The 20 best movies to stream on Now TV and Sky
Sky's streaming service is packed with wonderful movies - here are the ones you should watch first
The 20 best movies to stream on Now TV and Sky
If you’re seeking a streaming service focused on movies, it’s not Amazon Prime or Netflix that deserves your attention – it’s Now TV. Sky’s cord-cutter service is far better-served with newer, bigger-name films than either of its main rivals, with at least one new movie being added every day to an already-huge collection. The sheer size of that collection means it’s not always easy to immediately find something to watch though (y’know, the paralysis of choice, and so on). Which is where we come in: we’ve picked out a selection of must-see cinematic masterpieces, so the next time you’re settling down for an evening on the sofa, you can conserve your brainpower for picking the right snacks.
SUPERBAD
Why can’t all teen comedies could be as funny, pacy and ultimately life-affirming as Superbad, which manages to juggle all the tropes of the genre (partying, sex, friendship) without feeling hackneyed or bloated?
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR
If you’re going to only watch one of the 85 Marvel superhero movies released in the past few years, it might as well be Civil War. Ostensibly the third instalment in the Captain America franchise, it features such an insanely vast cast of costumed characters that it’s more a de facto third Avengers movie – albeit one in which the crew spends more time fighting each other than the real bad guy.
LOGAN
With Marvel Cinematic Universe releasing a seemingly endless string of superhero movies concerning the Avengers and their mates, 20th Century Fox’s rival “other Marvel heroes” run of X-Men films has felt like a second-string franchise in comparison. But Logan proves that there’s still plenty of potential in the long-running mutant saga, featuring an ageing Wolverine and Charles Xavier confronting the passage of time and the fact that, with no mutants having been born in 25 years, the X-Men are all but finished – a weak, washed-up shadow of their former greatness.
AMERICAN BEAUTY
Before his current role steering the James Bond series, former theatre director Sam Mendes made his big screen debut helming this unconventional drama – which went on to win no fewer than six Oscars, cement Kevin Spacey as one of the best actors of his generation, and ensure none of us ever looked at a discarded plastic bag in the same way again.
THE WITCH
A spooky forest, an aggressive goat called Black Phillip, creepy twins, missing babies and failed harvests – The Witch could hardly tick more classic horror boxes if it tried. Ye olde worlde dialogue will put some off but it fuels the feeling of authenticity and adds to the unshakeable sense of otherworldliness. If you’re looking for jumps go elsewhere but if you see a creepier film this year we’d like to know about it.
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
A space operatic take on the “men on a mission” war movie, Rogue One follows the efforts of a small band of Rebel Alliance troops as they attempt to steal plans to the Death Star. Anyone familiar with previous Star Wars movies will know that this mission succeeds, but the excitement here comes from finding out who – if any – of the band of outcasts will survive until the closing credits, not to mention from the spectacular action sequences. A grittier, grimmer take on Star Wars sure to please fans and newcomers alike.
MILLER’S CROSSING
One of the Coen brothers’ early and (unjustifiably) lesser-known films, Miller’s Crossing is rich with the snappy script, intricate plotting, symbolism and visual flair that characterise their later hits like Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men. Set in an unnamed American city during the Prohibition era, it’s a slick gangster tale about the nature of friendship and betrayal, and features stellar performances from Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney and frequent Coen alumnus John Turturro.
DON’T BREATHE
A lot of the most memorable horror movies are memorable precisely because there’s some kind of killer (literally) gimmick in place, and that’s very much the case with Don’t Breathe. When a trio of teen tearaways breaks into the home of an old blind man, they don’t count of him being a grizzled, ruthless ex-soldier with superhuman hearing, a vicious guard dog and a burning desire to keep the contents of his basement a secret. Cue an hour and a half of toe-curling tension.
CHILDREN OF MEN
When it was released back in 2006, Children of Men’s near-future British setting seemed like a particularly pessimistic take on the direction in which humanity was heading. A decade and a bit later, it seems eerily prescient in its deft presentation of a green and pleasant land gone grey and grim, robbed of hope by multiple crises. But Children of Men does more than just show us a depressingly plausible dystopia – it weaves together a thrilling plot, featuring some of the best one-shot takes in modern cinema.
