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 ‘Mean Girls’
The clique-based high school comedy has rarely been told with the rapier wit or the surgical precision of this “tart and often charming” teen comedy from Mark Waters, directing a script adapted by Tina Fey from Rosalind Wiseman’s book “Queen Bees and Wannabes.” Fey turned Wiseman’s youth-focused self-help book into the fabulously funny story of a new girl (Lindsay Lohan) who must quickly learn how to navigate a tricky social stratum. Rachel McAdams is deliciously despicable as the most popular (and thus, the most powerful) girl in school, while the “Saturday Night Live” veterans Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer and Fey herself shine in supporting turns. These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘Brockmire’
In this raunchy comedy, veteran character actor Hank Azaria plays the disgraced, alcoholic baseball announcer Jim Brockmire, who tries to resuscitate his career by taking a job with a ramshackle minor league team. Amanda Peet plays a sports-loving small town entrepreneur, who hires Brockmire and helps him get back on track. The appeals of this show are manifold, from the protagonist’s rich-toned, colorfully phrased vulgarity to the story’s nuanced understanding of what success means in 21st century America. Our critic called the title character “hilarious in a vile sort of way,” adding, “He’s also, just barely, someone you can feel sympathy for, which is what really makes the series work.” Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU ‘The Life of Chuck’
Mike Flanagan’s latest feature is an adaptation of a Stephen King story published in 2020, but it feels more current in its opening section, which forcefully captures the acute sense of everything falling to pieces. It is, per the title, the story of a life (Chuck is played by Tom Hiddleston) starting with Act Three — which is not just the end of his life but the end of the world — and then walking backward. That unconventional structure lends an “anything goes” feeling to the narrative; we can guess at the broad strokes, but the recurring images, sounds and motifs keep us off-balance, even with the guidance of Nick Offerman’s dry, delightful narration. It’s a quietly profound and undeniably earnest movie (which has certainly rubbed some viewers the wrong way), with an ending that delivers an emotional wallop. Here are Hulu’s best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ‘Les Misérables’
Anne Hathaway won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her turn in this adaptation of the musical theater sensation, which was adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo. The director, Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), shot live performances of the song on set — most movie musicals feature actors lip-syncing to studio recordings — and the unconventional technique made for some remarkably raw and vulnerable performances, especially in the case of Hathaway’s show stopper “I Dreamed a Dream.” Some of Hooper’s other risks don’t pay off as handsomely (casting Russell Crowe in a role requiring a strong singer was … a choice), but this one is worth streaming for Hathaway’s electric work alone. Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX ‘Architecton’
The Russian director Victor Kossakovsky specializes in slow, meditative, largely wordless documentaries about our relationship with the natural world like “Gunda,” a mesmeric portrait of a pig on a Norwegian farm, and “Aquarela,” a global survey of water and ice. Kossakovsky’s latest, “Architecton,” is about stone and concrete, the millennia-old foundation of human architecture, and how the use of these building blocks have turned into a pox on the environment. Though the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi ruminates on the issue, the stunning images of ravaged buildings and cascading stones are the driving force of this sensory experience, which should be felt more than intellectualized. Lisa Kennedy called it “as gorgeous as it is grave.” See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ ‘The Beatles Anthology’
An official, in-house documentary about the Beatles was in the works as far back as 1971, but after various snags over years, including John Lennon’s death in 1980, the project was shelved until the early ’90s. First released on 1995 on ABC and British television, “The Beatles Anthology” would eventually make its way to video as an eight-volume VHS and laserdisc set that plumbed a vast archive of in-studio and documentary footage to tell the Beatles’ story, with a rich soundtrack and interviews with the surviving members. In addition to a polished-up and re-edited cut of the doc, the Disney+ version, supervised by Peter Jackson, includes a ninth episode of odds and ends that are about Paul, George and Ringo getting together to make “Anthology” in the ’90s. This postscript proves bittersweet. The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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