What to Watch This Weekend: 20 Great New Movies on All Streaming Services

This is the film that made drinking a glass of milk the height of erotic ecstasy. In Babygirl, Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) is a high-powered CEO who is happily married to a theater director and has two wonderful teenage daughters. She also has a lackluster sex life and watches porn to achieve orgasm. But when hunky intern Sam (Harris Dickinson) propositions her, Romy can’t resist his charms — or his dominant behavior that give her the sexual pleasure she’s been seeking all along.

Babygirl has been described as an erotic thriller, but it’s really a drama about sex that intelligently explores a woman’s desires. Kidman is excellent as Romy, who craves power in the boardroom and submission in the bedroom. The film has some unexpected comedic bits that work and a dance sequence set to George Michael’s “Father Figure” that’s both funny and sexy. But that’s Babygirl in a nutshell, and its complicated characters will make you want to watch it again and again.

If you’re in the mood for an intense action movie with jaw-dropping stunts, Havoc will satisfy you. Tom Hardy stars as Walker, a jaded detective who is in a lot of trouble. A drug deal has just gone bad and he’s on the run from a gun-happy crime syndicate that wants him dead and some dirty cops who don’t want their criminal side hustles exposed. 

To make it worse, he has to protect a crooked politician’s son who was involved in the drug deal and knows more than he’s letting on. Can Walker save the boy and not be killed in the process?

The plot isn’t anything new, but Havoc is worth watching just for the stunts alone. The movie was directed by Gareth Evans, who made the modern action classics The Raid and Gangs of London, so there are a lot of gunshots, explosions and face-smashing fights. Hell, there’s even a chase scene where someone throws a washing machine onto a pursuing cop car. 

Havoc is good, silly fun, the kind of movie you’re glad to watch while it’s on and forget about when you finish it. 

Remember way back in 2000 when Russell Crowe asked, “Are you not entertained?” to the roaring crowds in Gladiator? Well, be prepared to answer that question again in the long-awaited sequel, Gladiator II. The Ridley Scott film isn’t perfect — it doesn’t match the raw, muscular power of its predecessor, and Crowe’s brawny presence is sorely missed — but it’s still largely entertaining, and Denzel Washington gives one of his loosest, most enjoyable performances ever.

Years after Maximus Meridius’ death, his exiled son Lucius (Paul Mescal) follows in his father’s footsteps and seeks revenge on the powerful people who killed his wife. But his need for vengeance will bring him back to a home he has never known and a mother (Connie Nielsen) who abandoned him to protect him. Can Lucius fulfil his destiny while also satisfying his need to honor the family he lost?

Well, the answer is kinda obvious, but the journey getting there is mostly a blast. One of Gladiator II‘s highlights is the brutal sword-on-sword action between Mescal and Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius, who relishes playing a villain as charismatic and lethal as his Oberyn in Game of Thrones.

You’ve probably seen this setup before — a group of rowdy and randy young adults party in the woods, and they’re systematically slaughtered one by one. Yet In A Violent Nature finds a new angle to this old Friday the 13th hack-and-slash story by focusing solely on the killer, Johnny (Ry Barrett), chopping up all those helpless campers. 

The result is a truly unsettling horror film, where the audience has to share a lot of the time with an unknowable, undead creature who simply just wants to kill. It’s a bit disconcerting, especially when the film’s plot is only discernible when Johnny hears his victims talking in the distance. But it’s also incredibly effective, especially when he chops up one fortunate victim and slowly slices up another using a lumber buzzsaw.

Is In a Violent Nature pleasant to watch? No, not really — but it’s an unforgettable experience and one of the few slasher films that truly gets under your skin. A sequel is already in the works, but it will be hard to top the raw, visceral power of the original. 

