9 New Movies to Watch This Weekend on Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu and More

War is hell, and if you don’t believe that, watch Warfare. Directed by Alex Garland, this intense 2025 movie chronicles a day in the life of a US Navy SEALs team as they seek cover at a local Iraqi house after the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. There’s no time to rest, though, as Iraqi soldiers pummel the house with bullets and grenades. With no support and dwindling supplies, these American soldiers face impossible odds to survive another day.

With a cast consisting of up-and-comers like Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton and Kit Connor, Warfare is an unusually star-studded war film that has no lead character to root for. Instead, these soldiers are all more or less the same — scared, determined and willing to do just about anything to survive. You never know who is going to live or die, which is exactly the point. In war, there are no stars or main characters, and whoever manages to survive is left to pick up the pieces.

What if you crossed Lost in Translation with Knives Out? You’d get something like I Don’t Understand You, a black comedy where cultural misunderstandings lead to murder. Don (Andrew Rannells) and Cole (Nick Kroll) travel to Italy to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Things take a dark turn when they accidentally kill the elderly owner of the restaurant they’re eating at one night. Desperate, they cover up their crime, but misunderstandings and language barriers cause more mayhem and, yes, deaths.

There’s very little logic in I Don’t Understand You, but what it lacks in believability it more than makes up for in laughs. As the accidentally murderous couple, Rannells and Kroll are comic portraits of upper-middle-class panic. They’re horrified by what they’ve done, but they are even more scared of being deprived of all the materialistic things they’re used to back at home. The movie’s ambitions are only to make you laugh at all the ridiculous deaths Dom and Cole cause and by that metric, it succeeds.

Everyone wants to go to Paris, France, and that includes aspiring artist Dawn (Miranda Cosgrove). She can’t afford art school on her own, so she participates in a popular dating show, The Honeypot, which promises an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris. Dawn is selected to be a part of the show, but is dismayed to find out it’s filming in Paris, Texas. Ew! But before Dawn books her flight home, she sees the show’s handsome, eligible bachelor, Trey (Pierson Fodé) and decides maybe the town isn’t so bad after all.

Netflix’s original rom-coms have a can’t-miss formula by now: a charismatic female lead with a Disney or Nickelodeon background, a hunky male costar (who no one has ever heard of) and a silly premise. When it works, it’s enjoyable, and The Wrong Paris is a successful product of Netflix’s never-ending rom-com factory. That’s due mostly to Cosgrove, who injects enough spunk in her generic character to give the movie some life. She’s great at portraying a woman whose Parisian dreams have to be slightly readjusted to match her Cracker Barrel reality.

When director Spike Lee and Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington team up, you know it’s going to be good, and their latest, Highest 2 Lowest, is one of their best movies. A loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, the movie stars Washington as David King, a Diddy-like rap mogul whose son is kidnapped and held for ransom. David agrees to pay for his freedom but then finds out the kidnappers mistakenly took his driver’s son instead of his own. Now, David must choose between losing most of his money for a relative stranger or keeping it and letting someone potentially die because of his inaction.

Highest 2 Lowest is an effective thriller that puts its characters through the wringer. What makes this remake so distinctive — and so special — is Lee’s evocative use of Brooklyn and the new social context he places the classic story in. What does it mean to be a successful Black man, and what obligation — if any — does David have to give back to the community he profited from throughout his career? Highest 2 Lowest asks tough questions and doesn’t give any easy answers. That it’s also an entertaining suspense movie with a surprisingly intense ASAP Rocky performance is just icing on the cake.

Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) isn’t happy, and he’s desperate for change in his life. Bored with his middle-class life and roles as husband to Tami (Kate Mara) and father of Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer), he perks up when his new neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), moves in. Austin is everything Craig is not — cool, confident and liked by everyone he meets. The two men soon become best friends, but Craig wants Austin all to himself, and his neediness and jealousy set off a chain of events that could ruin his friendship, marriage and life.

Friendship is “cringe comedy” at its cringiest, an unsettling and frequently funny look at the lengths one man will go to impress his new best friend. Fans of Robinson’s work in shows like I Think You Should Leave will be at home watching as Craig sabotages his relationship with Austin as well as his family.  Equally good is Rudd, who plays a role that isn’t that far off from the one he played in I Love You, Man 16 years ago.

Disney’s live-action remakes of their beloved animated classics range from the bearable (Beauty and the Beast) to the dreadful (Snow White), and Lilo & Stitch is more good than bad. This remake largely — and wisely — stays true to the original, with Hawaiian schoolgirl Lilo Pelekai (Maia Kealoha) befriending a strange creature from the planet Turo, Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders). 

The two soon become inseparable, but their friendship is threatened by Stitch’s creator, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis), who wants to bring him back to their home planet, and Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance), a CIA agent tasked with capturing the newly arrived alien. Can a little girl’s love for her new friend save them both from being separated forever?

It’s Disney, so you know the answer. This remake can’t compare with the magical 2002 animated original, but it retains enough charm and whimsy to be entertaining. 

Summer isn’t technically over, so why not spend the last few weeks that are left and watch this pretty gnarly shark thriller? In Dangerous Animals, American tourist Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is abducted by sadistic Aussie sea captain Tucker (Jai Courtney), who likes to kill people by taking them out in the ocean and feeding them to some hungry sharks. Zephyr doesn’t want to be his latest victim, but how can she escape from an experienced serial killer in an ocean full of great whites?

A slasher Jaws? Longlegs with sharks? Dangerous Animals fully commits to its ludicrous premise, resulting in a B-movie that’s as bloody as it is enjoyable. As Tucker, Courtney has his best role ever as a murderer with an unhealthy obsession with sharks. (It’s all tied to childhood trauma, because even schlocky films like this one need to have some dimension.) The movie’s a fun ride with a satisfactory ending that slams the door shut on a sequel.

I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like a good, cozy British murder mystery, and if I ever do, I’ll run the other way. Netflix just released a high-profile addition to the popular genre with The Thursday Murder Club, and it’s a winner. It’s a murder mystery that’s light on violence and heavy on charm, with a stellar cast of the finest English actors working today.

Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie star as a quirky quartet of mystery-loving seniors living in a retirement village who get to solve a real crime when someone in their community turns up dead. Who did it and why? Well, that’s what they all want to find out before the murderer strikes again. It’s Agatha Christie with just a dash of Golden Girls, and it’s utterly delightful.

2025 isn’t even over yet, but it’s safe to say that Thunderbolts* was done dirty by the mass public. One of the best-reviewed MCU movies in years, the Marvel movie about a ragtag band of anti-heroes brought together to save the world didn’t do too well at the box office, even though hardcore fans have been dying for a well-made action movie that messes with the now stale comic book formula. 

Maybe audiences were scared of the focus on each member’s existential angst, which is exploited by an entity known as The Void. What is The Void, and how is it connected to new character Bob (Lewis Pullman), who seems like an ordinary dude? That’s what the team, and particularly Yelenea Belova (Florence Pugh), wants to find out before the world is consumed by The Void.

Thunderbolts* gives MCU fans what they want — there’s some killer action scenes and great interplay between each member (well, except for poor Taskmaster (Olga Kurlyenko). Pugh’s Yelena is the perfect Marvel heroine — damaged, sarcastic and always ready to bust some heads. The Oppenheimer gives the role and movie an unusual gravitas that sells its trauma-centric storyline and elevates what could’ve been a typical superhero punchfest into something better and deeper than its spandex-clad brethren.

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