35 best movies to watch on Hulu right now

Director: Sean Baker

Cast: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov

Fairy tales don’t come true in America, except, sometimes, at the Oscars. Sean Baker’s small-time indie dramedy cleaned up, winning five awards, including Best Picture — an ironic capstone for a movie about the lie of Cinderella stories. The lesson? Never bet against Mikey Madison. The Best Actress honoree is pure dynamite as Ani “Don’t Call Me Anora, Actually” Mikheeva, a take-no-shit stripper who believes her prince has come in the form of a Russian oligarch’s charming failson. It’s youthful naivety, of course, but you can’t fault her for wanting it to be true love. Stranger things have happened, anyway, and on much bigger stages. Rated R. 2 hr 19 min.

Watch Anora now on Hulu 

Director: Denis Villaneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh

Succeeding where greats like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodoworsky fell short, Denis Villaneuve finally gives Frank Herbert’s famously dense 1965 sci-fi novel the grandly visualized big-screen adaptation it’s always deserved. What’s it about? Well, y’see, there’s this rich kid named Paul, who may or may not be the messiah for a planet of colonized desert-dwellers, and there’s this stuff called “spice” that’s basically space angeldust, and also massive sandworms and Zendaya and a talking fetus and albino Austin Butler and… all right, so the story is still not easy to explain. But Villaneuve’s treatment is a wonder to behold — and truth be told, not as inaccessible as it sounds. Rated PG-13. Total runtime: 5 hrs 11 min.

Watch Dune Pt. 1 now on Hulu 

Watch Dune Pt. 2 now on Hulu

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield

Before Facebook helped manipulate politics and aid the proliferation of fake news, it was just a website for college students who wanted to keep in touch with each other. Of course, the story of the social media site is a lot murkier than that and this tense tale, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, attempts to tell that story, albeit in a way where the truth has been stretched and moulded to suit the filmmakers' themes. Still, it’s thrilling stuff. Rated PG-13. 2 hrs.

Watch The Social Network now on Hulu

Director: Justine Triet

Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner

Turns out all those true-crime docs you’ve binged were prep for this knotty and enthralling murder-mystery puzzle box. A man falls out of a chalet, but did he jump or was he pushed by his disgruntled wife? When your first witness is a border collie, it’s never going to be a straightforward case. With a complex and not always sympathetic central performance from Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller and Justine Triet’s deftly ambiguous direction, it’s far better than your average Netflix binge. Rated R. 2 hr 32 min.

Watch Anatomy of a Fall now on Hulu

Director: Jesse Eisenberg

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey

Call it typecasting, but if you’re making a movie about a manic motormouth and his neurotic cousin, no one can play those respective roles better than Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. And lo and behold, they’re both perfect as Benji and David, once-close family members looking to reconnect while on a heritage trip to Poland. As a study of midlife anxiety, it’s indeed painful at times. But there’s plenty of wincing humour in Eisenberg’s screenplay, as two guys who clearly care for each other gradually realize their lives are no longer compatible. Rated R. 1 hr 29 min.

Watch A Real Pain now on Hulu

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Chang Hyae-jin, Choi Woo-sik, Park So-dam

It takes a certain kind of genius — part social scientist, part sadist— to build a stinging contraption like this Best Picture winner. To a list that includes Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher, let’s now add South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho. Sleek and impeccably acted, his movie taps into an undercurrent of class resentment. Rated R. 2 hr 12 min.

Watch Parasite now on Hulu

Director: Osgood Perkins

Cast: Maika Monroe, Nic Cage

The power of Marc Bolan compels you! In Osgood ‘Son of Anthony’ Perkins’ breakthrough horror-thriller, a barely recognisable Nic Cage is a serial killer who worships T. Rex, Lou Reed and Satan, not necessarily in that order. But the true star is It Follows’ Maika Monroe, mesmerising (and seemingly hypnotised) as the rookie FBI agent tracking him down. Neon’s marketing campaign went a tad overboard selling the film as the scariest movie of the decade, but Perkins certainly knows how to make audiences nearly nauseous with dread. Rated R. 1 hr 41 min.

