The best movies on Sky Cinema and Now TV
Sky's streaming service is packed with wonderful movies - here are the ones you should watch first. Updated for March 2023
If you’re seeking a TV service focused primarily on movies, it may not be Prime Video, Netflix or Disney+ that deserves your attention. Instead, consider a subscription to Sky Cinema – available via Now (previously Now TV), Sky Stream and regular satellite-derived Sky. Here’s our guide to the best movies on Sky Cinema and Now.
Now tends to be better served with newer, bigger-name films than any of its main rivals, with at least one new movie being added every day to an already bulging collection.
The sheer size of that library means it’s not always easy to immediately find something to watch though (you know: the paralysis of choice and so on). Which is where we come in. The Stuff team has picked out a selection of must-see cinematic masterpieces both old and new, so the next time you’re settling down for an evening on the sofa, you can conserve your brainpower for picking the right snacks rather than the right movie.
Top Gun: Maverick
Is Top Gun: Maverick the movie that saved movie theatres? Steven Spielberg certainly thinks so, crediting Tom Cruise’s return to his most iconic 1980s role as a kind of panacea in Panavision: a summertime blockbuster so universally appealing and crowd-pleasing that it convinced a public cowed by COVID-19 and a cornucopia of effort-free at-home streaming services into returning to picture houses in droves.
Maverick – in which Cruise’s ageing flyboy is forced back to his roots to train the next generation of fighter aces – is certainly an exhilarating and warmly nostalgic ride, offering plenty of call-backs for the old-timers along with some of the greatest airborne action sequences ever put on celluloid. Everyone should see this story of daredevil pilots, romance, redemption and learning to grow old gracefully. Even if a cinema screen is where it really belongs.
Elvis
Who better to oversee a biopic of the King of Rock and Roll than Baz Luhrmann, a director well-versed in the type of camp, OTT entertainment associated with Elvis Presley’s Las Vegas years? Luhrmann doesn’t disappoint here: Elvis is a glitzy, glamourous and non-stop ride through the icon’s short life, complete with soaring musical sequences and hard-to-forget performances (a fat-suited Tom Hanks as Presley’s Machiavellian manager Colonel Tom Parker being particular difficult to shift from one’s brain).
Holding the entire thing together can’t have been easy, but Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated lead performance succeeds. Poor Butler appears to have undergone some kind of permanent psychic transformation as a result of this role (his normal speaking voice seems to be forever Elvis-ified), but it’s a certified star-making turn.
Jaws
The film that discouraged an entire generation from skinny dipping, Jaws remains one of the most influential, most copied and most beloved films of all time.
The premise is beautifully simple: when a New Jersey seaside resort is terrorised by a killer Great White shark, the local police chief decides to hunt it down. But it’s the film’s presentation, script, direction and its iconic score that make it so special. Director Steven Spielberg cranks up the tension through his use of perspective and sound, leaving the audience constantly on edge, but Jaws isn’t afraid to contrast its scarier moments (and make no mistake: this is essentially a horror movie) with fantastic beats of levity and comedy.
The end result is that it’s still an incredibly rewarding and riveting watch more than 40 years after its release. Just do yourself a favour and avoid the sequels.
Bodies Bodies Bodies
A group of wealthy 20-something friends gathers at a palatial home and decides to ride out an approaching thunderstorm by taking lots of drugs, drinking gallons of booze and playing a murder in the dark-style game. When the shenanigans get a little too real, it sparks off a rapidly escalating flurry of mistrust and paranoia where old grudges are refreshed and new suspicions are forged.
Working both as an efficient murder mystery horror flick and a venomous social satire on Gen Z’s tendency for vacuity, victimhood and backstabbing selfishness, Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of the rare films that succeeds in being likeable despite lacking a single likeable character.
The Northman
Arthouse director Robert Eggers’ brutal, bloody retelling of Hamlet – in which Viking warrior Amleth takes revenge for his father’s death – cost a similar amount of money to a big summer blockbuster but has the slightly off-kilter sensibilities of an indie movie. It certainly makes no attempt to coddle its viewers with easy-to-like characters, a fast-moving plot or frequent action scenes, and while it never feels like a chore it’s not always an easy watch. It’s a glorious-looking piece of cinema, though, and few viewers will be left in any doubt as to Eggers’ commitment to making an interesting film rather than a crowd-pleasing money-maker.
