Hello, Yahoo readers! My name is Brett Arnold, film critic and host of Roger & Me, a weekly Siskel & Ebert-style movie review show, and I’m back with another edition of Trust Me, I Watch Everything.

This weekend, James Cameron’s highly anticipated third Avatar film hits theaters nationwide, as does Paul Feig’s adaptation of the bestselling book The Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried.

At home, you can rent or buy action-thriller Sisu: Road to Revenge or catch up with the new Now You See Me sequel and the new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man.

🎥 What to watch in theaters

My recommendation: The Housemaid

Why you should see it: Amanda Seyfried, in particular, is having an absolute blast in The Housemaid, Paul Feig’s adaptation of the bestselling novel that, if the movie is any indication, must read like a trashy airport paperback, and I mean that as a compliment!

Hoping for a fresh start, a young woman (Sydney Sweeney) becomes a live-in maid for a wealthy couple (Seyfried’s Nina and her husband, played by Brandon Sklenar), who harbor sinister secrets.

We quickly learn that Sweeney’s character might have a secret of her own, but the movie is clever and twisty enough that just when you think you’ve got a handle on what’s going on, the rug gets pulled out from under you.

It’s as sexy as it is kind of bats*** crazy, and the less said about what transpires, the better. It’s tough to talk about without spoiling the fun, as any comparison I make will give away and ruin something that is better discovered in real time. But let’s just say it’s sneakily … feminist in a way that will feel familiar, but it’s a shame it takes the film until the third act to really let its themes — and Sweeney — fly.

Feig (Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor) might not seem to be the best fit for such lurid material, but I must admit being impressed with how wacko things get. It overstays its welcome maybe just a hair too long, as it runs over two hours, but you won’t be bored!

What other critics are saying: It’s getting great marks! AP’s Mark Kennedy writes, “Santa left us a present this holiday season, and it is exactly what we didn’t know we needed: A twisty, psychological horror-thriller with nudity that’s all wrapped up in an empowerment message.” William Bibbiani at TheWrap agrees, calling it “glorious, angry, hilarious, nail-biting fun from a director, writer and cast who all know exactly what they’re doing, and relish in the fact that they’re practically getting away with murder.”

How to watch: The Housemaid is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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Bonus sort-of-recommendation: Avatar: Fire and Ash

Why you should maybe see it: It’s frankly stunning the degree to which Avatar: Fire and Ash feels like the same movie as the last one. There was a 13-year gap between 2009’s Avatar and its first sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, in 2022. The fact that we spent time on Pandora with Jake Sully and his family so recently makes the return to their incredible world feel less exciting. They should’ve called it Avatar 3: Avatar 2!

It’s drag-and-drop cinema; a number of scenes here could’ve worked just as well in part 2, as it’s really just part 2B. Cameron has been honest about the fact that Avatar 2 and 3 were once a single movie that is now split into two extremely long parts; he’s been less honest when discussing how incredible the stories are. It’s the same damn movie!

In the film, conflict on Pandora escalates as Jake and Neytiri’s family encounter a new, aggressive Na’vi tribe led by the evil Varang, played by Oona Chaplin, who gives the standout performance in the film. She’s Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter, and there’s something quite special about tracing the history of cinema from the silent era to this instance of high-tech futurist cinema.

There’s at least one big sequence I got swept up in — in which the past movie’s villain, Quaritch, still very much the villain here despite dying in part 1 and being quasi-resurrected in part 2, arms the evil Na’vi clan with guns. And there are probably three to five shots where my jaw actually dropped from the visuals. Anytime it’s not delivering top-notch action, though, it’s boring, and the action that’s there simply isn’t enough. Why does Cameron introduce Fury Road-esque Na’vi warboys only to dispatch them a single time?! There’s just not much that’s new in the bag of tricks. I do love, though, that Cameron continues to stuff his blockbuster spectacle with hyperspecific critiques of U.S. foreign policy and interventionism.