To Josh (Jack Quaid), Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is the perfect girlfriend —  intelligent, attractive and always there when he needs her. There’s a good reason for that: she’s programmed that way. Iris is a companion android Josh rented to accompany him for a weekend getaway with some friends. But Josh’s intentions aren’t as pure as Iris thinks, and she realizes she’s being used in a plot she doesn’t want any part of. Can Iris overcome her programming to break free? Or will she be forever a companion that Josh has total control over?

Companion makes the most of its intriguing premise, resulting in a movie that is both brutal and morbidly funny. The twisty plot is better kept hidden, but what can be spoiled is that genre fans will be pleased by the amount of blood and gore on display here. Thatcher stands out as the android who has every reason to be paranoid. She’s sweet when she wants to be, but cross her, and she makes M3GAN seem as harmless as a Barbie doll.

When Blake (Christopher Abbott) takes his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) to his family cabin in Oregon, he expects to rest and bond with his family. Instead, he gets into an accident and is bitten by a wolf. Soon after, Blake’s body begins to change, and he realizes he’s turning into a werewolf. Nothing stops the transformation, and he has to get away quickly from Charlotte and Ginger before he harms them.

Wolf Man doesn’t change the werewolf horror movie formula too much, but it provides just enough claustrophobic thrills to warrant a watch. There’s a barely buried allegory about how family trauma is passed on from fathers to their children, but Wolf Man is more effective when it sticks to the script and delivers B-movie boogeyman thrills. 

Martha (Tilda Swinton) is dying, and she has some unfinished business to settle. That somehow involves Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a successful writer who once worked with Martha at the same magazine years ago. Martha asks Ingrid to accompany her to upstate New York, where she will spend her remaining time bonding with her former friend. But Martha has another agenda, and Ingrid may not like what she has planned.

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodovar’s first full-length, English-language feature, and it contains all of the director’s signature calling cards: vibrant sets with bold colors, a script that’s purposefully melodramatic, a resonant score by Albert Iglesias and two dynamic female characters played by great actresses. The movie doesn’t reach the heights of his classics All About My Mother, Volver or Talk to Her, but even mid Almodovar is better than almost anything else out there. 

In The Order, Jude Law stars as FBI agent Terry Husk, whose investigation of a suspicious murder leads him to Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), a charismatic leader of a terrorist group called The Order. Their goal is to promote white supremacy through domestic terrorism, and Husk, along with neophyte police officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), is the only one who can stop him. 

The Order seems like your standard testosterone-filled action movie, but beneath its macho swagger is a thoughtful examination of racism in small-town America. As a balding, middle-aged cop, Law is almost unrecognizable, and Hoult is appropriately menacing as a racist terrorist who cosplays as a law-abiding citizen. 

After Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy eschewed big-budget movies and chose to star in a small, low-budget drama about the Magdalene laundries called Small Things Like These.

It’s 1985 in Ireland, and Bill Furlong (Murphy) is a coal merchant with a loving wife and five daughters. When he delivers coal to the local convent, he discovers a young pregnant girl, Sarah (Agnes O’Casey), scared and freezing in a shed. The convent’s Mother Superior, Sister Mary (Emily Watson), explains that Sara is a victim of a childish prank gone wrong, but Bill isn’t so sure. As he begins to investigate what’s really going on, he encounters pushback from the community and the Church itself.

Small Things Like These is a quiet film that dramatizes a very real tragedy that occurred in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries. Murphy is outstanding as a man caught between his faith and his morals. He wants to help Sarah, but he doesn’t want to go against the religious leaders he’s followed all his life. The movie is a bit heavy, but if you want a quality drama, you can’t beat Small Things Like These.

Movie biopics about musical legends have become a bit of a running joke over the past decade or so. Anyone who endured Bohemian Rhapsody or Back to Black will tell you that the genre has become a parody of itself. But A Complete Unknown is one of the better recent biopics because of the assured direction by James Mangold, a strong supporting cast with Oscar nominees Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro and a great lead performance by Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan.

