The 50 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now, Updated for January 2025

DIRECTOR: Yorgos Lanthimos
STARS: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe
RATING: R

Make sure that you are very comfortable with whomever you choose to watch Poor Things alongside. That’s in part because you’ll be watching a lot of sex scenes together. But it’s also because Yorgos Lanthimos’ wild take on coming-of-age, as experienced by the baby brain of Bella Baxter inside an adult body (Emma Stone), is a deeply revelatory experience about the laws that govern the human heart … and how different those are from the laws that govern society. It’s a movie and a new way to look at the world from the skewered vantage point only a master like Lanthimos can provide.

Watch Poor Things on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Clay Tarver
STARS: John Cena, Meredith Hagner, Lil Rey Howery
RATING: R

Has anyone else noticed the fact that Lil Rel Howery has been crushing it in every movie role he’s in recently? And also the fact that Lil Rel Howery has been in a lot of movie roles recently? In the year 2021 alone, he’s been the voice of a shoulder devil and angel in Tom & Jerry, pranked unsuspecting civilians with Eric Andre in Bad Trip, played Kevin Hart’s best friend in Fatherhood, played Ryan Reynolds’s best friend in Free Guy, and commentated the big game in Space Jam: A New Legacy. He stars here alongside John Cena and Meredith Hagner in a movie that’s basically Wedding Crashers meets The Hangover.

Watch Vacation Friends on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Wim Wenders
STARS: Kōji Yakusho
RATING: PG

Are you about to quit your job to move to Tokyo and clean toilets? Perfect Days may well convince you that its stoic, steadfast protagonist Hirayama has something figured out about the rhythms of daily life that elude those of us toiling under the ever-increasing pace of the modern economy. Wim Wenders’ simple human drama reconnects us with what matters in life: service and sincerity.

Watch Perfect Days on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Aneesh Chaganty
CAST: Sarah Paulson, Kiera Allen
RATING: PG-13

Run was one of those 2020 films that got caught in the COVID-19 release/format churn. Originally scheduled for a Mother’s Day release, it eventually ended up on Hulu, to the benefit of the streaming platform, as it’s become its most successful original film. The thriller stars Sarah Paulson as Diane Sherman, mother to Chloe (Kiera Allen), a sickly high schooler with a laundry list of conditions and disorders. Diane dotes on Chloe, but it’s also pretty clear early on that all is not what it seems, and as Run unfolds, a war begins between mom and daughter to discover what’s really going on, and whether Chloe was ever really sick at all. Throw all that at the wall and add in a twist ending that’s become a phenomenon on social media, and Run is a satisfyingly twisty watch that pairs well with the latest in contemporary horror.

Watch Run on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Christopher Erskin
STARS: Cedric the Entertainer, Vanessa Williams, Steve Harvey
RATING: PG-13

Sure, it’s a blatant and uninspired rip-off of the legendary Chevy Chase Vacation series. But don’t let the single-digit Rotten Tomatoes score scare you away – there’s a lot of fun to be had with Johnson Family Vacation as Cedric the Entertainer’s Nate Johnson tries to get his family cross-country to a family reunion. I’m not entirely sure how, but years of widespread TV play have made it a highly quotable within my family. Everyone’s got their guilty pleasures!

Watch Johnson Family Vacation on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jerrod Carmichael
STARS: Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Tiffany Haddish
RATING: R

If a comedy about two friends making a suicide pact sounds like it could never possibly work, then you need to see Jerrod Carmichael’s On the Count of Three to prove your assumptions wrong. This astutely observed day-in-the-life story of its two leads finds the humor and the heartbreak in their situation as it winds toward what they think is its inevitable conclusion. Though Carmichael is the main reason for the film’s behind the screen, it’s Christopher Abbott’s live wire who steals On the Count of Three on screen. His car front-seat rendition of Papa Roach can heal the world.

Watch On the Count of Three on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Catherine Hardwicke
STARS: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson
RATING: PG-13

“Look at a movie that a lot of people love,” wrote the late great Roger Ebert, “and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may seem.” In Twilight, it’s possible to see the romantic anxieties of teenage girls taken seriously and filtered through the prism of the vampire genre. Bella’s tentative dealings with the vampiric Edward as she contemplates the permanence of her love and affection are worth consideration for their massive resonance with its target audience. Don’t write off the film just because of who it caters to.

