The Best Movies and TV Shows to Stream: ‘I Care a Lot,’ ‘Nomadland’ and More
There’s always something to watch on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount+), Peacock and Discovery+, amongst even more streaming services. However, there are so many choices that it can get a little overwhelming. To help you out, we’ve rounded up the best movies and TV shows to stream right now — including new arrivals, old favorites and titles you may have forgotten to check out when they first premiered.
And for even more recommendations, make sure to check out our guide for everything new on Netflix and Hulu in February.
I Care a Lot
Rosamund Pike delivers serious Amazing Amy vibes in this dark comedy, playing a woman who manipulates the court into appointing her as legal guardian of some unwitting senior and then bilks the poor sap for everything they’re worth. She messes with the wrong ward, however, when she tries to swindle Dianne Wiest’s character. “I love seeing female characters on screen devoid of shame and who are unapologetic. It’s just refreshing,” co-star Eiza González tells ET. “It’s like, ‘Oh wow, they are wickedly evil and they are enjoying every minute of it.’”
Nomadland
A silver lining of streaming in the time of corona is that it’s easier than ever to keep up with all your required awards season viewing. Put Nomadland on the top of your list, which streams on Hulu in addition to its theatrical release. The film stars Frances McDormand as a woman living on the road as a modern-day nomad, and McDormand, as well as director Chloé Zhao and the picture itself, are already major contenders on the road to the Oscars. If you need any further incentive, Zhao’s next movie is Marvel’s Eternals.
Tell Me Your Secrets
For all the Rabeheads who have been clamoring for her to be spun off from American Horror Story or The Undoing, have we got a series for you: In Amazon’s new psychological thriller, Lily Rabe is front and center as a woman with a past connection to a serial killer. Amy Brenneman co-stars as a grieving mother obsessed with finding her missing daughter and Hamish Linklater as a former predator looking for redemption. Their stories collide over 10 bingeable episodes, with the entire first season streaming now.
Watch Tell Me Your Secrets on Prime Video
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It’s a Sin
Queer TV laureate Russell T. Davies — creator of such series as Queer as Folk and Banana/Cucumber — returns with a limited series about three twentysomething men (played by Olly Alexander, Omari Douglas and Callum Scott Howells) living, laughing and loving in 1980s London amid the onset of the growing AIDS crisis. “I’ve been writing this stuff for a very long time and I think HIV and AIDS as a thread in my work has quietly been working its way through,” Davies tells ET. “I would have been very disappointed if I hadn’t done this.”
WandaVision
The first of Marvel’s crop of big-budget TV shows to roll out on Disney+, WandaVision follows Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as they live their ideal lives in suburban America who begin to suspect that not everything is as they seem. What begins as a half-hour sitcom paying homage to classic ’50s and ’70s comedies transforms into something completely different. New episode every Friday.
To All The Boys: Always and Forever
The To All the Boys trilogy is coming to an end with one final swoon-worthy installment, titled Always and Forever. The threequel sees Lara Jean Song Covey (Lana Condor) travel to Korea, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) make a rom-com-worthy promposal, and the couple navigate their future once they both leave for college.
“We ended on a really, really good note,” Condor teased to ET. “I’m forever grateful for the character and I’m really excited for people to see the third movie, because I think the third one is my favorite movie out of the three.”
Watch To All The Boys: Always and Forever on Netflix
Judas and the Black Messiah
Judas and the Black Messiah is the latest film from Warner Bros. to open in theaters and drop on HBO on the same day. Daniel Kaluuya plays the revolutionary Fred Hampton, with LaKeith Stanfield as the FBI informant tasked with infiltrating the Black Panther Party.
The film made both AFI and National Board of Review’s best films of the year, with Kaluuya earning Best Supporting Actor nominations at the Golden Globes and SAG Awards, among others. “It’s nice to be recognized, but that’s stuff that’s out of my control. I did this for Chairman Fred, to serve chairman and be invested with Chairman Fred and to get this story out, to get this narrative out, to get these ideas out,” the actor told ET.
Watch Judas and the Black Messiah on HBO Max
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
Amazon’s charming time loop dramedy is more than just YA Palm Springs or Groundhog Day for teens. The film stars Kyle Allen as Mark, an adrift teen who finds himself trapped in a temporal anomaly, living the same day over and over and over again. When he meets Margaret (Kathryn Newton), the only other person who realizes what’s happening, they set out to uncover all of the tiny things that make that one day perfect.