The movie takes place during Dylan’s early days as an up-and-coming singer in the early ‘60s New York City folk scene, where Pete Seeger (Norton) mentors him and Joan Baez (Barbaro) collaborates with him professionally and personally. Dylan soon eclipses them both in popularity, but his desire to experiment — specifically by ditching his acoustic guitar for an electric one — causes him to question his purpose as a musician and a symbol of the emerging counterculture movement. 

Chalamet is an uncanny mimic, but his performance as Dylan is more than just a flattering imitation. He understands that Dylan can’t really be entirely understood, and his slipperiness —  his resistance to being pinned down to just one identity — is the bulk of his appeal. A Complete Unknown is nirvana for Dylan fans, but it’s accessible and entertaining enough for the uninitiated, too.

In 2019, Disney ruled the box office with their live-action remake of the beloved 1994 animated movie, The Lion King. It was only a matter of time before they released the inevitable sequel — or in Mufasa’s case, a prequel  — and while it didn’t make as much money as its predecessor, it’s better and more memorable.

That’s largely due to director Barry Jenkins, who brings his distinctive empathy for his characters — even photorealistic CGI ones — and eye for the odd striking visual to the origin story of Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) and Taka (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), his adoptive brother. Despite their different temperaments, the two cubs form a strong bond, and they’ll need it as they flee from the dangerous Outsiders. Can the brothers hold back their enemies to reclaim the Pride Lands before it’s too late?

It’s time to defy gravity all over again as one of 2024’s highest-grossing movies is now available to stream — Wicked! In John M. Chu’s candy-colored adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, the origins of The Wizard of Oz’s two witches get the feature film treatment, complete with a massive 160-minute runtime.

That’s how long it takes to tell the story of Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), a green-skinned outcast at Shiz University who strikes up an unlikely friendship with the perky, blonde and popular Galinda (Ariana Grande). But can this friendship survive the handsome Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who pulls at Elphaba’s heart, or the secret the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is hiding from them all?

Wicked is unabashedly a musical, full of soaring ballads and power anthems about love and being free, and the filmmaking is like that, too. It’s a bit exhausting, but it’s also fun and easy on the eyes. Erivo is deadly serious as the proto-Wicked Witch of the West, while Grande is as bouncy and shiny as one of the bubbles she uses to fly around in. 

William Lee (Daniel Craig) is a 50-year-old American in Mexico with nothing to do except hang out in bars and try to pick up men who aren’t interested in him. Things change when he meets Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a young GI who is also drifting through life. The two soon begin an affair, but Eugene isn’t sure he wants to be with any man, let alone William. But William is madly in love and is willing to travel to the ends of the Earth to make Eugene stay with him.

Queer is an odd film to classify — it’s not quite a romance or a drama or a comedy, although it contains elements of all those genres. The third act gets trippy (literally) and may leave you feeling confused, but it’s worth it for the dynamic lead performances by Craig and Starkey. They play lovers lost to each other and to themselves, and they may just make you swoon.

All Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxon (Chloe East) want to do is save Mr. Reed’s (Hugh Grant) soul. That’s why the two young Mormon missionaries knock on the reclusive man’s door and walk into his isolated cabin to plead their case. But Mr. Reed, with his old cardigan and warm smile, isn’t as friendly as he appears to be. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and he’s out to test the two girls’ faith through a series of twisted games that could lead to their deaths.

Heretic was one of last year’s best horror movies, and it’s not hard to understand why. The setup is intriguing, and the battle of wills between Mr. Reed and the two girls generates enough dramatic tension to keep you interested throughout the film’s 111-minute runtime. It’s Grant, though, who impresses the most, giving a creepy, uncharacteristically sinister performance that rightfully earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

When robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) crash-lands on a seemingly deserted island, it sends a signal to be retrieved by its corporate masters. While waiting to be picked up, Roz befriends various animals it finds on the island, including a sly fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal) and Brightbill (Kit Connor), an orphaned gosling Roz shelters from potential predators. As Roz becomes more at home with its new animal friends, it must soon make a fateful choice: leave the island or stay and be a “wild robot.”