Watch Twilight on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Paul Verhoeven
STARS: Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson
RATING: Unrated

If all you see is blasphemy in Paul Verhoeven’s riotous Benedetta, look further. What initially presents as a scintillating, sensuous tale of lesbian nuns in 17th century has so much more to offer about the nature of faith, transgression, and order within religious institutional settings. This side of Scorsese, you won’t find another movie so sincere in its desire to understand why people give themselves over to divine and earthly authorities. Benedetta and her fellow nuns pledge to become one with Christ, but what does that mean for one’s burgeoning sense of self? Sparks fly as Verhoeven allows his characters to sort that out.

Watch Benedetta on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jared Hess
STARS: Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, Jon Gries
RATING: PG

No film went from cult Sundance hit to mainstream merchandising machine quite like Napoleon Dynamite. (Is there any more emblematic mid-aughts uniform quite like a “Vote for Pedro” shirt?) Even if the taglines and jokes might have worn out their welcome a decade ago, Jared Hess’ film itself still delights as an offbeat delight. His unexpected comic rhythms must be witnessed to be believed.

Watch Napoleon Dynamite on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
STARS: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer
RATING: R

Ridley Scott gives viewers quite the value meal in The Last Duel, which is really three movies rolled up in one. The film runs through a series of events from each character’s perspective after the wife (Comer) of a French knight (Damon) accuses his rival (Driver) of raping her. With each new telling, we learn how each person’s subjectivity clouds them from seeing the reality of what happened. Small differences become deeply meaningful when magnified in such a way. Bonus: it does in fact end with a rousing duel and features an absolute bonkers supporting performance from Ben Affleck threaded throughout.

Watch The Last Duel on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Vikram Gandhi
CAST: 6ix9ine
RATING: Not Rated

This chronicle of the meteoric rise of an ambitious, outsized young rapper from Bushwick, Brooklyn speeds by at the flickering, manic pace of contemporary social media. It tells the story of how Danny Hernandez went from being just a kid working at the bodega to becoming the flame-haired, face-tatted, Platinum-selling rap artist Tekashi 6ix9ine, with a street rep and rap sheet to go with it. But 69 also illustrates the incredible power of social platforms, everything from the short-lived Vine to the furious, chaotic immediacy of TikTok. Like any kid in the 21st century, Hernandez grew up with social media woven into his personhood, and savvily engaged with it to amplify his music and persona. This doc is a biography of the artist at its center, but it also examines the pathways to fame, and the hefty price tag on unchecked ambition.

Watch 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Marcus Dunstan
CAST: Reign Edwards, Kerr Smith, Courtney Henggeler  
RATING: TV-MA

One of the more consistently interesting corners of Hulu is its Into the Dark series, which produces feature-length horror films with the participation of horror scene heavyweight Jason Blum. In Marcus Dunstan’s Pilgrim, an overeager mother hires a group of Pilgrim re-enactors to enrich her family’s Thanksgiving experience, but as weird as that is, it gets even weirder when they build a shed in the family’s backyard, invite more of their “re-enacting” friends over, and end up putting the parents in stocks, branding them with hot pokers, and accusing them of blasphemy. It’s up to plucky oldest daughter Reign Edwards to save the day, and it all culminates in one of the more bizarre and more bloody Thanksgiving Day dinners ever put to film. “You best get to shucking!”

Watch Pilgrim on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Alice Rohrwacher
STARS: Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher
RATING: Not Rated

There’s something magical about the way Italian director Alice Rohrwacher locates the marvels of humanity and nature hiding in plain sight. Her film La Chimera is a beautiful reflection on the higher purpose of art as observed through the beautiful statues entombed with the ancient Etruscans, who built elaborate underground graves with works never meant for human eyes. That means little to the roving band of tombaroli, a group of “tomb raiders” led by a mysterious foreigner (Josh O’Connor) with a gift for divining the location of these secret burial plots. It’s a treasure hunt movie where the real grail is not a physical object but rather inner serenity.

