In 2017, Hulu made television history by becoming the first streaming network to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, thanks to the phenomenon that is The Handmaid’s Tale. While this painfully prescient adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel remains one of the best TV shows to watch on Hulu, it also set a bar for quality entertainment that the network has gone on to match – and sometimes exceed. – with original series like the bear, GreatAnd Only murders in the building.
While Netflix has largely cornered the streaming market for original films, and even managed to convince the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martin Scorsese on board, Hulu is also starting to find its footing in features. Below are some of our top picks for the best movies (originals and otherwise) streaming on Hulu right now.
Still looking for other great titles to add to your queue? Check out WIRED’s guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Disney+, and the best movies on Amazon Prime. Don’t like our picks or want to offer your own suggestions? Head to the comments below.
Flaming hot
Also available on Disney+, Flaming hot tells the story of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the Frito Lay janitor who brought Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to the masses. Directed by Eva Longoria, the film can come across as a bit cheesy at times, but its comedy and heart turns it into something that’s more than just a story about a beloved snack.
rye lane
Raine Allen-Miller caused a stir at Sundance with her directorial debut, which offers a playful twist on the typical romantic comedy. Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson) are two young people in their twenties reeling from recent breakups. After a chance and rather awkward first meeting, the pair spend a day wandering around south London, bonding around their experience together, finding cheeky ways to deal with the grief of their previous relationships and discovering perhaps to be that romance isn’t dead after all. .
Clock
From Rosemary’s baby For Hereditary, motherhood has long served as the catalyst for some of the scariest films in the horror genre. In the case of Clock, it is the lack of desire to procreate that is treated as terror. Ella (Dianna Agron) is a happily married interior designer who is perfectly content with her life and has no desire to add a child to it. But this does not sit well with her friends and family, who continue to pressure her to procreate. So she signs up to take part in a clinical trial for women like her, whose so-called biological clocks are broken or non-existent. This is where things get really scary. Fair warning: Clock gets pretty dark and weird, and is definitely grounded in the horror genre. But for some, it also plays as a satire of the American Dream and its obsession with family.
The stars at noon
Claire Denis, masterful as always, channels the warm and moist atmosphere of body heat for this story of Trish (Margaret Qualley), a young journalist who finds herself stranded in Nicaragua. When she meets a handsome but somewhat mysterious Brit (Joe Alwyn) at a bar, she thinks he might be able to help her, but only after things get steamy between them. Eventually, however, she realizes that nothing is what it seems, and Daniel may not be what it seems.
The hunger Games Series
It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since these films took over the cultural zeitgeist and made Jennifer Lawrence an intergalactic superstar, but here we are. Based on the hit young adult series by Suzanne Collins, the Hunger Games films focus on a teenage girl, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), who, say it with me, volunteers as a tribute to stop her sister from participating in a brutal television competition where she fight to the death. It’s no longer a spoiler to say that Katniss wins the Hunger Games and thus becomes a beacon of hope for all the people who have been forced to send their children to die for years. If you’ve never watched the series, you should. If you watched it, now is your chance to stream the movies again, just in time for the release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakesa prequel movie coming in November.
triangle of sadness
Think of it as Gilligan’s Island, but with more class comments and vomit. When a group of wealthy people set out to sea on a luxury yacht, their plans are thwarted when a terrible storm leaves many of them stranded on a beach where none of their money or power can help them survive. That already says too much, but as much to say, if you like Menu-esque critiques of the excesses of wealth with so many dark comedy twists, then this Oscar-nominated film is for you.
Portrait of a lady on fire
OK, so maybe it was the movie that gave the idea for “lesbian period drama” in a trope, but it’s also one of the best modern queer romance films, alongside Moonlight And Carol. Set on a remote French coast in the late 1700s, writer-director Céline Sciamma’s film centers on a young aristocrat, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), engaged to a wealthy Milanese. When Héloïse’s mother hires Mariane (Noémie Merlant) to paint a portrait of her daughter, the two women fall in love and have the kind of heartbreaking bond that made lesbian period dramas so unmistakable in the first place. You will be transfixed.
spencer
Look, there are probably way too many Princess Diana movies and TV shows already, but this one, directed by Pablo Larrain and starring Kristen Stewart as the Princess of Wales, focuses on a Christmas specific to Queen Elizabeth’s Sandringham estate in a shrinking way. how complex Diana’s daily life with the royal family must have been. Yes, the backdrop are the divorce rumors surrounding Diana and Prince Charles (Jack Farthing), but the story is about her relationships within the family and the life she left behind to join them.
nomadland
This film from director Chloé Zhao, about a woman’s quest after the Great Depression across the American West, won a ton of Oscars, including best picture, best actress for Frances McDormand, and Best Director and Best Editing for Zhao. Zhao also won Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of the book by WIRED contributor Jessica Bruder, also called nomadland. It’s an invigorating look at the modern American dream.
boston strangler
If you’re the kind of viewer who just can’t get enough of murder shows and is looking for murder moviecould we suggest boston strangler? Based on the real-life serial killer of the same nickname, writer-director Matt Ruskin”reinvent” of the 1968 movie centers on the two reporters – Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) – who uncovered news of the Strangler murder series in the 1960s and uncovered the story. If nothing else, it’s worth watching just to see what happens when a Boston director forbidden its mostly non-Bostonian cast to try and emulate the city’s notorious accent.
Costs
Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a single woman looking for a partner, but tired of the online dating scene. So when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a handsome, eccentric stranger, she tries to give him her number. The two hit it off on the first date and eventually find themselves planning to spend a weekend – it’s then that Noa realizes that Steve has been hiding some disturbing details about himself. Eventually, Costs comes as a lesson in the horrors of dating in the digital age (both real and imagined).
Good luck to you, Leo Grande
Two years after the death of her husband, retired religion teacher Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) decides it’s time to do something about the fact that she never had an orgasm. So she hires Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack), a young sex worker, and invites him to a hotel room so she can cross a few items off her sexual wish list. But what begins as a transactional relationship quickly and truly evolves into so much more.
Palm Springs
Given the existence of Harold Ramis’ near-perfect groundhog day, it takes a lot of chutzpah for a filmmaker to add another frame to the endlessly looping rom-com canon. But writer-director Max Barbakow went ahead and did it anyway with Palm Springs, and the public is grateful to him for having done so. Building on the rules originally established in groundhog day, Palm Springs offers its own unique twist on the story. Instead of one person (Billy Murray’s Phil Conners) being slowly pushed to the edge of madness because he’s the only one who seems to be experiencing the phenomenon, Palm Springs sees three wedding guests – Nyles (Andy Samberg), Sarah (Cristin Milioti) and Roy (JK Simmons) – living the same day over and over again and working together to find a way out.
