Fall is here, and the autumnal turn marks a season of returns. Back to school, back to work—and when it comes to the best films on streaming services, back to some of the best films of yesteryear.
September finds John Carpenter’s brilliant 1982 remake of The Thing crawling its way onto Prime Video, Luc Besson’s mind-bending and eye-popping The Fifth Element on Netflix, and an unexpected blast from the past coming to Hulu in the form of The X-Files: I Want to Believe—Vrach Frankenshteyn, an R-rated director’s cut of 2008’s second cinematic case for Mulder and Scully, now closer to creator Chris Carter’s original vision.
Even the new arrivals have a vintage flair this month though. Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian and Grogu brings the big-screen bounty hunters back to Disney+ for a retro-tinged adventure, