The Best Movies and Shows on Hulu Right Now – The New York Times

Tina Fey co-created and starred in this long-running NBC metasitcom, inspired by her own experiences as head writer for “Saturday Night Live.” It’s written and played with the wink and nudge of knowing showbiz gossip and inside jokes, delivered at lightning pace. She came into her own as a performer over the show’s seven seasons, with the help of an unbeatable ensemble cast: Jane Krakowski as the show’s uproariously vain star, Tracy Morgan as a gleefully hedonistic superstar brought in to boost ratings, Jack McBrayer as the delightfully naïve network page, and (especially) Alec Baldwin as the gruff and cynical network executive in charge of the program. (For more fast-paced New York comedy, try “Broad City.”)

Shot on the fly in real locations with smartphones and a cast of mostly first-time actors, this “fast, raucously funny comedy about love and other misadventures” from the director Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”) is a vibrant and heartfelt story of life on the fringe. The plot concerns two transgender sex workers (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor) and their various fortunes and misfortunes over a 24-hour period in the sketchier stretches of Hollywood. Played differently, the material could have been sensationalistic, but it isn’t; Baker is, above all, a humanist, and he loves his characters no matter what kind of trouble they’re causing. (Indie drama fans will also want to watch “Columbus” and “Gemini.”)

Greg Daniels and Michael Schur’s follow-up to the U.S. version of “The Office” took some time to find its own identity; its mockumentary style and eager-to-please protagonist made it seem, at first blush, like an “Office” knock-off. But it soon established itself as “charming and funny in its own right and in its own way”: a gentle (sometimes even whimsical) small-town ensemble comedy, powered by the quirks and idiosyncrasies of its finely-tuned characters and the sheer comic force of the leading lady, Amy Poehler. By the end of the show’s seven seasons, Pawnee, Ind., had become one of the great television towns, its various eccentrics and traditions as unmistakable as Mayberry’s or Stars Hollow’s. (Schur’s follow-up “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the similarly styled “Superstore” are also available on Hulu.)

Winner of the Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best actor (Gene Hackman), this tense, terrific action movie tells the true story of two New York Police Department detectives and their relentless pursuit of a very large shipment of heroin. But that plot is just the clothesline on which the director, William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”), hangs a series of mercilessly suspenseful set pieces, including an ingenious cat-and-mouse game on a subway platform and a justifiably celebrated car-and-train pursuit through the streets of Brooklyn that our critic called “the most brilliantly executed chase sequence I have ever seen.” (Friedkin’s “Killer Joe,” starring Matthew McConaughey, is also streaming on Hulu.)

The Coen Brothers “beautifully adapted” the 1969 John Wayne classic (and the Charles Portis novel that inspired it) in this, their first traditional western, and the genre proved a perfect fit for their grandiose characters, colloquial dialogue style and cockeyed worldview. Jeff Bridges is a hoot, situating his Marshal Rooster Cogburn as a hybrid of Wayne, the Dude from “The Big Lebowski” and your crotchety grandfather, but the show-stealer is the newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, an absolute firecracker as the young woman who hires him to track down her father’s killer. (Fans of unconventional westerns should also check out the recent “The Sisters Brothers” and the cult classic “Johnny Guitar.”)

Many a dysfunctional family has graced our televisions, but few boasted as many problems as Michael Bluth’s: His father is in prison, his mother is blissfully out of touch, one brother is a blowhard, the other seems to be from another planet, his sister is a dime-store Gwyneth Paltrow and his son is in love with his cousin. This “sharply satirical comedy” steadfastly refused to make its horrifying central family lovable or relatable, save for Michael (played wryly, and winningly, by Jason Bateman), whose dry, bemused reactions make him a useful audience surrogate. Hulu is only streaming the original three seasons of the series (Netflix financed, and thus hosts, its revival), but these are the best ones anyway.

Aardman Animations, the British stop-motion studio behind the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit shorts, made its feature debut with this delightful cross between barnyard farce and prison escape caper, in which a headstrong hen enlists a cocky circus rooster to help her and her friends flee their henhouse before the evil farmer turns them into pies. The animation is, per the company’s standard, breathtakingly meticulous. But parents will enjoy this one as much as their kids do, as the directors Nick Park and Peter Lord inject copious doses of droll British wit and winking nods to classic adventure movies. Our critic called it “immensely satisfying, a divinely relaxed and confident film.” (For more stop-motion family fun, stream LAIKA’s “Missing Link.”)

When David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surrealist mystery/soap debuted on ABC in 1990, our critic wrote, “Nothing like it has ever been seen on network prime time” — and week after week, Lynch and Frost continued to prove him right. The show’s central preoccupation is the murder of Laura Palmer, a seemingly innocent teen queen, but that mystery is merely the entry point; the show’s real subject is the depravity of small-town life and the secrets that emerge when its careful veneer of normality is cracked. (Admirers of the show’s surrealism and sexuality should stream “The Duke of Burgundy.”)

