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 ‘Nightcrawler’
Jake Gyllenhaal is unnerving and absorbing as a modern-day “Taxi Driver” in this frequently troubling tale of an unstable misfit’s rapid ascension to the top of television news. Slithering through the Los Angeles nightscape, armed with an HD video camera and a questionable sense of ethics, Gyllenhaal’s Louis Bloom will go anywhere for the story — and if he can’t find one, he’ll engineer one. The writer and director Dan Gilroy immerses the viewer in this sticky subset of crime journalism and bracingly dramatizes the ease with which this literal ambulance chaser traverses the bridge into mainstream media. Anchoring these increasingly relevant questions is a gripping performance by Gyllenhaal, who stares this savvy climber right in the eyes and glimpses the horrifying hollowness behind them. These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semiautobiographical “Little House” novels, this series follows a pioneer family as they try to build a new life in Kansas in the 1870s, while coping with the many setbacks by relishing the moments of joy, beauty and companionship. Unlike past versions of “Little House on the Prairie,” this series also focuses on the land’s original Osage inhabitants. Our critic wrote, “It is a spirited, wholesome story of adventure and hardship, broadened to consider the people who lived on the prairie long before the Ingallses and company came to homestead it.” Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU ‘Memento’
Christopher Nolan’s second feature — and first big hit — is an expertly constructed windup toy of a movie, spinning sheer exhilaration out of a fairly simple premise: A man with short-term memory loss (Guy Pearce) tries to solve his wife’s murder. But Nolan augments the storytelling with a stylistic flourish, presenting it in reverse chronological order, so that in each new scene, the viewer is as uncertain about what’s happening as the protagonist. Replete with neo-noir styling and a cast of top-notch character actors (including Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss and Stephen Tobolowsky), “Memento” is a deliciously inventive mystery with a potent dose of melancholy right under its surface. Here are Hulu’s best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ‘Eephus’
On paper, a group of middle-aged men getting together to play amateur baseball may not sound like riveting cinema. But these characters are developed with such singularity and sensitivity, and played with such next-door-neighbor familiarity, that their seemingly slight hopes and dreams attain end-of-the-world gravitas. They meet at the baseball diamond in the small town of Douglas, Mass., for their weekly games, but they won’t anymore; “Eephus” dramatizes the final innings they’ll play before their Soldier’s Field is bulldozed to make way for a new public school. There are no last-minute efforts to save the field, nor is there a big game whose outcome will change anyone’s life in any particular way. Instead, this is a movie about the act of playing and watching baseball, which involves a lot of hanging out, talking trash, eating garbage food and occasionally hitting a ball. Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX ‘Us’
The writer-director Jordan Peele set a high bar when his debut feature, “Get Out,” was hailed as an instant horror classic, but his follow-up offers another juicy high-concept hook while considerably amping up the intensity. “Us” is scary enough as a home invasion thriller, with Lupita Nyong’o as a mother who protects her family from four masked strangers lurking outside her vacation home. It gets altogether freakier, however, when the intruders are unmasked, revealing themselves to be violent doppelgängers of unknown origin. Though Peele’s satirical instincts show up in flashes, his metaphysical horror film is more primed to freak audiences out. Manohla Dargis called it “more ambitious than ‘Get Out,’ and in some ways more unsettling.” See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ ‘Beauty and the Beast’
The renaissance of Disney animation that started with “The Little Mermaid” peaked with this romance between the book-smart Belle and the tempestuous Beast, a former prince who holds her captive in his enchanted castle until the curse that turned him into a monster is broken. The technical and artistic contributions are first-rate all around, none greater than the songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, which include “Be Our Guest” and the title number. Our critic praised its combination of “the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway.” The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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