What’s new to VOD and streaming this weekend: May 14-16 Including reviews of The Underground Railroad, The Killing Of Two Lovers, In The Earth and more By Norman Wilner and Radheyan Simonpillai May 14, 2021 OW critics pick what’s new to streaming and VOD for the weekend of May 14. Plus: Everything new to VOD and streaming platforms. The Killing Of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian) Machoian’s solo debut as a writer/director after more than a decade of collaborations and documentaries is a spare, aching and almost unbearably sad drama about thirtysomething David (Clayne Crawford), a husband and father in rural Utah mired in a domestic crisis. He’s separated from his wife Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) and their children. Nikki appears to be moving on. David has a gun. He badly wants to use it. But The Killing Of Two Lovers isn’t that simple. Machoian immediately complicates his story by showing us who David is when he’s not blinded by rage, and then complicates things further by demonstrating that everyone else is just as layered and complex, striving to find their way through an impossible situation. Crawford and Moafi are both tremendously affecting, showing us an entire history between David and Nikki through their physicality and their shared concern for their kids, and Machoian presents their performances in deliberately paced, unbroken takes that let the characters dig through their complex feelings for each other. The filmmaker also makes sure his movie can’t be read as an apology for toxic masculinity; rather, it understands how it runs through the totality of American culture, offering weak men an excuse to be their worst selves.