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 ‘Train Dreams’
Clint Bentley’s “modest, luminous” film adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella barely speaks above a whisper yet lands with an emotional force that by its conclusion, is overwhelming. Joel Edgerton stars as Robert Grainier, a laborer in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century, who lives a pretty average life: He works, he falls in love with a wonderful woman (Felicity Jones), they have a child, they experience tragedy. But it’s less a rolling narrative than a memory play, capturing the feeling of living in this time, in these places, working alongside these “itinerant men.” Much of Edgerton’s performance is reactive, but it doesn’t matter; he says more, with his soulful eyes or a deep and heavy sigh, about sadness, grief and guilt than any monologue can convey. The cinematography, by Adolpho Veloso, is awe-inspiring — stunning in its beauty, devastating in its desolation. These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘Search Party’
Alia Shawkat stars in this darkly comic mystery series as Dory, a bored young Brooklynite who becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened to a former college classmate who disappeared. While playing amateur detective alongside her friends (played by John Early, John Reynolds and Meredith Hagner), Dory stumbles into multiple unpredictable misadventures, which ultimately lead to her becoming a quasi celebrity, for better and for worse. “Search Party” is funny and strange, and filled with talented actors who capture the messiness of being young and hip in New York City. Our critic called it “a comedy of millennial angst and entitlement” that is “surprisingly entertaining and even, here and there, moving.” Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU ‘Superbad’
Manohla Dargis praised this “sweetly absurd high school comedy,” in which a pair of horny teen outcasts (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) try to bluff their way into the party of the year. The screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script when they were in high school — the protagonists even share their names — and that proximity to the subject matter gives the picture an honesty and truth too often lacking in teen sex romps. Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Emma Stone (in her debut role) all shine, but Hill is the M.V.P., a roaring lighting bolt of comic energy and surprising vulnerability. Here are Hulu’s best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ‘Inherit the Wind’
Our critic deemed Stanley Kramer’s adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s stage play (based on the notorious Scopes “monkey trial”) to be “triumphant,” its climax “one of the most brilliant and engrossing displays of acting ever witnessed on the screen.” The actors Fredric March and Spencer Tracy are in career-best form as the Bible-pounding orator and the agnostic defense attorney on opposite theological and philosophical sides of the evolution debate. Kramer cranks up the carnival atmosphere, to great effect, and pulls a rare (and entertaining) nonmusical supporting turn from Gene Kelly as an H.L. Mencken-esque newspaper reporter. Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’
In a performance that shows the full range of her talent as a dramatic and comedic actress, Rose Byrne spends “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” in a state of perpetual duress, playing a mother who’s tending to her daughter’s mysterious illness while several other brush fires flare up. As she’s flooded out of her home and a client at her therapy practice goes missing mid-session, Linda (Byrne) keeps a tenuous hold on her sanity, no thanks to her own therapist (Conan O’Brien), who seems put off by her crises. The writer-director Mary Bronstein directs the film like a feature-length panic attack, but Byrne’s resiliency and sense of humor keep it grounded. Jeannette Catsoulis called it “a howl of maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor.” See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ ‘Bluey’
For parents of very young children, “tolerable” tends to be the low bar that shows have to clear. But this delightful Australian cartoon about a family of dogs living in Brisbane appeals to all ages with its imaginative playtime scenarios and its genuinely clever and sweet observations about domestic life. The episodes are a digestible seven minutes long, enough time for low-key vignettes about, say, a chaotic wait for a takeout order or about when Bluey, the oldest child, dreams of being a fruit bat. In an NYT Parenting column on favorite TV shows for kids, “Bluey” was “by far the most popular reader submission.” The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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