Scoob!, Tom Hardy as Capone, and more new movies to stream from home this May

This first film from Andrew “Rapman” Onwubolo traffics in many of the same tropes as his hit YouTube series, : love, betrayal, and loyalties divided on the streets of London. Onwubolo features his own Greek chorus, rapping over the conflict between childhood friends Stephen Odubola and Michael Ward, as conflicting gang affiliations drag them into bloody strife. Now set for a VOD debut Stateside, Blue Story opened to strong reviews—and —in the U.K. last year, with critics praising the energy Onwubolo infused into a somewhat familiar story.

The reliably scene-stealing Hong Chau () takes a starring role as a single mom who brings her young son (Lucas Jaye) to a small town for the summer; the boy ends up forging a friendship with the gruff veteran next door, played by the late Brian Dennehy. While this might sound like the basic outline of any number of low-key indie dramas, director Andrew Ahn proved himself to be a sensitive filmmaker with his previous film, the micro-budgeted .

Just this once, Z is not for zombie. Three years after making his feature debut with the infant-themed horror of Still/Born, director Brandon Christensen kicks the age of his threat up to grade school. This hard-to-Google effort, about an 8-year-old boy with a homicidal imaginary friend, teams Christensen with co-writer Colin Minihan, who worked on the above-average found footage thriller Grave Encounters. That, coupled with the awards Z picked up at genre film festivals last year, bodes well for the film, which is going directly to the horror-themed streaming service Shudder.

British journalist Caitlin Moran adapts her own semi-autobiographical novel about a highly imaginative, deeply uncool teen in ’90s England who reinvents herself as a sarcastic, sexually aggressive music writer. The role seems custom made for its lead, Beanie Feldstein, though it does present new challenges for the star, including an English accent and dyed red hair. (It’s a horribly difficult color to grow out.) She’s on her own with the dye job, but Feldstein is supported on screen by an ensemble cast that includes Chris O’Dowd, Alfie Allen, and Emma Thompson. Reviews from Toronto, where the film premiered last autumn, were generally rosy.

Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s musical remake of the 1983 teen-movie romance between a Southern California girl and a punk boy was shot almost three years ago and originally scheduled for release in June 2018. The initial reason for its delay was the tedious antics of professional and co-star Logan Paul. But why focus on one YouTube dummy in a cast that includes ’s Jessica Rothe, as well as Chloe Bennet, Mae Whitman, Alicia Silverstone (presumably to provide valley cred), and Judy Greer? The delightful original Valley Girl didn’t need remaking, but the prospect of seeing a well-soundtracked comedy done up as a proper musical remains enticing.

With her marriage falling apart, a middle-aged college professor (Chiara Mastroianni) moves into the hotel across the street from her Paris apartment—only to discover a twentysomething version of her husband living in her suite. Before long, the hotel room starts filling up with more and more Ghost Of Indiscretions Past. Writer-director Christophe Honoré (, ) has built his career in part on making the kind of blasé bed-hopping relationship movies that are supposedly a specialty of the French. He seems to have stumbled on a whimsically inspired idea here; whether he manages to take it anywhere is another question.

At last, a rebuttal to the inaccuracies of Bio-Dome! This Sundance-approved documentary looks back on the Biosphere 2 project, in which eight scientists spent two years in a giant, enclosed replica of Earth’s ecosystem; the experiment made headlines the world over, in part because of rumors the participants were engaging in cult-like behavior. Of course, current events have probably thrown a new lens over its portrait of self-imposed isolation. Certainly, they’ve affected how you can watch Spaceship Earth, which Neon is making available through a wide array of viewing platforms, including the websites of local businesses and also “select pop-up city-scape projections.”

Like many low-budget horror movies, Porno revolves around a group of teenagers confined to a single location. Here, it’s a movie theater in an unnamed small town. But these teens aren’t the hard-partying horndogs seen in most films of its type. Instead, they’re clean-cut Christians (plus one straight-edge projectionist) who accidentally unleash a sexually voracious demon when they play a mysterious reel of film found in the theater’s basement. The juvenile chaos that ensues is a letdown compared to the diabolically clever premise. If you like your thrills cheap and silly, however, those are available in abundance—just watch out for the graphic genital mutilation.

Clementine was obviously completed long before this time of social distancing, but it does feature a quarantine of sorts: Karen (Otmara Marrero) leaves Los Angeles and holes up in the Pacific Northwest lakehouse of her ex-girlfriend. There she crosses paths with a mysterious younger woman (Sydney Sweeney), and the question of what their tentative relationship will become hangs over the whole film. Writer-director Lara Gallagher’s feature debut is a little slight, but fans of slow-burning psychological duels like and might want to check it out.