Watch Longlegs now on Hulu

Director: Céline Sciamma

Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel

When a movie opens your eyes to a new way of seeing, it’s almost insufficient to praise it. French filmmaker Céline Sciamma’s radical feminist love story turns its viewers into artists close to the canvas, sketching out a line that leads to expression, desire and the remaking of identity. The story takes place within the strictures of 18th-century Brittany but gives way to something frank and modern. Rated R. 2 hr 1 min.

Watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire now on Hulu

Director: Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson

At this point, Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, is as known for his decades-long disappearing act as the groundbreaking pop hits he wrote in the 1960s. In his third full-length documentary, Roots drummer Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson looks to reaffirm the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Famer’s brilliance, while also investigating the particular pressures faced by Black artists that cause some to self-destruct. While more of a straightforward ‘rise-and-fall’ music doc than the Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, Thompson draws uncommon candor and insight from his talking heads, which here include Q-Tip, Andre 3000 and D’Angelo. Rated R. 1 hr 25 min.

Watch Sly Lives! now on Hulu

Director: Andrew Haigh

Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal

A queer love story and a palimpsest of childhood loss coalesce in Andrew Haigh’s empathetic drama about a lonely Londoner, Adam (Andrew Scott), finding connection with a mysterious neighbour (Paul Mescal) in his London high-rise. A ghostly London is a haunting backdrop to his journey of healing and hedonism. It’s one of those films that knocks you down and then picks you right back up again. Rated R. 1 hr 45 min.

Watch All of Us Strangers now on Hulu

Director: Max Barbakow

Cast: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, JK Simmons

A time-loop comedy released in summer 2020, after we’d all spent months living the same day over and over again, was a bit on-the-nose, but it still counts as escapist, because who wouldn’t want to spend eternity in a pool with Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti? Still Hulu’s best original movie to date, it’s less a millennial redux of Groundhog Day than a continued exploration of the concept. What if you weren’t alone in cosmic purgatory? Would you fall in love? If you did, would it even be real? And how would you handle the third guy with the crossbow who enjoys hunting you for sport? Rated R. 1 hr 30 min.

Watch Palm Springs now on Hulu

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney

Not the movie the notorious ice-skating flameout Tonya Harding probably deserves — but happily (for us) the one she’s gotten — I, Tonya is a dazzlingly complex and exuberant treatment of a disgraced figure. Like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights, it has a supercharged style and creates an unshakable tension, the kind that has you laughing and cringing at the same time. Rated R. 2 hrs.

Directors: Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping

Cast: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, George MacKay

Closeted thug Preston (George MacKay) embarks on a journey of lust and self-loathing with Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s drag artist in an intimate and intoxicating slice of London nightlife that could almost be a 2020s update of Mona Lisa. Filmmaking double act Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping deliver piano-wire tension and culture-war relevance to a gripping and powerful thriller. Not rated. 1 hr 39 min.

Watch Femme now on Hulu

Director: Dan Trachtenberg

Cast: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers

‘Predators through time’ should’ve been the concept of every Predator sequel after Joel McTiernan’s ’roided-up 1987 original. In a refreshing detour from the suffocating machismo of every other movie in the action-horror franchise, 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg pits a teenage female Comanche warrior against an intergalactic sport hunter in 1700s North America. Stripped back and blessedly free of lore, excepting one Easter egg, it’s easily the second-best entry in the series. Trachtenberg’s follow-up is coming in 2025. Bring it on. Rated R. 1 hr 39 min.

