Many recommendations are for new shows, while others are for under-the-radar releases you might have missed or classics that are about to depart a streaming service at the end of the month.
Have a new favorite movie or show you think we should know about? Let us know in the comments, or email[email protected]. Looking for even more greatstreaming options? Check out previous editions of ourmust-watch list here.
Movies
“Good Will Hunting”
Next week marks the release of Matt Damon and Casey Affleck’s “The Instigators,” a delightful heist comedy set and shot in Boston. It’s been more than 25 years since the childhood buddies teamed up for a Boston-set film, so before you enjoy “The Instigators,” fire up “Good Will Hunting” and marvel at the baby-faced boys from Cambridge. Casey Affleck is the real star of “The Instigators,” and while he doesn’t get as much material in Gus Van Sant’s drama, he makes his handful of lines count.
In an interview with Boston.com that will publish early next week to coincide with “The Instigators,” Matt Damon and Casey Affleck name-checked the 1988 action-comedy “Midnight Run” as one of their primary inspirations. Starring Robert De Niro as a streetwise bounty hunter and the late Charles Grodin (“Beethoven”) as a mob accountant who skipped bail, “Midnight Run” is a sneakily well-constructed film, with each line of dialogue and scene fitting together perfectly. Damon calls the film a “Swiss watch.” I call it a must-watch.
Jayson Tatum and Derrick White share a laugh ahead of the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics. – (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
This may seem like cheating, but really, what else are you going to watch more over the next two weeks than the Summer Olympics? There are more than 50 Olympic athletes with New England ties competing in every discipline from archery to swimming, with primetime coverage kicking off Friday night with a re-airing of the afternoon’s opening ceremony. NBC has really pushed Peacock as the sole place to watch every single competition live, while the NBC Olympics app and its suite of terrestrial networks (NBC, USA, CNBC) will handle the lion’s share of tape-delayed contests edited for user-friendliness.
You don’t actually need to watch any previous Marvel movies or shows to understand what’s happening in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the newest entry in the MCU. As I noted in my review of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” viewers are expected to know more about Disney’s acquisition of Fox and its associated IP — including Deadpool, Wolverine, and their fellow X-Men — than any Marvel property. That said, if you were to play catch-up, the show to watch beforehand is “Loki,” which plays a prominent role in a film not overly concerned with plot.
In the show, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his pal Mobius (Owen Wilson) are hopping across timelines in coordination with the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic entity tasked with preventing multiversal meltdown. In “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a rogue TVA agent played by Matthew Macfayden (“Succession”) is attempting to speed up the process of killing Deadpool’s universe after it loses its “anchor entity” — Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Got all of that? Me neither, but “Loki” is easily the best of Disney+’s Marvel shows, so give it a watch anyway.
On Friday, “Veep” creator Armando Iannucci penned a thoughtful essay in theNew York Times articulating the reasons why he’s not pleased that the real-life events of American politics have mirrored the plot of his HBO comedy — and is equally unhappy that people keep asking him about it. With apologies to the sharpest satirist currently working in television, the first thing I did after Joe Biden announced he would not be seeking reelection was fire up “Veep” to watch what happens when Vice President Selina Meyer (the incomparable Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is told that the president she serves under isn’t seeking a second term. Here’s hoping Kamala Harris doesn’t have a Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) in her life.
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