The Avatar fans that (ironically?) love Spider (Jack Champion) and the subtitled whales will surely have a blast, and it’s technically as incredible an achievement as ever, but if you’re one of those “I don’t get Avatar” people, Fire and Ash doesn’t do anything new to make it make sense. It’s simply more of the same, which is certainly enough for some, considering they are the highest-grossing films of all time.

What other critics are saying: It has the most mixed reviews yet for the franchise. Rolling Stone’s David Fear calls it “the most expensive three-hour video-game cut scene ever,” adding, “the piles of ash here looks and sounds phenomenal. What you would not give to feel some actual fire burning behind all of this.” Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian writes, “Avatar is as gigantically uninteresting and colossally impervious to criticism as ever: a vast, blank edifice that placidly repels objection.”

How to watch: Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters nationwide.

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💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy

My recommendation: Sisu: Road to Revenge

Why you should see it: The 2022 revenge-action film Sisu was a treat for fans of over-the-top, stylized violence. It was a movie about a Finnish man becoming a one-man army and killing a bunch of Nazis in 1944, his determination to exact revenge after the death of his family making him literally immortal. It was pretty fun, but it got a little repetitive by the end. There are only so many ways to kill Nazis!

Thankfully, its sequel, Sisu: Road to Revenge, learned from its predecessor’s mistakes and delivers an even better film that has no problem one-upping itself throughout, delivering intensely gory action set pieces that are so increasingly creative, each and every kill got an actual laugh from me. They found a bunch of new and exciting ways to kill bad guys!

Our hero from the last film dismantles the house where his family was murdered and loads it onto a truck to rebuild it somewhere safe. He soon finds himself in a violent cross-country chase as the Red Army commander who killed his family comes back to finish the job. That commander is played by character actor Stephen Lang, most recently of Avatar and Don’t Breathe fame, and his presence ups the ante in a big way.

It goes from a Mad Max: Fury Road-inspired sequence to a “what if the plane in North by Northwest had a turret and bombs,” at a moment’s notice. It’s essentially a feature-length chase scene, involving everything from tanks and trucks to planes and trains.

It’s an absolute blast and a marked improvement on the original in just about every way. It sets the tone right up top with a ludicrous kill that made me guffaw and stays that ridiculous and fun throughout. And it’s all wrapped up in under 90 minutes. Bring on Sisu 3!

What other critics are saying: It’s a hit! William Bibbiani at TheWrap writes that it’s “everything you could want from a rough-and-tumble, tough-as-nails action movie.” The Los Angeles Times’ Amy Nicholson calls it “the action spectacular of the year” that she likens to “a scrappy, indie translation of Mad Max: Fury Road.”

How to watch: Sisu: Road to Revenge is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

But that’s not all …

• Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Now You See Me Now You Don’t disappoints for the same reasons that its predecessors do. There’s simply nothing to latch on to when the rules are “anything can happen because: magic,” and also, “but actually it was a misdirection with a real-world explanation,” which might be fun if the movie weren’t playing so fast and loose with the characters’ borderline supernatural abilities. At a live magic show, absolutely, it would work and blow my mind! But watching a movie with movie magic, aka computer-generated bulls***, it falls entirely flat. Many praise these films, among the dumbest to ever spawn a trilogy, as a “turn your brain off” silly good time, but the lack of any consistent internal logic makes all the fun disappear. Rent or buy.

• The Running Man: This new adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novel stars Glen Powell and is far different from the Arnold Schwarzenegger version from 1987. Ultimately, The Running Man feels like a stale misfire due to its refusal to engage with the text in a way that our modern society demands. Read my full review here. Rent or buy.

📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

My recommendation: One Battle After Another

Why you should watch it: One Battle After Another is an astonishingly entertaining film. It’s also so incredibly of-the-moment and full of career-best performances that it’s an instant Oscar frontrunner.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s genre-defying movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary who lives in a state of drug-induced paranoia. He’s surviving off-grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). When his evil nemesis (Sean Penn) resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their pasts.