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs put Quentin Tarantino on the map as a writer/director, but it was follow-up Pulp Fiction that cemented him as the enfant terrible of 1990s cinema, as well as inspiring an entire generation of imitators (none of which came close, we might add).
On the face of it, this film is a trio of interweaving stories set in the Los Angeles criminal underworld – a novel structure in and of itself. But it’s the style, snappy dialogue, music, depictions of violence and drugs, and (yes) dance sequences that truly make it something special. If we had to pick a movie that best sums up cinema in the 1990s, it’s tough to think of a better bet.
It’s arguable that Tarantino has yet to top Pulp Fiction. He certainly hasn’t made anything since that feels as fresh, freewheeling and thrilling.
The Hunt for Red October
Highly decorated Soviet submarine captain Sean Connery goes off-mission in an undetectable nuclear sub, causing the CIA’s Alec Baldwin to give chase… in person. Wanting their top secret hardware back, the Russians are (figuratively) on board with the hunt, but things hot up below deck when Baldwin (literally) joins the Red October’s crew and forms an unlikely alliance. A masterful piece of Tom Clancy-penned Cold War sub-aquatic suspense directed by Die Hard’s John McTiernan.
The Batman
Another Batman reboot, this time with a pallid, soft-spoken and very emo Robert Pattinson playing the caped crusader in a sodium-glow Gotham where it seems to be permanently night-time, raining or both. When a series of city bigwigs turn up dead with riddles and ciphers duct-taped to their bodies, Jim Gordon brings in Batman to help investigate – all while Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) attempts to track down her missing friend. Somehow, you sense, all this stuff is linked.
Even if we’ve seen it all before (and we have, in all honesty), this movie is at least visually impressive, despite it feeling even more grounded in reality than the dour Nolan trilogy.
Clueless
A veritable classic teen comedy from a decade full of them, 1995’s Clueless is a rework of Jane Austen’s Emma, supplanting the mansions and bodices of 19th century England with the shopping malls and designer threads of 1990s Los Angeles. Rich, pretty and popular Cher (Alicia Silverstone) loves playing matchmaker among her friends, but soon realises that she herself knows very little about romance.
As with many films of its day, Clueless has aged quite noticeably – but that’s all part of its charm. And speaking of aging, what on earth is Paul Rudd’s secret? He’s barely changed in the 25 years since this film first aired.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
James Cameron is renowned for pushing special effects technology with an almost religious fervour (we have him to ‘thank’ for the brief 3D movie ‘craze’) and in Terminator 2 he conjured up the most advanced computer-generated character yet seen on the big screen. The liquid-metal T-1000, a cyborg assassin sent back in time to murder tearaway teenager John Connor, used every CGI trick in the book to sell the reality of the character. And it doesn’t look half bad over 30 years later.
Audiences in 1991 were floored by this digital creation as it morphed from one character to another, oozed through the bars of a steel door and turned its hands into blades, but ultimately this movie succeeds for other reasons, namely Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic performance as the ‘good guy’ T-800 sent to protect Connor, the equally impressive practical SFX and fast-moving, riveting plot.
Looper
Rian Johnson’s Looper is a brilliantly mind-bending time travel action-thriller with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing an assassin whose job consists of putting a bullet in the head of people teleported to his time by a future mob organisation (we know, we know – but stick with it). When the poor sap that appears before him turns out to be his future self (played by Bruce Willis) things get understandably complicated.
The intricate plot is strongly complimented by plenty of action and strong performances from all, although Gordon-Levitt’s Bruce Willis-like prosthetic nose is initially a little distracting.
Hot Fuzz
The second entry in the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ that also includes Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, Hot Fuzz takes the 90s action movie template and lands it in sleepy rural England. As Shaun riffed on old zombie movies, this turns action flick tropes and traits into a source of comedy – and it does so in such a warm, technically adept way that the filmmakers’ respect for their inspirational source material shines through.
Not only is Hot Fuzz – in which Pegg’s hero supercop is shipped off to a sleepy West Country village for making the rest of the Metropolitan Police look bad – hilarious, it’s also a fantastic homage to the likes of Point Break, Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys.
