5 must-watch movies & TV shows streaming right now – Boston.com

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

“Companion”

Note: Since the trailer for the new horror movie “Companion” reveals an early plot twist (one of many in the film), I will as well. Stop reading if you want to go in fresh.

Between 2022’s “M3GAN,” the upcoming sequel “M3GAN 2.0,” and 2024’s “Subservience,” it’s safe to say movies about female-presenting robots run amok are having a moment. You can add “Companion” to that list as well, with Sophie Thatcher (“Yellowjackets”) playing a companion android on a weekend trip with her owner/boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid).

Iris doesn’t know she’s not human until a deadly accident about 20 minutes into the film, at which point she begins to question the nature of her relationship and why Jack deserves to have control. The film is from the producer of 2022 horror hit “Barbarian,” and has a dark sense of humor that fuels its 97 minutes of carnage.

How to watch: “Companion” is streaming on Max.

“The Order”

Jude Law is at the end of his rope in “The Order,” playing an FBI agent sent to rural Idaho to investigate white supremacists who may or may not be plotting acts of domestic terrorism. The town’s residents have tolerated (if not outright embraced) the militia’s extremist ideologies, but Law manages to recruit one deputy (Tye Sheridan) who won’t look the other way.

Based on a true story, the real standout of “The Order” is Nicholas Hoult (“Nosferatu”), playing an ascendant militia leader whose charisma pushes the town’s angry men (and they are almost exclusively men) toward violent insurrection.

How to watch: “The Order” is streaming on Hulu.

“Small Things Like These”

This Ben Affleck and Matt Damon-produced historical drama got lost in the shuffle last year, which is a real shame. In his first role since winning the Best Actor Oscar for “Oppenheimer,” Cillian Murphy plays an Irish laborer living paycheck to paycheck in a small town dominated by the Catholic Church.

When he encounters a teenage girl locked in a shed, he faces a moral quandry that could threaten his whole family if he chooses the wrong path. Murphy anchors this self-contained drama that typifies a shockingly recent practice in Ireland’s history.

How to watch: “Small Things Like These” is streaming on Hulu.

New TV Shows Streaming

“North of North”

Though there’s plenty of cultural specificity in this Indigenous Canadian romcom, the central story — about a woman Siaja (Anna Lambe, “True Detective”) who leaves her crappy husband and faces a bumpy journey of self-discovery — is universally relatable.

Siaja decides to leave Ting (Kelly William) after he knocks her off a boat during a seal hunt and unwittingly leaves her behind. (We’ve all been there, right?) Starting over as a single mom in the fictional town of Ice Cove is hard, especially when your only job prospects are working at the supply store for your mother (Maika Harper) or running community programming for the only white woman in town (Mary Lynn Rajskub, “24”).

“North of North” is an easy eight-episode watch that will warm your heart in ways that the town’s Arctic climate never could.

How to watch: “North of North” is streaming on Netflix.

“Your Friends & Neighbors”

I will watch Jon Hamm in anything, including this Apple TV+ dark comedy in which the “Mad Men” actor plays a yuppie who has lost nearly everything. Instead of reacting the way Don Draper would to being fired and getting divorced — getting stoically blackout drunk before crafting the perfect ad campaign that will make everything better — Hamm’s Coop turns to robbing his rich friends and neighbors.

“Your Friends & Neighbors” is no “Mad Men,” but it is a fun exercise in class rebellion. Hamm’s Coop is a different animal than Don Draper, and thanks to a persistent voiceover, his motivations are more transparent. But both characters have a love-hate relationship with their social status, oscillating between morosely wondering why they care about a life of empty opulence and doing everything they can to maintain it.

How to watch: “Your Friends & Neighbors” is streaming on Apple TV+

This post was originally published on this site