Barry Jenkins followed up the triumph of his Oscar-winning “Moonlight” with this “anguished and mournful” adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel. It is, first and foremost, a love story, and the warmth and electricity Jenkins captures and conveys between stars KiKi Layne and Stephan James is overwhelming. But it’s also a love story between two African-Americans in 1960s Harlem, and the delicacy with which the filmmaker threads in the troubles of that time, and the injustice that ultimately tears his main characters apart, is heart-wrenching. Masterly performances abound — particularly from Regina King, who won an Oscar for her complex, layered portrayal of a mother on a mission.

Few television series run more than a decade without losing their flavor, their laughs, or their heart — but then again, few television series are as special as “Cheers.” Set in a Boston bar owned and tended by a former baseball star and recovering alcoholic (Ted Danson, in the role that understandably made him a star), “Cheers” took the conventions of the character-driven hangout sitcom and perfected them. Thanks to consistently razor-sharp writing and a flawless ensemble cast, the result was “pure comedy that was sophisticated but not pretentious.” Running 275 episodes (without a clunker in the bunch), “Cheers” has gone on to charm subsequent generations of viewers, who have found it as comforting and reliable as … well, as a trip to the neighborhood watering hole. (The show’s long-running spin-off series “Frasier” is also on Hulu.)

Though separated by nearly two decades, “Bob’s Burgers” is something of a “Cheers” for the 21st century — television comfort food, centering on a neighborhood mainstay and the weirdos who float through its doors (though this show’s characters are allowed to veer into even stranger territory by the animated format). But it’s also a clever riff on the family sitcom, as the establishment’s proprietor is the patriarch of a decidedly oddball family; most surprisingly, it treats that family with genuine affection, peccadillos and all. Our critic compared it to a go-to restaurant, “reliably good, visit after visit.” (“Bob’s Burgers” fans may also enjoy “King of the Hill” and “Malcolm in the Middle.”)

Robin Williams won the Academy Award for his supporting work in this, the breakthrough film for co-writer/co-stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who also picked up Oscars for their original screenplay). Damon stars as Will Hunting, a Boston janitor whose secret gift for advanced mathematics puts him on a fast track out of the working class — a journey he’s not quite sure he’s ready to make. Williams shines as the psychologist who tries to steer him right, and Affleck is superb in the relatively unshowy role of Will’s supportive best friend; Gus Van Sant’s direction is similarly modest but affecting. “The script’s bare bones are familiar,” Janet Maslin wrote, “yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart.”

In a scant two seasons, Donald Glover’s FX comedy/drama has established itself as a true force in modern television — thoughtful, peculiar, cinematic, relentlessly entertaining. Glover (who also created the show, and frequently writes and directs) stars as Earn, a small-timer with big dreams who takes the reins of his cousin’s burgeoning hip-hop career, with mixed results. The supporting cast is topnotch, with Brian Tyree Henry, Lakeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz as nuanced characters interpreted with fierce precision, but the show is most dazzling for its tonal improvisations; it feels like Glover and company can go anywhere, at any time, and the results are exhilarating. (Pamela Adlon’s acclaimed “Better Things,” also from FX, is a similarly personality-driven comedy/drama.)

In investigating the death of a trainer at SeaWorld, the director Gabriela Cowperthwaite traces the sordid history of the capture of killer whales and their training to perform for audiences, creating a masterly juxtaposition of SeaWorld’s own commercials and promo videos with grisly tales of accidents, attacks and public relations spin. Paced like a thriller and written like a deft courtroom summation, it is intelligent, methodical and harrowing; our critic called it a “delicately lacerating documentary.” (Documentary lovers also won’t want to miss the 2019 Oscar nominee “Honeyland.”)

Few shows in television history sounded less promising than a series adaptation of an unloved, unsuccessful teen horror/comedy, launching mid-season 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. (Whedon’s short-lived but much-loved space opera “Firefly” is also available on Hulu.)

There was little reason to expect much from this cartoon comedy, which the then-nascent Fox network spun off from the animated interstitials of “The Tracey Ullman Show.” But the show, which our critic deemed “refreshingly different,” became the longest-running fiction series in television history, with a jaw-dropping 30 seasons on the books. Not all are great (nothing lasts forever, folks), but particularly in its early, subversive seasons, “The Simpsons” is a whip-smart, lightning-paced mixture of social commentary, pop culture burlesque and anti-“Cosby Show” family comedy. And its best episodes (“Marge vs. the Monorail,” “Last Exit to Springfield,” “A Streetcar Named Marge,” etc.) are among the very finest half-hours in all of TV comedy. (Creator Matt Groening’s follow-up series “Futurama” is also streaming on Hulu.)

The first manned voyage to the moon is a subject not exactly avoided by filmmakers, nonfiction and otherwise; the particulars of that 1969 mission have been so exhaustively documented and dramatized, it seemed impossible that Todd Douglas Miller’s 50th anniversary feature would offer anything new. But it did, and then some; drawing on a treasure trove of previously unseen (and painstakingly restored) archival footage, inventive graphics and unexpected juxtapositions, Miller eschews contemporary interviews and voice-of-God narration to create a thrilling sense of the present tense —creating suspense and tension out of a story whose outcome is common knowledge. The results, our critic wrote, are “entirely awe-inspiring.” (If you prefer science fiction to science fact, check out “Annihilation.”)

