The 50 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now, Updated for October 2024

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: Andy Tennant
STARS: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey
RATING: PG-13

When we look back at the illustrious career of Reese Witherspoon, Sweet Home Alabama may well be the definitive star text. It’s got all the trappings of her favorite narrative conventions – namely, a supremely qualified woman with two men fighting for her hand – but a satisfying meta layer as well. As her powerful New York fashion designer Melanie Carmichael prepares for a high-society marriage, she must return to her Alabamian roots to tie up some loose ends. She thought she could simply sever herself from the South but unexpectedly finds that she’s carried more affection for her home than initially realized … and must find a way to bridge those two worlds inside herself.

Watch Sweet Home Alabama 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: Ridley Scott
STARS: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron
RATING: R

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who respect Ridley Scott’s return to the storied Alien franchise … and those who are wrong. Prometheus returns the series to its body horror roots, weaving another terrifying yarn about how extraterrestrial spores slowly infect and demolish a flight crew in the outer reaches of space. If that’s not enough, the film also features one of Michael Fassbender’s best turns as David, the ship’s icy and calculating android butler.

Watch Prometheus 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: Gil Junger
STARS: Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
RATING: PG-13

There was just something in the air of March 1999: teenagers were so desperate to be taken seriously that they had to graft their struggles onto classic literature. First came Cruel Intentions, a wicked transposition of Dangerous Liaisons onto boarding school brats, but then came a much tamer comedy: 10 Things I Hate About You. This youthful romance restages Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in contemporary high school hallways as a popular Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) needs to pair off her irascible older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) so her old-fashioned father will allow the younger sibling to date. Despite the centuries-old source material, nothing feels dated about this madcap rom-com.

Watch 10 Things I Hate About You 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: David Fincher
STARS: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter
RATING: R

So, you think you fully understand Fight Club. Give it another watch, honestly. There is no end to peeling back layers of its trickery, commentary, and irony. With time and distance, this satire of masculinity and consumerism only shows more of its devilishly grinning face to the world.

Watch Fight Club 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

DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow
STARS: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler
RATING: R

All the controversy around whether or not Zero Dark Thirty glorified or excused torture (it doesn’t, as is clear upon any kind of close read of the film) clouded out that it’s just a plain fantastic movie. The story of America’s decade-long mission to hunt down Osama bin Laden is a ruthlessly effective procedural thriller, moving from blacksites to boardrooms effortlessly. It’s all anchored in the clear-eyed performance of Jessica Chastain as the relentless, resilient agent who refused to take her eyes off the prize – and doggedly earned vindication.

Watch Zero Dark Thirty 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: Anne Fletcher
STARS: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Betty White
RATING: PG-13

Few modern rom-coms have quite bottled up the energy of the old screwball classics quite like The Proposal. One can feel the energy of the comedies of remarriage in the magnetic pairing of Sandra Bullock as a fearsome publishing bigwig at risk of deportation to her native Canada and Ryan Reynolds as the long-suffering assistant who she strong-arms into “marrying” her so she can stay in America. It’s a movie that does romance as well as it does comedy, a rarity in a subgenre where one side usually prevails over the other.

Watch The Proposal on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve
STARS: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin
RATING: R

Denis Villeneuve has become a master of sci-fi worlds in his most recent directorial outings, but his best work may still be the grounded terrestrial tale along the U.S.-Mexico border in Sicario. This gripping thriller gets into the murky middle-ground where the drug trade meets law enforcement … where there is no division as clean as a dividing line. Our spiritual guide through this dangerous territory is Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, an FBI agent trying to keep her moral compass straight. Watching Blunt’s minute facial expressions register the confusion and horror swirling around her is truly the essence of cinema.

Watch Sicario on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Lynn
STARS: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Ralph Macchio
RATING: R

The uproarious My Cousin Vinny is the cure for the common legal procedural. The film soars on the back of hysterical “fish out of water” comedy as Joe Pesci’s brash New Yorker Vinny Gambini clashes with a genteel Southern town holding his wrongfully accused cousin in jail. Not to be outdone, however, it’s also a rare cinematic portrayal of the legal system that gets the nuts and bolts of courtroom proceedings correct according to legal scholars. Get a laugh and an education all at once!

