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Streaming ain’t easy. Sure, if you’re a cinephile, practically every movie you could ever want to watch is at your fingertips. But therein lies the problem: knowing what’s out there, and where to find it, can become overwhelming. Here, we’re doing the hard work for you, by cutting through the clutter and getting straight to the best new movies available to watch right now. Here are the four must-watch movies hitting streaming services this weekend.
Recommended:
🏆 The best movies of 2025
🗓️ The most anticipated movies of 2026
🆕 What’s new on Netflix in January 2026
1. The Smashing Machine (HBO Max)
In Round 1 of the Battle of the Solo Safdie Brothers, Benny the Younger took a pretty decisive loss. While big bro Josh made a ping-pong period piece hopped up on the duo’s signature frantic energy, winning big at the box office and with Oscar voters, the other opted for a muted character study of early MMA star Mark Kerr. Hardly anyone saw it, even with Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson in the lead. A bit down the line, though, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the film receive a reappraisal, with Johnson’s career-best performance as a walking colossus fighting several losing battles at once leading the way. Read Time Out’s review.
Watch The Smashing Machine now on HBO Max
2. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (Hulu)
Speaking of great performances in movies audiences mostly overlooked, many had The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White tipped as an Oscar frontrunner sight-unseen when it first came out that he’d be portraying Bruce Springsteen in a movie about the making of 1982’s stark acoustic outlier Nebraska. After all, White’s a captivating presence in most things, and a biopic about a boomer icon is Academy catnip. Alas, the film underperformed creatively and at the box office, the victim of a script loaded with cliches. But White is excellent, crawling into the damaged heart and soul of a rock legend without resorting to mere impersonation. Read Time Out’s review.
Watch Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere now on Hulu
3. Eleanor the Great (Netflix)
Are we sensing a pattern this week? In yet another effort that came and went despite the involvement of some major names, Scarlett Johansson makes her directorial debut with a low-key dramedy starring June Squibb in her followup to late-life triumph Thelma. The nonagenarian plays a Jewish grandmother left adrift by the death of her best friend, who wanders into a meeting for Holocaust survivors and tells a lie that gradually gets too big for her to control. While Johannson isn’t exactly the next Greta Gerwig – or even Harris Dickinson – Squibb is a total delight, as to be expected.
Watch Eleanor the Great on Netflix starting Jan 24
4. Mother of Flies (Shudder)
Indie-horror heads already know the Adams family, a clan of filmmakers already with a couple of impressively resourceful low-budget chillers to their name, but their latest threatens to bring them to a wider audience. After receiving a dire medical diagnosis, a desperate young woman (Zelda Adams) goes into the woods seeking treatment from an alleged witch. Sure, the American healthcare system is a wreck, but that still seems like a bad idea.
Watch Mother of Flies now on Shudder
5. Plainclothes (MUBI)
Did you enjoy Heated Rivalry but wish it were darker, grimier and more anxiety-inducing? In this tense romantic thriller, People We Meet on Vacation’s Tom Blyth is an undercover cop in ’90s New York tasked with entrapping gay men soliciting sex who develops an obsession with one of his marks, played by Being Human’s Russell Tovey. It’s something like Cruising meets Femme, and marks a head-turning debut for writer-director Carmen Emmi.
Watch Plainclothes now on MUBI