Good Will Hunting
Matt Damon plays Will Hunting, a blue-collar Boston boy genius who mops floors at Harvard University at night – taking a break every now and then to solve unsolvable mathematical equations on the blackboard. But his prodigious talent comes with an excess of baggage from his childhood, and when his wayward behaviour leads him to reluctantly start seeing a therapist (Robin Williams in one of his career best performances), the past begins to catch up with him in destructive fashion.
If that makes the film sound serious and sentimental, you should know that it’s also riotously funny and eminently quotable, with an Oscar-winning script written by Damon and co-star Ben Affleck.
Gladiator
Russell Crowe rose to superstardom off the back of this Roman Empire epic, in which he plays a celebrated and honourable general who, when betrayed by Joaquin Phoenix’s power-mad new emperor, is forced to fight his way to vengeance via the blood-stained pits of gladiatorial combat.
Directed with typical visual panache by Ridley Scott, Gladiator is a stirring, old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster of the highest order, replete with all the classic tropes: sweeping vistas, rousing emotion, romance, scintillating fight scenes and a truly hateful villain in Phoenix. Movies of this type don’t generally age well – astonishingly, this is now over 20 years old – but thanks to Scott’s mastery behind the camera and Crowe’s Oscar-winning performance in front of it, Gladiator feels as fresh as the day it hit cinemas.
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Tom Holland’s third outing as the wallcrawler sees him unwittingly pulled headlong into the multiverse, reuniting him with a bunch of villains from previous, pre-Holland movies such as Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin and Electro. Having inadvertently sucked all these costumed goons into his own world, Spider-Man needs to defeat them and send them back from whence they came – and luckily for him, he won’t have to do it alone.
With the rate at which Marvel Cinematic Universe films arrive, and the way in which the studio tends to polish out anything resembling nuance or character, it’s easy to dismiss them as entertaining but forgetful fluff. And that’s basically what No Way Home is, but the way it tugs at your nostalgia-nodes makes it worth a watch in our book, particularly if you’ve been a fan of Spider-Man movies since Sam Raimi’s brilliant 2002 film.
Jackass Forever
Over 20 years on from the TV show’s debut, the Jackass crew (or most of them) reunite for a new feature-length barrage of bone-shaking stunts and wince-inducing pranks. The formula may not have changed (and yes, if you’re wondering – it’s still not big, it’s not clever but it’s very, very funny) but the faces are crinklier, the hairlines are higher and the teeth are fewer. There’s something strangely heart-warming in watching these middle-aged men getting back together to act the fool, as well as symbolically pass the torch on to a new, younger generation of masochistic loons.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island cohorts Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer bring their brand of humour – previously confined to YouTube, the occasional Saturday Night Live sketch and their records – to the big screen in this unjustly overlooked mockumentary about egomaniacal pop star Conner4Real.
With old friends sidelined or cut out of his life altogether, Conner’s life and career spiral into disaster as his second album flops – which of course, makes for an entertaining ride. The cameos from dozens of real-life celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Seal and Paul McCartney add plenty of spice to the mix.
Scream (1996)
In self-referential teen horror Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven riffs on the genre tropes he himself helped define: here, the masked killer sticks slavishly to the stalk-and-slash rules set by older scary movies.
What could easily have turned out as a schlocky parody actually works as both a creepy, tension-wracked slasher flick and an amusing po-mo meta-comment on the genre, helped in part by a strong cast (the most famous member of which is bumped off in the first ten minutes), some great twists and plenty of quotable lines. It was followed by a raft of lesser sequels, a TV series and a full-on nostalgia-fuelled reboot, but for our money the original remains by far the best.
Last Night in Soho
Edgar Wright’s thriller sees a lonely, Swinging Sixties-obsessed fashion student from the sticks move to London’s Soho – a place she has idealised and dreamed about for years. And dream she does, discovering a strange ability to travel back to the area’s 1960s heyday in her sleep and experience the bright lights and glitz for herself, albeit as a witness rather than a participant. But she finds out that there’s a dark side to the glamour – one that threatens to bleed into her life in the present day. Matt Smith and Anya Taylor-Joy also star.
Dune (2021)
Don’t get us wrong: we love David Lynch and all. But James Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel has finally got the screen adaptation it deserves thanks to Denis Villeneuve and co. With an all-star ensemble cast, endlessly stunning cinematography and sound design and a riveting story of war, exploitation and family in the far future, Dune is an event movie that manages to be more than just a popcorn-chomper. And it’s just the first part of what the director intends to become a trilogy.