Watch Prey now on Hulu

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Frances McDormand, Charlene Swankie, David Strathairn

Transforming a story of economic catastrophe into one of healing and reconnection, Chloé Zhao’s stunning and elegiac celebration of outsiderhood is raw with emotional honesty and boasts an almost spiritual connection with the landscape. Frances McDormand, meanwhile, is magnetic, a quietly fierce avatar for economic anxiety who conveys both deep sadness and her character Fern’s unquenchable faith in the future. This is a film that will leave you transformed. Rated R. 1 hr 48 min.

Watch Nomadland now on Hulu

Director: Wes Ball

Cast: Owen Teague, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon

Caesar is dead. Long live Caesar. A whole 300 years after the death of the revered ape king, his life still looms large. But with mankind reduced to feral scavengers, the formerly oppressed have started to oppress each other, and a new generation is beginning to call bullshit on the whole system. At this point, you’ve either bought into the blockbuster sci-fi franchise or ignored it, but the fifth film in the rebooted series is yet another uncommonly smart and entertaining entry, even without Andy Serkis. Rated PG-13. 2 hr 25 min.

Watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes now on Hulu

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Sandra Bernhard, Jerry Lewis

Exhibit A in the argument that the mid-’80s were actually Martin Scorsese’s best period, the director’s darkest comedy is the clown-show version of Taxi Driver, a portrait of male delusion and entitlement made years before phrases like “toxic masculinity” and “incel” entered the lexicon. De Niro resurrects Travis Bickle as Rupert Pupkin, an awful comic convinced the world needs to hear his takes — by any means necessary. (So Scorsese predicted podcasting, too.) Todd Phillips, of course, cribbed nearly all of it for Joker, except he made his protagonist sympathetic rather than simply pathetic and missed the whole point. Rated PG. 1 hr 49 min.

Watch The King of Comedy now on Hulu 

Director: Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie

World, meet Renate Reinsve. Or maybe you already have. (And not just because she also starred in 2024’s A Different Man.) As Julie, the centre of this playful-yet-grounded Norwegian gem, she embodies someone we’ve all known at one point in our lives, or perhaps been: confused, indecisive and waiting for adulthood to start, despite being nearly 30. Joachim Trier’s romcom exists as a showcase for Reinsve, and she doesn’t disappoint, taking the stereotype of the messy young woman and making her come alive. 

Watch The Worst Person in the World now on Hulu

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux

This enjoyably gruesome and often inspired Alien reboot has a special on facehuggers: the little bastards are everywhere, as a small band of young interstellar fugitives discover when they reboot the wrong derelict spacecraft. Don’t Breathe’s Fede Álvarez conjures the spirit of Ridley Scott’s 1979 original with blue-collar strugglers to root for, led by Cailee Spaeny’s Ellen Ripley redux, and a zero-G acid blood sequence with real flair. Rated R. 1 hr 59 min.

Watch Alien: Romulus now on Hulu

Director: Wim Wenders

Cast: Kōji Yakusho, Aoi Yamada, Tokio Emoto

Sometimes you need to settle down with a gentle rumination on life courtesy of German great Wim Wenders. If this is one of those times, Perfect Days is right here for you. Ignore the seemingly inauspicious subject matter – a middle-aged Tokyo loo cleaner mostly keeping his plants alive and vibing out to American new wave in his car – and tune into its soothing wavelength, deep empathy for ordinary lives led well, and a beautiful performance from veteran actor Kōji Yakusho. Rated PG. 2 hr 5 min.

Watch Perfect Days now on Hulu

Sensual and sensitive, funny and forlorn, Alfonso Cuarón’s breakthrough as an auteur outside the Hollywood system follows two exceptionally horny teenage boys (Luna and Bernal, both also breaking out) on a transformative road trip through Mexico with an alluring older woman (Verdú). After the sex scenes got the movie slapped with a restrictive 18+ rating, Cuarón sued the country’s government-controlled ratings board, eventually causing the agency to loosen its political influence and changing Mexican cinema in the process. Rated R. 1 hr 46 min.

