But with so many platforms available, which one truly offers the best cinematic experiences? This article will do an in-depth look at the streaming apps that have the best movies. Without any further ado, let’s get into it.

Top 3 Best Streaming Apps for Movie Buffs

#1 Disney+

Disney+, the brainchild of the Walt Disney Company, is not just another streaming service in the crowded digital space. It’s an experience that taps into nostalgia while simultaneously catering to the new-age audience. With an expansive library that encompasses everything from the heartwarming classics of the Disney Renaissance era to the thrilling escapades of Marvel superheroes, Disney+ ensures that the magic of storytelling is alive and well. Furthermore, the platform’s dedication to bringing cinematic experiences to the small screen is evident. Fresh releases, behind-the-scenes exclusives, and unique reimaginings like “The Mandalorian” are a testament to Disney’s commitment to quality and innovation.

In a world of fleeting digital content, Disney+ offers permanence. Families can introduce new generations to the joys of “The Little Mermaid” or “Beauty and the Beast,” while also exploring new tales from the Star Wars universe or diving into the complexities of the Marvel multiverse. Beyond these, the platform’s acquisition of Pixar, National Geographic, and 20th Century Studios has further expanded its horizons. From soul-stirring documentaries to spine-tingling adventures, Disney+ is where dreams come alive.

#2 Hulu

Hulu is the embodiment of modern-day entertainment diversity. Initially launched as a hub for catching up on recent TV episodes, it has since transformed into a formidable content powerhouse. It stands out with its blend of current season episodes, complete past seasons of hit shows and a prolific library of movies spanning multiple genres. The platform’s partnership with various major networks ensures that there’s always something fresh to watch. This agility and currency of content make Hulu a go-to choice for those looking to stay updated with the entertainment world. We should also mention that the Hulu free trial offers a great way to watch the latest movies without spending a dime.

However, it’s not just about quantity with Hulu; it’s about groundbreaking quality. Their foray into original content with shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and films like “Palm Springs” has garnered critical acclaim. Furthermore, the platform’s willingness to experiment, as evident from its diverse slate of originals and acquired content, is commendable. Whether you’re in the mood for a timeless classic, a gripping documentary, or a fresh-off-the-cinema movie, Hulu promises and delivers variety in spades.

#3 HBO Max

HBO has always been synonymous with top-tier entertainment. Their reputation for delivering hard-hitting series like “Game of Thrones” and “The Sopranos” set the stage for what premium television content should look like. HBO Max takes this legacy and elevates it to new heights. While it boasts the complete HBO library, it doesn’t stop there. The platform introduces Max Originals, a range of content curated for diverse audiences, from riveting dramas to light-hearted comedies. This, coupled with their timeless classics, makes HBO Max a haven for cinephiles.

It’s not just about the past and the present with HBO Max; it’s a bridge to the future of entertainment. Their recent strategy of releasing major cinematic releases on the platform concurrently with theater releases signals a shift in how we perceive movie-watching. Films like “Dune” and “Wonder Woman 1984” are testimonies to their commitment to bringing grand cinematic experiences to the comfort of our homes. Whether you’re a fan of the golden age of cinema or looking forward to the latest blockbuster, HBO Max seamlessly blends the old with the new, ensuring a comprehensive entertainment experience.

Streaming is Taking Over Cable TV

In the last decade, the entertainment landscape has witnessed a tectonic shift. Traditional cable TV, which once dominated our living rooms, is gradually ceding ground to the more flexible and user-centric world of streaming services. The allure of cable TV was undeniably strong, with its curated programming and scheduled slots for favourite shows. However, the digital age brought with it a desire for on-demand content, where viewers wanted to dictate their viewing schedules rather than adhering to the timelines set by broadcasters. Streaming platforms catered to this very demand, providing a buffet of content that users could dive into anytime, anywhere, and on a device of their choice.

