The 30 Best Movies to Watch on Every Streaming Service

This article will be updated as movies move on and off streaming services. An asterisk* indicates a new addition to the list.

Don’t we all deserve to watch something that’s actually great? Too often, the competing streaming algorithms at Netflix, Max, and Amazon Prime Video push a smattering of undifferentiated piffle. So many of the major services seemingly just want to highlight their own latest acquisition or buzzy project. But we at Vulture have no horse in the streaming race: Our job is to help you figure out what to watch by recommending the best movies each of these services has to offer at any given time.

To that end, we have gone over the must-see titles on each platform and winnowed them down to the list below. It could easily be 100 movies long, but we tried to keep it manageable — a tight 30! — and if you come back every month, you can expect to see it updated with new selections. Read on to jump to a streaming service and find something to watch, starting with this week’s critic’s pick.

Jump to a streaming service:
Netflix | Amazon Prime Video | Max | Hulu | Apple TV+ | Peacock | Disney+ | Paramount+ | The Criterion Channel

This Week’s Critic’s Pick

May December

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 57m
Director: Todd Haynes

Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman star in the latest from Carol and Far from Heaven director Todd Haynes, a stunning character study of an actress who discovers that some people are impossible to figure out. Portman plays a star who tries to get under the skin of Moore’s character, a woman who raped a child when she was a teacher, and later married that young man. Charles Melton is phenomenal as the now-grown victim, stuck in perpetual adolescence.

Netflix

Aftersun

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 41m
Director: Charlotte Wells

What a beautiful movie this is, one of the best of the 2020s so far and it’s nowhere else for streaming subscribers. Paul Mescal earned an Oscar nomination for his work as the father of an 11-year-old girl, played by the wonderful Frankie Corio. Aftersun is actually a memory piece, a drama about that moment in life when you realize your parents are human too. It’s gorgeous.

Dune: Part Two

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 45m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

You can now watch the entire Dune saga to date on Netflix for the first time (for a month at least since the first half is leaving on the 31st — Netflix, never stop being weird). The second half of Villeneuve’s saga fulfills the promise of the first, turning the set-up of the 2021 film into a full-blooded action tale of a new messiah. Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya lead an all-star cast in a film that understands both scope and character. It may not play quite as well at home as it did in theaters, but it still rocks.

Parasite

Year: 2019
Runtime: 2h 12m
Director: Bong Joon-ho

Remember when this incredible film actually won the Oscar for Best Picture? It felt like anything was possible. Already a half-decade old, take a chance to revisit Bong’s masterpiece, a scathing thriller that shifts issues of class and privilege into an unforgettable piece of storytelling.

*Pride & Prejudice

Year: 2005
Runtime: 2h 8m
Director: Joe Wright

One of the best Jane Austen adaptations ever remains this version of one of her most beloved novels, the film that put Keira Knightley on the map. Directed by Joe Wright, this version is relatively faithful to the source, but it’s filmed with such passion and grace that it’s easy to get lost in it again and again.

Rebel Ridge

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 11m
Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Future superstar Aaron Pierre stars in the latest from the phenomenal director behind Blue Ruin and Green Room, proving again that he is one of the best at tight action filmmaking. Wasting no time, Rebel Ridge opens with Pierre’s character essentially robbed by smalltown cops while he’s trying to take bail money to his cousin. The former military specialist doesn’t take that well. This is one of the best Netflix originals in a long time. (Streaming September 6.)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Year: 2023
Runtime: 2h 20m
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

This is how you do a big-budget blockbuster sequel, developing the themes of the first movie and setting up the stake for what now appears will be one of the best trilogies in superhero history. Packed with so much detail and creativity, it’s a film you’ll want to watch over and over again.

Amazon Prime Video

Challengers

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 11m
Director: Luca Guadagnino

One of the most acclaimed dramas of the year is exclusively on Prime Video. Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor star in a story of tennis players who also happen to be lovers. Smart and sexy, this is the kind of film they’re talking about when they say that Hollywood doesn’t make movies for adults anymore. Watch this one so they do.

*Contagion

Year: 2011
Runtime: 1h 41m
Director: Steven Soderbergh

It’s impossible to watch Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 drama in the same way after the COVID-19 pandemic changed the entire world. In fact, it’s startling how prophetic the film turned out to be in its presentation of how quickly an international virus could derail just about everything. It’s still a razor-sharp piece of entertainment, but it just feels different now, especially given news around the recent measles outbreak and the current administration’s stance on public health.