Watch My Cousin Vinny on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Demme
STARS: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger
RATING: R

Even the pesky “Hathahaters” must be silenced by her turn in Rachel Getting Married, an achingly real portrait of a volatile addict in recovery who returns home for her sister’s wedding. This is not a portrayal of substance dependency as a series of tics that can be cured and treated like a disease – it’s a condition that Hathaway’s Kym must vigilantly manage because she’s still mitigating the damage it has caused with her family. Jonathan Demme’s empathetic direction handles this sensitive subject matter with grace, even as the story resists easy answers or simple catharsis for their fraught situation.

Watch Rachel Getting Married on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Thomas Bezucha
STARS: Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton
RATING: PG-13

Going home for the holidays is always a more fraught endeavor than one imagines, but Sarah Jessica Parker’s Meredith has no idea that tinderbox she ignites when she accompanies her boyfriend (Dermot Mulroney’s Everett) to Christmas with his immediate family. Meredith’s uptight etiquette instantly clashes with the free-wheeling members of the Stone family, setting up some madcap misadventures and prolonged painful exchanges. Sure, The Family Stone gets a bit unhinged with the wild plot maneuvers it undergoes … but what’s the holiday season without a little crazy?!

Watch The Family Stone on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele
STARS: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford
RATING: R

How many movies can say they added an entire term to the popular lexicon? Say someone’s in the “sunken place” and they’ll instantly have a complex and frightening web of associations thanks to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. (As I once pointed out in my “Smells Like ‘10s Spirit” column, it’s perhaps the best embodiment of how memes remade moviegoing culture in the last decade.) The right movie for the right time, his “social thriller” provided America the release valve for all the tensions boiling in the turnover from Obama to Trump.

Watch Get Out 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: Greg Mottola
STARS: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen
RATING: R

Is Superbad the best comedy of the last 15 years? There’s certainly a compelling case to make for this story of two high-school best friends (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) on a do-or-die mission to supply a party with booze and score their dream girls. There are wall-to-wall laughs from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s script, plus all the performers bring their A-game to add superb physical comedy. The more you watch, too, the more you see the tender and tentative (b)romance between the two leads emerge from under the gags.

Watch Superbad on Hulu

DIRECTOR: Peter Weir
STARS: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke
RATING: PG

The prospect of revisiting a high school classroom is scary, mostly because it’s a place I only return to in a nightmare where there’s a surprise math test I forgot to study for. But I’ll make an exception for Dead Poets Society, mostly because of the teacher who’s at the blackboard. Robin Williams’ John Keating (perhaps better known as “Oh Captain, My Captain”) is the best kind of professor, one who understands the value of educating literature as something that can enrich the very experience of life itself. This could be the quintessential Robin Williams role as it combines both his warmth of spirit and incorrigible energy.

Watch Dead Poets Society 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

DIRECTOR: Andrew Bujalski
STARS: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Dylan Gelula
RATING: R

As the so-called #girlboss era slips from powerful to parodic, there’s never been a better time to visit (or revisit) Andrew Bujalski’s incisive workplace comedy Support the Girls. Regina Hall shines as a woman just trying to get through the workday despite all the distractions and disruptions caused by the people she serves. Without getting on any kind of polemical soapbox, he effortlessly conveys the kind of emotional labor that so often falls on the female managerial class. And what better vantage point into the wide range of humanity than a Southern “breastaurant” modeled on Hooters?

Watch Support the Girls 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: David Mirkin
STARS: Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino, Janeane Garofalo
RATING: R

Social media effectively killed the purpose of the high school reunion by ensuring no one ever really lost touch with their former classmates. There’s no way today that the plot of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, where the two titular flailing twentysomethings spin a fabulist narrative of their success at their ten-year reunion, would work. But we can still laugh at — and, yes, identify with — the deep insecurities that drive the characters to disprove the doubters from their formative years.

