Looking for something to watch this weekend on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or Hulu? Check out our list of the best new shows and movies on various streaming services, including The Shape of Water, Cary Fukunaga’s new show Maniac, and the strange marital comedy Forever.
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: Adventurous shows, an Oscar-winning film about a merman, and more.
The new show Forever, from Alan Yang ( Master of None) and Matt Hubbard ( 30 Rock), may have a dull title, but the show itself is anything but. Just gaze upon the opening sequence of the first episode, a wordless montage that waltzes through the relationship of June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen), from their first, random encounters to their engagement, then to the slow descent into monotony. It’s poignant enough to work as a short film, but it’s merely a prologue, setting up June’s suburban listlessness and Oscar’s obliviousness. June’s solution is to propose they replace their annual lake house vacation with a ski trip. To say any more would be to give away Forever’s secrets. Watch it, and you’ll see one of the most inventive shows to grace screens this year.
Watch now on:
Amazon
Cary Fukunaga (director of the first season of True Detective) and writer Patrick Somerville have a new limited series on Netflix called Maniac, and while the details (at the time of this writing) are sparse, it appears to be a real trip. The series focuses on two people, Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill), each burdened by mental health issues, who take part in a strange new pharmaceutical trial overseen by Dr. James Mantleray (Justin Theroux). What exactly do the drugs do? If the trailers are any indication, they will take Owen and Annie through a variety of alternate timelines, or perhaps illusory worlds? Whatever the plot of Maniac ends up being, the prodigious talent involved and the unique premise make it a show to keep an eye on.
Watch now on:
Netflix
Although it was Robert Eggers’ directorial debut, The Witch was a horror movie of remarkable craftsmanship — creepy and even gory at times, but always moving with careful restraint. The film takes place in colonial New England, where William (Ralph Ineson), following a dispute over his interpretation of scripture, leaves his Puritan settlement in exile, taking his family with him. William, his wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie), and their children establish a farm on the edge of a forest. While teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is playing with infant Samuel, the baby goes missing, and the family soon discovers there is something lurking in the woods. The Witch is a beautiful, eerie film, capturing the ominous presence of rural New England, and for those tired of self-aware, humorous scary movies, it is also a refreshingly straightforward horror movie.
Watch now on:
Netflix
Wes Anderson’s films usually exhibit a certain level of whimsy, and Moonrise Kingdom is a particularly strong example of this, examining as it does the young, innocent romance between two adolescents trying to break free from the structures that confine them. Set in New England circa 1965, the film follows Khaki Scout Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and bookworm Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), who meet at a church production of Noye’s Fludde and write letters to each other for a year, eventually running away in the last days of summer. As they adventure and frolic, alone in the wilderness, Sam’s scout troop and Suzy’s family set out to find them. Moonrise Kingdom is a beautiful film, even by Anderson’s standards, filmed in rich colors, with every shot immaculately composed.
Watch now on:
Hulu
The 2018 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is, like most of his previous films, a strange, modern fantasy about primal human emotions. Set during the Cold War, the film follows Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman who works as a custodian at a top-secret government research facility. Col. Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), the man in charge of the facility, brings a humanoid, amphibious creature — a fish-man, to be blunt — back from the Amazon, and although he treats the creature with contempt, Elisa secretly forms a bond with it. As the two grow closer, Elisa discovers that her finny paramour is in mortal danger, and hatches a plan to help him escape. The Shape of Water is a sincere, surreal exploration of intimacy, and a perfect example of del Toro’s fascination with fairy tales and classic movie monsters.
Watch now on:
HBO Now
