Streaming

The best of new streaming offerings on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney Plus and more.

Welcome to Boston.com weekly streaming guide. Every week we recommend five must-see movies and TV shows available on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBOMaxPeacock, Paramount+ and more.

Many recommendations are new shows, others are releases you may have missed and haven’t seen that often, or classics that are disappearing from streaming services at the end of the month.

Do you have a new favorite movie or TV show that you think we should know about? Let us know in the comments or send us an email. (email protected). Looking for even more great streaming options? Check out previous editions of our Must-watch list here.

New films in streaming

“The Crow”

Instead of heading to the cinema to see the new remake of The Crow (currently at 21% on Rotten Tomatoes), check out the 1994 original, a stylish revenge thriller with an inevitable touch of tragedy due to the on-set death of Brandon Lee. Based on the comic book series of the same name, Bruce Lee’s son Eric plays Draven, a rock musician who is killed in crime-ridden Detroit, while his girlfriend succumbs to her injuries shortly afterward. A year later, Eric is brought back from the dead, recovering from every injury and hell-bent on revenge.

Director Alex Proyas makes some challenging stylistic choices, and while the story doesn’t always fit, it’s held together by Lee, who tragically died when the muzzle of a gun used during filming wasn’t cleaned. His haunting performance was an obvious inspiration for Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, and it’s easy to see why Lee and The Crow developed a cult following.

Here’s how you can watch: “The Crow” is streaming on Prime Video.

“Glengarry Glen Ross”

With the recent news that Bill Burr will make his Broadway debut in Glengarry Glen Ross alongside Bob Odenkirk and Kieran Culkin, now is a good time to revisit the big screen adaptation of David Mamet’s Tony Award-winning play. (The 1992 film is also currently part of our monthly list of the best movies on Netflix.)

Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris play desperate real estate agents forced into a high-stakes sales competition: first place gets a new car, second place gets a set of steak knives and the other two get fired. Things quickly spiral out of control, especially when the office manager who has all the best leads (Kevin Spacey) refuses to work with the salespeople. An unsympathetic kill-or-die look at the capitalist system, Glengarry Glen Ross is filled to the brim with Mamet’s crackling dialogue, delivered by a gangsters’ gallery of screen legends.

Here’s how you can watch: “Glengarry Glen Ross” is Streaming on Netflix

“The Murderer”

When I saw the trailer for John Woo’s new film, The Killer, an English-language remake of Woo’s 1989 film of the same name, I was worried. How could Woo live up to the standard of his influential original? Would Nathalie Emmanuel (“Game of Thrones”) be a worthy successor to the role originally created by Chow Yun-Fat? And why was there only a single pigeon in the trailer, and not dozens of pigeons?

The 2024 version of The Killer doesn’t quite measure up to the 1989 original. But since that one isn’t streaming anywhere, the remake, now streaming on Peacock, is a worthy substitute. The Killer follows Zee (Emmanuel), a hitman who develops a conscience after accidentally blinding a lounge singer (Dianna Silvers, Ma) caught in the crossfire of one of her murders. This puts Zee at odds with both her handler (Sam Worthington, Avatar) and an obsessed detective (Omar Sy, Lupin) hot on her tail. Woo still has an eye for cinematic action sequences, and moving the action from Hong Kong to Paris means we’ll get to see some explosive confrontations in the same scenic locations we saw during the 2024 Olympics. You almost expect Tom Cruise to parachute in and jump into battle.

Here’s how you can watch: “The Killer” is streaming on Peacock.

New TV streaming

“Interview with a Vampire”

If you’ve been resisting paying for a fourth or fifth streaming service and it’s kept you from watching AMC’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s hugely successful (and influential) vampire novel, Netflix can help. The streaming giant has had a mutually beneficial relationship with AMC for years. Shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men gave Netflix an early boost when it first launched as a streaming service, and AMC was able to attract new viewers and AMC+ subscribers to fans who couldn’t wait for the latest season of Better Call Saul to finally hit Netflix.

If this is your first foray into the gothic world of Interview with the Vampire, you might notice a few changes from showrunner Rolin Jones (Weeds). For one, Louis de Pointe du Lac is no longer a plantation owner, but the owner of a black brothel. For another, the homoerotic undertones between Louis and the bloodsucking Lestat threaten to boil over (and eventually do in Season 2). This makes Louis’ interviews with nosy journalist Daniel Molloy (Woburn native Eric Bogosian) all the more intriguing—as if a casual discussion about life as a vampire wasn’t interesting enough.

Here’s how you can watch: Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire streams on Netflix, while seasons 1 and 2 stream on AMC+.

“Pachinko”

Despite being one of the best TV shows of 2022, Apple TV+’s “Pachinko” only received one Emmy nomination. Perhaps it was a victim of its dense, decades-spanning storytelling style, but hopefully industry voters will take notice in Season 2, which is even more ambitious in scope and storytelling. Based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel of the same name, “Pachinko” is a sprawling, masterfully plotted drama that jumps between cities, languages ​​and generations to tell the story of a Korean family’s slow, steady rise as immigrants in Japan.

Season 1 jumps back and forth between 1938 and 1989, while Season 2 moves forward to 1945, when Sunja (Minha Kim) and her family are forced to move to a remote rice field to escape the destruction of the cities by war. Nearly 50 years later, the elderly Sunja (Oscar winner Yuh-jung Youn) wistfully watches her grandchildren endure comparatively minor hardships that nonetheless have an impact.

Here’s how you can watch: Season 2 of “Pachinko” will stream on Apple TV+.