Watch La Chimera on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Nathan Grossman
CAST: Greta Thunberg, Malena Ernman
RATING: TV-14

She was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize twice and has made numerous Most Influential People lists since she came to prominence as one of the world’s foremost  — and youngest — authorities on climate activism, so it makes sense that Greta Thunberg would get her own documentary. I Am Greta opens with a stationary shot aboard ship with the young activist as she makes her 2019 sea voyage to attend climate conferences in New York City. It then rolls into a supercut of ugly weather, accompanied by the soundbites of naysayers. (“I’m from Canada, so I could use a few more degrees of warmth!” Yuk yuk yuk.) It then goes back to the beginning for Thunberg, when she would stage one-person protests outside Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, and her voiceover, delivered in the deliberate manner of speaking for which she has become well known, elaborates on her original motivation to begin pestering those in positions of power to do something, anything, about climate change. I Am Greta doesn’t reveal anything very new about Thunberg’s quest. But it serves as a sounding board for her views, and helps to humanize a young person who has perhaps been somewhat stereotyped as just an angry voice at a microphone. “Humanity sees nature as this big bag of candy,” she says in narration. “That we can just take as much as we want. And so one day, nature will probably strike back in some way.”

Watch I Am Greta on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Soleil Moon-Frye
CAST: Soleil Moon-Frye
RATING: TV-MA

Kid 90 is a documentary film that follows the actress Soleil Moon Frye from her time as a child star on Punky Brewster through her hard-partying teen years. We see her take a drag on a joint and take a slug from a bottle of Jagermeister as we hear audio from an old talk show in which she professes kids to “just say no” to drugs. She and her friends take mushrooms and cavort in a field, playing with ladybugs and philosophizing about raindrops on the windshield like Very High Teenagers. She leaves her Los Angeles home at 18 to attend college in New York, scraping by in a spartan apartment with a futon and no refrigerator, falling in with a new group of friends. The partying continued, as you might expect. You know some of her friends from both coasts: Jenny Lewis, Brian Austin Green, Sara Gilbert, Mark-Paul Gosselar, Leonardo DiCaprio (a credited producer of Kid 90), Justin Pierce, Stephen Dorff, Jonathan Brandis, David Arquette, Danny Boy O’Connor (of rap group House of Pain). She asks many of them to give their philosophy on life. Some of them are featured in new interviews, looking back; others aren’t alive to do so. This was Moon Frye’s young life, and looking back at all this, she says she’s “coming of age as an adult.”

Watch Kid 90 on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Mike Judge
STARS: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole
RATING: R

The technology and corporate environments might have changed, but the frustrations bottled up in Office Space certainly have not. The drudgery and inanity of office work, from nagging bosses to meaningless meetings, get put on blast by Mike Judge. The film is both highly specific to a hollow brand of ’90s capitalism but still rings true today. Anyone who’s ever held a knowledge economy job will laugh, then groan, in utter recognition.

Watch Office Space on Hulu

DIRECTORS: Will Merrick, Nicholas D. Johnson
STARS: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung
RATING: PG-13

You’ve seen a true crime movie before, but have you ever seen one that unfurls entirely from a computer? The ingenious “screen movie” format, which literalizes just how much of our lives are experienced through screens, adds additional heightened stakes to the tale of a teenager investigating the mysterious disappearance of her mother. The kidnapping thriller that makes up the core of Missing might occasionally stretch believability to stay true to the aesthetic belt of chastity, but the overall cleverness shines through any occasional clunkiness.

Watch Missing on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jessica Earnshaw
STARS: Jacinta
RATING: TV-MA

Jacinta is a compassionate, wrenching portrait of the devastating nature of addiction and the damage it does to so many lives. It’s a documentary that may remind you a bit of Heroin(e), Tarnation, Evelyn, and even Girls Incarcerated.

Watch Jacinta on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Ben Berman
CAST: The Amazing Johnathan, Ben Berman
RATING: Not Rated

The Amazing Johnathan is a comedian, performance artist, and occasional magician who over the years has made a name for himself with frequent appearances on the Las Vegas comedy circuit, and with shows that strive for the outrageous. What’s more outrageous? A guy making a documentary about The Amazing Johnathan’s act and life who suddenly has to deal with a rival bunch of documentary filmmakers clamoring to access the same subject. That’s part of the subtext of The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, Ben Berman’s film about the comedian, who stepped away from public life in 2014 after being diagnosed with a heart ailment. Berman becomes a character of sorts in his own film, questioning his motives for making it and examining his own history even as he tracks Johnathan and interviews comedy luminaries like Penn Jillette and “Weird Al” Yankovic for their thoughts about the longtime trickster.

Watch The Amazing Johnathan Documentary on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Joe Carnahan
CAST: Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts
RATING: R

Boss Level is an explosive hoot of time loop mumbo jumbo that only cares about its temporal niceties for as long as it takes to get to the next shootout, car chase, or, yes, supercut of its hero being beheaded. It’s outrageous. Just go with it.