A Quiet Place Part II
The buttock-clenchingly taut thriller about a world invaded by aliens with super sensitive hearing gets a sequel, and while many might dismiss it as unnecessary (and purely a consequence of the unexpected success of the first film), it’s a really enjoyable popcorn movie that balances breathless scares and high tension while developing the original characters further.
We see a lot more of the aliens this time around – it’s a sequel so there’s little point in keeping the creatures a mystery this time – but it hasn’t gone full action-thriller; director John Krasinski has once again made a family drama that just happens to take place in the wake of a disaster. Emily Blunt is in great form once again, but it’s the young actors and newcomer Cillian Murphy who shine here.
Nobody
From the minds that brought you John Wick comes a very John Wick-style action movie with comedian and Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk playing firmly against type. Odenkirk’s character is the titular “nobody”: a grey-tinged suburban schmo who trudges to a dull office job every day after a near-silent breakfast with his distracted family. But he wasn’t always this way, and after an encounter on a bus his past life comes rushing back to the present, complete with a heck of a lot of guns, snapping bones and broken noses. Who needs originality when the formulaic stuff can be so enjoyable?
Pig
Nicolas Cage’s rehabilitation as an actor continues in Michael Sarnoski’s superb and affecting drama. Cage is excellent as a bedraggled, near-silent truffle hunter living in the Oregon forest, alone except for his beloved foraging pig. When the hog is kidnapped, he springs into action to track her down – but anyone expecting a John Wick-style revenge thriller might be surprised at where Sarnoski’s film goes. Instead of leaving a trail of bodies and broken glass, Cage is forced to revisit his past and confront his choices as he reckons with the task at hand.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sometimes sci-fi is all about spaceships and explosions and men in silly costumes waving giant glow-sticks at each other; sometimes it’s about a vision of the near future, or even a parallel present, that’s close enough to our reality to properly sting.
Eternal Sunshine is mostly a modern love story, the inspired twist being that in this world you can pay to have all memories of a specific person erased from your mind. It’s complicated and clever but ultimately warm and honest; most impressively of all, it’s got Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in it and you don’t want to shoot either of them.
The Matrix
The Matrix isn’t just an entertaining action movie. This film is packed with cultural touchstones and iconic moments, and it still looks amazing more than twenty years after it first emerged from the Wachowski’s febrile minds.
Keanu Reeves has never been better as Thomas Anderson, an office-bound drudge by day and hacker by night who finds himself drawn into a reality-shattering adventure full of flying bullets, mind-blowing martial arts sequences and some early CGI that doesn’t look like absolute rubbish today. Whoa!
Riders of Justice
Watching the trailer above, you might think this Danish film is just another revenge flick, with Mads Mikkelsen’s soldier picking up an arsenal of weaponry and going H.A.M. in true Neeson/Statham/Reeves style on the gang of evil goons that killed his wife. But there’s so much more to Thomas Anders Jensen’s movie than that: it’s surprisingly funny, often sweetly heart-warming and occasionally brutal, not to mention a deconstruction of the entire concepts of revenge, loss, grief and (as the title hints) justice. An arthouse movie wrapped in the garments of an action-thriller, then, and well worth a watch for anyone bored of either genre.
The Raid
Directed by Welshman Gareth Evans, this 2011 Indonesian action film has already reached certified cult classic status and spawned a decent sequel.
A showcase for the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat, it features electric fight scene after electric fight scene as one plucky cop takes on an entire apartment block full of ruthless criminals in an attempt to reach the vicious drug lord on the top floor. It’s a beautifully simple premise, but the heart-pumping action sequences are bolstered by a pretty great and emotional story, too. Quite simply a must-watch for martial arts fans (although they’ve probably seen it 50 times by now) and highly recommended for anyone else.
Jurassic Park
Almost three decades after its release, Jurassic Park remains a near-perfect film. Steven Spielberg’s mastery of pacing, camera, editing and sound is on full display here, as the living attractions in a dinosaur theme park take advantage of chaos theory to turn on their captors. The dreary, uninspired sequels have shown that there’s much more to making a great movie than a great idea (what if dinosaurs and humans could interact?) and great special effects; this is a rare occasion when a mega-budgeted box office-breaking blockbuster feels full of heart.
Promising Young Woman
Emerald Fennell’s Oscar-winning screenplay is just one fascinating aspect of this stylish, genre-bending movie, in which the superb Carey Mulligan plays a coffee shop worker who spends her nights teaching creeps a lesson about consent.