Five years after the disastrous  all but demolished his filmmaking career, ’s Josh Trank returns, now with a heavily made-up Tom Hardy in tow. Ostensibly a biopic, Trank’s Capone situates the infamous gangster at the very end of his life and career, paranoia over the ongoing attentions of the FBI enhanced by syphilis and dementia. Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon, and Kyle MacLachlan co-star, but the obvious attraction here is Hardy, descending once again into his favored spot as one of cinema’s go-to monstrous men.

Rithy Panh has spent most of his career looking back on the atrocity that shaped his childhood: the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, in which millions died in the work camps they were relocated to by the Khmer Rouge government. Like his superb, harrowing , Panh’s Graves Without A Name explores that dark chapter of personal and national history through nonfiction; having already laid out the horrifying specifics of life in the camps, the director now turns to the testimonials of survivors, all while embarking on a journey to uncover the remains of the family he lost.

Hollywood’s latest attempt to find a proper outlet for formidable  favorite Lauren Lapkus comes courtesy of Netflix’s Happy Madison movie pipeline, with David Spade playing the improbably disinterested object of Lapkus’ screwball affections. Co-starring Nick Swardson and Geoff Pierson (all doing their best, presumably, to distract from the 21-year age difference between their film’s ostensible romantic leads), The Wrong Missy sees Spade playing the straight man role for once, forced to cope with Lapkus’ semi-deranged Missy after he accidentally invites her to a Hawaiian work retreat.

is one of the most relentlessly rebooted animated franchises in history, with dozens of TV series and direct-to-video movies over the past 50 years. The newest iteration involves Shaggy (Will Forte), Velma (Gina Rodriguez), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried), and Fred (Zac Efron) getting mixed up in a further-reaching mystery than usual, featuring several other less immediately recognizable Hanna-Barbera characters—and supposedly intended to jumpstart an animated cinematic universe. It’s a little bittersweet, then, that the character’s first fully animated movie intended for the big screen (there were   hybrids in the early 2000s) is now heading straight to VOD, thanks to that meddling coronavirus. At least stir-crazy families can enjoy the kid’s-first-horror-thriller adventure at home—and, fingers crossed, maybe a few spooky drive-ins that aren’t really being haunted by a popcorn zombie.

There’s no shortage of films about waning twentysomething friendships. But this drama from NYC filmmaker and critic Dan Sallitt () approaches that familiar subject matter with intelligence and ambition, chronicling roughly a decade in the life of a self-destructive social worker (Norma Kuhling) and the middle-school bestie (Tallie Medel) starting to wonder how healthy their long-term relationship really is. The lead performances are superb; the nuances of both will come through clearly on the small screen.

Like Our Mothers, here’s a festival favorite about a young person on a journey and the dad they never knew. In this first feature from writer-director Ena Sendijarevic, the character is a Dutch teenager (Sara Luna Zoric) of Bosnian descent, traveling to meet her father on his deathbed. The film won a special award at last year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival, where The Hollywood Reporter “a distinctive and ultimately quite promising debut.”

Originally set to premiere at SXSW, Paramount’s Issa Rae-Kumail Nanjiani vehicle The Lovebirds was unceremoniously pushed out of the nest by the festival’s cancellation in early March. Now the film has found a safe place to nest at Netflix; it joins a growing subgenre of action-comedies, à la and , about ordinary, bored couples suddenly thrust into extraordinary life-and-death circumstances.

Despite the rather fatalistic ending to their across a picturesque European country, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are back for more wining, dining, and celebrity impressions in the fourth installment of their improbable Trip franchise. The destination this time is Greece, as the two comedians—playing themselves, as always—retrace the steps of Odysseus, presumably while gorging on the most lovingly prepared and filmed regional cuisine this side of a Travel Channel special. Spain largely exhausted the novelty of ’s comic premise, but maybe there’s extra vicarious pleasure to be had watching two old friends sit next each other, eat at restaurants, and enjoy the splendor of the outdoors on vacation.

This spirited blend of food porn and quirky biography was received at last year’s SXSW like a bowl of homemade guacamole and a basket of freshly fried chips. Not that it’s necessarily to the taste of its 97-year-old subject: Kennedy, a self-proclaimed “gastro-anthropologist” who reinvented herself as an expert on Mexican cuisine after moving to Mexico City in 1957, is known for her hard-nosed approach to both cooking and life. Kennedy’s love for traditional foodways and environmental causes inform what early reviews describe as a cheerful portrait—and, perhaps predictably, one that’s reluctant to engage with questions of cultural appropriation that have emerged since her heyday.

When you think 1950s New Mexico, what comes to mind? The obvious answer is the correct one for director Andrew Patterson’s debut feature, which plays off of the midcentury fascination with both analog technology and unidentified flying objects for an innovative take on a classic sci-fi setup that’s indebted to old-fashioned radio plays. Emerging out of nowhere at last year’s ultra-indie Slamdance Film Festival, The Vast Of Night is a very auspicious genre debut; even if aliens aren’t really your thing, it’s worth a watch, just so you can say you were hip to Patterson before he hit the big leagues.