Need something to watch this weekend on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or Hulu? Check out our list of the best new shows and movies this week on various streaming services, including Arrested Development season 5 — part 1, Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, Coco, and more.
Streaming entertainment is bigger than ever, and with so many streaming services adding new shows and movies every week, it can be nearly impossible to sort through the good and the bad. If you need something to watch and don’t want to wade through the digital muck that washes up on the internet’s shores, follow our picks below for the best new shows and movies to stream on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon, and other services.
On the list this week: The return of comedy’s most dysfunctional family, a new Pixar adventure, and the impressive sequel to a sci-fi classic.
After a five-year hiatus, the Bluths are back, and just as funny (and cringe-inducing) as ever. Season 5 picks up where the last left off, with Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) running for office, Gob (Will Arnett) and George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) running form their problems, and Michael (Jason Bateman) trying to run away from the family entirely. Season 4 largely kept the various members of the Bluth clan on their own separate paths, but the new episodes return to the ensemble-based comedy that helped make the show a classic. As always, the jokes fly by at a rapid pace, and frequent callbacks reward longtime fans. Netflix has only put out the first eight episodes of the season, with the rest to come later, but this batch of episodes is excellent, even if it goes by quickly.
Watch now on:
Netflix
Pixar’s 2017 film Coco is another great entry in an already stellar (a few lackluster, cash grabs notwithstanding) body of work. Set in Mexico, the film follows a young boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez). Miguel’s great-grandmother banned music from their family after her husband abandoned her to pursue a music career, but Miguel wants to become a musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). After he discovers that de la Cruz may be his great-grandfather, Miguel breaks into his tomb on the Day of the Dead to steal his guitar. Doing so transports Miguel to the afterlife, where he meets his dead ancestors and learns that if he does not return to the world of the living by sunrise, he will be trapped among the spirits forever. Coco is a gorgeous film, set largely in a psychedelic spirit world, and it’s also an emotional tale of family and the passing down of legacies.
Watch now on:
Netflix
Sports rivalries can get intense, but few reach the scandalous levels of the competition between figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, which peaked when an assailant struck Kerrigan’s leg with a baton, in a plot orchestrated by Harding’s ex-husband and her bodyguard. Harding’s involvement in the matter (or lack thereof, as she professed) was a burning question for the media, and the biopic I, Tonya looks back on the events from Harding’s (perhaps warped) perspective. The film follows Harding (Margot Robbie) from her oppressive childhood — growing up under her scathing mother (Allison Janney) — to her high point as one of the greatest female skaters in the world, to her downfall and eventual ban from skating. It’s a manic, funny film, built around wild performances from Robbie and Janney.
Watch now on:
Hulu
Since the breakout success of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Gore Verbinski has become known for bombastic films of varying quality. His latest film, the fantasy-horror A Cure for Wellness, is certainly as big as anything he’s ever done, and while critics may have disagreed about the quality, there’s no arguing that the film takes some surprising risks. It begins with Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) taking on a mission for the board of directors of the firm where he works. The company’s CEO refuses to return from a wellness center in Switzerland, and the board wants Lockhart to travel there and retrieve him. When Lockhart arrives, he finds the hospital rather ominous, and Dr. Heinrich Volmer (Jason Isaacs), the man in charge, quite uncooperative. A Cure for Wellness is a strange film, a throwback to the gothic horror movies of yesteryear, with imposing atmosphere and ghoulish visuals.
Watch now for:
HBO Now
Did Blade Runner need a sequel? Maybe not, but while it would have been easy for the producers to knock out a vapid blockbuster with the Blade Runner name attached, Denis Villeneuve’s distant sequel is a bold successor to Ridley Scott’s visionary sci-fi masterpiece. Set 30 years after the original, 2049 follows a replicant — the film’s name for androids — named K (Ryan Gosling), who works as a Blade Runner, hunting down rogue replicants and dispatching them. After his latest bounty leads him to the body of a female replicant whose autopsy showed that she had a caesarian section — and thus was pregnant, a first for replicants — K must track down the replicant’s child, a quest that will put him at odds with the sinister Wallace Corporation. Blade Runner 2049 is a visually stunning film, with masterful cinematography and art design, and although it largely stands on its own, it circles back nicely to the plot of the original.
Watch now on:
HBO Now
