Happy New Year, and welcome to Trust Me, I Watch Everything, a weekly guide to all the new movies released every Friday.

My name is Brett Arnold, film critic and host of Roger & Me, a weekly Siskel & Ebert-style movie review show, and I'm here to shepherd you through it all.

It's the first Friday of the new year, and there's only one wide release hitting theaters, but it's a good one: We Bury the Dead, starring Daisy Ridley. Additionally, there are plenty of options newly available to watch at home, including Wicked: For Good, now available to rent or buy. And there are several new picks on streaming services you may already be paying for, like Americana and The Unbreakable Boy.

Read on, as there's a lot more, and there's always something for everyone.

• What to watch in theaters

• Movies newly available to rent or buy

• Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

🎥 What to watch in theaters

My recommendation: We Bury the Dead

Why you should see it: It's January, which means it's time for our annual Daisy Ridley movie that has zero awareness but is actually pretty good (see also: Sometimes I Think About Dying, and Cleaner, which was technically a February release, but I'm counting it)! She's made such a strong turn to starring in fun indies, and it's a shame they've largely gone unheralded. Magpie is quite good too.

Here, Ridley plays a woman desperate to find her missing husband. The film follows her terrifying yet moving journey as she confronts grief, loss and ... the undead!

The specifics of the premise are rich: After a catastrophic military disaster kills the entire population of an island, the dead don’t just rise — they hunt. Ava searches for her missing husband, but what she finds is far more terrifying.

It's a somber and thoughtful meditation on death, dying and grief, more so than a violent or tense zombie action movie, but I found it effective in its chosen register, focusing on the characters' emotions more than any carnage. It reminded me a lot of 28 Years Later, which also used the zombie movie subgenre to pontificate about death in ways that alienated large chunks of the audience expecting action rather than profundity.

What other critics are saying: They think it's good! Matt Goldberg at TheWrap agrees that the film "thrives on matters of grief and closure rather than typical undead thrills." Siddhant Adlakha at Variety was a bit more mixed, writing that the film "wrestles with how much it wants to be a zombie movie. It’s at its most interesting and exciting when it approaches the well-worn subgenre with brand-new spins. ... Unfortunately, it keeps swerving back toward traditional horror territory."

How to watch: We Bury the Dead is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Get tickets

💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy

My not-a-recommendation: Wicked: For Good

Why you should skip it: I don't like to harp on the movies that I consider to be the worst of the year — making movies is so difficult, why spend time ripping one apart when there are always several others every week actually worth recommending? That's why you'll never see a "worst of the year" list from me.

That being said, Wicked: For Good coming home forces me to reckon with it again. It's a major studio film and not some indie darling, so I'll just go ahead and say it's easily one of the worst movies of the year.

The problems here are admittedly inherent to the Broadway show that it's adapting; the harsh truth that fans of the original production already knew is that the second half is simply far less compelling than the first. All the good songs are in that first section, as well as all semblance of anything new regarding these characters. The second half is marred by its need to tie all these elements back to the original The Wizard of Oz. The play and the book upon which it is based are, ultimately, fan fiction!

The closer the material gets to that original text, the deadlier it becomes, and Wicked: For Good is almost entirely reliant on references to the beloved classic. Remember the Cowardly Lion? Here’s how he got so cowardly! You know the Tin Man? Well, he was once a normal man! The movie opens with the Yellow Brick Road being paved! It’s Easter egg cinema at its worst. It’s shocking how much worse Wicked: For Good is than last year's blockbuster smash hit.

What other critics are saying: The response is more mixed than it was for Wicked. The Telegraph's Robbie Collin calls it "irritating" and says "the corporate stretch-it-out-and-wring-it-dry approach here has been deadening." Pete Hammond at Deadline loved it, however, writing, "The visual effects are first rate" and that it "flies even higher than the first." Wow!

How to watch: Wicked: For Good is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

My recommendation: Americana

Why you should watch it: Americana is an entertaining comic neo-western about normal people getting wrapped up in a dangerous criminal situation in pursuit of a sacred and valuable Native American ghost shirt. It's an "innocent folks find a bag of money" movie.

The cast and their well-written characters are part of what really makes it sing — Sydney Sweeney is quite good playing against type as a shy girl with a lisp who dreams of becoming a singer, and Paul Walter Hauser is wonderful as a right-handed guy named Lefty who can't stop asking women to marry him.

