This year, summer movie season is a little different. Theaters may be open, but streaming services are still taking the spotlight as Warner Bros. is releasing its entire theatrical slate on HBO Max as soon as the movies hit theaters, and Netflix is releasing a new original flick every week. So, stream your best life! But with so much coming and going on the major streamers this summer, it’s tough to keep up with what’s worth seeing. To help you out, we’re compiling the best new movies to join Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max. Check back — we update every week!
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, and the best movies on HBO.
Netflix
Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson’s tale about the ’70s porn industry in the San Fernando Valley is deeply provocative and endlessly entertaining. Mark Wahlberg stars as Eddie Adams, a teenage busboy discovered by porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), who transforms into adult sensation Dirk Diggler. Brought into a supportive circle of other performers and creators, Dirk thrives in the hedonistic lifestyle of 1970s Los Angeles, but that lifestyle soon threatens to bring him back down.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Bong Joon-ho’s (Parasite) first big film to hit American markets was Snowpiercer, an intense post-apocalyptic political thriller that takes place on a giant train. After an ice age forces huomanity’s final survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain, they find that the political and social dynamics that formed the world haven’t gone anywhere. But facing extinction, one man (Chris Evans) leads a revolt for control of the engine and the world.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence deliver outstanding performances in this film about mentally ill people searching for connection in an insane world. After losing his job and wife and spending time in a mental institution, Pat Solatano (Cooper) is back living with his parents. Wanting to rebuild his life and win back his wife, Pat goes about doing the same rote things he did to fall off the wagon in the first place. That is, until he meets Tiffany (Lawrence), who offers to help him reconnect with his wife as long as he’ll do something for her in exchange.
Fatherhood (2021)
Kevin Hart gets dramatic in this new original film about a father raising his baby girl after the unexpected death of his wife the day after their daughter’s birth. Hart delivers a surprisingly poignant performance in a difficult role that delivers as much charm and humor as can work while dealing with such a heavy subject.
Penguin Town (2021)
You’ve seen reality TV and you’ve seen nature shows, but you probably haven’t seen a documentary quite like Penguin Town. The whimsical flick centers on a picturesque South African town where an eclectic group of endangered penguins live like rock stars. You’ll get to know the characters as they flock around town to find mates, raise families, and mix with the local humans.
Hulu
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2021)
Delayed due to the pandemic, Bill & Ted Face the Music is finally out, 30 years after the original excellent adventure. The boys are still best friends in adulthood and, when the ruler of the future tells them they must compose a new song to save life on Earth, it’s time once again for Wyld Stallyns to shine! Except … they don’t really want to work that hard, so they decide to time travel to steal it from their future selves instead. Simultaneously, their young daughters devise their own scheme to help their fathers succeed.
The Terminator (1984)
One of the greatest sci-fi films of all time is available on Hulu. In 2029, humanity is on the brink of extinction at the hands of machines — until a hero arises. To prevent this, the machines send a cyborg assassin known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to the year 1984 to kill the hero’s mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The humans send back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to protect Connor and alert her to the coming of Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will spark a nuclear holocaust and bring about an apocalyptic war. Now, Sarah and Kyle must escape the virtually unstoppable Terminator at all costs.
False Positive (2021)
Broad City‘s Ilana Glazer tries her hand at horror in this Hulu Original. After months of trying and failing to get pregnant, Lucy (Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) find the fertility doctor of their dreams, Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan). But when Lucy becomes pregnant with a healthy baby, she soon finds something sinister about Dr. Hindle. As she investigates the man, she soon discovers an unsettling truth about him and her own life.
Gone Girl (2014)
David Fincher expertly adapted Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel into an Oscar-nominated thriller that’s chock full of juicy twists. Spurred by outstanding performances by Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl follows the national search for a woman who was the inspiration for her parents’ beloved children’s books after she is reported missing by her husband. But all is not as it appears.
Slumdog Millionaire (2009)
This Best Picture winner took Hollywood by storm as a rare film not about the West or Westerners to win the honor. Dev Patel stars as 18-year-old Jamal Malik, a young thief who finds himself on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Starting in media res, we learn more about Jamal, how he got to be on the show, and how he knows every answer through flashbacks into his difficult life. After the death of his mother, Jamal and his brother join a group of thieves surviving on the streets of Mumbai. While his brother enjoys the life of crime, Jamal struggles to go straight with small jobs until stumbling into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on the show.