Is Promising Young Woman a black comedy? A rom-com? A revenge thriller? A post-Me Too polemic ? A cautionary tale about how holding onto anger and resentment can consume you? It’s all of the above, and all the more captivating for it.
No Country for Old Men
No Country for Old Men always felt like the most screen-adaptable of Cormac McCarthy’s novels, and with the Coen brothers at the helm it would have taken some kind of disaster to stop this movie from becoming an instant classic. And it is, thanks to not only the source material and its sympathetic treatment by America’s finest filmmaking pair of siblings, but due to killer performances from Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones and, most memorably, Javier Bardem as a philosophising, seemingly unstoppable mass murderer with a criminal haircut. If you like your thrillers as contemplative and lyrical as they are nail-biting, look no further.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The first (and we think best) Indiana Jones film is a globe-trotting blockbuster that has set the standard for all Hollywood adventure movies since. A throwback to the flicks of Spielberg and producer George Lucas’ childhood, it sees Ford’s bullwhip-brandishing archaeologist travel to Egypt in an attempt to locate the Ark of the Covenant ahead of the Third Reich, who plan to use the ancient artefact’s powers to place the world under Nazi rule.
The visual effects and, er, ‘cultural depictions’ have aged noticeable since 1981, but this is mainstream filmmaking at its purest – a broadly entertaining, fast-paced and iconic movie that it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of the even more epic fantasy novel is not without its issues (I mean, how many endings does a film need?), but the director’s achievement in wrangling such an uneven, weighty and wide-ranging tome into three enjoyable blockbuster movies should not be overlooked.
You likely know the story already: a young hobbit must travel from his peaceful, bucolic corner of the world to the hellish realm of Mordor to destroy a powerful ring. Along the way he’ll encounter dangers, make new friends, take part in an apocalyptic war and much, much more. This trilogy is action-packed, well-acted and visually arresting – and capable of generating plenty of emotion at times, too.
Whiplash
Watching an indie movie about jazz drumming might not sound like the most riveting way to spend an evening, but trust us: Whiplash is no ordinary movie about jazz drumming.
Miles Teller plays a music college student determined to become one of the skin-bashing greats. The only problem? He’s never quite good enough to impress his insanely demanding band conductor, played in Oscar-winning form by J. K. Simmons. Simmons’ monster of an instructor dominates the film right through to the unforgettable final reel. We doubt you’ve ever seen a music movie with so much blood, sweat and tears.
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone set aside the Dollars trilogy’s crowd-pleasing antics to create two and half hours of cinematic history with this scorched-earth homage to the gritty realities of homesteading on the new frontier.
Expertly paying homage to practically every film in the genre, Leone helps the everyman Henry Fonda find his dark side while giving Charles Bronson his own theme tune (supplied, of course, by long-term Leone sidekick Ennio Morricone). It’s beautiful, brutal and iconic stuff – and a must-watch for any would-be cinema connoisseur. This is the spaghetti Western – gourmet style.
Django Unchained
Quentin Tarantino’s western (or, more accurately “southern”) takes its cues both from Sergio Leone and the blaxploitation genre. Set mostly in the Deep South, Django Unchained pits Jamie Foxx’s titular freed slave against the plantation owners, traders and overseers who’ve separated him from his wife.
He’s joined on his quest by German bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (an Oscar-nominated Christoph Waltz) but equally impressive are Leonardo Dicaprio as Calvin Candie, who cloaks the barbarity of his gladiatorial slave fights beneath a veneer of civilisation, and Samuel L Jackson as Candie’s house slave (and éminence grise) Stephen.
Foxx plays Django as a modern Man With No Name – though in his case his silence is more the result of tightly-wound righteous fury than stoicism, and when he eventually unleashes bloody vengeance on his oppressors it’s spectacularly cathartic.
Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese’s much-lauded exploration of isolation, obsession and mania is certainly one of the best classic movies available on Netflix, and anyone who considers themselves a fan of cinema and hasn’t already watch it should drop everything, fire up their Netflix app of choice and settle down for 113 minutes of masterful moviemaking, as Scorsese’s camera follows increasingly unhinged Vietnam veteran and cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro in one of his defining roles) as he navigates the sleazy streets 1970s New York.
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