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 ‘Memento’
Christopher Nolan made his first big splash with this, his second feature film, a stylish noir riff that tells its familiar story in an exuberantly inventive way: In order to mirror the disorientation of its protagonist, Leonard (Guy Pearce), who has lost his ability to create new memories, Nolan tells the story by ordering its scenes in reverse chronology. As Leonard pursues an investigation of his wife’s murder, revelations fold back on themselves and betrayals become clear to the audience before they’re known to him. Yet even without that narrative flourish, “Memento” would be a scorching piece of work, loaded with sharp performances, moody cinematography and a noir-inspired sense of doom. These are the 50 best movies on Netflix.STREAMING ON NETFLIX ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semiautobiographical “Little House” novels, this series follows a pioneer family as they try to build a new life in Kansas in the 1870s, while coping with the many setbacks by relishing the moments of joy, beauty and companionship. Unlike past versions of “Little House on the Prairie,” this series also focuses on the land’s original Osage inhabitants. Our critic wrote, “It is a spirited, wholesome story of adventure and hardship, broadened to consider the people who lived on the prairie long before the Ingallses and company came to homestead it.” Here are 30 great TV shows on Netflix.STREAMING ON HULU ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’
Few shows in television history sounded less promising than a series adaptation of an unloved, unsuccessful teen horror/comedy, launching midseason on a network no one had heard of. But from the ashes of the (vastly compromised, it’s said) 1992 feature film came Joss Whedon’s reimagined and recalibrated seven-season triumph, which slyly conflated the conventions of supernatural horror and high school life, and asked which was truly the fiery hellscape. Though a little bumpy early on — it took some time for Whedon and company to find their tone (and access to convincing special effects) — once “Buffy” finds its footing, it’s unstoppable. Here are Hulu’s best movies and TV shows.STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ‘Frankenstein’
Horror cinema was changed forever in the year 1931, when Universal — a scrappy studio known primarily for B-movies and programmers — went all in on monster movies. Tod Browning’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (also on Prime) set the template for every vampire movie to follow (doubly so for Bela Lugosi’s title turn), and James Whale’s take on Mary Shelley’s mad scientist novel, released nine months after, further solidified the template for Universal horror: moody, slyly funny, carefully crafted and sneakily poignant, thanks in no small part to Boris Karloff’s wounded work as the monster. Our critic called it “a stirring grand-guignol type of picture.” Here are a bunch of great movies on Amazon.STREAMING ON HBO MAX ‘Irma Vep’
One of the great movies about making movies, Olivier Assayas’s ingenious, ultracool cult classic acts as a barometer of the French film industry in the late 20th century and finds it both creatively and institutionally bereft. Appearing as herself, Maggie Cheung arrives in Paris to play the lead role in a remake of “Les Vampires,” the silent crime serial from the midteens, now revived by a long-in-the-tooth director, played by the French new wave legend Jean-Pierre Léaud. As the production spins out of control, Cheung’s increasing sense of confusion and alienation causes her to turn inward, leading to an unforgettable sequence where she dons her character’s latex catsuit and stalks her hotel. See more great movies streaming on HBO Max.STREAMING ON DISNEY+ ‘The Straight Story’
The director David Lynch shocked the film world by following the hard-R mind-melters “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” and “Lost Highway” with a G-rated, fact-based Disney film about an elderly Midwesterner (Richard Farnsworth) who travels 370 miles on a riding lawn mower to visit his ill, estranged brother. There’s plenty of Lynchian eccentricity and style, however, to his heartfelt slice of Americana, and a genuine conviction in the decency that evildoers in his other films often work to snuff out. Janet Maslin called it “a supremely improbable triumph.” The 50 best things to watch on Disney+ right now.
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