On Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Amazon
The weekend is here. It's here! Regardless of what streaming service you subscribe to, we want to help you find something great to watch. We've gone through Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ to find the best titles on each service. |
Here is one of the 50 best movies on Netflix. |
 | | Adepero Oduye in "Pariah," a 2011 film directed by Dee Rees.Focus Features |
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Dee Rees, the director of "Mudbound" (also streaming on Netflix), made her feature directorial debut with this heartfelt and thoughtful story about a Brooklyn teenager (the "incandescent" Adepero Oduye) named Alike (pronounced ah-LEE-kay) and her delicate attempt to come out as a lesbian — fully aware of the resistance she will face from her controlling mother (Kim Wayans). Rees, who also penned the screenplay, tells this semi-autobiographical tale like a richly detailed short story, well-versed in the lives these characters live, the neighborhoods they inhabit and the lies they tell one another in order to coexist. But she also captures the seductiveness of the subcultures Alike begins to explore, and the alternative they present: the choice to live one's truth, with no apologies. |
Here is one of the best TV shows on Netflix. |
 | | "Selena: The Series" portrays Selena, played by Christian Serratos, as both a typical American girl and a born superstar.Michael Lavine/Netflix |
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This lively musical biography covers the short life of the Tejano singing sensation Selena Quintanilla, following her rise from low-paying gigs to multiplatinum album sales. What sets this two-part, 18-episode mini-series apart from so many other celebrity origin stories — and from the beloved 1997 big-screen biopic "Selena" — is that each episode focuses quite a bit on Selena's family, which provided her first backing band and remained an enduring motivational force. Ricardo Chavira gives a fine performance as the driven patriarch Abraham Quintanilla, whose obsession with finding just the right formula to make his daughter famous generates a lot of the plot in this fascinatingly detailed backstage drama. (For a fun series about a fictional band of young rockers, watch the supernatural comedy "Julie and the Phantoms.") |
Have a Hulu subscription? It's a lot to wade through. We can help! |
 | | Jiro Ono, left, and Yoshikazu Ono in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi."Magnolia Pictures |
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"You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill," Jiro Ono explains. "That is the key to happiness." His 10-seat Tokyo eatery is recognized the world over and is less a restaurant than a temple. But has that perfectionism made him (or the people around him) happy? David Gelb's mouthwatering 2011 documentary poses that question and further explores his philosophies of life and work, while also crafting a healthy dose of stunning "food porn," painstakingly capturing the careful preparation of Ono's culinary gifts and lovingly lingering on the results. (For more stellar bio-documentary filmmaking, try "Mike Wallace is Here" and "Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.") |
Amazon Prime Video doesn't make it easy to find stuff. Luckily, we have done the work for you. |
 | | Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense."Spyglass Entertainment |
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This inventive ghost story helped start the career of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. Bruce Willis stars as a child psychologist attempting to aid a young boy who believes not only that he can "see dead people" but also that he's meant to help them settle their unfinished business. Willis is excellent in the role, generating warmth and trust with a young Haley Joel Osment, who plays his troubled patient. "The Sixth Sense" is best remembered for its twist ending, but there's much more to the film; even viewers going in aware of its outcome are still likely to find it scary, moving and surprisingly poignant. (Shyamalan and Willis' follow-up, "Unbreakable," is also on Prime.) |
Disney+ is full of older classics. But there are newer things to watch, too. |
 | | From left, Rhianna Dorris, Tom Taylor, Dean Chaumoo and Louis Ashbourne Serkis in "The Kid Who Would Be King."Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox |
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'The Kid Who Would Be King' |
In his follow-up to "Attack the Block," an ingenious science-fiction thriller that brought an alien invasion to the streets of South London, the writer and director Joe Cornish again marries the fantastical with the everyday through this rousing modern twist on the King Arthur myth. The boy of destiny here is a 12-year-old from a London suburb who pulls the sword of Excalibur from a construction site and recruits his own knights to do battle against an evil sorceress. The critic Bilge Ebiri called it "a brisk, well-mounted children's fantasy." |
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