Watch Boss Level on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Rawson Marshall Thurber
STARS: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor
RATING: PG-13

Among the films of the so-called “Frat Pack” in their prime, Dodgeball is definitely one that has not maintained quite the same cultural profile. It makes sense: this is definitely a broader and more juvenile comedy. And yet … the movie remains hilarious! Ben Stiller’s brash bravado as pompous gym owner White Goodman still cracks me up; it’s stealthily one of his best comedic creations.

Watch Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story on Hulu

DIRECTORS: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
STAR: Alex Honnold
RATING: PG-13

No need for the big screen to get all the thrills of Free Solo, a documentary detailing climber Alex Honnold’s extraordinary feat of scaling the side of El Capitan with no rope support. The filmmaking team brings us into the death-defying accomplishment and makes us feel how risky the climb is on a gut level.

Watch Free Solo on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Peter Cattaneo
STARS: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy
RATING: R

The working stiffs preparing for a striptease in The Full Monty might not have the Adonis-quality bodies of the Magic Mike cast, to be sure. But they’ve got something else: heart in spades. This raucous comedy about unemployed British men of all shapes and sizes rehearsing a strip routine for some extra cash uses humor as an entryway into complicated male emotions that rarely get discussed on-screen.

Watch The Full Monty on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Benh Zeitlin
STARS: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry
RATING: PG-13

There aren’t too many great American films in the traditional of poetic social realism, but Beasts of the Southern Wild is a mighty entry. In the outskirts of Louisiana, director Benh Zeitlin captures all the grit and grace of a young firecracker named Hushpuppy who we will come to believe can take on the world. In her imagination, which then bleeds into reality, she has to do just that. It’s a moving vision of childhood resilience visualized on a scale that feels equally epic and intimate.

Watch Beasts of the Southern Wild on Hulu

DIRECTOR: McG
STARS: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy
RATING: PG-13

Tom Hardy says he’ll never do another rom-com after This Means War, but frankly, he should reconsider. He might have been miserable, but it doesn’t show on screen as Hardy’s Tuck vies against his friend and fellow CIA agent FDR (Chris Pine) for the heart of Reese Witherspoon’s Lauren. It’s a fun action movie paired with the inexhaustible “Reese Witherspoon can’t decide between two guys” romantic plot – what’s not to love in this gloriously goofy movie?

Watch This Means War on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Richard Kelly
STARS: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore
RATING: R

Decades after its release, the deeply polarizing Donnie Darko still sparks passionate responses from admirers and detractors alike. This eccentric story about a disturbed teenage boy with visions of the world ending – provided by a soothsayer in a rabbit costume – is an eccentric and unique portrayal of adolescent malaise. No matter where you fall in assessing its merits, you’re bound to have a great conversation sorting through all of its oddities with someone else.

Watch Donnie Darko on Hulu

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
STARS: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin
RATING: PG-13

The cultural legacy of Walk the Line now lives in the shadows of Walk Hard, the spoof film that so expertly skewers the cliches of musician biopics from the aughts. But something can be ripe for praise as well as parody. Thanks to two committed and compassionate performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny Cash and June Carter, Walk the Line proves there’s nothing wrong with a cliché so long as it’s executed with conviction.

Watch Walk the Line on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Alex Gibney
CAST: Alex Azar, Charlie Baker, Scott Becker
RATING: TV-14

Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s sobering Totally Under Control might very well prove to be the lasting document of America’s Most Terrible Year. With clear eyes, the Academy Award-winning documentarian takes 2020 at its unfortunate face value. Control tracks the discovery, spread, and eventually all-consuming specter of COVID-19, and unequivocally places the pandemic firestorm’s causal roots and mounting death toll at the feet of President Donald Trump and his coterie of bureaucratic flunkies (‘sup, Jared?) and do-nothing appointees. Through interviews with frontline medical professionals and disillusioned government officials, as well as a wealth of damning press footage of Trump, his sycophants, and other MAGA mouthpieces downplaying every sad thing that we know to be terribly serious and totally true, Totally Under Control illustrates in a narrative close to harrowing real time not only how bad 2020 got, but why it got that way in the first place.

