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Bulah Landaker
After scouring Netflix for the best thrillers, best action flicks, best romantic comedies, best horror movies, best family films, and more, it's finally time for us to narrow down our streaming suggestions to the best movies, period.
Five years ago we got what remains one of the best superhero movies of all time with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That's an incredibly hard act to follow, and yet the sequel to Miles Morales' journey, Across the Spider-Verse, is absolutely fantastic.
The truth is, you haven't known joy until you've experienced Paddington, one of the most charming movies imaginable. It's well agreed upon that the titular Peruvian-British bear, voiced oh-so-sweetly by Ben Whishaw, is the epitome of cuteness. You could watch Paddington on mute and, by the laws of nature, melt into a puddle over his marmalade-smeared little face. This isn't just a movie about gushing over cute animals, though, but one that gently tells a story about British colonialism, immigration, and xenophobia through the wacky adventures of a bear on the run.
On its surface, the latest from Todd Haynes (Carol, Velvet Goldmine) may seem like a thinly veiled reexamination of a true crime tale that had '90s tabloids absolutely obsessed. Screenwriter Samy Burch uses this familiar framework to construct a story that not only delivers a dishy parody of a melodrama, down to a string-zinging score and comically banal dialogue about hot dogs. She's also built a keen device to evaluate our obsession with true crime, for better or for ghoulish.
If Daniel Day-Lewis is really and truly permanently retired from acting (and let's hope he's not, for acting's sake), then he went out on a darn high note with this profoundly romantic anti-romance from director Paul Thomas Anderson. DDL's persnickety couture bastard Reynolds Woodcock (a name the director and his star came up with as a gag, which stuck) and his right-hand sis Cyril (Lesley Manville, who will go right through you) have the disgustingly wealthy eating out of their satin-lined gloves when the film begins.
This 2016 adventure about bad egg Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) and his curmudgeonly foster father Hec (Sam Neill) is the kind of eccentric delight that writer/director Taika Waititi specializes in (this time co-writing with Barry Crump, who wrote the book it's based on).
Take your typical family road trip comedy, toss in a robot apocalypse, and top it all off with a heavy smattering of meme-worthy filters, doodles, and GIFs, and you might end up with something like The Mitchells vs. The Machines: a truly fun-for-the-whole-family feature that hinges on whether an artsy teen (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) and her luddite dad (voiced by Danny McBride) can set aside their differences long enough to save all of humanity from being launched into space by Siri Pal.
Based on a real Palestinian girl's story, Darin J. Sallam's debut feature film follows 14-year-old Farha (Karam Taher), who dreams of moving from her Palestinian village into the city so she can go to school instead of getting married. But it's 1948 in Palestine, just as the first Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, was taking place, and far more horrifying things are about to interrupt Farha's hopes.
Emotional demolitions expert/filmmaker Charlie Kaufman destroys audiences once more in the mind-boggling I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Adapted from Iain Reid's novel of the same name, this cryptically titled psychological thriller follows a woman, played by Jessie Buckley, and her boyfriend, played by Jesse Plemons, on a disturbing visit to his parents' remote farmhouse. What follows? Well, that depends on who you ask.
Sometimes true crime can lead to some pitch-perfect dark comedy. This is the case for this outrageous offering, which stars Jack Black as infamous scammer/local celebrity Jan Lewan. Black brings all the rock star panache you need to understand how Lewan could be so beguiling to the Pennsylvanian retirees who surrendered their savings to the self-proclaimed Polka King.
Writer/director Rian Johnson follows up his critically heralded whodunnit with a sequel that's even more explosive than Knives Out. Southern gentleman/detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is back, drawling deductions and whipping out witticisms, much to the chagrin of a group of wealthy and conniving friends.
Jason Adams is a freelance entertainment writer at Mashable. He lives in New York City and is a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic who also writes for Pajiba, The Film Experience, AwardsWatch, and his own personal site My New Plaid Pants. He's extensively covered several film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, New York, SXSW, Fantasia, and Tribeca. He's a member of the LGBTQ critics guild GALECA. He loves slasher movies and Fassbinder and you can follow him on Twitter at @JAMNPP.
Another week on the books means another weekend to grab some popcorn, curl up on the couch, and watch whatever's new on the best streaming services. But with so many great movies coming and going each week, figuring out what to watch can be a headache.