ROBOCOP
Forget the unnecessary 2014 reboot – if it’s a RoboCop you’re going to watch, it has to be the Paul Verhoeven-directed original. On one level an ultra-violent futuristic thriller about a cybernetic policeman battling to take down a criminal gang, it’s also a deft satire on the corporatisation and militarisation of law enforcement. OTT in the best possible way.
ROCKY
If you’ve never seen Rocky you’ll probably have made a few assumptions about it already. After all, it’s a film about boxing which stars everyone’s favourite meathead Sylvester Stallone. Not only that, but its plot – affable loser, struggling to stay afloat in a harsh world, gets a shot at the big time – sounds, well, like a walking, talking cliché. But Rocky is no brain-dead punch fest. What it is, is a film with an enormous heart that somehow manages to never be cheesy.
JURASSIC PARK
Jurassic Park’s masterful mixture of special effects and CGI means that its visuals impress to this very day, more than 20 years after its release. Being big dino fans in our youth, this movie had it all – big teeth, gigantic beasts, and just enough humour to lighten the mood in between scenes brimming with terrifying suspense. We still get the odd recurring T-rex nightmare even now and – wait, can you hear that thumping?
FROZEN
Frozen is a pretty wonderful modern-day Disney film. It’s not horribly sexist, in that the lead characters are strong-willed, independent girls who don’t generally need saving, it looks fantastic, the story is gripping and funny without being too cheesy, and there’s no denying the power of those aforementioned songs. It’s definitely one to settle down with and watch together as a family – but just be aware that you will have those tunes jammed your noggin for the next month.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
Clocking in at a bum-numbing 216 minutes, David Lean’s biopic of mercurial British Army officer T.E. Lawrence is epic in every sense of the word (when first released, it had an actual intermission in the middle so cinema-goers could stretch their legs). Stunning desert vistas, grand battles, a cast of thousands and some of the best acting talent of the time all go towards making Lawrence of Arabia an unforgettable film about war, Empire, loyalty, individual brilliance and, yes, what happens when foreign powers meddle in the affairs of the Middle East.
THE GODFATHER TRILOGY
Look, if you haven’t seen The Godfather and The Godfather Part II by now, stop reading this and just go watch it. And then maybe watch the third one just to round things out, even though it’s a bit of a dud by comparison. Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia epic spans a generation, weaving the tale of a Sicilian immigrant who becomes a powerful mobster and his son, who strives to turn his father’s “business” into a legitimate concern but finds it impossible to keep his two families together without getting his hands dirty.
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 two of America’s finest filmmakers, but due to strong performances from Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Tommy Lee Jones and, most memorably, Javier Bardem as a philosophising, seemingly unstoppable mass murderer.
THE TERMINATOR
The movie that put James Cameron on the map as a AAA director and cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as a superstar (albeit one whose acting talents yet required some polish), this 1984 action thriller succeeds despite a ludicrous premise (a humanoid robot is sent back in time to kill a woman before she gives birth to a resistance leader) and some of the dodgiest haircuts ever committed to celluloid.
WRECK-IT RALPH
A film set inside an arcade machine featuring cameos from all your favourite video-game characters, including Pac-Man, Bowser, Sonic and the like. In many ways Ralph is the perfect film to watch with your kids: you can get all nostalgic over those long-gone days when you had time to actually play games, they can enjoy a fine film about fitting in and being yourself.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Ex-schoolteacher Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) sets off across France to find Private Ryan – whose three brothers were killed during D-Day – and y’know, save him. It’s Steven Spielberg’s take on the classic “men on a mission” movie, a grand epic rich with the sort of masterful camerawork, thrilling action and touching sentimentality that tend to be associated with the director.
GET OUT
Not many horror movies get nominated for Best Picture Oscars (in fact, the last two were Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006 and Black Swan in 2010, both of which could arguably described as non-horror), but Get Out isn’t your average slasher flick or ghost story, even if it features gallons of gore seasoned with plenty of otherworldly creepiness. It’s instead a satirical, genre-bending piece that succeeds both as a straight-up scary movie and as a wry, insightful take on race – in particular, on modern interracial dating between black men and white women.