Watch Y Tu Mama Tambien now on Hulu

Director: Arkasha Stevenson

Cast: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Bill Nighy

A rare horror prequel that actually works, Arkasha Stevenson’s prologue to The Omen succeeds by standing on its own and not just filling in the blanks of the 1976 original. It does, however, answer one pertinent question: how did a woman get impregnated with the spawn of Satan in the first place? Turns out, it was a conspiracy by the Catholic Church all along. Surprise! What’s truly terrifying, though, is how the themes of female subjugation and forced birth resonate in post-Roe America. The devil’s work, they say, is never done. Rated R. 1 hr 59 min.

Watch The First Omen now on Hulu

Director: Josh Margolin

Cast: June Squibb, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Malcolm McDowell

A movie about a nonagenarian out for revenge against the scammers who ripped her off could go wrong in so many ways, either by being too cutesy, too slapstick or too ironically violent. But first-timer Josh Margolin strikes an ideal balance, neither condescending toward his characters nor underplaying the absurdity of a grandmother on a motorized scooter going Mission: Impossible on her enemies. It’s really all about Squibb, though. At age 93, she not only lands her first leading role, but gets to be an action star, and she makes the absolute most out of it. Rated PG-13. 1 hr 39 min.

Watch Thelma now on Hulu

Director: Ruben Östlund

Cast: Charlbi Dean, Harris Dickinson, Dolly De Leon, Woody Harrelson

Ironic commentary on the super-rich is Ruben Östlund’s stock-in-trade, so winning the Palme d’Or at well-heeled, yacht-laden Cannes for a film about rich people on yachts seems almost as funny as his film. Triangle of Sadness borrows from William Golding’s handbook with a comedy-drama that’s sometimes sharply satirical, sometimes just happy to unleash an epic barf-athon, as it assembles some truly loathable types on a big boat and unleashes disasters on them. Rated R. 2 hr and 27 min.

Watch Triangle of Sadness now on Hulu

Director: Raine Allen Miller

Cast: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Munya Chawawa, Omari Douglas

Showing Richard Curtis how to do it, this funny, bright and buoyant romcom follows David Jonsson’s nerdy, newly-heartbroken south Londoner as he meets and spends a day with Vivian Oparah’s spiky, sure-footed Peckhamite. It’s the best kind of romantic hangout movie, where a break-in to snatch back a treasured A Tribe Called Quest LP from an ex is as high as the stakes go and the meet-cute is in a toilet cubicle. Rated R. 1 hr 22 min.

Watch Rye Lane now on Hulu

Directors: Colin and Cameron Cairnes

Cast: David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss

Aussie brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes make found footage fun again in this mockumentary covering the night, in 1977, when a talk-show host attempted to commune with the devil himself live on the air. David Dastmalchian is excellent as an arrogant late-night also-ran so desperate to pop a rating he invites a young girl supposedly in the throes of demonic possession on as a guest. We see the purported broadcast in full, plus panicked backstage footage, and footage from… somewhere else entirely. It’s a wild ride to hell and back. Rated R. 1 hr 29 min.

Watch Late Night with the Devil now on Hulu

Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Cast: Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s magical-realist crime fable gets a jolt of magnetism from the mere presence of Josh O’Connor as a British archaeologist turned graverobber. A man living in the past in more ways than one, we meet him newly out of jail, as he reunites with his old gang, is plagued by memories of an old flame and touched by visions of ancient Etruscan artefacts buried beneath his feet. In a film full of gorgeous treasures and surreal scenes, the object you can’t keep your eyes off is his face, which hides secrets of its own. A one of a kind actor in a one of a kind movie. Not rated. 2 hr 13 min.

Watch La Chimera now on Hulu

Director: Zach Cregger

Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long

On a dark and stormy night in Detroit, a woman arrives at her short-term rental home in the city’s worst neighborhood, only to discover it’s been double-booked. Against her better judgment, she decides to stay. If you think you know where this is going, think again. And again. And again. Swerving into a #MeToo satire halfway through, it’s a horror-comedy that knows how to deliver tension-relieving laughs without diluting its shocks – it’s funny, sick and twisted in equal measure. Rated R. 1 hr 42 min.

