The week of 6 to 12 September splits fairly cleanly between star-driven titles leaving theaters for digital rental and smaller genre pictures opening in cinemas, with Disney's live-action Moana the biggest of the films heading home.
Mutiny is the week's top home-viewing pull, an action thriller starring Jason Statham as Cole Reed, a man framed for his billionaire boss's murder who boards a cargo ship seeking revenge and ends up caught in an international conspiracy instead. It opened in theaters on 21 August and moves to premium digital rental on Tuesday 8 September, just 18 days later. Jean-Francois Richet directs, and he has spent his career making exactly this kind of lean, propulsive genre film.
Moana, the live-action remake of Disney's 2016 animated hit, arrives to rent or buy digitally on Tuesday 8 September after a summer in theaters, with Catherine Laga'aia taking over the title role and Dwayne Johnson returning as Maui. It plays the original's biggest ideas far too safe, retracing the animated film beat for beat without finding a reason of its own to exist, and its 32% on Rotten Tomatoes is about right.
Hope opens in US theaters on Wednesday 9 September, a creature feature about a mysterious monster terrorizing the remote fishing village of Hope Harbor. Directed by Na Hong-jin, whose last film The Wailing came out a decade ago, it premiered at Cannes in May, and Neon is putting it into around 1,500 theaters, the widest US opening for a Korean-language film since Parasite. It is the week's most ambitious swing by some distance.
Elsewhere, the romantic comedy One Night Only also arrives on digital on 8 September alongside Mutiny and Moana, while cinemas add the cartel thriller Runner and Practical Magic 2 on Friday 11 September, the sequel that reunites Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters a quarter century after the original, directed this time by Susanne Bier.
For straightforward escapism at home, Mutiny delivers exactly what its trailer promises. If you would rather gamble on ambitious spectacle in a theater, Hope is the more interesting bet than Moana's safer nostalgia play, and if witchy sisterhood is more your speed, Practical Magic 2 picks up a genuinely beloved story a quarter century on.