Glengarry Glen Ross

Year: 1992
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: 1992

For a long time, it felt like David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 masterpiece was unfilmable, but Foley, working with the playwright as screenwriter, figured it out, assembling one of the best ensembles of the ‘90s to do so. Alec Baldwin notoriously steals his one scene, but the entire cast here is a stunner, especially Al Pacino (who was Oscar-nominated), Alan Arkin, and Jack Lemmon.

Oppenheimer

Year: 2023
Runtime: 2h 58m
Director: Christopher Nolan

One of the biggest and best movies of 2023 has been doing a victory lap on the streaming services following its Oscar win for Best Picture. Of course, one of the draws of Nolan’s brilliant examination of the development of the atomic bomb was the way it played on Imax screens around the world. It’s best viewed large, loud, and in a one 3-hour chunk. So don’t break this one up and don’t watch it on your phone. Give yourself over to one of the most truly cinematic experiences of the decade.

Max

Barbie

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Greta Gerwig

One of the biggest films of 2023 has landed on Max. Greta Gerwig’s daring blockbuster is a comedy that works both as a reminder of the power imagination and the fight for equality. Anyone who thinks this movie is anti-male isn’t paying any attention. The theme of the movie is that no one — not even Barbie or Ken — should be defined by traditional roles. We should all be free to play however we want. It’s a wonderful film that will truly stand the test of time.

*Ghostbusters

Year: 1984
Runtime: 1h 46m
Director: Ivan Reitman

One of the most beloved movies of all time, the original Ghostbusters still stands up as the best in the series…by far. Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson are perfectly cast as the guys who end up saving the world from a giant marshmallow man, among other things. Still very funny, it’s one of the most popular comedies of the 1980s for a reason.

*Goodfellas

Year: 1990
Runtime: 2h 26m
Director: Martin Scorsese

One of the best films of the 1990s, Martin Scorsese’s telling of the story of Henry Hill changed the language of how we tell stories about mobsters, and it’s a work that only feels more like a classic with each passing year. GoodFellas has held up perfectly over the last three decades partially because of how much that followed tried to hollowly repeat it, but it’s also still just a wildly entertaining piece of work, a movie with more life in any five-minute stretch than most films have in their entire runtime.

The Lighthouse

Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Robert Eggers

Is this the best COVID lockdown movie? Sure, it came out the year before, but a lot of people watched it on streaming while they were going crazy with people with whom they were stuck. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are fearless in Robert Eggers’ black-and-white nightmare about two New England lighthouse keepers who learn that nothing is scarier than being trapped with someone unbearable. It’s a twisted gem.

Spirited Away

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Almost all of the Studio Ghibli films are on Max, the exclusive home to them when it comes to streaming. The truth is that we could write thousands of words about the impact of Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues (and we have: here’s a ranking of the entire output of the most important modern animation studio in the world), but for now we’ll recommend starting with Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky. You won’t stop.

Hulu

Anatomy of a Fall

Year: 2023
Runtime: 2h 31m
Director: Justine Triet

The latest Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay is already exclusively on Hulu thanks to their relationship with Neon. The great Sandra Huller stars as a woman whose husband dies from a fall at their home. Was it suicide or murder? More than a mere courtroom drama, this is a dissection of a marriage that’s raw, brutal, and real.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Year: 2007
Runtime: 1h 57m
Director: Sidney Lumet

The masterful director of 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and so many more American classics ended his career with a banger in this intense thriller featuring performances from Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney that stand among their best. A chronological puzzle of a film that would impress Christopher Nolan with its structure, this is one of the best films of the 2000s.

*Pulp Fiction

Year: 1994
Runtime: 2h 35m
Director: Quentin Tarantino

There are certain tentpoles of American film history that changed the form forever, and this is undeniably one. Heck, we’re still getting Tarantino riffs almost thirty years later, as everyone wants to make a movie as effortlessly cool as his masterpiece. What more could possibly be written about Pulp Fiction? You know you love this and want to see it again. Now you can.

