The Best Movies On Apple TV+: From ‘CODA’ to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Martin Scorsese’s gripping and much-Oscar-nominated true crime epic sees him adapting a David Grann book into a devastating indictment of white people’s greed and violence towards indigenous Americans in the early 20th century. Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio deliver star power but Lily Gladstone is no less charismatic as an Osage woman at the heart of a murderous conspiracy. It’s three and 26 minutes long, so the ‘pause’ button on the Apple remote control will come in handy. 

The Thane of Coen (ie: Joel) fulfils his destiny with a striking solo directorial movie, a monochrome take on Shakespeare’s bloody tale of ambition, murder and giant cauldrons. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth – yes, Marge Gunderson has turned to the dark side – with sinister plots in their minds. The expressionist sets, Carter Burwell’s intense score and the general Coen-y off-kilter vibes make it a very different animal to your average, musty take on the Bard.

Aside from the always-delightful ‘Peanuts’ movies, including the legendary A Charlie Brown Christmas, Apple TV+ is not exactly overflowing with kid-friendly fare. But it does have this Irish folk fable from Cartoon Saloon (The Secret of Kells), the animation house fast becoming Cork’s answer to Studio Ghibli. And it’s very lovely, to boot. A young girl takes on the dastardly English invaders in 17th century Kilkenny with some help from some mythical wolves. It’s the perfect family movie night treat.

The ’80s wouldn’t have been the same without Michael J Fox, the sprightly, baby-faced superstar who won America’s heart as Marty McFly, Alex Keaton and Teen Wolf. Then came a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and his life was turned on its head. This Sundance breakout doc is a candid, wryly funny and super-emosh portrait of the man now – and then – as he reflects on how life changed with the disease and talks through those crazy, A-list days. ‘I was a massive bath of fear and professional anxiety,’ he remembers. Watch it and then watch Back to the Future for a bittersweet double bill.

Apple’s movie library offers an intriguing mix of OG filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Joel Coen and Sofia Coppola, and exciting new voices (Sian Heder, Lila Neugebauer, Christos Nikou). This music doc is from the OG camp, with Todd Haynes delivering a rambunctious rock-out of a doc about new wave legends The Velvet Underground. There’s no boring rock-doc clichés here, no musos blathering on about chord progressions; instead, Haynes’s film takes you through the band’s eventful career, via Andy Warhol’s Factory and the hedonist New York of the ’60s and early ’70s.

The man behind the ‘Interrotron’ – the most terrifying-sounding interviewing technique in filmmaking – takes on a veteran Cold War interrogator. A battle of wits in documentary form, albeit fairly friendly and entirely electrode-free, Errol Morris’s (The Fog of War) grills spy-turned-spy-novelist par excellence John le Carré in a confessional look back at an extraordinary life. A must-see for anyone who knows their ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ from their ‘Constant Gardener’, The Pigeon Tunnel shines a powerful light on the shadowiest corners of recent history.

Greek director Christos Nikou caught the eye with his brilliant debut Apples, an offbeat sci-fi   set in a world infected with amnesia. This second film from the Yorgos Lanthimos protégé builds on that early promise with another intriguing, high-concept idea. This time, it’s a mostly analogue world where technology can tell us if we’re in love. Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed play colleagues who may be falling for each other, despite the presence of The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as her boyfriend. But what will the machine say? Fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will love it.

CODA – ‘child of deaf adult’ – is an uplifting movie about hard-lived lives in a Massachusetts fishing town. It was a surprise Best Picture winner and deaf actor Troy Kotsur won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, so it comes with a tonne of deserved acclaim for its performances and empathetic depiction of family life in all its raucous, emotional reality. Londoner Emilia Jones plays high-schooler Ruby Rossi, a conduit for her deaf father and older brother on their New England fishing boat – as well as her mum (Children of the Lesser God’s Marlee Matlin). 

Jennifer Lawrence is on top form as a PTSD-sticken Afghanistan war veteran who tries to settle back home in New Orleans but can’t shake her trauma. Enter Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry as a mechanic who clocks the ex-soldier’s troubles and forms a moving bond with her. One of the weightest films on Apple TV+, Causeway is the best kind of heavyweight American indie: a pearl-pure and soulful snapshot of humans in flux, with complex characters and two stellar performances.

Trying to erase Madame Web from your mind? Give this far superior Dakota Johnson effort a spin. Written, directed by and starring indie whizzkid Cooper Raiff, it’s the story of a charming slacker stalling in his purposeless twenties who reinvents himself as a boisterous party MC. Enter Domino (Johnson, magnetic), single mum to an autistic teenage girl, and the beginnings of a tender connection. The result is a little like the lovechild of About a Boy and Garden State.

Looking for a real-life version of The Hunger Games? Try this fly-on-the-wall doc about The American Legion’s Boys State, a week-long political bootcamp for young D.C. hopefuls that once had Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton passing through on their way to power. No one stabs anyone – not literally, at any rate – but the ruthless scheming is a sight to behold. Meet Ben, the Reagan devotee who believes that ‘you have to use personal attacks and divisive issues to differentiate yourself’. It’s gripping, train-crash viewing – albeit, you coming away hoping that train isn’t going to hit us all in 30 years time.

This Sidney Poitier doc is produced by Oprah Winfrey and features interviews with old pals and fans like Denzel Washington, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand and Spike Lee, so don’t expect a hit piece full of devastating revelations. Then again, how would that be possible with a man as unimpeachably inspirational as the Oscar-winning actor and Civil Rights pioneer? But Sidney is much more than just a gushing hagiography, with enough insights and complexities to keep movielovers and Poitier newcomers alike glued to the telly.

No one captures the healing power of music with quite the salty-but-uplifting skill of Sing Street and Once director John Carney. This sweary comedy-drama stars Bad Sisters’ Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a single mum trying to find some purpose for her troubled son and the guitar teacher who helps her get some chords into his life. The wrinkle? She’s in Dublin and he’s in LA. Happily there’s a lot more follow-through in this one than all those online courses we took during the pandemic.

It’s no Lost in Translation (or even Priscilla) but Sofia Coppola’s dad-and-daughter comedy-drama is an affable, enjoyable passport to an enjoyable tour of chi-chi Manhattan spots. Bill Murray plays the feckless father, a playboy showing no signs of abandoning his bad habits, and Rashida Jones is his stewing, frustrated daughter. Together the pair set out to spy on her potentially unfaithful husband in his vintage Alfa Romeo and exchange martinis and barbed put downs along the way.

Bubbles are big in movies at the moment  – see also: BlackBerry, Dumb Money – at least partly because they come with their own built-in tension: when will they burst? A fun, throwaway Friday night watch, this true-life story follows eccentric toy maker Ty Warner (a barely recognisable Zach Galifianakis) as he launches the Beanie Babies craze with some help from three women in his life (Elizabeth Banks, Geraldine Viswanathan and Sarah Snook) and creates a resale bubble that finally goes ‘pop’.

There’s a Nazi U-boat at large and only Tom Hanks’ US Navy commander and his flotilla of destroyers can prevent it sending an Allied convoy to the bottom of the Atlantic. Written by Hanks, this dad-core war flick freshens up the sub movie formula with a character study of a man trying to stay cool under immense pressure, even as the Nazi submarine commander taunts him over the intercom (we’re not sure that bit is historically accurate) and the sonar display goes bonkers. If you’re hearing ‘pinging’ during this one, it’s not the microwave going off next door.