It’s only the first week of May, and summer already feels like it’s here. A big part of that is due to the success of Thunderbolts*, which kicked off the summer moviegoing season with a few quips and a lot of explosions.
Summer has also arrived on Hulu, where you can watch blockbusters from years past and relive those memories of being off from school and cooling down in a crowded movie theater. The streamer has one of the best summer movies ever — 1996’s Mission: Impossible — as well as its many sequels like Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
It’s not all about Tom Cruise and his merry band of spies, though, as Hulu also is streaming one of the best movies of the 2020s — Decision to Leave. That film is completely different from Cruise’s iconic action franchise, but both are guaranteed to entertain you in May or whenever you stream them.
Need more recommendations? Then check out the Best New Movies on Netflix, (HBO) Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime and More, the Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now, the Best Rom-Com Movies on Netflix Right Now and the Must-Watch Shows on Hulu.
Jang Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) can’t sleep, and that’s an asset when you’re a detective with a lot of cases to solve. His latest one is a doozy — an old man is found dead near a mountain, and his much younger wife, Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), is the prime suspect. The case seems pretty simple, but Jang soon finds himself disturbed by his growing feelings for Song. Soon, his empathy for her turns into an obsession that might get them both killed.
Nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars in 2023, South Korea’s Decision to Leave is one of the best movies released in the last five years, period. It’s effective as a police procedural thriller, but it’s also a haunting ode to how love saves and destroys one man. Decision to Leave’s plot is surprisingly twisty, and the film’s stunning cinematography will linger in your memory long after you’ve finished the movie. It’s that good.
Tom Cruise will say goodbye to one of the best action movie franchises ever made later in May with Mission: Impossible — The Final Countdown, so now’s the perfect time to go back to where it all started and watch the first entry in the long-running series. The Brian De Palma-directed movie hasn’t aged a bit and remains the gold standard by which every other film in the genre is measured.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is a cocky spy on the run from his former bosses after a mission goes awry and most of his teammates dead. With his reputation in ruins, Hunt has no choice but to team up with several disgraced spies to clear his name and stop a mysterious crime boss known only as Max (Vanessa Redgrave) from exposing undercover agents around the world.
Mission: Impossible’s plot is notoriously murky, but it’s all an excuse to jump from one breathless action set piece after another. Cruise has never been more Cruise-y here — yes, he runs a lot — and the supporting cast, which includes Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean Reno and Ving Rhames — is first rate. The movie is the rare action blockbuster that will make you feel giddy while watching it.
Ani (Mikey Madison) is a Brighton Beach stripper who speaks some Russian and is very good at her job. That helps her meet Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), a 21-year-old son of a wealthy Russian oligarch who wants some companionship along with a lap dance. They fall in lust, then love and soon marry, but Vanya’s disapproving parents send three men to force them to annul their marriage. When Vanya flees, Ani, along with hired hand Igor (Yura Borisov), Vanya’s godfather Telos (Karren Karagulian) and henchman Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) have to find him before the boy’s parents arrive in the United States.
Anora is a stripper Cinderella fable that effortlessly blends comedy, drama and action (there’s an extended fight sequence that will make you laugh and wince) into one entertaining package. The film won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, and it’s easy to see why — it’s legitimately great and fun to watch. As Ani, Madison is terrific, creating a character who is tough but still wants to believe in a happily ever after ending.
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.
David (Jesse Eisenberg, who also directed the movie) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) travel to Poland to honor the last wish of their dead grandmother to take part in a Jewish heritage tour and visit her childhood home. But things don’t go according to plan as the once-close cousins realize they’ve grown too far apart to really relate to each other anymore. Can they find a way to reconnect before the tour ends and they go their separate ways back in America?
A Real Pain was one of 2024’s most critically acclaimed movies, and after watching it, you can understand why. The writing (Eisenberg wrote the excellent script) is punchy but never trite; at times, you want to slap David and Benji across the face and then give them a big hug and tell them everything will be okay.
Culkin won an Oscar for his performance, and it was deserved. There’s a Benji in every family, and Culkin’s frantic energy makes him stand out in every scene he’s in.
Sandra Voyter’s (Sandra Huller) husband is dead, and everyone suspects she did it. His gruesome fall from their two-story French chalet can’t easily be explained as an accident, and their past relationship was rocky. They fought bitterly, and even their visually impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) isn’t so sure his mother is innocent. As Sandra stands trial for murder, can she convince a judge — and the audience — that she didn’t push her husband and let him fall to his death?
Anatomy of a Fall isn’t your traditional thriller since there are really no other suspects, and no one else is in harm’s way. But the director, Justine Triet, isn’t concerned with just generating suspense; she also wants to examine how Sandra’s once-solid marriage gradually disintegrated and why it’s not completely ridiculous to think Sandra would off her husband in such a manner. The film features superb acting from Huller and Machado-Graner, and one of the best canine performances (by Messi, who became a social media star in late 2023) in film history.
Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) isn’t your ordinary teenager. She’s still getting over the death of her mother, and her dad’s work has taken her away from her home. Stuck in a remote resort in the Bavarian Alps, Gretchen notices some unusual things like loud shrieks at night, vomiting female guests and a hooded woman who seems to be stalking her. She begins to suspect her father’s employer, the inscrutable Herr Koning (Dan Stevens), is involved in all of this, but her efforts to prove her theory may get her killed.
