiety, and mental illness. Playing with deeper themes about the ownership people feel over pop stars, Finn doesn’t just repeat the beats of the first movie but finds new avenues to explore. And Scott is fearless through all of it, giving one of the most effective horror performances of the decade.
November 26
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Terrifier 3
Directed by Damien Leone, 125 minutes
Bring Art the Clown to your Thanksgiving Party! He’s got rats! The third film about the sociopathic clown largely repeats the pros and cons of the last movie — killer makeup effects and a great performance buried in a repetitive flick with a story that’s impossible to care about — but that’s more than enough for fans of this increasingly popular franchise. The Terrifier movies have been an interesting counter to “elevated horror,” a study in pure gore that’s hitting a nerve for people who just want to see crazy shit in the genre. It definitely scratches that itch.
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We Live in Time
Directed by John Crowley, 118 minutes
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star in this moving romantic dramedy with a twist. The trick here is that their love story is told out of chronological order, shifting back and forth through the early days of their relationship, through starting a family, to her cancer diagnosis in an order that could be called emotional more than traditional. The shuffling allows some of the clichés to go down easier, but the real reason this is worth a PVOD rental price is simple: Garfield and Pugh rule. In particular, the man who played Spider-Man three times (for now) has one of the most effective “sad faces” in the history of cinema.