Amazon Prime Video
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Amazon Prime Video takes on a big-budget blockbuster with The Tomorrow War. When a group of time travelers arrives from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message, the world is thrown into upheaval. In the future, mankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species, and the only hope for survival is to bring soldiers and civilians from the present into the future to join the fight. Among the chosen is high school teacher Dan Forester (Chris Pratt), who teams up with a brilliant scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) to help rewrite the fate of the planet.
Snatch (2000)
Likely Guy Ritchie’s best film, Snatch puts the director’s classic breakneck pace to excellent effect in a British gangster movie that’s as full of laughs as it is with twists. Turkish (Jason Statham) is an illegal boxing promoter who convinces gangster Brick Top (Alan Ford) to offer bets on bare-knuckle boxer Mickey (Brad Pitt) in a fixed match. But when Mickey doesn’t throw the fight, Brick Top demands another match. While Brick Top is preoccupied with the bookie, gangster Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) maneuvers behind him while multiple criminals converge on a stolen diamond that Frankie has come to London to sell. If it sounds like chaos, it is. And it’s amazing.
Pinnochio (2020)
The classic Italian folktale comes to life with a bit more of a sinister tone in this PG-13 live-action story. The Italian film stars Roberto Benigni as Geppetto, father of the magical puppet Pinocchio, who comes to life with dreams of becoming a real boy. An easily manipulated, docile puppet, Pinnochio soon finds himself tricked, kidnapped, and chased by bandits through a world of imaginative creatures, all while Geppetto fights valiantly to recover the puppet before it’s lost forever.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller are at the top of their games in this raunchy competition comedy. Average Joe’s Gym isn’t doing so well. Neither is its owner, Peter La Fleur (Vaughn). The gym across the street, Globo-Gym, run by maniacal fitness freak White Goodman (Stiller) is about to run Average Joe’s out of business, and Goodman is psychotically dedicated to bringing La Fleur down. Unless Peter can raise $50,000 to keep his mortgage, he’ll lose the gym. To get that money, he resorts to a last-ditch effort: Entering a dodgeball contest with a big cash prize with a ragtag group of Average Joe’s members. But when Goodman hears about the Average Joe’s plan, he enters the competition with his own superteam.
Fight Club (1999)
This energetic adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s book doesn’t pull its punches, right down to an absolutely awesome final twist. Edward Norton plays a depressed man suffering from insomnia who meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who promises to bring the man back to life. Soon, the two bored men are living in a squalid house together and forming an underground fight club where men fed up with their mundane lives come to take out their frustrations on one another. But as the club grows, it takes on nefarious purposes, which are amplified when a woman attracts Tyler’s attention.
HBO and HBO Max
No Sudden Move (2021)
In 1954 Detroit, a group of small-time criminals is hired to steal what they think is a basic document. But when their plan goes horribly wrong, their search for who hired them and why weaves them through a rapidly changing city torn apart by racial strife, social advancement, and economic stagnation. Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Jon Hamm, and Benicio Del Toro star in this new Warner Bros. film from Steven Soderbergh.
The Little Things (2021)
Released earlier this year on HBO Max, The Little Things is now available for standard HBO subscribers as well. This slow-burn detective tale follows Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) as he travels to Los Angeles for what should be a quick evidence-gathering assignment. But Deacon has a history in the LAPD, and he soon finds himself roped into an investigation of a serial killer who is terrorizing the city.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Steve Carell stars in this ridiculous rom-com as a mild-mannered, action-figure-collecting, 40-year-old man who has just sort of casually proceeded through his life without ever having sex. Discovering this, his co-workers launch him on a misguided odyssey to lose his virginity. But while his coworkers’ advice keeps leading to disaster, the answer to his woes might just be across the street in the form of a local entrepreneur.
In the Heights (2021)
Before the cultural phenomenon of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda made a slightly more contained Broadway hit, In The Heights. Now, Warner Bros. has adapted the show into one of the best musical films of recent memory. In Washington Heights, New York, a tight-knit community thrives and barely scrapes by with a melting pot of dreams and problems constantly swirling around them. At the intersection of it all is a magnetic bodega owner who dreams of a better life for all.
Shazam! (2019)
Zachary Levi shines as the adult superhero version of young Billy Batson who unwittingly inherits the power of the great wizard Shazam. Now, he can transform into a superhero by simply shouting one word. But although he looks like a grown-up, Shazam is still a kid inside, having a little too much fun testing out his newfound powers and not taking them all that seriously. But when the evil Dr. Thaddeus Sivana shows up, attempting to steal Shazam’s magical abilities, Billy has to get serious in a hurry.
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