You may have noticed that there are very slim pickings for new movies on Disney+. But that’s not a problem that is shared by its corporate sibling, Hulu. Unlike Disney+, the start of May brought several new titles to Hulu, including films from other studios as well as selections from the iconic movie library of 20th Century Studios.
Thanks to Hulu’s lack of content restrictions, new movies are coming all of the time. There’s even a Hulu original remake of White Men Can’t Jump that is slated to debut near the end of the month. But if you want to find something to watch sooner, we’ve updated our list of the best movies on Hulu right now.
Subscribe to a different platform? Not only do we have a guide to the best shows on Hulu, but we’ve rounded up the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Netflix, and the best movies on Disney+.
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The Hunger Games2012 -
The Joy Luck Club1993
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It2017
There’s a Hunger Games prequel coming to theaters later this year, and that’s reason enough to revisit the film that made Jennifer Lawrence a superstar. In The Hunger Games, Lawrence made her first appearance as Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who volunteers for a deadly combat event in order to save her younger sister. Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a teenager who harbors a crush on Katniss, is also chosen to fight for their home, District 12.
Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) mentors Katniss and Peeta in the capital to prepare them for the fight of their lives. But once the games begin, all bets are off. Can Katniss and Peeta trust each other when their lives are on the line? May the odds be ever in their favor!
2023 marks the 30th anniversary of The Joy Luck Club, a drama that charts the stories of four Chinese mothers who immigrated to America, and their Chinese-American daughters who often have trouble relating to the generation that came before them.
All of the mother-daughter pairings have compelling stories behind them, but the connection between Suyuan Woo (Kieu Chinh) and her daughter, June Woo (Ming-Na Wen), is particularly noteworthy because of the deep emotional wounds between them, and June’s fear that she can never be who Suyuan wants her to be.
There are some scary clowns in popular fiction, but few hold a candle to Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård) in Stephen King’s It. He literally feeds on fear and children, including young Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) during the summer of 1988. But when Pennywise begins to menace Georgie’s older brother, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), he inadvertently inspires the other abused children in town to band together as The Losers Club.
Somehow Bill, Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff), Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), and Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) must find a way to defeat a creature that can literally appear as the thing they fear most. And if they fail, more children will die.
The late Sergio Leone made his name with several famous Spaghetti Westerns, but his final film, Once Upon a Time in America, is an unforgettable crime epic that further solidified Leone’s legendary career. During the Great Depression, a pair of young thieves, Noodles (Scott Tiler) and Max (Rusty Jacobs), become fast friends before Noodles is sent to jail.
When Noodles (Robert De Niro) is finally released during the height of Prohibition in the ‘30s, he reunites with Max (James Woods) in their growing criminal enterprise. But as Prohibition winds down, Noodles and Max’s friendship is tested in ways that may destroy both of them.
The Planet of the Apes franchise has gone through a few different incarnations, but the modern reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is a cut above the rest.
Andy Serkis stars as Caesar, a remarkably intelligent chimpanzee who lives with his adoptive father, Dr. William Rodman (James Franco). Will’s attempt to cure Alzheimer’s disease has catastrophic results for the world, but it also greatly enhances the intelligence of apes. And when Caesar is locked away with this fellow apes, he takes the initiative to lead a revolution.
Steven Spielberg’s superlative biopic, Lincoln, covers a very specific time in the life of President Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis). In the waning months of the Civil War, Lincoln faces the very real prospect that his Emancipation Proclamation may be overturned, and the Thirteenth Amendment to ban slavery is not yet in the books.
It’s a political drama at heart, as Lincoln figuratively moves mountains to make it happen, even as the viewer realizes that the clock is ticking on his own life as well.
As comic book movies go, Dredd has a pretty low-budget. But the action and intensity more than makes up for the lack of dazzling effects. In the near future, Judges act as law enforcement figures in Mega-City One. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and rookie judge, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), attempt to take down a local crime lord, Madeline “Ma-Ma” Madrigal (Lena Headey).
However, Dredd and Anderson soon find themselves trapped in a residential building controlled by Ma-Ma, with a bounty on their lives that even some of their fellow judges attempt to collect. Thirlby is really engaging as Anderson, but Urban is the perfect Dredd in every way. He is the law!
The original Despicable Me introduced viewers to Gru (Steve Carell), a delightfully evil super-villain who has big dreams of stealing the moon and showing up his rival, Vector (Jason Segel). With his hilariously bizarre Minions in tow, Gru makes an elaborate plan that involves adopting three orphan girls, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Elsie Fisher).
Much to Gru’s surprise, the girls quickly accept him as their adoptive father and show him love and affection. And even Gru’s cold heart can’t help but love them in return, even if it threatens his ambitions.
An exciting example of the kind of narrative ingenuity that only a worldwide pandemic can foster, Something in the Dirt is the latest film from writer-director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Synchronic), and is arguably the most primitively fascinating work of these two collaborators. Shot over the course of a year with a crew of just 12, our story follows Levi and John, apartment-dwelling neighbors who decide to make a documentary about a range of supernatural events occurring in their Los Angeles residence. But as the two men discover that these kinds of extraordinary happenings are taking place all over L.A., their findings lead them to a combative exchange of theories and calculations.
In director Rob Schroeder’s Ultrasound, Mad Men alum Vincent Kartheiser stars as Glen, an unassuming everyman who just so happens to encounter some car trouble on a dark and stormy night. Seeking some help, he knocks on the door of a perfectly kind stranger named Arthur (Bob Stephenson), leading the former down an uncanny rabbit hole of deceit and mind control. Presenting a nail-biter of a story without diving into carnage and other typical screen grabs, Ultrasound does its best work as a quietly curious foray into a world that’s hard to pin down.
It’s about time the world of Hellraiser received some much-needed reimagining. For years now, the franchise has seen sequel after sequel, and while Cenobite fans are always pleased to see Doug Bradley donning his Pinhead garb, the series has certainly run into its fair share of cinematic duds. But director David Bruckner has come along to get the saga on track once more. The 2022 remake stars Odessa A’zion as Riley, an on-the-mend drug addict who comes into the possession of a runic puzzle box — a mysterious device that summons an armada of hellish entities. Led by the Hell Priest (Jamie Clayton), Odessa is plunged into a fight for survival when the demonic visitors begin wreaking havoc in the real world. Bruckner’s Hellraiser reboot may not satisfy all of the saga’s diehards, but when you consider it as a gruesome yet polished homage to Clive Barker’s source novella and first batch of films, the 2022 version more than gets the job done.
Based on the David Wong novel of the same name, John Dies at the End is a kaleidoscopic horror-comedy of epic proportions. Chase Williamson stars as David, your typical everyman protagonist, and the story follows his mind-altering adventures alongside his gang of friends. At the center of these otherworldly jaunts is a mysterious new drug called “Soy Sauce,” a nightmarish substance accidentally injected by David that allows him to jump through time and space, into and out of alternate dimensions. The end result for us viewers? A wild trek of a film that will leave your brain hovering somewhere over a triple rainbow in a distant universe.
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