The weekend is here! If you’re looking for something to watch, we can help. We’ve dug through Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Disney+ to find some of the best titles on each service. STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’
The filmmaker Desiree Akhavan directed and collaborated on the screenplay for this delicate, funny film that won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Chloë Grace Moretz does some of her best work to date as Cameron, a gay teenager whose conservative guardians send her to an isolated “conversion therapy” center — where, instead of a “cure,” she finds the support and validation of like-minded peers. A.O. Scott wrote that the film, based on a young adult novel by Emily Danforth, navigates “troubled culture-war waters with grace, humor and compassion.” These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys’
This documentary series looks back at the 1990s renaissance of the Dallas Cowboys, after the former N.F.L. powerhouse stumbled through much of the ’80s. “America’s Team” focuses mainly on the team’s controversial owner Jerry Jones, who brought in talented new players while also overhauling the Cowboys’ all-American image, giving freer rein to some of pro football’s flashier personalities. The result is an unusual kind of underdog story, tracing how an American institution became dominant again, thanks to the efforts of some people unafraid of big risks and obnoxious swagger. Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU ‘Sharp Corner’
This psychologically intense and often frightening character study starts innocuously enough, as the middle manager Josh (Ben Foster), his wife, Rachel (Cobie Smulders), and their young son move from the city to a dream home in the suburbs. But their newfound bliss is punctured on the very first night by a horrible automobile accident in their front yard, thanks to a particularly dangerous curve that comes to consume Josh. Adapting a short story by Russell Wangersky, the writer and director Jason Buxton methodically follows Josh’s quiet descent as his obsession surfaces issues bubbling within his marriage — and within his entire existence. Foster and Smulders are excellent as a man unspooling and the woman who’s watching helplessly. And the closing passages have a disturbing live-wire, anything-can-happen quality. This one gets under your skin, and stays there. Here are Hulu’s best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ‘After the Hunt’
The words “cancel culture” are never uttered in Luca Guadagnino’s new drama. But that’s undeniably the subject of this story of a rape accusation in the Yale philosophy department that prompts a moment of reckoning and examination for everyone involved. Nora Garrett’s thoughtful script doesn’t stack the deck, and takes pains to avoid easy assumptions; she sets up all sorts of competing stakes, overlapping interests and stray provocations. The entire cast is superb, but this is some of Julia Roberts’s best film work to date, a masterful characterization that seeks out and seizes on the shadings and contradictions of a complicated woman. It occasionally veers into the didactic; most of the time, it’s refreshing to see a modern movie address these hot-button issues with such nuance. Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX ‘The Alabama Solution’
With press access restricted because of “security” concerns, the appalling conditions within the Alabama prison system have festered in the dark, obscuring reports of massive overcrowding, inmate abuse and shocking rates of drug addiction and violence. Yet the prisons have not been able to curtail the flow of contraband cellphones, giving the makers of “The Alabama Solution” the opportunity to tell this story from the inside out. Using the possible murder of an inmate as a through-line, Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s multilayered documentary tours a corrupt and dangerous system while supporting the efforts of incarcerated leaders who seek legal relief. Alissa Wilkinson believes the film’s vitality comes from “how it illuminates the sheer force of a video from inside a prison.” See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ ‘Thunderbolts*’
As recent cycles of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been bogged down by obligations to the overall mythology of the series, it’s refreshing for a film like “Thunderbolts*” to come along with like an off-brand Avengers, following a ragtag group of back-bench superheroes that are fun to watch together. Arguably the most famous of the bunch is Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), a.k.a. the Winter Soldier from the “Captain America” movies. But more enjoyably still are the wisecracking Yelena Belva (Florence Pugh) and Red Guardian (David Harbour) from “Black Widow,” and John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the failed Cap successor from the TV series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Manohla Dargis singled out Pugh as “a vibrantly alive presence.” The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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