Oscar season may be over, but Hulu is adding two of 2023’s top nominees to this month’s movie lineup. Poor Things is already available to stream, and on March 22, it will be joined by the French legal thriller Anatomy of a Fall. As you can also see by looking over the new titles on Hulu, March is a very strong month for movie lovers. But for this list, we’re throwing the spotlight on Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.
That’s just the beginning of the best movies on Hulu right now. Keep reading for more of our picks, which feature a great lineup of Hulu originals mixed in with acclaimed films from all over the world.
Subscribe to a different platform? Not only do we have a guide to the best shows on Hulu, but we’ve rounded up the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Netflix, and the best movies on Disney+.
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Poor Things2023 - Anatomy of a Fall2023
- Inception2010
- Life of Pi2012
Poor Things (2023) new
Emma Stone won her second Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) falls for Bella before he learns that a mad scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), brought her back to life with a newborn’s brain. That doesn’t dissuade Max from wanting to marry Bella, but she has other ideas.
Bella runs away with a lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), so she can experience everything that the world has to offer her. Much like Max, Duncan’s influence over Bella only goes so far before she starts setting the agenda for herself, and no one is prepared to accept that.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023) new
Anatomy of a Fall was a five-time nominee at the Oscars, and the winner for 2023’s Best Original Screenplay. The story revolves around the death of Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) and the discovery of his body by his son, Daniel Maleski (Milo Machado-Graner). Did Samuel fall from the attic in his home, or was he pushed?
The police soon openly suspect that Samuel’s wife and Daniel’s mother, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller), attacked Samuel and pushed him to his death. Even Daniel doesn’t quite know what to think when the truth about his parent’s strained marriage is brought out to the open. Affairs and resentment are only a small part of why Sandra and Samuel were estranged. But it looks damning when one of the leading characters in Sandra’s new novel contemplated killing her husband in a similar manner.
Inception (2010) new
Prior to Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy tended to have only supporting roles in Christopher Nolan’s movies. For Inception, Murphy played Robert Fischer Jr., a man whose rival want him to dissolve his father’s business empire. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a thief who enters people’s dreams and steals their secrets, is hired to plant an idea in Robert’s head to make him think that breaking up the business was his own idea. That’s the inception in Inception.
Robert’s mind and body are well-defended, which is why Dom has put together a team to handle the mind heist as well as someone to watch over them in the real world. The problem with Dom’s dreams is that even in this scenario, he’s haunted by the specter of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who doesn’t want him to get away.
Life of Pi (2012) new
Life of Pi is not a fantasy, but there’s a touch of magic in director Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s hit novel. The film and the book are the story of Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel (Suraj Sharma), a teenager who accompanies his family and their zoo animals as they travel by sea to immigrate to Canada. Tragedy strikes when the boat sinks, killing Pi’s family and most of the animals.
Only a handful of animals make it off the ship with Pi, including a large Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Soon, it’s just Pi and the tiger as the former attempts to find a way to co-exist with Richard Parker without being eaten or attacked. Because the boy and the tiger need each other to survive while stranded in the open waters of the sea.
Suncoast (2024)
Laura Chinn’s Suncoast is largely based on true events that happened to her and her family, but the movie does take some dramatic license with the story. Nico Parker stars as Doris, a teenager who is overwhelmed by the brain cancer afflicting her brother, Max (Cree Kawa), and from her attempts to deal with their mother, Kristine (Laura Linney).
When Max enters hospice care, Doris befriends Paul (Woody Harrelson), an activist who is fighting to keep a woman named Terri Schiavo hooked up to life support despite her persistent vegetative state and the wishes of her husband. As for Doris, she has to face the very real possibility that her brother will never come home from hospice.
12 Years a Slave (2013)
The final fate of Solomon Northup has been lost to time, but his harrowing account of being sold into slavery two decades before the Civil War was adopted for the big screen as 12 Years a Slave. In 2013’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays Solomon, a free Black musician in the North who is kidnapped and forced into slavery in the South.
Solomon’s first owner, William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), at least has some compassion for him. The same can’t be said about Solomon’s next master, Edwin Epps (The Killer‘s Michael Fassbender), a cruel sadist who abuses Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), one of his female slaves. With each passing year, Solomon despairs that his chances to regain his freedom are slipping away until he finally meets someone willing to risk their own life to help him.
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s Heat has the distinction of featuring The Godfather Part II’s Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together for the first time in the same scene. But they play very different characters in this thrilling crime drama. Pacino portrays Lieutenant Vincent Hanna of the LAPD, a man determined to catch an elusive thief, Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), and bring him to justice.
McCauley and Hanna actually have some measure of respect for each other, but not enough to back down from their impending showdown. McCauley has more immediate problems when a heist goes wrong, and his attempt to sell his stolen goods back to their owner, Roger Van Zant (William Fichtner), only earns him another deadly enemy.