The rise of streaming can also be attributed to its adaptive nature. These platforms not only offered the latest movies and TV series but also invested heavily in original content, creating a unique selling proposition. Shows like “Stranger Things” on Netflix or “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu became cultural phenomena, sparking discussions and generating fan theories worldwide. Additionally, the ability to binge-watch, absence of commercial interruptions, and the option to explore a diverse range of international content made streaming platforms an irresistible proposition. As a result, more households are cutting the cable cord, opting for the tailored, rich, and varied experiences that streaming platforms promise.

Final Thoughts

The world of movie streaming is vast and varied. Each platform brings its unique flavour, ensuring that movie enthusiasts have a diverse palette to choose from. While Disney+ is a treasure trove for family-oriented content, Hulu provides a mix of everything, and HBO Max offers cinematic depth. In the end, the best platform largely depends on individual preferences. However, with all these platforms at our disposal, one thing’s for sure – movie nights have never been better!

Also Read: How the Streaming Revolution Has Fuelled Movie Piracy

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If you, like me, have been watching the second season of Euphoria, then you’ll know what it means to feel stressed. The opening episode alone featured a girl hanging her head out the window of a truck while the boy driving hit up to 90 mph, and later that same girl hid in a bathtub to avoid being caught having an affair (that second one was tenser than it sounds, I promise!). The premiere ended on a distinctly violent note, too, in which the show’s villain, if one can talk about Euphoria in such binary terms, was beaten to a pulp by the local drug dealer. Yet none of that compares to episode five, in which Rue (played exquisitely by Zendaya) goes on the run after refusing rehab, and, honestly, it’s still too soon to talk about it even two weeks later. But, in all the chaos, the show is often funny. A scene in a recent episode in which a large number of the female cast discuss the musical Oklahoma! in the school bathroom is a brilliant piece of comic writing. 

Amongst all this tension and humour, though, the show has consistently been a lightning rod for discussion by those who say they get the show and those who don’t. Its first season was measured by how many dicks were on screen (was it 30 or 80?), and it was dogged by a moralistic discussion of how much sex was too much. Was it appropriate to show teen characters, albeit those being played by adults, taking drugs and having sex? This was mixed up in the endless debate surrounding whether shows like Euphoria glamorise sex and drug use or condemn them, as if each piece of art needs to have a clear moral position on every issue it chooses to engage with. 

The show’s second season, currently airing on Now TV in the UK, has been chiefly used as a litmus test for coolness. If you say you don’t understand the show, you’re old and out of touch (either that or you admit to your own “uncool” teenage years). Moreover, people have questioned whether the show is any good when you peel back its shocking parts. Recently, various writers have levelled accusations of valuing style over substance, with Dazed calling the show a walking meme and The Guardian proclaiming season two contains “far too much nudity, sex and violence.” Still, the show has repeatedly dominated online conversation each week and has seen its viewing figures double since it premiered in 2019. Clearly, something appeals to people, and surely that can’t all be smoke and mirrors? 

I have found, perhaps surprisingly given its success, that the show’s second season reminds me of  John Cassavetes’ deeply depressing 1974 independent masterpiece about a woman’s declining mental state, A Woman Under the Influence. Not in its style – Cassavetes always favoured realism, and his films are brutal in their commitment to the grimness of reality – but in its central performance. It is certainly not light praise to compare Zendaya’s turn as Rue Bennett, a teenage drug addict, to that of Gena Rowland’s as Mabel, the latter a performance which crops up often in discussions of the greatest ever captured on film. Yet there is something to be said for the sheer panic of them; the way both actresses relinquish themselves totally to their respective roles.

Watching the first ten minutes of episode five, when Rue discovers her mother has flushed her stash, I saw shades of the scene in which Mabel’s family try to convince her to go to the hospital. Mabel’s demeanour moves from fear to denial to anger. When the doctor shows up, she makes nervous jokes, becoming increasingly uneasy as the inevitable dawns on her.  It is a heart-breaking scene, one that feels painful to watch—much like those opening ten minutes of episode five were, with Rue spiralling between severe anger, terror, and regret. 

