12 Great Movies You Can Stream Right Now

Fun comedies, delightful dramas and big stars to keep you entertained

Tim Appelo,

AARP

Comments

En español

Published March 13, 2020

Tom Hanks stars as Mister Rogers in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Lacey Terrell/Sony Pictures Entertainment

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

AARP readers’ favorite movie of 2019 starred Tom Hanks, 63, as the nicest guy in TV history, kids’ show host Fred Rogers. Hanks conveys Mister Rogers’ crinkly-eyed goodness, his gravitas and vulnerability. We could all use a soothing, soulful movie like this right now.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Apple TV, Vudu.

HELEN MIRREN as Betty McLeish and IAN McKELLEN as Roy Courtnay in New Line Cinema’s suspense thriller "THE GOOD LIAR."

Chia James/Warner Bros. Entertainment

The Good Liar (2019)

In a wickedly entertaining film about attempted marriage fraud, Ian McKellen plays a super-cool con man and Helen Mirren a gorgeous retired Oxford prof who's saved up $3.6 million but has no clue how to invest money. He thinks he can help. The Times of London called Mirren and McKellen “the new Hepburn and Tracy,” with good reason. They're sexy, witty and a bit unpredictable. Downton Abbey's Jim Carter is great as McKellen's henchman.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu.

Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in "Ford v Ferrari."

Merrick Morton/Twentieth Century Fox

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

It's a racetrack movie that's also an acting competition between Oscar winners Matt Damon and Christian Bale — and everybody wins. Based on a true story, it's about a renegade 1960s car designer (Damon) and crazy British driver (Bale) who want their underdog Ford Motors team to humiliate the snooty Italian Ferrari team at Le Mans. Spoiler: They did it, and you're strapped in for quite a ride. It boasts much of the pedal-to-the-metal appeal of the Fast and Furious films, plus delightful humor, fantastic acting and a ripping story.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu.

Pierce Brosnan as Sam Carmichael and Meryl Streep as Donna Sheridan in the musical romantic comedy Mamma Mia

Peter Mountain/Universal Studios

Mamma Mia! (2008)

So you canceled your Mediterranean trip? This smash musical will whisk you to a sun-splashed Greek isle along with Amanda Seyfried, playing a bride who invites her mom's once-wild 1960s lovers (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård) to her wedding to find out which is her dad. Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson (who both tested positive for coronavirus) produced this triple rom-com with the smash-hit ABBA soundtrack.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu, Starz.

Astronauts board a transport vehicle in Apollo 11.

Neon/CNN Films

Apollo 11 (2019)

Relive America's peak moment of technological triumph, shared and celebrated by humanity, in this must-see documentary. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin says it's the closest anyone has come to re-creating the experience of the first mission to the pockmarked surface of the moon. With 11,000 hours of newly recovered recordings, you are there aboard the Eagle as it perilously lands and the heroes even more perilously return. It captures the spirit of those who watched all over the Earth, and takes us back to a time when we gazed up at the stars with wonder. It's nostalgia, but also it gives us hope right when we need it.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu, Hulu.

Elizabeth McGovern stars as Lady Grantham Harry Hadden Paton as Lord Hexham Laura Carmichael as Lady Hexham Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham and Michael Fox as Andy in the film Downton Abbey

Jaap Buitendijk/Focus Features

Downton Abbey: The Movie (2019)

It's the next best thing to a new season of the phenomenal PBS hit series about Britain's aristocratic Crawley clan, who now reluctantly accept the fact that it's 1927. But you don't have to have seen the series to get it. Downton's dowager countess (Maggie Smith) keeps her chin high, trading haughty insults with her rival Isobel (Penelope Wilton), and concealing an enormous secret fans will want to hear. Everyone is on edge, because the King and Queen are coming to visit.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu.

Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever star in the film Booksmart

Annapurna Pictures/Everett Collection

Booksmart (2019)

A wonderful, wise coming-of-age comedy by House's Olivia Wilde, it didn't get the audience it deserved in theaters and is perfect for the home screen. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are terrific as nerdy scholarly girls who panic on the last night of high school, feeling they've missed all the fun, so they go wild. Just as good as the boy-centric Superbad.

Watch it on: Amazon, iTunes, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Hulu, Vudu.

Melissa McCarthy Ellie Kemper Rose Byrne Wendi McLendon Covey Maya Rudolph Kristen Wiig in the film Bridesmaids

Suzanne Hanover/Universal Pictures/Everett Collection

Bridesmaids (2011)

A comic masterpiece that lasts, thanks to the authentic girl-bonding of SNL vets Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, plus the wonderful Melissa McCarthy. Wiig plays Rudolph's neurotic bestie and maid of honor in an extraordinarily ill-fated wedding that makes you weep with the laughter of recognition, and also tugs heartstrings.

Watch it on: Amazon, iTunes, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Hulu, Vudu.

Eddie Murphy stars in Dolemite Is My Name

François Duhamel/Netflix

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Comeback king Eddie Murphy, 58, brings down the house in this funky biopic about the Ed Wood of blaxploitation, Rudy Ray Moore, best known for his character Dolemite. With its danceable soundtrack, corny jokes, killer cast (Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Keegan-Michael Key, Snoop Dogg) and paunchy underdog hero who works in an L.A. record shop while dreaming of glory, this movie is as American as shrimp ‘n’ grits. The sexy songstress Lady Reed (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), whom Moore discovers in a backwater juke joint after she decks her cheating husband, gives Murphy his best foil yet in a groovy, entertaining film.

Watch it on: Netflix.

Claire Folger/MRC II

Knives Out (2019)

In a film as sharply engineered as a Swiss Army knife, the cast isn't just a collection of stars each getting a lively scene or two, as in many star-studded murder mysteries (like Kenneth Branagh's good Murder on the Orient Express, streaming on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu). In a smoothly fused comic unit, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Don Johnson and Michael Shannon play relatives maneuvering for the fortune of their late patriarch (Christopher Plummer, on a huge career roll). Each scheming relative casts revealing light on the others’ characters and advances the clever plot. Craig's Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc is way better than his James Bond.

Watch it on: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in Silver Linings Playbook

JoJo Whilden/Weinstein Company/Everett Collection

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

It's more heartwarming than most conventional rom-coms, and way more interesting. Bradley Cooper plays a bipolar guy forced to move back in with his protective folks (hard-core Philadelphia Eagles football fans Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) and courting an also volatile widow (Jennifer Lawrence at her best). It got eight Oscar nominations, including Lawrence's best actress win, and helped make director David O. Russell a comeback hit maker at 54. It's inspired partly by Russell's bipolar son, so it's a comedy with serious dramatic roots. It gets you laughing, but it plays for keeps emotionally in a way that few movies do.

Watch it on: Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, Fandango Now, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu.

A scene from the documentary March of the Penguins

Warner Bros./Everett Collection

March of the Penguins (2005)

Morgan Freeman narrates a tale more gripping than the usual Oscar-winning nature documentary — it makes you feel like you're among the Antarctic emperor penguins in their fight for love and survival. It's 70 below zero, the winds are 100 miles per hour, you have to go months without food and waddle 70 miles to your breeding grounds. Humans were never so courageous and inspiring — nor half so adorable.