Spend some time with some dysfunctional families in this week’s new movies on VOD. First up, Andy Garcia stars in Big Gold Brick, about a wealthy man named Floyd Devereaux who hits a writer named Samuel (Emory Cohen) with his car, and offers his home as a place to recuperate in exchange for Samuel helping Floyd write his biography. It’s a zany, sometimes surrealist comedy, but if you want something closer to reality (as in, a movie where everyone communicates via group chat), there’s Family Squares, a movie that’s rich with comedy legends and character actors like Henry Winkler, Ann Dowd, and Judy Greer, dealing with a family member’s imminent death via Zoom.
Give Or Take rounds out our trio of films about family this week. Director Paul Riccio (who co-wrote the film with star Jamie Effros) has created a dramedy that about a man dealing with the death of his father and all the unexpected details that need to be sorted in the aftermath. Martin (Effros) is New Yorker who returns to his childhood home on Cape Cod after the death of his father. Intent on selling the home to make a buck, he instead has to deal with the fact that his father’s new husband, Ted (Norbert Leo Butz) doesn’t want to sell. It’s a strange dynamic for Martin, grieving alongside the man that represented a hidden side to his father, but the film, as with the rest of this week’s top picks, is a great example of how your family and their secrets and quirks tend to define who you are, for better or worse. Cheri Oteri provides some comedy as the local realtor who will stop at nothing for her seller’s commission.
These are just a few of the titles that are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube, and through your cable service this week. Check out what movies are available to buy or rent on demand now!
Big Gold Brick is a movie that hopes that in the future it will be a cult classic because there are so many quirks and bizarre choices in the film, and so many above-the-title actors involved, including Andy Garcia, Oscar Isaac and Megan Fox. Garcia plays Floyd Deveraux, a wealthy man who hits a writer, Samuel (Emory Cohen), with his car. Feeling bad about it, he invites Samuel to recuperate at his mansion, which is also inhabited by his sexy, adulterous wife (Megan Fox), his adult daughter Lily (Lucy Hale), and his goth teenage son Edward (Leonidas Castrounis). Everyone in the house is not quite what they seemed, once Samuel starts to interview them all as he works on a biography of Floyd, but Samuel isn’t either, thanks to the weird hallucinations he suffers after the accident.
Where to stream Big Gold Brick
Grandma Mabel (June Squibb) is on her deathbed and her dying wish is to reunite with her family over Zoom. Her family, it should be mentioned, is a who’s who of comedians and actors, including Veep stars Timothy Simons and Sam Richardson, plus Casey Rose Wilson, Ann Dowd and Margo Martindale (with narration by Rob Reiner). But once she has her family together, Grandma Mabel has a few bombs to drop on them too, which leads the rest of the family to divulge their own secrets.
Where to stream Family Squares
To Buy:
To Rent:
Family Squares
Big Gold Brick
Give Or Take
Let Me Be Me
My Best Part
I’ll Find You
Creation Stories
France (2022)
The Desperate Hour
Desperate Riders
Samland
Cardi B: The Hustle
The Extinction Of Fireflies
Broadcast (2022)
When I’m Done Dying
Firstness
Potato Dreams of America
Strawberry Mansion
Gasoline Alley
The Burning Sea
Friends And Strangers
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
