Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Best new shows and movies to stream: ‘The Meyerowitz Stories’ and more

A picture of Keanu Reeves
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Online streaming 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: An incredible Adam Sandler performance, a stylish action sequel, and more.

Recommended Videos

‘The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Noah Baumbach’s latest film centers on a timeless premise — the dysfunctional family. For the Meyerowitz family, that dysfunction stems, in large part, from elderly father Harold (Dustin Hoffman). A renowned sculptor, now long past his prime, Harold’s cantankerous personality and obsession with his art weigh on eldest son, Danny (Adam Sandler, in a stellar dramatic performance), a musician who hung up his six-string to raise his daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten). Danny and Eliza move in with Harold following the collapse of Danny’s marriage, and Harold’s other children, daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) and favored son Matthew (Ben Stiller), enter the story. As the family reconnects, old tensions bubble up. The Meyerowitz Stories is a superb exploration of a family in distress, and how emotional traumas carry over through the decades.

Netflix

‘Patton Oswalt: Annihilation’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

As one of the 21st century’s most prominent comedians, Patton Oswalt mixes observational humor about pop culture and life’s mundane routines with undercurrents of anger and sadness at the state of the world. It’s heavy stuff coated in a veneer of silliness, and Oswalt finds plenty of material to work with in recent events, including every comedian’s favorite subject of late, President Donald Trump. Oswalt’s own grief is one of Annihilation’s most important topics, however; in 2016, his wife, Michelle McNamara, died, and Oswalt dedicates a significant portion of Annihilation to reflecting on life after tragedy.

Netflix

‘John Wick: Chapter 2’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

John Wick was one of the most surprising action movies of recent years, a slick, pulsing revenge thriller about a retired hit man who takes up his guns once again after some cocky mobsters kill his dog. Chapter 2 doesn’t reinvent the bloody, absurd fun of the franchise, but it does build upon the first film’s solid foundation. The film opens as John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is once again pulled into the criminal underworld when Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) cashes in a debt, demanding Wick assassinate his sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), who is set to inherit the family crime business. John ventures to Rome, and Chapter 2 delves into the world of international assassins, which, it turns out, is ridiculously glamorous. The film is a bit more polished than the original.

HBO Go

‘Song to Song’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Since returning to cinema with 2011’s The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick has been in a distinct phase of his career, making films that resemble flowing rivers of imagery, dotted with branches of poetic dialogue. This recent string of films has been divisive, and if you found The Tree of Life or To the Wonder ponderous rather than brilliant, you will probably hate Song to Song. Those who enjoy Malick’s recent output will find much to like in the film, which follows a pair of musicians, Faye (Rooney Mara) and BV (Ryan Gosling), and the record mogul Cook (Michael Fassbender), who is trying to make them stars. Faye has romantic entanglements with both men, and their love triangle — and the conflicts it spurs — is the emotional core of the film. Song to Song is a dizzying drama, gorgeously shot.

Amazon

‘Volver’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Pedro Almodóvar is perhaps Spain’s most celebrated director, and Volver ranks among his finest films. The movie follows Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and her sister, Soledad (Lola Dueñas), who return to the village of their youth following the death of their aunt. A local woman, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), claims to have seen the ghost of their mother, who died years earlier, and Soledad soon sees it, too. Raimunda’s problems increase when she must dispose of a body, but despite the film’s preoccupation with death and the dead, it’s hardly macabre. Almodóvar’s film luxuriates in vivid colors, and his characters have a delightful liveliness to them.

Hulu

Will Nicol
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Nicol is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends. He covers a variety of subjects, particularly emerging technologies, movies…
I’ll never watch this harrowing, notorious 40-year-old movie ever again. Here’s why
A policeman wearing a mask stands in Threads.

I saw a few announcements about the October 9 rerun of the BBC film Threads ahead of it playing, and couldn’t quite remember if I had seen it or not. I was probably confusing it with another powerful made-for-TV movie about nuclear war, The Day After. I certainly knew Threads by reputation, though — a bleak depiction of what would happen to normal people in the wake of a nuclear conflict.

After it started it took only a few minutes for me to remember that I had, at some point, seen Threads before. I’m not sure when or how, as it has hardly been shown since its initial debut in 1984. But I knew, and it was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me I’d forced the film out of my memory, such is its ability to horrify. Yet I still wasn’t prepared for the ways it can still scare today, 40 years after it was made.
Can a movie cause childhood trauma?
Threads (1984) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]

Read more
This ambitious American epic might be the best movie of 2024
A man lights a cigarette in The Brutalist.

It's easy for a movie to become overhyped during the fall festival season. Every year, it seems like at least one film receives rapturous early reactions at festivals like Venice and Telluride, only to garner little more than a disappointed shrug from the general public. The Brutalist, due to no fault of its own, has seemingly all the makings of being one of those movies. The film came out of nowhere when it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in early September, but it was quickly hailed as a modern masterpiece by many and soon started to receive comparisons to iconic, unrivaled classics like The Godfather and There Will Be Blood.

In case that wasn't enough, there has also already been a lot of talk about what a technical accomplishment The Brutalist is. Not only is it 3 hours and 35 minutes long (counting a mandatory, well-timed 15-minute intermission), but it was also made using camera technology from the 1940s and '50s. It is, notably, the first American film to be shot on VistaVision — a long-abandoned 35mm film format — since 1961's One-Eyed Jacks. All of this is now well-known among certain cinephile circles, and there have even been viral social media posts about how heavy its 70mm film reels weigh.

Read more
At 50, this classic horror movie is still cinema’s ultimate nightmare
Pam walks to a big house in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Bryanston Distributing Company / Bryanston Distributing Company

Earlier this week, Variety published a list of the 100 best horror movies ever. Sitting at the top, like an exhumed corpse festering in the brilliant midday sun, was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This was not a controversial choice on the publication’s part, not in the year of our unholy lord of darkness 2024. Tobe Hooper’s deranged thriller, which roared into theaters 50 years ago, has been rising in critical esteem for decades, its reputation as a truly great movie — rather than merely a deeply upsetting and effective one — steadily cementing over the last half-century. Time, in other words, has been very kind to a savage, scandalous act of grindhouse exploitation once considered so shocking, it was banned in multiple countries. Yesterday’s outrage machine has become today’s lionized classic.

Read more