Watching: The best things to stream
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 'Watcher'
The haunted, melancholy visage of Maika Monroe, so well used in "It Follows" and "Longlegs," gets a workout in this deliberately paced, unnervingly crafted thriller from the director Chloe Okuno. Monroe stars as Julia, who accompanies her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), to Bucharest, Romania, for a career opportunity. He's working all the time, so she's a stranger in a strange land, and Okuno nails the specific, aching solitude of being alone in a crowd where you don't even speak the language — and the feeling that you're being watched and followed. The picture's tension comes from the commonplace, and Okuno uses the simplest of tools (rumbling on the soundtrack, knocks on doors, sudden movements, incoming texts) to build dread and unease. Most of all, she offers a gutsy female interpretation of the male gaze, a story explicitly about being watched, by men, and all of the dangers that can represent. These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX 'The Clubhouse: A Year With the Red Sox'
The documentary producer and director Greg Whiteley — whose team is behind multiple hit docu-series, including "Cheer" and "Wrestlers" — turns his attention to baseball with his latest project. Whiteley got unprecedented access to the Boston Red Sox throughout the 2024 baseball season, tracking a team that had some success but ended the year falling short of the playoffs. There is a rare level of honesty here from talented young players like Jarren Duran, Triston Casas and Brayan Bello, who share the complex preparations that go into every game, along with the mental and emotional struggles they endure whenever they make mistakes. Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU 'What We Do in the Shadows'
Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi adapted their hilarious 2015 mockumentary film into this FX sitcom, with "perfectly fun" results, finding the day-to-day lives (and irritations) of a group of Staten Island vampires to be a source for endless comic invention. Its quartet of undead housemates must wrestle with not only the logistics of bloodsucking but the general annoyance of roommates, and that incongruity gives the show its juice. Every member of the stellar ensemble shines, but special praise is due to Matt Berry, who finds just the right mixture of ornate theatricality and unapologetic horniness as the dandyish Laszlo. Here are Hulu's best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO 'Challengers'
The first of the director Luca Guadagnino's two 2024 releases is this "fizzy, lightly sexy, enjoyable tease of a movie," detailing every ill-advised kiss and every strategic volley of a love triangle in the world of professional tennis. Zendaya is Tashi, a rising star who becomes the simultaneous object of desire for best friends and fellow tennis prodigies Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O'Connor) — though desire is a messy emotion, easily diverted and manipulated. Guadagnino shoots the tennis matches with thrilling, electric style, but the real fireworks happen off the court. Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX 'Civil War'
Throughout his career as an author, screenwriter and director, Alex Garland has frequently considered the collapse of civilization, whether it's among idealistic young adventurers in South Asia ("The Beach") or survivors of a zombie outbreak in England ("28 Days Later"). While his provocative "Civil War" avoids the red-state/blue-state dichotomies that currently roil the country, the film imagines a bleak future where America has collapsed into violence and a team of journalists follow a rebel faction as it pushes its way into Washington, D.C. Garland intentionally makes "Civil War" an ideological Rorschach blot in order to suggest what humans are capable of doing when order breaks down. Manohla Dargis called it "a blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction." See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ 'Phineas and Ferb'
Virtually every episode of this thoroughly delightful animated musical comedy series leans on the same formula: The manic genius Phineas and his taciturn best buddy Ferb work on some wacky invention in Phineas's back yard during summer vacation. Phineas's tattletale older sister Candace tries and fails to "bust" the boys to her mother. Meanwhile, their pet Perry the platypus goes on side quests as a secret agent assigned to disrupt the latest evil scheme by would-be supervillain Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz. And yet over five seasons — the fifth arriving in 2025, 11 years after the show's initial run — "Phineas and Ferb" remains as reliably entertaining and inventive as it ever was. New inventions and new evil schemes lead to satisfying new adventures nearly every time. The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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