The Lost City (2022)
The Lost City plays a bit like a mixture of Argylle and Uncharted, while casting Sandra Bullock as Loretta, a wildly successful romance novelist who is still mourning her late husband. After being pushed into going on a book tour with her cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum), Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire, Abigail Faifax (Daniel Radcliffe), who is convinced that the research of Loretta’s husband can lead him to a hidden treasure.
Alan, having already fallen for Abigail, mounts a rescue mission alongside Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt). But when Jack goes down, Alan and Abigail are left on their own as they attempt to escape from Fairfax and his men.
Uncharted (2022)
Fans of the Uncharted video games may have done a double take when the MCU’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland, was cast as a much younger version of adventurer Nathan “Nate” Drake. The Uncharted movie is an alternate take on Nate’s origin story and how he formed a partnership with Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a treasure hunter who claims to have been the partner of Nate’s missing brother, Sam Drake (Rudy Pankow).
In the way of Nate and Sully’s first expedition is Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas), a very wealthy man who hires Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) and her mercenaries to take out anyone in their path. Nate and Sully only have Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali) to call upon for help, but even she may be less than trustworthy.
The King of Comedy (1982)
You may notice some intentional parallels between The King of Comedy and Joker, both of which featured Robert De Niro in leading roles. Except in Martin Scorsese’s film, De Niro is the one playing a mentally ill man, instead of a famous talk show host. Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is absolutely convinced that he’s got what it takes to be a stand-up comedian. He’s also deluded about his “friendship” with late-night TV host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis).
Rupert eventually meets Marsha (Sandra Bernhard), a woman who has her own delusions about being romantic with Jerry. Together, they hatch a scheme to get everything they want. All they have to do is take Jerry hostage and hold him for ransom.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
If Quentin Tarantino is serious about making only one more movie, then his penultimate film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, will go down as one of his best pictures. In this alternate version of history, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a faded Hollywood star, and his best friend and bodyguard, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is a dangerous man with a murky past. Rick is desperate for a comeback, and his opportunities are drying up.
Meanwhile, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is on the rise as a prominent actress, unaware that the Manson family’s violent ambitions may mean the death of her. Tarantino creates so much tension whenever the Mansons menace any of the three leads in this film that the inevitable violence is almost cathartic when it finally arrives.
EverAfter (1998)
True to its name, Ever After: A Cinderella Story is a riff on Cinderella. But there’s no Bibbidi‐Bobbidi‐Boo, talking mice, or fairy godmothers to be found here. The heroine isn’t even called Cinderella. Instead, her name is Danielle de Barbarac (Drew Barrymore), a young woman who is treated like a slave by her stepmother, Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent (Anjelica Huston), and her stepsister, Marguerite de Ghent (Megan Dodds). Danielle’s second stepsister, Jacqueline de Ghent (Melanie Lynskey), isn’t quite so wicked.
After years of servitude, Danielle comes across Prince Henry (Dougray Scott) as he attempts to flee his arranged marriage. Danielle and Henry have a definite spark, but she may need a little help from Leonardo da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey) to break free of her stepfamily and romance the prince.
Quiz Lady (2023)
Quiz Lady features a unique pairing of Awkwafina and Sandra Oh as sisters Annie and Jenny Yum, respectively. When their mother flees the country to avoid a gambling debt, the struggling Jenny moves back home with her younger sister. While Annie effortlessly answers the questions as she watches a TV game show, Jenny films it and later posts it online where it goes viral.
This attracts the wrong kind of attention to Annie’s talent, as a criminal kidnaps the family dog to blackmail Annie into going on the game show in order to cover her mother’s debt and get their pet back. What Annie doesn’t realize is that Jenny also has other ulterior motives to get her sister on TV.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot is accustomed to murder mysteries, but less so to ghosts in A Haunting in Venice. Just two years after World War II, Poirot is ready to put his life as a detective in the past. However, Poirot just can’t resist the opportunity to unmask a fraud when he is invited to attend a seance held by Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).
It doesn’t take Poirot long to figure out how Joyce pulls off her supposedly supernatural tricks. But much to Poirot’s alarm, someone soon tries to murder him before Joyce’s body is discovered. Now, Poirot has to figure out if he is dealing with a conventional murderer, or something more sinister from beyond the grave.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
The curse of Jumanji returns for a new generation of characters in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Now transformed into a video game, Jumanji entices four teenagers – Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff), Anthony “Fridge” Johnson (Ser’Darius Blain), Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman), and Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner) – into playing without fully understanding the consequences of their decision.
Suddenly, the group finds themselves physically transported into the game, with Spencer in the body of Dr. Xander “Smolder” Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany as Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon (Jack Black), and Martha as Ruby Roundhouse (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3‘s Karen Gillan). Each of the kids has only three lives to escape from Jumanji. But first, they have to locate the fifth player in their group.