Watch Totally Under Control on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Zach Braff
STARS: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard
RATING: R

The smashing success of Zach Braff’s early-’00s indie sensation Garden State defined “the Sundance movie” for quite some time. Don’t judge the movie by the spate of navel-gazing imitators it might have inspired. Flaws (cough — manic pixie dream girl Natalie Portman) and all, Braff captures something raw and real about the post-college ennui when the next step in life isn’t set out for you. If nothing else, at least enjoy the soundtrack — which still slaps.

Watch Garden State on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Ben Affleck
STARS: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Rebecca Hall
RATING: R

If Ben Affleck made The Town any more Bostonian, it would bleed Dunkin Donuts coffee. He both directs and stars in this crime story about a native son from the city’s infamous Charlestown neighborhood who’s caught between fulfilling and escaping a legacy of robbery. Can love — or a manhunt by the FBI — break the ironclad bonds of family? It’s thrilling to watch the two opposing forces tug on the protagonist.

Watch The Town on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Frank Oz
CAST: Derek DelGaudio
RATING: TV-MA

In & Of Itself is the filmed version of a theatrical experience performed 552 times by magician/illusionist/storyteller Derek DelGaudio. At the risk of sounding like a tease, the less you know about it heading into it, the more you’ll get out of watching it. It’s not a “traditional” magic show like you might expect from David Blaine or David Copperfield; it’s more like what the late Ricky Jay and the late Spalding Gray might have come up with if their paths ever intersected. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, and you’ll probably even tear up. It can’t replicate the feeling of a “night on the town,” exactly, but it will definitely scratch that “experience” itch of yours.—Mark Graham

Watch Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Andrew Ahn
STARS: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora
RATING: R

It’s by no means required to know Pride and Prejudice to enjoy Fire Island, though it certainly wouldn’t hurt to unlock additional layers of meaning within the film. This contemporary update of Austen set in the summer sun amongst a popular tourist destination for gay men is the rare new rom-com that delivers on both components of the genre. Star Joel Kim Booster’s script is full of sizzling insights about queer men oscillating between casual sex and committed relationships, and it’s gut-busting funny. It’s a film worth sweating and swooning over.

Watch Fire Island on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Clea DuVall
CAST: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen
RATING: PG-13

Happiest Season writer and director Clea DuVall assembled an impressively deep bench for her second feature. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis are the couple at its core, and they’re joined by Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Steenburgen, and Victor Garber (and Ana Gasteyer!). This is rom com central, and a “gathering the fam for the holidays” movie, to boot. But DuVall keeps the mood steady, and the cast is game to bring real life to the ensemble. Happiest Season also tells a story of coming out to one’s parents, and the pressure that decision can put on the people and parties involved. So in that sense, there’s a modern wrinkle to the proceedings. But even with that angle, Happiest Season is content to work within the framework of formula. Upon its initial run, the film got caught up in the COVID-19 floating release date/platform churn, but it overcame all of that with a lot of heart from the cast, and will likely offer future Christmas audiences a chance to cozy up with warm sweaters and a heartfelt group watch.

Watch Happiest Season on Hulu

DIRECTORS: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Feris
STARS: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin
RATING: R

Little Miss Sunshine takes a lot of flack for inspiring over a decade of “little indies that could” which feel reverse-engineered to recreate its miraculous path from Sundance to the Oscars. But don’t hold the imitators against it. This hilarious, heartwarming tale of a dysfunctional family trying to keep it together on a road trip long enough to get their youngest member to a dance competition strikes a resonant emotional chord.

Watch Little Miss Sunshine on Hulu

DIRECTOR: John McTiernan
STARS: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia
RATING: R

Before the fast-cutting style of Michael Bay took over the action genre, you used to be able to watch a movie and understand your way around a space. No movie does this to such an electrifying extent as Die Hard as we watch Bruce Willis’ scrappy John McClane outmaneuver Alan Rickman’s nefarious Hans Gruber within the nooks and crannies of the Nakatomi Plaza office building. On an unrelated note, this is also the best Christmas movie to watch outside the month of December.