Watch Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion on Hulu

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
STARS: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal
RATING: PG-13

A historical tale of how scrappy American racers took on the Italian behemoth, Ford v Ferrari runs like a well-oiled machine. Though James Mangold’s sleek craftsmanship makes the engine pure, the film would be nothing without the fuel provided by the soulful performances of Matt Damon and Christian Bale as the clashing visionaries behind the foolhardy Ford project. This is peak dad-core cinema right here, folks.

Watch Ford v Ferrari 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: Nicholas Stoller
STARS: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne
RATING: R

The sequel to Neighbors has absolutely no business being this funny, but it absolutely RIPS. Sorority Rising restages a lot of the original film’s conflict of adjoining properties between a family and a raucous college crew, only gender-swapped. But the real X-factor of this follow-up is how it wields Zac Efron’s Teddy Sanders from the first film as a frat star completely lost at sea as his brothers move on without him. It’s surprisingly sweet to watch him bop around the two houses in search of anything to provide him a sense of grounding and purpose in the absence of the fraternity that allowed him to be such a rockstar.

Watch Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising on Max

DIRECTOR: Jason Reitman
STARS: Elliott Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner
RATING: PG-13

There’s a version of Juno that lives on in the cultural imagination that’s reduced to indie quirk at its most cringe and snappy, stylized dialogue that might as well be a different language. That’s maybe not wrong, depending on how much you enjoy those things, but Juno is also a disarmingly emotional story about love and family through the eyes of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody wear their hearts out on their sleeves here, and with each revisit, I come to appreciate just how special the earnestness and sweetness of the movie are among that class of ‘00s indies.

Watch Juno on Hulu

DIRECTOR: M. Night Shyamalan
STARS: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Colette
RATING: PG-13

You may know the famous line from The Sixth Sense: “I see dead people.” You may even know the shocking twist at the end (it’s been over two decades, the moratorium on spoilers is over by now). But don’t let the enormous cultural legacy of M. Night Shyamalan’s breakout horror hit cloud the movie itself, which holds up as a tremendous work of suspense anchored in achingly vulnerable performances by Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment.

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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.

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DIRECTOR: Tom Hanks
STARS: Tom Hanks, Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler
RATING: PG

One of the biggest problems with movies about fictional artists is that they struggle to convince us that the art they make is actually good. Not so in That Thing You Do!, a lovingly nostalgic history of a fictional American band that becomes a one-hit wonder in the wake of Beatlemania. The title song is a legitimate bop, and Hanks (in the director’s chair!) renders every period detail with credibility and clarity. That exclamation point is more than merited for this eminently watchable and rewatchable film.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig
STARS: Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet
RATING: PG

Greta Gerwig’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s great American novel is decidedly a graduate course in Little Women, so those who aren’t as familiar with the story might be well advised to read the Wikipedia page before embarking on this emotional journey. This deconstruction and reconstruction of the feminist fable is alive in ways that adaptations of classic texts scarcely are because Gerwig locates the unsolved tension of balancing work and life within it. Break out the tissues, and not just for the famous death. This Little Women is poetic, poignant, and painfully relevant.

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DIRECTOR: Chloe Zhao
CAST: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn
RATING: R

Nomadland puts another prestige trophy in Hulu’s case, since it snagged top awards at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, and followed up with Golden Globe wins for Best Picture – Drama and Best Director for Chloe Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider), who also wrote the film. Then, of course, came the 2021 Oscars, which found Nomadland taking home the Best Picture prize, as well as Zhao winning Best Director. Frances McDormand is Fern — yet another Academy Award winner here — who takes to the road after she loses her job. Roaming the American West and living in her van, Fern falls in with an assortment of fellow nomads, conscious itinerants who either live in makeshift, rootless communities of like minded folks or survive in the space where heart and mettle meets tire and asphalt. Nomadland is lyrical, unhurried; it rests with its characters, respects their decisions, and carves for them a comforting space on the fraying edge of American society. And of course, Frances McDormand is an actor perfectly-cast to exist at the center of all of this. 

Watch Nomadland on Hulu