It's a fun, funny and unexpectedly sweet experience, even if it builds to something more action-oriented than I was expecting. It's nowhere near as good as the movies it's clearly inspired by — the works of the Coen brothers and Pulp Fiction, for starters — but it's worth checking out.

What other critics are saying: It's a pretty even split. The Hollywood Reporter's Justin Lowe writes, though it "doesn’t particularly reinvent the Western, [writer-director Tony] Tost’s portrayal of characters driven by unfettered greed or justifiable need gives voice to often-ignored segments of society as they strive for agency and respect — an admirable quality in any narrative genre." Meanwhile, Nick Schager at the Daily Beast wasn't into it, calling it "a sluggish and monotonous country-ified neo-noir that fails to innovate and, worse, to utilize its magnetic leading lady and her capable costars."

How to watch: Americana is now streaming on Starz.

Watch on Starz

My bonus recommendation: The Unbreakable Boy

Why you should see it: This light, sweet, funny, sad and tragic yet inspiring movie is based on the true story of an autistic boy living with a rare and debilitating condition called brittle bone disease.

It's an adaptation of a memoir written by the father, depicting the challenges of living with such a condition in a way that's neither overwhelmingly depressing nor hard to watch. It's a tough tonal balancing act, and I found that it worked more often than it didn't.

As a new-ish parent, I found the premise here deeply upsetting and got incredibly nervous every time the boy would injure himself. The movie plays it for whimsical laughs, but I was honestly mortified by the trauma that all involved endured.

That inherent tragic element aside, the way the film pivots to become more of a “faith-based” movie, centering on the alcoholic father and his hasty redemption arc solely to include God, is mildly off-putting and detracts from the feel-good aspect.

Zachary Levi delivers a strong performance, and Meghann Fahy, known for The White Lotus, is truly terrific in a supporting role. However, the movie ultimately misidentifies its true protagonist, which feels like something the filmmakers could've handled better in adapting the material. It's still worth a look, though.

What other critics are saying: Most didn't like it nearly as much as I did. Variety's Owen Gleiberman writes that the film "takes a turn toward something more sentimental than tough. Faith-based movies would be better if their happy endings weren’t always so rosy." Frank Scheck at the Hollywood Reporter also wasn't a fan, writing that it "works hard, very hard, to pull your heartstrings. ... But at a certain point, it stops feeling inspirational and more like misery porn."

How to watch: The Unbreakable Boy is now streaming on Starz.

Watch on Starz

But that's not all ...

• The Long Walk: The third (of four) big-screen Stephen King adaptation of the year is an impressive imagining of an incredibly bleak book that's long been considered unfilmable due to its brutality, simplicity and the more internal nature of its prose. It's deeply upsetting stuff, and the performances by the entire cast, but especially the two leads — Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and David Jonsson of Alien: Romulus fame — make you invested in their tragic situation. The ending, a moment King readers sometimes, quite famously, have issues with, is the one thing that changes from the book, and it's a smart and impactful update. Now streaming on Starz.

• The Threesome: One of the most interesting things about this movie is that it's not at all the raunchy sex comedy you'd expect it to be from its title. Instead, it's a thoughtful and thoroughly modern rom-com that uses the titular incident as a jumping-off point to tell a story about these characters and their incredibly complex relationships. Starring Zoey Deutch. Now streaming on Netflix.

• The Home: This ridiculously bonkers horror movie stars Pete Davidson and was directed by The Purge mastermind James DeMonaco. Davidson plays a troubled man who starts working at a retirement home and realizes its residents and caretakers harbor sinister secrets. It's unpredictable in a fun way, even if it feels like you're watching a different movie in the final 10 minutes. Now streaming on Starz.

• Together: Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in this body-horror rom-com skewering toxic codependence in relationships and modern fears of monogamy. The real-life married couple play a twosome moving to the countryside, which tests the limits of their relationship. The actual body horror stuff is nasty and fun. You watch a metaphor turn literal as the couple decides it would be easier to "split" now than to let things fester. In relationships, two halves are meant to become a single whole, and that idea gets taken here to its most horror-movie extreme. It's a fun and wild ride, and that ending is sure to be divisive. Now streaming on Hulu.

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.