Adapted from the beloved children’s book of the same name, The Wild Robot is a fantastic animated movie that recalls earlier classics like The Iron Giant and The Secret of NIMH. Nominated for three Oscars, the film boasts a great voice cast that also includes Catherine O’Hara and Bill Nighy as two older animals who give Roz valuable advice. The Wild Robot is a kids movie that is also for adults, and it will make you yearn for your own island adventure.

David and Benji Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) are cousins who have little in common. When their grandmother leaves them money to travel to Poland for a Jewish heritage tour, both men use it as an opportunity to get reacquainted with one another. But Benji’s impulsiveness gets on David’s nerves, and as they visit various Holocaust sites with a tour group, their trip threatens to drive them further apart. Can they reconcile in time to honor their late grandmother?

A Real Pain is a classic road-trip movie crossed with a family drama that is sometimes serious, sometimes funny, and always entertaining. As the two cousins, Eisenberg and Culkin have a prickly chemistry that makes you understand why the two characters love each other and also can’t stand one another. Culkin won an Oscar for his work, but Eisenberg is just as good, and his sharply observant screenplay largely avoids the cliches that drag movies in this genre down.

The pope is dead, and a replacement needs to be found quickly. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is in charge of organizing a conclave of the world’s best priests to determine who will be the next pope. But surprising revelations and intense political campaigning threaten to derail the process, and Thomas must decide who is telling the truth and who just wants to be chosen to fulfil their ambitions.

Conclave is one of 2024’s best movies, and it’s one of the most unexpected thrillers you’ll ever watch. Picking the next pope doesn’t sound particularly suspenseful, but director Edward Berger milks enough thrills from the material to make it a can’t-miss treat. The cast is outstanding, with Fiennes showing once again why he’s one of the best actors working today.

The 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich were marred by a terrorist attack known as the “Munich massacre,” when eight members of the militant group known as Black September took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage and eventually killed them. Because it happened during a major sporting event, the incident was covered extensively by ABC’s sports crew, who pivoted from interviewing athletes to broadcasting an event with enormous political significance.

September 5 is a dramatic recreation of the moments leading up to and during the terrorist attack and the behind-the-scenes drama that took place among ABC’s staff. A talented cast led by Peter Sarsgaard as ABC Sports president Roone Arledge breathes life into what could have been a static historical film, and the themes of journalistic integrity and morality in the face of a crisis are more relevant than ever.

Mild-mannered breakfast cereal sales rep Tobias (Andrew Garfield) isn’t having the best of luck finding love. He’s just getting over a divorce when he meets Almut (Florence Pugh), a carefree chef with whom he immediately connects. They soon move in together and contemplate having kids when Almut becomes ill, forcing the couple to make some harsh decisions about their future.

While We Live in Time’s story may seem like a routine melodrama, the way it’s told is anything but normal. It freely moves back and forth in time, showing the later stages of their relationship first before rewinding to depict how they first met.

As the lovestruck couple, Garfield and Pugh generate real chemistry that makes you believe their mutual attraction to each other. The movie is sad but never depressing and features enough scenes of Almut cooking to make you hungry after watching it.

The Gorge has a great, pulpy premise: Two elite snipers from different countries must keep watch over a mysterious gorge on opposite sides. They can’t talk to each other, and they can’t ask any questions about what’s in the gorge and why it must be guarded. But soon, both cocky Levi (Miles Teller) and stoic Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) begin to bond, and they eventually strike up a romantic relationship. But an accident occurs and they must both venture deep into the gorge and discover its many secrets, which could alter the world forever.

The Gorge is a cornball sci-fi action picture, but it’s also tons of fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. As she proved with 2024’s Furiosa, Taylor-Joy is a badass action heroine and Teller employs all the bro-y charm he displayed in Top Gun: Maverick. The movie’s monsters are a bit disappointing, but with humans like Miles and Anya reciting poetry to one another, you don’t really care.