Watch Barbarian now on Hulu

Director: Barry Jenkins 

Cast: KiKi Layne, Stephan James

A swooning romance peppered with jarring moments of institutionalised racism, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight follow-up may have been set in the early ’70s but it spoke to modern America just as surely as contemporary race dramas like The Hate U Give and Monsters and Men. For a novelist of such epic standing, James Baldwin has rarely been adapted for the screen, but Jenkins and his cast bring real poetry to his prose. Rated R. 1 hr 59 min.

Watch If Beale Street Could Talk now on Hulu

Director: Josh Greenbaum

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo, Jamie Dornan

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, this loopy comedy landed on streaming, and it was precisely what everyone needed at the height of their housebound delirium. Co-writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are the best Saturday Night Live characters who never were, two middle-age gal pals from Nebraska who leave home for the first time to vacation in Florida, only to stumble into the centre of a villainous plot targeting their resort. It’s like The White Lotus on nitrous oxide. Rated PG-13. 1 hr 47 min.

Watch Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar now on Hulu

Director: Kyle Edward Ball

Cast: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul, Jaime Hill

Less a horror movie than a sentient mood board of childhood fears, this low-budget cult curio has confused as many viewers as it’s creeped out, but for those in the latter camp, it can feel like someone shoved a camera directly into your younger self’s subconscious. Ostensibly a feature-length nightmare, it doesn’t have a ‘plot’ per se, instead conjuring a sense of nostalgic unease from a collage of images, sounds and feelings that are almost universally disquieting: empty houses, endless hallways, weird cartoons, strange voices calling from the dark. Affix yourself to its wavelength, and you may have to dig your security blanket out of storage to ever sleep again. Not rated. 1 hr 40 min.

Watch Skinamarink now on Hulu

Directors: Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson 

Cast: Keith Kupferer, Dolly de Leon, Katherine Mallen Kupferer

One of two movies from 2024 about the redemptive power of theatre, Ghostlight is an even smaller film than Sing Sing, yet packs an equal emotional wallop. A Chicago construction worker, reeling from a tragedy he has no idea how to process, finds an unlikely outlet in a local acting troupe. If that sounds achingly earnest, the authentic performances dissolve much of the sentimentality, particularly Keith Kupferer as the loving but inarticulate galoot who finds his voice in the words of Shakespeare. Rated R. 1 hr 55 min.

Watch Ghostlight now on Hulu

Director: Zach Braff

Cast: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard

There’s a lot more to this film than just twentysomething hipsters moaning about their lives. Sure, some might dub it the Urban Outfitters of indie cinema, and it may be the birthplace of the manic pixie dream girl, but at its heart is a universal tale about the confusion of young adulthood and the emotional consequences of becoming an observer of your own life. Also the soundtrack is absolutely excellent. Rated R. 1 hr 45 min.

Watch Garden State now on Hulu

Director: Marielle Heller

Cast: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Jessica Harper

While sold as ‘the movie where Amy Adams turns into a dog’, the allegorical elements of Marielle Heller’s dark comedy about early motherhood are frankly undercooked. What works are the literal depictions of life as a stay-at-home mom: the monotony of mealtime and park trips and parent meetups, the dads who think they’re helping but are really, truly not. Adams, looking convincingly exhausted and unshowered, carries the movie as a former artist hoping to reclaim her sense of self and reconnecting with something more feral. Rated R. 1 hr 39 min.

Watch Nightbitch now on Hulu

Director: Bing Liu

Golden hour for three skaters in a Rust Belt town is captured by the glidecam of Bing Liu, who won the breakthrough director award at Sundance for Minding the Gap. His doc initially flies on the euphoric energy of youth, before becoming an unflinching exploration of growing up amid male violence. Not rated. 1 hr 33 min.

Watch Minding the Gap on Hulu