What to watch: The best movies new to streaming from Corsage to Magic Mike

Wondering what to watch? Never fear, there's lots of new movies coming to streaming this week — starting with the acclaimed Corsage, starring Vicky Krieps of Phantom Thread fame. Krieps is playing Empress Elisabeth of Austria in a fictional account of a year of her life as she turns 40.

Meanwhile, one of the finest and spookiest of John Carpenter’s mid budget horror films, Prince of Darkness, which depicts a group of scientists’ encounter with the literal devil in the middle of the desert hits Sky Cinema and NOW.

Read more: Everything new on Prime Video in February

In the wake of the release of the latest (and probably last) instalment of the series, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, BBC iPlayer adds the first Magic Mike. The new film sees director Steven Soderbergh return to the series he started, which has taken on a life of its own in the wake of XXL’s popularity (including a live show, part of which is the inspiration for the new movie), so the first one is well worth revisiting.

Please note that a subscription may be required to watch.

Corsage (2022) | MUBI (pick of the week)

From the moment that Empress Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) teaches the proper manner in which to fake a fainting spell, the connection between Corsage and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette becomes apparent — both concerned with the farce of royalist and upper class pageantry and its stifling nature.

Where Marie escaped into an explosion of youthful exploits, Corsage is conducted with a more world weary cynicism, a little quieter in its smirking at tradition (see: a moment when her husband casually removes his mutton chops from his face and gently places them on a silk cushion held by a servant). The film is named for the bodice of 19th century dresses rather than the flower decoration — a rather literal metaphor of the constrictions placed around women in the court for the sake of maintaining appearances.

Watch a trailer for Corsage

Empress Elisabeth is turning 40, and she’s renowned for her youthful beauty, and so she has to fight to hold on to it so to preserve her status. As Elisabeth, Vicky Krieps exudes personality even as she’s forced to reign in her distaste for — and frustration with — the people around her as she’s reminded of her supposedly fading beauty, forced to simply stand there and except backhanded compliments or straightforward insults about her age or her fame for her “youthful appearance”. It feels funny to gawk at the film’s excellent costume design for this reason — elaborate distractions the dresses may be, but they’re still beautiful.

Read more: Everything new on Disney+ in February

A funny, smart costume drama and wry fictional depiction that gets at an emotional truth, held together by a great performance from Krieps.

Also new on MUBI: Mutzenbacher (2022), Story of Women (1988)

Prince of Darkness (1987) | NOW with a Sky Cinema Membership

The middle instalment of mid-budget maestro John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” (that’s what he calls it, along with The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness), Prince of Darkness is not-so-secretly one of the director’s best. The Halloween filmmaker clashes reason and scientific intrigue with unknowable mysticism as its main characters discover a spooky cylinder filled with green goo that is quite literally Satan in liquid form.

Read more: Everything new on Sky Cinema in February

Of course it doesn’t take long for the stuff to get loose and begin brutally possessing those in attendance (this is, after all, a follow up to The Thing), all while Carpenter unspools a nightmare, fatalistic and nihilistic version of Christian theology with a group of characters not ready to accept their lack of control. It’s dark – it’s in the title! – and one of Carpenter’s scariest for this added existential angle.

Also new on NOW: Bullet Train (2022)

Magic Mike (2012) | BBC iPlayer

Even though public opinion generally tilts towards Magic Mike XXL as the best of the trilogy, the first instalment Magic Mike is nothing to scoff at: between the glitzy fantasies of dancers with washboard abs is one of the better mainstream American movies concerned with economic recession.

It unspools the consequences of it on a personal level as well as a wider one, exploring how that post-crash economic climate turned everyone mercenary as well as, of course, the psychologies behind commodification of the body, through the eyes of both performer and audience.

Read more: Everything new on Netflix in February

Fantasies on and off the stage — of Mike starting a business, of his performances — are treated with equal interest, though perhaps the latter are still more interesting despite director Steven Soderbergh’s admirable thoughtfulness about the premise.

XXL would of course capitalise on that element, turning the spectacle into the entire picture to astounding effect. But it’s the the first Magic Mike is so different from its popular perception that makes it worth a watch.

Also new on iPlayer: Dark Waters (2019), The Notebook (2004)

Watch a trailer for Magic Mike's Last Dance