No One Will Save You (2023)
Kaitlyn Dever stars in the Hulu original movie No One Will Save You as Brynn, a young woman who lives a solitary existence in large part because she is a pariah in her small town. That’s one of the reasons why Brynn has no one to turn to when an alien invades her home. In the aftermath, Brynn finds no support from her fellow humans, and she discovers just how alone she really is.
No One Will Save You barely has any dialogue at all, but Dever’s expressive and earnest performance carries the entire film. It also goes a long way toward making little gray men scary again, especially when Brynn meets the more horrific aliens.
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Despite its name, Nightmare Alley is not a horror story, and also one of director Guillermo del Toro’s most grounded drama to date. Bradley Cooper stars as Stanton “Stan” Carlisle, a con man who has a gift in getting people to believe that he can physically speak to their loved ones who have died.
While this skill gets him out of the carnival, it also sets Stan up for a fall when Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill), a former skeptic who wants to speak with his dead son. Stan also appears to have met his match with Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a con artist who is even more ruthless than he is.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
There are few things more heartbreaking than when your best friend suddenly decides they don’t like you anymore. Writer and director Martin McDonagh explores this idea in his dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin. Colin Farrell stars as Pádraic Súilleabháin, an ordinary man living on Inisherin, who is absolutely bewildered and hurt when his best friend, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), abruptly ends their relationship.
Pádraic assumes that he’s somehow offended Colm and bends over backwards to apologize … to no avail. Even the efforts of Pádraic’s sister, Siobhán Súilleabháin (Kerry Condon), fail to reconcile Colm and Pádraic. And soon, Colm threatens to take drastic actions if Pádraic doesn’t stop trying to speak with him.
Flamin' Hot (2023)
What do you do when there’s a true story that may not be true? As was famously said in the 1962 Western classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” The story of Flamin’ Hot is truly inspirational regardless of whether these events actually played out this way in reality. The film is based on the memoir of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the man who claims that he created Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And he didn’t do it alone.
With the support of his wife, Judy Montañez (Annie Gonzalez), and his co-worker, Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), Richard rises from the rank of janitor and works up the nerve to pitch his Flamin’ Hot ideas to Frito-Lay executive Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub). From there, a snack food legend is born.
Something in the Dirt (2022)
An exciting example of the kind of narrative ingenuity that only a worldwide pandemic can foster, Something in the Dirt is the latest film from writer-director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Synchronic), and is arguably the most primitively fascinating work of these two collaborators. Shot over the course of a year with a crew of just 12, our story follows Levi and John, apartment-dwelling neighbors who decide to make a documentary about a range of supernatural events occurring in their Los Angeles residence. But as the two men discover that these kinds of extraordinary happenings are taking place all over L.A., their findings lead them to a combative exchange of theories and calculations.
The Valet (2022)
War Dogs (2016)
Ultrasound (2022)
In director Rob Schroeder’s Ultrasound, Mad Men alum Vincent Kartheiser stars as Glen, an unassuming everyman who just so happens to encounter some car trouble on a dark and stormy night. Seeking some help, he knocks on the door of a perfectly kind stranger named Arthur (Bob Stephenson), leading the former down an uncanny rabbit hole of deceit and mind control. Presenting a nail-biter of a story without diving into carnage and other typical screen grabs, Ultrasound does its best work as a quietly curious foray into a world that’s hard to pin down.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
The Last Tourist (2021)
Hellraiser (2022)
It’s about time the world of Hellraiser received some much-needed reimagining. For years now, the franchise has seen sequel after sequel, and while Cenobite fans are always pleased to see Doug Bradley donning his Pinhead garb, the series has certainly run into its fair share of cinematic duds. But director David Bruckner has come along to get the saga on track once more. The 2022 remake stars Odessa A’zion as Riley, an on-the-mend drug addict who comes into the possession of a runic puzzle box — a mysterious device that summons an armada of hellish entities. Led by the Hell Priest (Jamie Clayton), Odessa is plunged into a fight for survival when the demonic visitors begin wreaking havoc in the real world. Bruckner’s Hellraiser reboot may not satisfy all of the saga’s diehards, but when you consider it as a gruesome yet polished homage to Clive Barker’s source novella and first batch of films, the 2022 version more than gets the job done.
I Think We're Alone Now (2018)
Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself (2020)
This Mountain Life (2018)
Dinner in America (2022)
Pig (2021)
Prey (2022)
Flee (2021)
Sundown (2022)
Three Identical Strangers (2018)
Fresh (2022)
Spencer (2021)
No Exit (2022)
Deep Water (2022)
In the Earth (2021)
The Obituary of Tunde Johnson (2019)
The Vigil (2020)
Wander Darkly (2020)
Another Round (2020)
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