A Woman Under the Influence was initially written as a play, but Rowlands told her husband, Cassavetes, she could not do the role eight times a week. It would be too demanding and too draining. Her performance earned her an Oscar nomination although, shockingly, she did not win, a decision that looks even more bizarre in hindsight. Zendaya has already won an Emmy for her role on Euphoria, and rightly so, but just as Rowlands found the idea of performing as Mabel, again and again, to be impossible, it’s a wonder Zendaya is able to manage the long shoots the show demands. Even the actress herself took to social media before season two started and told fans that it would not be an easy ride. Of course, the vehicle is different. A Woman Under the Influence was made with very little money, with Cassavetes literally stealing electricity and casting his own family in most of the roles. By contrast, Euphoria is a buzzy and expensive show funded by HBO. It routinely employs complex camera tricks, dream sequences, and complex deconstructions of its artifice, but the whole show feels rooted around Zendaya. Like Rowlands before her, Zendaya is carrying the weight of something on her back. Still, both actresses handle it with total grace and leave their audience in awe. I find myself, each week, texting my friends with the same simple worlds: Zendaya really is the best actress of her generation.

Also Read: Did High-End TV Replace The Mid-Budget Indie Film?

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The 10-episode limited series, now airing on StarzPlay, is adapted from the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel. The novel, which was widely successful prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, gained new attention in light of recent events when people (like me!) searched for something to help them make sense of things. The virus (Georgia Flu in the novel but unnamed in the show) is significantly worse than COVID-19, in that it causes most of the planet to be dead within the first hundred days, but the storyline still has startling resonance. It captures that early fear, that panic whenever someone would cough, whenever someone stood too close. It understands the dread of the unknown, of something approaching, getting closer and more real day by day. It captures the emotional pain of that time, too; one early heart-wrenching yet brief scene in the first episode shows a doctor talking to a room of children, in masks, rounded up because their parents are either dead or dying. Yet it gets things wrong, too. Anyone who walked around a supermarket in March 2020 knows the eeriness of empty shelves. But when Jeevan and Kirsten buy themselves $10,000 worth of supplies so that they can haul up and wait for the flu out, the store is both fully stocked and practically empty of patrons. Meaning, as Lucy Mangan put it in The Guardian, we can point at the screen and say no, ‘it wasn’t like that.’

Even so, the anxiety of the early pandemic scenes can be tough to watch. They bring back the push and pull between denial and fear rife in those early days. While watching the first episode, I was distinctly reminded of going to lunch with a friend before the UK went into lockdown and them commenting on how how much anti-bacterial hand gel I was using, which I would dab onto my hands when I came back from the toilet before I touched a set of cutlery, and after I’d pushed elevator buttons or opened doors. These fears came bubbling back when Jeevan first hears of the flu and looks around the subway carriage he’s riding on as everyone suddenly becomes a potential vessel for illness. Then, in episode three, we follow Miranda, who is in Malaysia for work, as she tries to figure out what’s happening and escape a country on the verge of collapse due to the virus.  

In all this, it might be tempting to read this television adaption as a response to the last two years, but it was, in fact, green-lit months before COVID-19 and, somewhat ironically, production on the show was delayed due to the pandemic itself. Still, it goes without saying that a show like this hits differently in light of the past few years. Or perhaps we can see it as an alternative to the last few years, to see what could have been if the worst imaginable had happened. 

The show, like the novel, is split into two distinct time periods—one in the days leading up to and immediately after the outbreak, and the other twenty years in the future when survivors now live in settlements without technology—but, unlike the novel, they’re spliced together in a way that makes the future seem inevitable. Before we flicker into the packed theatre and watch Arthur die, we see it derelict, overgrown with plants, and littered with rotting Playbills. Later on, when Jeevan and Kirsten stand on the platform of Chicago’s high-rise railway just after Jeevan learnt of the flu, it flashes forward to the same setting; empty and overgrown too. 