In short, Anderson made a stoner-dad political satire about how each generation finds themselves befuddled by the next, no matter how subversive and revolutionary they were in their youth. The film is a five-star experience, a pure blockbuster spectacle, never didactic or lecturing. It’s punctuated by tons of action, including one of the most riveting and impeccably photographed car chases I’ve ever seen, which really takes advantage of its hill-ridden road.

Penn is unbelievable as the antagonist Col. Steven Lockjaw. His physicality is so appropriately sickening that it’ll stick with you. DiCaprio is typically excellent, earning tons of laughs in a role that, at a certain point, becomes “What if an Ethan Hunt-type guy was too stoned to remember the very important passcode needed to get his impossible mission?” Infiniti also stands out as DiCaprio’s daughter in a revelatory debut performance that helps get to the emotional core. Teyana Taylor also makes a hell of an impression despite limited screen time, and Benicio Del Toro is a delight here, in his second picture of the year directed by an Anderson.

One Battle After Another is the very best film of the year and one of the most exciting American films of the decade.

What other critics are saying: It’s got terrific buzz. AP’s Jake Coyle is one of many critics hailing it as “an American masterpiece.” David Ehrlich over at IndieWire gushes that it’s “monumental” and writes that it “might be among the sillier films that Anderson has ever made, but there’s no mistaking the sincerity of its horrors, or how lucidly it diagnoses the smallness of the men inflecting them upon the innocent and the vulnerable.”

How to watch: One Battle After Another is now streaming on HBO Max.

Watch on HBO Max

My bonus recommendation: Megadoc

Why you should watch it: Megadoc is a documentary made by esteemed filmmaker Mike Figgis that depicts the wild behind-the-scenes process that was the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project, Megalopolis, which he spent many years attempting to get made before finally putting up his own money to do so.

Unfortunately for Coppola, but fortunately for viewers of Megadoc, Figgis’s film is far more fascinating and entertaining than the film it’s actually about.

The footage from the making of the self-financed boondoggle Megalopolis is so far-reaching that it includes images from previous attempts at making the film as far back as 20 years ago, when Ryan Gosling was slated to play the role that Shia LaBeouf inhabited, for example. We see table reads from various iterations of the project and are left pondering which version was the “right” one.

It’s a full of incredible insights and details, including interviews with famously cagey Adam Driver about his process.

Even if Megalopolis did nothing for you, any fan of the art of filmmaking will find something to appreciate in Megadoc. It’s an incredible document of the process itself and a rare behind-the-scenes look at the making of the most expensive self-financed film ever made.

What other critics are saying: Everybody agrees it’s better than Megalopolis. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager says that it’s “a look at Coppola’s creative process that proves significantly more illuminating and entertaining than the director’s finished product.” Peter Debruge at Variety writes, “There’s much to be discovered from watching Megadoc, which brings audiences into everything from Coppola’s rehearsal process to the way he claims to see the finished film in his head.”

How to watch: Megadoc is now streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Watch on The Criterion Channel

But that’s not all …

• Relay: Riz Ahmed, Lily James and Sam Worthington star in this propulsive throwback cat-and-mouse thriller that borrows from the best of the genre, morphing from a ’70s-style flick to the ’90s as it goes. It’s a lot of fun, even if it takes one turn too many. Now streaming on Netflix.

• Queens of the Dead: Tina Romero, daughter of the late George Romero, horror legend and the man responsible for creating a film subgenre that’s still thriving, takes on her father’s legacy with her own unique and very queer spin on an “… of the Dead” movie. No disrespect to her dad, but it’s actually better than the last several he made himself. Read my full review here. Now streaming on Shudder.

• Him: This Jordan Peele-produced film proves that filmmaker Justin Tipping is, unfortunately, no Peele, as far as crafting biting social satire through a horror lens goes. It may be stylish, but it doesn’t have much substance. Read my full review here. Now streaming on Peacock.

That’s all for this week — we’ll see you next week at the movies!

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily updating list of the most popular movies of the year.