So let us here at Tom's Guide do the hard work for you. We've rounded up all of the hits and none of the duds to make your next movie night one to remember. While the release schedule has slowed in recent weeks, you're not hurting for quality flicks this weekend. Leading the pack is "Monkey Man," Dev Patel's high-octane action movie in the style of "John Wick," on Peacock along with one of the most visually distinctive horror movies of the year so far, "I Saw the TV Glow," on paid video-on-demand services.
Meanwhile, Netflix has a new animated superhero film that looks fun for the whole family with "Ultraman: Rising," one of the best 007 movies ("Casino Royale") just landed on Paramount Plus, and you can find the heartfelt stop-motion dramedy "Anomalisa" on Prime Video.
So without further ado, here are all the top movies that just arrived on streaming. If you're looking for even more streaming recommendations, be sure to check out our round-up of the best new TV shows to watch, too.
The directorial debut of Oscar-nominated actor Dev Patel finally landed on streaming platforms this week. A violent revenge thriller a la "John Wick," "Monkey Man" stars Patel as an unnamed protagonist who moonlights as a monkey-mask-wearing combatant in an underground fighting ring.
While I haven't gotten a chance to check out "I Saw the TV Glow" yet, it's the one horror movie this year so far that's intrigued me the most. Its trailer alone was enough to pique my interest with its "V/H/S" and "Channel Zero" vibes, but now that I see critics hailing its distinctive visual style and how it tackles queer themes, you can bet I'll be watching it this weekend.
Netflix is rebooting the decades-spanning "Ultraman" series for a new audience with this animated feature of the popular Japanese hero. "Ultraman: Rising" follows Ken Sato (voiced by Christopher Sean in the English dub), an egotistical baseball star who lives a secret life as the giant superhero Ultraman.
After an attack by giant monsters sees him return to Tokyo, his life becomes even more complicated when he adopts a baby kaiju after defeating its mother. Alongside reluctant parenthood, Ken must navigate a strained relationship with his estranged father and thwart the schemes of the Kaiju Defense Force, which plans to exploit the baby kaiju for nefarious purposes.
The start of Daniel Craig's 007 era is almost universally considered to be one of the best James Bond movies of all time. Not to mention one of the best action movies of the 2000s. "Casino Royale" is a sort of reboot, one that sees the newly licensed-to-kill British Secret Service agent set off on one of his first missions. This time around, he faces off against a truly iconic villain in the bloody-eyed Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen).
"Anomalisa" is a heartbreaking exploration of what it means to be human...through stop-motion puppetry. It's an artistic choice (and an eerily beautiful one at that) that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but whether you vibe with the premise or not, I encourage you to suspend your disbelief for a little bit. If only not to miss out on this all-too-human story about the unbearable loneliness of being and how our connections with those around us can change our very fabric.
While Diane Kruger may be best known for her roles in "National Treasure" and "Inglourious Basterds," her work in the German drama "In the Fade" has been hailed as a seminal performance of her career. She plays Katja, a mother and wife whose life falls apart in the blink of an eye when her family is killed in a bombing believed to be the work of Neo-Nazis.
Wracked with grief and with little support from her hard-hearted mother-in-law, she turns to drinking and drugs to deal with the pain. But things take a turn when the two suspects behind the bombing are arrested and stand trial for murder. For Katja, however, the line between justice and revenge is hazy.
The super-cool sci-fi sequel is one of several new movies available on your favorite services: Netflix, Amazon's Prime Video, Max, Hulu and Disney+ have a bunch of good stuff to watch from your couch. There's original fare like a Jennifer Lopez sci-fi action extravaganza and documentaries on the Beach Boys and the Blue Angels, plus theatrical releases arriving on streaming, such as Michael Mann's Enzo Ferrari biopic and a Dakota Johnson superhero flick.
Amazon is finally streaming one of last year's best movies! Better late than never to see Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright at the absolute top of his game as a curmudgeonly academic who writes a book with stereotypically Black tropes as a joke and is shocked when it becomes a hit in this tremendously funny and thoughtful film.
The futuristic sci-fi thriller casts Jennifer Lopez as a counterterrorism expert out to take down a robot (Simu Liu) bent on wiping out most of mankind. What's better than rom-com J.Lo? Action-hero J.Lo making friends with an AI and taking on villainous machines in mechanized armor.
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