This visual style, which is profoundly compelling, is formed primarily by Hiro Murai, whose previous work includes episodes of Atlanta and music videos for Childish Gambino. Murai directs episodes one and three, both of which are slick and beautiful to look at but also deeply resonate in terms of their thematic explorations of art and love, the lasting effects of work that connects with us, and what we will crave when everything is gone. This is mainly due to Patrick Somerville’s deft adaptation of the source material, informed by writing on shows such as The Leftovers and Maniac, which understands the novel’s questions and expands on them. Or, as Katy Walderman put it in The New Yorker, Somerville’s take on the story considers how ‘Art matters to the world’ and ‘not just because it strengthens the social fabric—it’s an experience people can share—but because it notates and preserves the luminously erratic lives that is at great pains to capture.’

At the time of publication, four episodes are available to watch. The first three dropped together last week, and the fourth premieres today. Not only does the show harken back to pre-pandemic days, but also to pre-pandemic release models with episodes being put out every Sunday on StarzPlay (an add-on channel available with a Prime subscription or as its own subscription service via its website). This seems to be making a comeback, maybe for a good reason. Perhaps surprisingly for a show aimed at younger audiences, HBO’s Euphoria drops weekly too, and regularly dominates online conversation in the days that follow. The same can be said, though perhaps not as positively, about And Just Like That, a show that has had difficulty finding its footing and has been cross-examined week after week. Still, for Station Eleven, it feels like this decision might not only be about word-of-mouth and allowing the show to grow but also allowing audiences to consider and ruminate on the hefty questions the show has to offer. And ruminate we will, not just on the nature of art and the lasting effects of its reach, but on that possible future; on the idea of what could have been. 

Also Read: COVID-19 In Movies: Five Films About The Virus That Shook The Earth

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While it’s understandable that the cast and crew wanted to release this movie ASAP after its many postponements, the Christmas date seems to be the wrong decision. If we get the chance to go out during Christmas, we probably spend that time with family and not at the movies. That’s why it felt that the company behind Wonder Woman 1984 focussed only on HBO Max. Even more so because another release postponement would have been understandable if that would have meant that more cinemas would be able to show the movie.

This is absolutely no criticism to anyone working on Wonder Woman 1984, because many companies would have made the same decision. Still, it feels like it’s another slap in the face of the cinemas and fans who want to watch this movie in a safe cinema. That’s why I want to send a love letter to every party affected by a decision like that: film companies, cinemas and fans.

…to the film companies

Just as any industry, the film industry needed to adapt, and so I salute you for making the difficult decisions about postponements and skipping the cinema release and going straight to streaming platforms. I also want to applaud the many companies who decided to grace the few cinemas with great new releases (think of Saint Maud, Babyteeth, Saint Frances) and who are planning to do the same for the rest of 2020.

While your goal isn’t only to please the audience, it’s obviously also to make money and try to tip over the scale to the profit side instead of the loss one. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using different media (streaming platforms, cinema, television, etc.) to distribute your movie. However, just remember that there are movie fans out there who are willing to wait for a major release on the big screen, no matter when that will happen. We did it before 2020 and pretty sure we will do it after this year as well.

… the cinemas

Sorry to hear that you had to close your doors again during the last few weeks and that a completely re-opening won’t happen for a very long time. Based on the experience I had before lockdown, cinemas is an extremely safe place—social distancing, hand sanitizers, air-filters, etc. You made sure that it was all there. While there weren’t any new big releases after Tenet, you did bring light into the cinema files lives by programming smaller releases and re-screening movies that need the big screen.

Many of the screenings were sold out. While that was probably because of the limited seats, it was also because film lovers want to go to the cinema to escape from 2020. Understandably, not everyone wants to return to the movies (I respect everyone’s decision), but for the ones who went to a film screening, you as the cinema provided the much-needed escapism, so we thank you for that. Let’s hope that must of you can re-open again soon.