It’s a wistful, winning movie with a sweet romance, clever time loop gags and something thoughtful to say. “You can’t hang on to the good or the bad, because you have to make room for new, which is so difficult to learn,” Newton tells ET. “You’ve got to let go of your past, whether it was good or bad, if you want to keep growing into the person you’re supposed to be.”
Watch The Map of Tiny Perfect Things on Prime Video
The Stand
The latest TV adaptation of Stephen King’s sprawling 1978 novel, The Stand tells the epic saga of good versus evil among survivors after a viral plague decimates the world’s population. At either end of what executive producer Ben Cavell calls “the forces of light and dark” are 108-year-old Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) and the sinister Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), who have drawn a sprawling, eclectic group of followers played by the likes of James Marsden, Jovan Adepo and Odessa Young.
The complete limited series is now streaming, including an ending that will be new to even fans of the book — King himself has penned a different coda for the TV adaptation.
Watch The Stand on CBS All Access
Malcolm & Marie
Zendaya and John David Washington explore the fragility of love and relationships in the black-and-white Netflix film, Malcolm & Marie, which is directed and written by Euphoria creator Sam Levinson. Filmed during the pandemic, they play a couple who return home after the premiere for Malcolm’s (Washington), a filmmaker, latest movie. As he waits for what he hopes is critical and financial success, the evening takes a turn as revelations about their relationships — past and present — begin to surface, testing the strength of their love.
“It’s been a special opportunity to play a character that was not only written for me but written to me,” Zendaya told ET. “Sam wrote it not only as a challenge for me, but also to the woman he is able to see grow in front of him.”
Watch Malcolm & Marie on Netflix
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Bridgerton
While it’s being called Gossip Girl meets Downton Abbey, Bridgerton is truly a Shondaland original. The upcoming period drama based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling romance novels is the first original series to come out of Shonda Rhimes’ production deal with Netflix, and features a racially diverse interpretation of the early 1800s, near the end of King George III’s rule, where Black people hold titles and power equal to their white counterparts.
The ensemble series about high society kicks off as Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), the eldest daughter of the revered and expansive Bridgerton family, makes her debut in London’s marriage market. And no sooner than she steps out do she and others around her become the subject of the mysterious Lady Whistledown’s scandal sheet, which stirs up drama among friends, families and outsiders alike.
Soul
Pixar’s latest offeringfollows a middle-school band teacher, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), whose dreams of becoming a professional jazz musician are put on hold when he falls down an open manhole and lands in The Great Before. There, he meets a reluctant new soul, 22 (Tina Fey), and the duo set off to return Joe to his body and a second chance at living. Phylicia Rashad, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Angela Bassett and Daveed Diggs round out the film’s Earthly cast, while the spiritual realm boasts the voices of Graham Norton, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Rachel House, among others.
The movie is Pixar’s first film to feature a Black lead, as well as the first completed remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic and the first to debut exclusively on Disney+. Director Pete Docter tells ET, “The idea that you’re waking yourself up to life and looking at it anew every day, I think is really exciting. That’s what we try to communicate in this movie.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is Viola Davis’ second adaptation of an August Wilson stage show, following her Oscar-winning turn in 2016’s Fences. (Denzel Washington, who co-starred in and directed the latter, serves as an executive producer on Ma Rainey.) In the movie, which is sure to be another awards contender, Davis stars as the legendary titular singer, known as the Mother of the Blues, during a recording session of the titular song in 1920s Chicago, with a backing band that includes standout turns from Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Glynn Turman and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final film role.
Watch Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Netflix
The Flight Attendant
If you haven’t caught The Flight Attendant yet, it’s time to get on board. Kaley Cuoco returns to TV for her first live-action role since The Big Bang Theory wrapped in 2019 in the eight-episode HBO Max series, playing Cassie, a flight attendant who wakes up after a drunken evening of debauchery and sex with a handsome, mysterious stranger (Michiel Huisman), only to find her lover gruesomely murdered in her hotel bed. Rosie Perez, Zosia Mamet, Michelle Gomez and T.R. Knight also star.
Watch The Flight Attendant on HBO Max
Sound of Metal
The TIFF darling stars Riz Ahmed in an acclaimed performance as Ruben, a drummer who plays in a metal band with his girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). When Ruben begins to rapidly lose his hearing, he has to grapple with the immediate effect on his professional and personal life, maintain his sobriety and figure out how to move forward in a new, unexpected reality.
