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, HBO 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

*Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Year: 1992
Runtime: 2h 7m
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 epic retelling of the classic novel is one of the most lavish and ambitious Hollywood productions of its era. Gary Oldman gives one of his best performances as the title character, but it’s Coppola’s incredible craftsmanship and unforgettable design that make this movie an underrated horror classic.

Netflix

Born on the Fourth of July

Year: 1989
Runtime: 2h 24m
Director: Oliver Stone

The director of the Best Picture-winning Platoon returned to Vietnam era with a very different film that’s more about coming home than going to war. Tom Cruise gives one of the best performances of his career as Ron Kovic, an average American kid forced into combat, who came home paralyzed and in a country that had no idea what to do with its veterans. It’s a very moving drama that landed eight Oscar nominations, including Cruise’s first, and won a second trophy for Oliver Stone.

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.

*Phantom Thread

Year: 2017
Runtime: 2h 10m
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Daniel Day-Lewis stars in this period piece from one of the most popular working American directors. The Oscar winner plays a dressmaker in 1950s London who become attached to a waitress, played by Vicky Krieps. First, she’s his muse, inspiring him to create, but their relationship becomes warped by his manipulation, until she ends up turning the tables. A character study of codependence with PTA’s unmatched craftsmanship—it’s one of the best films of the 2010s.

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.

Amazon Prime Video

25th Hour

Year: 2003
Runtime: 2h 14m
Director: Spike Lee

One of the best movies from one of our better filmmakers, this incredible drama about a man’s (Edward Norton) final day before a 7-year prison stint is a fantastic way to spend the time before another Spike Lee joint, Highest 2 Lowest, comes out this year. Often considered one of the great 9/11 movies, 25th Hour is a modern classic, a film about a man and a city going through drastic change.

Brokeback Mountain

Year: 2006
Runtime: 2h 8m
Director: Ang Lee

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal star in this romantic drama, one of the best films of the ‘00s. Adapted from the short story by Annie Proulx, Ang Lee’s film is tender and heartbreaking, the story of unaccepted love between two men in the American West. It features some of the career-best work from Ledger, Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams.

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.

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.

Robocop

Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

People like to point at ‘80s movies and say they were ahead of their time, but this may be most true about Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterpiece, a film that foretold how technology would impact law enforcement in ways that took decades to come true. A brilliant action satire, this is the story of a Detroit cop who is murdered and revived as the title character, a superhuman cyborg enforcer. It’s even more riveting and relevant almost four decades later.

HBO Max

2001: A Space Odyssey

Year: 1968
Runtime: 2h 29m
Director: Stanley Kubrick

It’s no exaggeration to say that Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film changed the language of the genre forever. It has influenced nearly every film set in space to follow and embedded in pop culture a shorthand about distrust of technology that still resonates a half-century later. One of several films on Max that can legitimately be called a masterpiece.

Barbie

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

One of the biggest films of 2023 has landed on HBO 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.

*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.

I Saw the TV Glow

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: Jane Schoenbrun

One of the best films of 2024 is already available exclusively on HBO Max. Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore effort is the tale of a young man, played perfectly by Justice Smith, who becomes obsessed with a fictional show called The Pink Opaque, which opens him up to a new understanding of the world and his place in it. Schoenbrun’s visual language is arguably the most striking of the year, announcing them as a major cinematic talent.

Sing Sing

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 47m
Director: Greg Kwedar

Based on the real acting program that changes lives at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and starring a number of veterans of that class, Sing Sing is a masterful drama about the healing power of art. Colman Domingo landed his second Oscar nod for the best work of his career to date, while Clarence Maclin was robbed. (And it should have been nominated for Best Picture too.)

*Sinners

Year: 2025
Runtime: 2h 18m
Director: Ryan Coogler

The best film of the year so far is already streaming. Michael B. Jordan plays dual roles in this breathtaking hybrid of horror, music, history, and more filmmaking passion than anything in a long time. This massive blockbuster became the biggest original box office hit in over a decade, proof that audiences will turn up for new ideas when they’re executed this masterfully.

Spirited Away

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

Almost all of the Studio Ghibli films are on HBO 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.

Anora

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 19m
Director: Sean Baker

The last Oscar winner for Best Picture, Actress, Director, and Original Screenplay just dropped on Hulu, only a couple weeks after it won all the awards. Mikey Madison is incredible as a sex worker who gets entangled with the selfish rich kid of a Russian oligarch. Funny and moving, it’s a dramedy that will stand the test of time.

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.

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

Black Bag

Year: 2025
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Steven Soderbergh

One of the most acclaimed films of early 2025 is already exclusively on Peacock, mere weeks after it played in theaters. Sexy and stylish, Black Bag is the story of a spy (Michael Fassbender) who realizes that he may not be able to trust his wife (Cate Blanchett). Steven Soderbergh does no wrong, and this is one of the most acclaimed works of his illustrious career.

The Northman

Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 17m
Director: Robert Eggers

This epic from the director of The Lighthouse stars Alexander Skarsgard as a Viking prince who returns to his homeland with vengeance on his mind. A retelling of the myth that inspired Hamlet, this visually striking tale also stars Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Bjork, and Willem Dafoe. It’s one of those films that history will likely be very kind to as the years pass.

*Oppenheimer

Year: 2023
Runtime: 3h
Director: Christopher Nolan

A Best Picture winner and one of the biggest blockbusters of its era is usually on Peacock when it comes to subscription streaming services. While Nolan’s masterful historical drama played best on the big screen, it sustains a lot of its power at home too, where one can appreciate all of the many detailed choices that went into this unforgettable production with each repeat viewing.

Paramount+

Almost Famous

Year: 2000
Runtime: 2h 3m
Director: Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe wrote and directed this masterpiece about a young man (Patrick Fugit) who ends up on tour with a rock band known as Stillwater. With incredible supporting performances from Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, this is one of the richest and most timeless films of its era, a rare movie that gets better every time you see it.

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.

*Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Year: 1991
Runtime: 2h 17m
Director: James Cameron

Any list of the best sequels ever made that doesn’t include Terminator 2 is flatly wrong. James Cameron took the ideas of his 1984 sci-fi breakthrough and expanded on them in this action masterpiece that reverses roles and made movie history. Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor, the woman who knows that her son is the key to the future. She’s great but the movie belongs to Ah-nuld and, even more, Cameron, who flexes his action directing muscle here in unforgettable ways.

Disney+

Avatar: The Way of Water

Year: 2022
Runtime: 3h 15m
Director: James Cameron

Are we still talking about the cultural footprint of Avatar after the 2022 sequel made over $1 billion? Never doubt James Cameron. The director’s long-delayed return to Pandora is finally on Disney+, and it should be noted that it looks fantastic, clearly being given a more-detailed 4K video treatment than a lot of streaming offerings. Cameron is clearly never leaving Pandora — he’s working multiple sequels set there — so you better get to know this world with repeat viewings.

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 Nightmare Before Christmas

Year: 1993
Runtime: 1h 19m
Director: Henry Selick

It doesn’t have to be Halloween or Christmas to enjoy the story of Jack Skellington, brought unforgettably to life by the great Henry Selick and his buddy Tim Burton. This inventive, creative, original film has grown in popularity with every passing generation as parents pass it down to their kids. It’s also held up better than most family films of its era, largely because of how much it trusts kids to be able to handle darker themes and its unforgettable visuals.

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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