Bing Liu was nominated for a best documentary Oscar for this, his debut feature, a candid and sometimes agonizingly intimate portrait of his loose crew of skateboarding pals. He began making videos to capture that activity, recording the skateboarders’ tricks, spills and pranks; they got comfortable around the camera, forgetting it was even there. But it was, observing and chronicling their lives for years on end — and as they got older, Liu used their comfort to eavesdrop on difficult conversations and extraordinary confessions, weaving what A.O. Scott called “a rich, devastating essay on race, class and manhood in 21st-century America.” (Admirers of this intimate documentary may also enjoy “The Wolfpack.”)

Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s nine-season ensemble sitcom was, famously, a show “about nothing,” but that label is deceptively simplistic. “Seinfeld” is a show about navigating the inexplicable inconveniences and rage-inducing frustrations of modern life, of trying one’s best to cope in a world that seems solely populated by inconsiderate nincompoops. (And also, subtly, it’s about becoming one yourself.) The four actors at the show’s center were a Marx Brothers of the ’90s, a finely-tuned comedy team whose gifts and timing complemented each other with precision, and the writing — chock-full of idioms and idiosyncrasies that have fully penetrated the American vernacular — is as sharp and uproarious as ever. (The show’s spiritual successor, the darkly funny “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” is also on Hulu.)

Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are the delightful duo funny, prickly and plausible — at the center of this “fast, brainy, nasty-but-nice teenage comedy” from the actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde, which both embraces the conventions of the John Hughes-style high school movie and shrewdly subverts them. Our heroines are a pair of overachievers who’ve focused solely on their studies all through high school, only to discover on the eve of graduation that their hard-partying classmates nevertheless landed at prestigious universities themselves. And thus, they must recover four years of lost opportunities in a single night of bad behavior and hard truths.

Eliza Hittman (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”) writes and directs the muted yet moving story of Frankie (the sublime Harris Dickinson), a sexually conflicted young man who fears his orientation is at odds with his persona and finds himself struggling to live within the lies he’s built. Hittman’s sensitive screenplay scrutinizes its subject but never judges him; her keen understanding of Frankie’s surroundings and upbringing forbids such simplicity. Performances are subtle but effective, with particular praise due to Madeline Weinstein as the girlfriend caught in his emotional crossfire.

Few series of the 1980s were as influential or acclaimed as Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll’s seven-season cop drama, which shunned the flash and sizzle typical of police series of the era for something closer to the ground-level realism of ’70s cinema. There were sprawling, complicated narratives, messy and not altogether sympathetic “heroes” and a visual style that seemed to stumble upon scenes rather than stage them. “Hill Street” was operatic yet intimate, institutional but personal; it changed the look, feel and flavor of cop shows for decades to come. (The show’s influence is keenly felt in Bochco’s later “NYPD Blue” and the more recent “Southland.”)

The writer/star Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”), the actor Vince Vaughn (“Wedding Crashers”), and the director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”) simultaneously burst onto the scene with this low-budget guy-talk comedy, which became an underground cultural sensation in the late 1990s. Favreau is a sad sack stand-up trying to make it in Hollywood, where he and his pals (including Vaughn and “Office Space” star Ron Livingston) frequent cocktail lounges and swing dance clubs, trying to blend in with the cool kids. But it’s an old-fashioned, feel-good picture at heart, filled with clever comic constructions and quotable patois; the film, Janet Maslin wrote, “has such fun with its characters’ awkwardness that it turns their square-peg ethos into counter-cool.” (For a more female-centric hangout comedy, try “Support the Girls.”)

Robert Altman’s hit 1970 antiwar comedy didn’t seem like a slam-dunk for television adaptation, thanks to its raw style and bawdy humor. The series creator and TV comedy veteran Larry Gelbart sanded away most of those edges, yet found a way to ground the show in the horrors of war while keeping the laughs digestible. Much of that was because of the chemistry and camaraderie of the flawless cast — particularly Alan Alda’s brilliantly realized characterization of “Hawkeye” Pierce, the unflappable wiseguy who found, over the course of the show’s 11 seasons, that there were some things even he couldn’t manage to make light of. (Hulu is also streaming Altman’s original film.)

George Clooney turns in one of his most nuanced performances in this sharp and affecting comedy-drama from the writer and director Jason Reitman (“Juno”). Clooney uses his movie-star good looks and charisma in service of the supremely confident Ryan Bingham, a man who specializes in being the corporate bad guy (he is brought in to handle the layoffs), but whose confidence slowly deteriorates; Anna Kendrick is pitch-perfect as the young woman who is seeking to streamline their profession, and consequently put him out of a job. Our Manohla Dargis praised this “laugh-infused stealth tragedy.” (For more character-driven comedy/drama, check out “I, Tonya.”)