Watch Sound of Metal on Amazon Prime
Sylvie’s Love
Starring Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha, Sylvie’s Love is a sweeping romance set in the 1950s (and ’60s). If you’ve been waiting for a cinematic love story akin to The Notebook, this is the one. The film is a gorgeous depiction of Black love and Kerry Washington’s support for star and real-life husband Asomugha makes the whole thing that much cuter./p>
Watch Sylvie’s Love on Amazon Prime
Star Trek: Discovery
Disco’sthird season picked up after a game-changing cliffhanger, when Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the USS Discovery crew blasted off 930 years into the future, arriving in the year 3188, where the Federation has been depleted following a mysterious apocalyptic event called The Burn. Season 3 also welcomed the franchise’s first transgender and non-binary characters, as well as Michael’s mysterious ally in the new world, Cleveland “Book” Booker (David Ajala), and his furry companion, a cat named Grudge.
Watch Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access
Saved By the Bell
Surprising many, the Saved by the Bell reboot defied expectations when it premiered on Peacock. 30 Rock and Great News producer Tracy Wigfield brought the beloved high school comedy out of its ’90s multi-cam bubble and infused it with a modern sensibility. Still taking place at Bayside High, the new series follows a group of privileged teens who must now share the hallways with a more diverse group of kids from working-class families after the California governor (Mark-Paul Gosselaar returning as a grown-up Zack Morris) shuts down lower-income schools. The series also welcomes back originals Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley Lauren) and A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez), who serve as faculty members and the voice of reason to the new generation of students — and the talented cast of young stars inject a needed dose of reality to the franchise.
Watch Saved By the Bell on Peacock
Shameless
The Gallaghers are back for one last raucous adventure, taking on gentrifiers, the Milkovich family and the legal marijuana industry in their eleventh and final season. News of Shameless‘ impending series finale came in early 2020, following Cameron Monaghan’s return to the series after initially announcing his exit in October 2018 and leading lady Emmy Rossum’s departure from the series after nine seasons. The cast also includes William H. Macy, Jeremy Allen White, Ethan Cutkosky, Shanola Hampton, Steve Howey, Emma Kenney, Christian Isaiah, Noel Fisher and Kate Miner.
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The Crown
The highly anticipated fourth season of The Crown marks Olivia Colman’s return and final episodes as Queen Elizabeth II, before she passes the royal scepter to Imelda Staunton. This season, the historical drama about the royal family, created by Peter Morgan, jumps forward in time to the 1980s, a period when two new women — Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) and Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) — had the most impact on the monarchy.
The Queen’s Gambit
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in the coming-of-age drama about a chess prodigy to life in The Queen’s Gambit. The limited series — and one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of 2020 — is based on the novel by Walter Tevis and “explores the true cost of genius” as it tells the story of an orphan, Beth Harmon (Taylor-Joy), who discovers she has a remarkable talent for chess. Soon after she’s adopted by a lonely housewife, Mrs. Alma (Marielle Heller), Beth’s passion for chess grows as she starts competing around the country. However, her passion for the game is challenged by her addiction to tranquilizers, which she turns to in order to help combat her personal demons.
Watch The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin’s latest real-life dramatization tells the story of the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and a group of political leaders who were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot in a nationally televised trial that radicalized a generation of young people. The star-studded cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong as activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Bobby Seale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne and more.
Watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix
Ted Lasso
One of 2020’s most hilarious new shows, Ted Lasso stars SNL alum Jason Sudeikis as a good ol’ boy college football coach who heads across the pond to lead a beloved English “football” club. The character was born from a series of promos Sudeikis did as the character for NBC Sports’ coverage of the English Premier League several years ago, but there’s just as much heart as there is silly schtick in the new series.
Hamilton
The beloved (and 11-time Tony-winning) Broadway musical is finally available to watch at home! Hamilton is streaming on Disney+ on July 3, offering fans a composite of several productions of the hip-hop founding father saga recorded at the Richard Rodgers Theatre with the original 2016 cast, which includes Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Philippa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Daveed Diggs and more.
Friends
Your favorite Central Perk sextet is back on streaming on HBO Max! Catch up with Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, and Ross, check in on Ugly Naked Guy, grab a coffee from Gunther and figure out, once and for all, if they were really “on a break” as you enjoy all 10 seasons of the iconic sitcom.
Survivor
Twenty years after its premiere season, Survivor has continued to outwit, outplay and outlast, delivering some of reality TV’s most grueling challenges and compelling personalities. Stream every season of the ultimate competition show on CBS All Access now.
source : etonline.com