… to the fans

Saying that 2020 was a year that changed the way we watch films would be a massive understatement. While Netflix and Amazon Prime already had many subscribers before this year, they gained even more, and we also saw the rise of Disney+. With every postponement, our heart sank to the floor because we would have to wait much longer to be able to do what we want: watching new movies in the cinemas. It’s the same as game lovers having to wait longer for the release of a new console or game.

If you’ve been to the movies during this pandemic, you know that, while it doesn’t feel, as usual, the big screen makes you forget the world we live in for a moment. If you haven’t been, then I’m glad that you can still enjoy some great releases from the comfort of your home. Fingers crossed that we will meet up in a cinema in the near future.

Also Read: Coronavirus: How It’s Affected The Film Industry

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Disney’s Restructuring

Last week Disney announced a huge restructure with its Content creation and distribution being separated. Content creation will now focus on creating big franchise content for theatrical and streaming distribution, as well as general entertainment and sports content for Disney’s streaming platforms and TV networks. Meanwhile the “Media and Entertainment Distribution group” will handle monetisation and distribution of all the company’s projects. And with Disney reporting over 60 million Disney+ subscribers worldwide their efforts have shifted towards creating content for and distributing content on their streaming platforms.

How Will This Affect Cinemas?

Disney movies attract incredibly large cinema audiences. And with Cineworld’s recent closure due to the lack of big releases needed to sustain themselves during the pandemic, this move could be rather damaging. Especially since studios like WarnerMedia and Comcast are seemingly following Disney’s lead. Recently they reorganised to focus on streaming service’s HBO Max and Peacock.

However, despite Disney shifting focus to streaming, analyst Rich Greenfield said, “nothing can achieve the per picture economics that Disney…generate through a global theatrical release”. Showing that Disney still needs cinema distribution to ensure their projects make their money back. This move may be meant to recoup losses further down the line. With projects aimed at attracting new customers to Disney’s subscription services and keeping people subscribed; paying for content, as they proved they could do with Mulan (2020). And as Disney has access to a huge amount of resources, and bankable studios, it’s hard to see this becoming an industry trend. Not every studio has the resources needed to shift towards streaming over cinema. Cinemas still matter but can they remain open without the support of many big tentpole releases?

How Can Cinemas Survive?

There are no concrete answers, but cinemas currently have a lot of avenues available. For example, the largest audience for UK cinema releases is consistently 15-24-year-olds. Other statistics show that BAME and LGBTQ filmgoers, as well as adults with children under 18, make up a high percentage of cinema audiences. Cinemas could target these audiences by providing discounts or exclusive screenings to encourage certain demographics to keep returning (similar to how The Light and Odeon cinemas currently offer discounts for former Cineworld customers). Rewards can also be offered to make customers feel valued. And classic and recent content could be offered to draw in BAME and LGBTQ audiences.

Also, recently smaller movies like After we collided and Unhinged have done relatively well at the UK box office. Showing that smaller films can do well with a bigger platform. And with many smaller releases still on the horizon, cinemas have an opportunity to encourage audiences to try something new. They can do this by increasing social media awareness. Offering discounts/rewards. Or perhaps even organising local cinema clubs, as many of the previously mentioned groups are more likely to respond to the idea of a film club. Plus the localised nature of film clubs could be a great comfort to regions in higher lockdown tiers.

Of course, if cases spike cinemas will have to close. But other options are available. For example, during the lockdown, Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema partnered with various streaming and VoD sites. Offering free trials for their members, and virtual screenings that split the money evenly with the Showroom if you used their site. These options allowed people to watch films safely from home. And helped keep the Showroom on its feet.

Conclusion

Despite Disney’s shift to focus more on streaming, many studios don’t have Disney’s money and resources. So it’s hard to see this becoming an industry trend. Cinema distribution will still be needed to cover big-budget production costs.

But cinemas must adapt to survive without huge tentpole releases. There are many independent productions out there to entice audiences. And offers and rewards, targeted marketing, film clubs, virtual screenings; profit-sharing with VoD, and streaming services are certainly options that can help cinemas to make money. But will they succeed? Only time will tell.

Also Read: What’s Next For Disney?

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