Watch Die Hard on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Luc Jacquet
CAST: Lambert Wilson, Morgan Freeman
RATING: G

As the camera comes up on an azure expanse with no horizon, and the stirring string music lifts you high up into the sky, you know you can drop the remote and stop the search: this nature doc has grabbed you. And that’s all before director Luc Jacquet’s film brings you beneath the surface of the water, to meet the penguins as they ride like ribbons of silk on the massive ocean currents. March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step is the sequel to the hit 2005 documentary March of the Penguins, and returns Morgan Freeman as the omniscient narrator. “Meet the remarkable Emperor Penguin…again,” Freeman intones, and thousands of the titular birds are depicted in their wild, windy, freezing natural habitat of Antarctica, bopping to and fro and encountering one another as if they were at some strange avian cocktail mixer. The Next Step travels 2000 feet below the surface of the Southern ocean, following one penguin as it drifts past otherworldly sea creatures and vast fields of octopi. And it tracks an infant Emperor, covered in dun peach fuzz, as it sets out from its windswept inland home “for an ocean it’s never seen.” Instinct, insight, and full immersion in a place none of us will likely ever be: March of the Penguins 2 is a journey waiting to be taken.

Watch March of the Penguins 2 on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Josh Greenbaum
STARS: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo, Jamie Dornan
RATING: PG-13

There are many things COVID robbed us of, and one of the most underappreciated has to be the ability to see Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar. This camp classic in the making features Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo as two Midwestern women who make the unexpected decision to venture beyond their hometown and go to a beach resort. Hilarity ensues, especially when they encounter the divinely silly Jamie Dornan as a henchman who sees the dynamic duo as useful idiots for his villainous boss’ evil plan. He matches their freak and then some. Let’s just say his goofy musical number “Edgar’s Prayer” walked so “I’m Just Ken” could run.

Watch Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Chad Stahelski
STARS: Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane
RATING: R

The recent renaissance of Keanu Reeves begins with 2014’s John Wick. This shoot-‘em-up actioner begins with an almost parodic premise: Reeves’ titular hero kicks into full assassin mode after some Russian gangsters kill his dog. What results is his quest for revenge is a no-holds-barred affair that features some of the best action choreography in years, much of it executed with balletic grace by Reeves that harkens back to his days as Neo in The Matrix.

Watch John Wick on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Raine Allen Miller
STARS: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Charlie Knight
RATING: R

Rumors of the contemporary rom-com’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Director Raine Allen Miller shows there’s more than enough fuel in the tank with Rye Lane, a day-in-the-life story as the sparks of passion rage between South Londoners Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson). It works as both portraiture and landscape as they amble about town chatting through their past hang-ups and future hopes. It’ll charm you to no end.

Watch Rye Lane on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Celine Sciamma
CAST: Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel
RATING: R

“I’ve dreamt of that for years.” 

“Dying?”

“Running.” 

The cliffs and crashing sea are a constant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Celine Sciamma’s immersive drama about the relationship between a painter and her elusive aristocratic portrait subject in 18th century France. In a film with a certain quietness about it — the cast is limited, the setting is relatively static — it’s the roar and constant motion of the sea that agitates, and it keeps the viewer out of balance as the love story at the center of Lady on Fire‘s plot unfolds. Heloise, the aristocrat (played by Adele Haenel), dreamed of running because she was cooped up in a convent for a number of years, until her older sister committed suicide by leaping from the cliffs, and Heloise’s mother (Valeria Golino) instead bethrothed Heloise to a Milanese nobleman. As she begins to plot out her painting, starts to get to know her subject, and eventually falls in love with her, the audience discovers quite a bit about Marianne (Noeme Merlant), too, but Lady on Fire always returns to that roiling sea, and fittingly, it’s the setting for the fiery final acknowledgement of the forbidden love between these two women. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a mighty period romance that is also furiously contemporary in its thinking on love and relationships.

Watch Portrait of a Lady On Fire on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Robert Wise
STARS: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker
RATING: G

Start them young — The Sound of Music is the only Best Picture winner on Disney+, and it’s the perfect pick to be a young viewer’s first one. This sweeping movie musical captures all the grandeur of studio filmmaking while also encapsulating all the grace and gentility of Julie Andrews’ performance as the incorrigible Maria. It’s worth the time commitment.

Watch The Sound of Music on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese
STARS: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott
RATING: PG

If you’ve ever wondered where Todd Phillips could get something as depraved as Joker from, go back the source (AKA, the film he’s basically writing a fan letter to): Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. This ‘80s-set masterclass in cringe comedy was way ahead of its time in pinpointing the creepiness of parasocial relationships. De Niro sends shivers up the spine as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring television personality willing to go to increasingly queasy ends to get himself the fame he thinks he deserves. Scorsese saw what lay beyond Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame and tried to warn us. Now, we’re living in a world of Ruperts.