Cuckoo lives up to its title — it’s genuinely crazy in all the right ways. The film makes the most of its atmospheric setting, utilizing dark shadows and moments of disturbing silence to set up several well-earned jump scares. Schafer is a great addition to the Final Girl Hall of Fame, and Stevens adds another madman role to his already impressive resume of unhinged weirdos.
Hollywood is dominated by franchises, and most of them have been exhausted. But one that hasn’t is the Planet of the Apes series, which keeps getting better with each installment. The latest, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is set long after Caesar (Andy Serkis) has died, and apes are now the dominant species on Earth.
When his family is slaughtered by Proximus Caesar’s (Kevin Durand) henchmen, young chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) teams with elder orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) and human woman Mae (Freya Allan) to fight back against their ape oppressors. But can apes and humans work together and coexist peacefully?
This fourth prequel to the original Planet of the Apes movie isn’t too different from its predecessors, but why mess with a formula that works? The special effects are convincingly realistic, making you believe these apes and chimps can walk, talk, fight and love. Serkis is missed, but Durand fills the villain void admirably, and Teague’s Noa is a protagonist you want to follow around for a few more movies.
In Oregon, a string of gruesome murder-suicides has left local investigations stumped. FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is called in to investigate and figure out why these crimes were committed. Her path eventually leads to a strange, pasty-faced serial killer named Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), who claims to work for “the man downstairs.” But what led to Longlegs’ involvement with all of the murders? And why does Lee feel personally connected to the case?
A surprise summer hit in 2024, Longlegs is a riff on The Silence of the Lambs with just a touch of deeply unsettling weirdness. Director Oz Perkins opts for atmosphere over jump scares, resulting in a movie that is filled with ominous foreboding and dread. As Longlegs, Cage is appropriately freaky and creepy, and Monroe makes for a great heroine burdened by childhood trauma who would make Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling proud.
Eileen Dunlop’s (Thomasin McKenzie) life is pretty drab. She lives in Massachusetts, where the winters are long and bleak, and she works at a juvenile detention facility for teenage boys, which is about as exciting as it sounds. But one day, in walks the platinum blonde Rebecca Saint John (Anne Hathaway), and Eileen’s life is forever changed — at first for the better, and then for the worse.
Eileen is an excellent thriller that’s also a compelling character study as it follows both women’s interest in a young inmate, Lee Polk (The White Lotus Season 3 star Sam Nivola), who Rebecca suspects is hiding a dark family secret. Hathaway is in full movie-star mode as the glamorous Rebecca, and McKenzie is convincing as the sexually repressed Eileen. The movie paints a vivid picture of New England life in the early 1960s, and its abrupt ending is both frustrating and appropriate.
The phrase “Covid comedy” may seem like an oxymoron or, worse, an unnecessary reminder of a truly terrible time, but it accurately describes just how special and unique Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is for some people. Released on Hulu at the height of the pandemic, it provided welcome comedic relief to many and yet another showcase of SNL vet Kirsten Wiig‘s out-there genius.
Wiig and co-star Annie Mumolo play Star and Barb, two middle-aged Nebraska women looking for some adventure to clear away the cobwebs. They find it in, you guessed it, Vista Del Mar, a resort town in Florida that’s home to high-priced hotels, an evil woman (Maya Rudolph) who wants to destroy it, and Trish, a peppy mermaid played by Reba McEntire. Yes, it’s that kind of movie: fun, nonsensical and colorful. Throw in some zippy song-and-dance numbers by Irish hunk Jamie Dornan and you’ve got a film that can make you forget all your troubles.
Class warfare takes place on a luxury superyacht in Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund’s pitch-black social satire from 2022. Among the boat’s guests are Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean Kriek), two spoiled models/influencers who are in a relationship of convenience; Russian tycoon Dimitri (Zlatko Buric) and his wife Vera (Sunnyi Melles); and Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin), a tech billionaire with eyes for Yaya. They are served by the boat’s loyal crew, particularly maid Abigail (Dolly de Leon) and the captain (Woody Harrelson), but when a storm strikes and pirates attack, class lines blur, tables are turned and the fragile divide between the rich and the poor disappears completely.
Nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2023, Triangle of Sadness hits all the obvious targets (rich people, war profiteers, social media stars) but does so in a very funny way. The film takes its premise to absurd lengths and the third act is pretty much Lord of the Flies with adults instead of children, but it’s always watchable, and it will make you think twice about eating all that seafood.
Hannah (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are two American backpackers traveling across the Australian Outback. When they run out of money, they take temporary jobs as bartenders at the Royal Hotel, a rundown pub that houses many of the local misfits. As the two women try to save enough money to leave, they find out very quickly that their new workplace isn’t as hospitable as they would like it to be. Violence inevitably erupts, and Hannah and Liv will have to fight for their lives to check out of the Royal Hotel.
Inspired by the 2006 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, The Royal Hotel is a thriller grounded in reality. Nothing the two women experience, from casual sexism to blatant harassment, feels all that outlandish and the feeling that this could happen to anyone makes the movie more unsettling. Both Garner and Henwick are outstanding as the Americans who witness the ugly side of Australia, and the direction by Kitty Green is taut without overdoing it.