Apple TV+

Killers of the Flower Moon

Year: 2023
Runtime: 3h 26m
Director: Martin Scorsese

One of the most acclaimed films of the 2020s is now exclusively available for subscribers of Apple TV+. Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro star in an epic drama that’s about nothing less than the violent formation of this country. When the Osage people became the richest per capita in the country, the white power figures in the region did everything they could to take it from them. As well-made as any streaming original of all time, it’s not only the best film on Apple TV+, it’s one of the best films you could watch on any streaming service, anywhere.

Wolfwalkers

Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 43m
Directors: Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart

Wolfwalkers should have won the Oscar in early 2021. It’s a lyrical and gorgeous final act to Cartoon Saloon’s “Irish Folklore Trilogy,” the story of a girl named Robyn Goodfellowe, whose father has been hired to hunt wolves. Robyn befriends a shapeshifter, a girl who is both wolf and human, in a story that incorporates modern storytelling with Irish folklore and inspired visual style.

Peacock

*The Big Lebowski

Year: 1998
Runtime: 1h 57m
Director: Joel Coen

Well, that’s just like your opinion, man. Joel and Ethan Coen followed up the biggest hit of their careers win Fargo with the story of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, unforgettably played by Jeff Bridges. In one of his most iconic roles, Bridges captures a kind of lazy L.A. style that turned this flick into a comedy classic, a movie that’s being quoted somewhere in the world on every minute of every day.

Conclave

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h
Director: Edward Berger

A surprising arthouse hit, this drama has been racking up awards while being exclusively on Peacock for subscribers. Ralph Fiennes stars as the cardinal in charge of a conclave to elect a new pope. Fiennes does some of the best work of his career, supported by great turns from Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, and more.

Paramount+

The Godfather

Year: 1972
Runtime: 2h 55m
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

It’s only the film that made Al Pacino a star and kicked Francis Ford Coppola’s career into the stratosphere — maybe you’ve heard of it? In all seriousness, the entire Godfather trilogy is available on Paramount+, including the superior recent cut of the third film. You could then slide from some of the best filmmaking of all time into the streaming service’s original series The Offer, about the making of Coppola’s masterpiece. Or, pair this with Coppola’s latest (and final?) film Megalopolis, in theaters this weekend, and see how the director has evolved over his legendary career.

Interstellar

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 49m
Director: Christopher Nolan

The most underrated film from the director of The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer remains this 2014 sci-fi epic, a film that’s better if you approach it as an emotional journey instead of a physical one. Matthew McConaughey gives one of the best performances of his career as an astronaut searching for a new home for mankind, and realizing all that he left behind to do so. It’s a technical marvel with some of the most striking visuals and best sound design of Nolan’s career.

Past Lives

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Celine Song

This phenomenal Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominee isn’t on any of the other streamers. It stars the excellent Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as a couple who were close as children but reunite years later after she immigrated to the United States. It’s as much a story of what people leave behind when they change their entire lives as it is a traditional story of unrequited love. It’s beautiful and unforgettable.

Disney+

The Lion King

Year: 1994
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff

A key part of the Disney Renaissance, this animated classic is one of the most beloved Disney films in the history of the company. It’s one of the Disney movies that became more than just a movie, inspiring sequels, theme park attractions, and even a massive hit Broadway show. People keep returning to the story of Simba as it gets passed down from generation to generation, probably earning a new fan somewhere in the world every single day.

The Criterion Channel

Ikiru 

Year: 1952
Runtime: 2h 23m
Director: Akira Kurosawa

Even if Criterion had only a handful of Kurosawa films, it would still be difficult to choose between The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ran, to name a few. So why Ikiru? Well, it’s an unqualified masterpiece, about a man with stomach cancer coming to terms with the end of his life. It’s hard to believe Kurosawa made it when he was just over 40.

In the Mood for Love 

Year: 2000
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Wong Kar-wai

Movies don’t get more hypnotic than this, a story of love and longing set in Hong Kong in 1962. Gorgeously shot by cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, In the Mood for Love also features career-defining performances by Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung Man-yuk. The two play neighbors who develop an attraction to one another in a way that feels both deeply cinematic and completely human.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 

Year: 1975
Runtime: 3h 21m
Director: Chantal Akerman

The 2022 Sight & Sound critics poll named Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece the best film of all time, and it’s sitting on the Criterion Channel waiting for you to find out why. This 1975 examination of the gradual breakdown of the routines of an ordinary life turns everyday detail into something unforgettable, even transcendent. Critics have loved this film for decades and now it’s had an incredible resurgence almost six decades after its release.

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