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5 must-watch movies & TV shows streaming right now
The best of what's new streaming on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and more.
Welcome to Boston.com’s weekly streaming guide. Each week, we recommend five must-watch movies and TV shows available on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and more.
Want more streaming goodness? Sign up for The Queue, our streaming newsletter featuring the latest industry news, movie and TV recommendations, and more in your inbox every week.
For even more great streaming options, check out previous editions of our must-watch list here.
New Movies Streaming
‘Burn After Reading’ (2008)
Back in 1998, the Coen Brothers caught a lot of flak when they followed up their Oscar-winning “Fargo” (streaming on Tubi) with “The Big Lebowski” (HBO Max), which many critics saw as a goofy, unserious film. The pattern repeated itself in 2008, when the brothers followed up their Best Picture winner “No Country For Old Men” (Pluto TV) with “Burn After Reading,” a daffy crime caper starring Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt as clueless gym employees who try to sell what they think are misplaced classified documents to the highest bidder.
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How to watch: “Burn After Reading” is streaming on Netflix.
‘The Friend’ (2025)
If you’re like me and curate your social media feeds to feature as many cute animals as possible, you may already know Bing, the 150-pound Great Dane who is breakout star of “The Friend.” Iris (Naomi Watts), a New York writer, has her life upended not only by the death of her mentor and friend (Bill Murray), but also by his bequeathal of Apollo (Bing). It’s a messy fit from the start, not only because of the impracticality of keeping a massive dog in her Manhattan apartment, but because the dog reminds her of the loss of her closest friend. That the pair eventually bond and thrive may be predictable, but it’s no less heartwarming.
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How to watch: “The Friend” is streaming on Paramount+.
‘Thunderbolts*’ (2025)
The warning sirens must really be going off at Marvel now. For the first time in years, the studio made a very entertaining superhero movie full of bankable stars, and it still underwhelmed at the box office. For those of you who missed it in theaters (and the receipts indicate that many of you did), it’s worth checking out this band of antiheroes — including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena (Florence Pugh), and Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) — now that they’re on Disney+.
How to watch: “Thunderbolts*” is streaming on Disney+.
New TV Shows Streaming
‘The Terminal List: Dark Wolf’
Just last week, I wrote that thanks to the Jacks (Reacher and Ryan), Amazon Prime Video is the go-to streamer for combat thrillers based on airport novels. The e-commerce giant proves me right again this week with “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf,” a prequel to 2018’s “The Terminal List.” This time, the series focuses more on CIA operative Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch) than Navy SEAL James Reece (Chris Pratt), who makes a couple of perfunctory appearances. The early episodes take a bit of an obnoxiously American approach to Middle Eastern relations, but the series finds its groove as showrunners Jack Carr and David DiGilio begin to weave additional plot threads into the larger narrative.
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How to watch: “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf” is streaming on Prime Video.
‘Upload‘
For a show created by Greg Daniels (“The Office,” “King of the Hill,” “Parks and Recreation”), Prime Video’s “Upload” has lived a pretty quiet existence. The cerebral sci-fi comedy is about a computer programmer (Robbie Amell) whose consciousness is uploaded into a digital afterlife after he dies prematurely.
From fighting with his still-alive girlfriend who controls the purse strings, dealing with his afterlife provider being sold to a different corporate overlord, and falling in love with his “Angel” handler, “Upload” cleverly toes the line between total fantasy and the current reality created by our AI and metaverse-obsessed capitalist overlords. The show’s fourth and final season, which debuted earlier this week, is an abrupt four-episode finale. But it’s still worth going back to its 2020 debut season and catching up.
How to watch: “Upload” is streaming on Prime Video.
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