Watch The King of Comedy on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Baz Luhrmann
STARS: Nicole Kidman, Ewan MacGregor, Jim Broadbent
RATING: PG-13

The word melodrama derives from Greek words meaning “music drama,” a definition that Baz Luhrmann embodies better than anybody with Moulin Rouge! This exuberant portrait of fin de siècle Parisian nightlife finds the throughline between the can-can and MTV, portraying a doomed romance between MacGregor’s penniless writer and Kidman’s ambitious courtesan in period costumes and modern tunes. No movie has earned an exclamation point in its title quite like this one!

Watch Moulin Rouge! on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Pablo Larraín
STARS: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sean Harris
RATING: R

If you’d rather your royal dramas resemble The Shining than The Crown, then Spencer is the movie for you. Director Pablo Larraín builds on his incisive film Jackie to paint a portrayal of Princess Diana during a critical crucible as her marriage – and sanity – hang on by a mere thread over a holiday weekend. He’s got an incredibly cooperative partner in star Kristen Stewart, who imbues Diana with the same streak of soulfulness and shyness that runs through her own work and career. This is the cure for the common biopic.

Watch Spencer on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Barry Jenkins
STARS: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King
RATING: R

It’s easy to grade Barry Jenkins on a curve for attempting what none others were foolish enough to try: adapting the formidable prose of the legendary James Baldwin to the screen. If Beale Street Could Talk is more than just a participation medal, even if Jenkins himself has second-guessed some of his decisions on the film. This is a film that preserves the raw power of Baldwin’s words and finds a visual corollary in Jenkins’ poetic aesthetic. It’s a tribute to Black joy and love with the power to persevere across the ages.

Watch If Beale Street Could Talk on Hulu

strong>DIRECTOR: Justine Triet
STARS: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner
RATING: R

There are courtroom dramas, and then there’s Anatomy of a Fall. Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning sensation starts within a familiar framework — did a wife (Sandra Hüller’s Sandra Voyter) kill her husband, as she stands accused of doing, or did he simply fall to his death? But from there, every aspect of identity goes on the stand as Triet explodes every illusion that the trial is about Sandra’s innocence or guilt. It’s where France goes to settle its metaphorical disputes and decide its values. She is but collateral damage to forces that she cannot control but prove riveting to watch unfold.

Watch Anatomy of a Fall on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Max Barbakow
CAST: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti
RATING: R

Equal parts fun, poignance and wackiness, Palm Springs twists the rom com setting of a destination wedding ass backward on itself, over and over again, until a cocktail of quantum physics and psilocybin mushrooms attempts to bust the time loop cycle wide open. That’s right, it’s humankind’s perpetual search for life’s meaning and love’s promise at play against the rules of temporal lock grooves as understood by the Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day. With the narrative of Palm Springs repeatedly snapping back on itself, Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti have quite a load to shoulder. They’re like Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow, only with less alien invaders and more cold beers to crush. Samberg and Milioti prove ably up to the task, and get support too from a mischievous JK Simmons.

Watch Palm Springs on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Questlove
STARS: Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone
RATING: PG-13

DJ, The Roots drummer/leader, and ubiquitous cultural icon Questlove makes his directorial debut in Summer Of Soul, a documentary that explores a previously overlooked moment in 60s musical history: the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Engrossing archival footage of performers like Stevie Wonder is just one reason why the film took home several awards at the 2021 Sundance Festival.

Watch Summer of Soul on Hulu

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
STARS: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon
RATING: R

Anne Hathaway made waves when she announced Gone Girl was one of her favorite romcoms. But honestly, without spoiling, where’s the lie? This acrid breakdown of a marriage saved by mutual recognition of each other’s psychopathy is just the kind of sick laugh that one could expect from Fight Club director David Fincher. Even if you know the big twist, this thriller about games couples play never gets old.

Watch Gone Girl on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Michael Mann
STARS: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer
RATING: R

It might make a little more sense to watch Heat knowing that Al Pacino played his character as being on cocaine, but then director Michael Mann took out the subplot. (This would help explain the notoriously memed “GREAT ASS!” explosion.) Or, you could just take it as a natural escalation of tensions in a film that takes such a dynamic as its very subject. Pacino’s cop goes head-to-head with Robert De Niro’s criminal in a battle of wits that pushes both men to the extremes of their game. The same could be said for the actors, too.

Watch Heat on Hulu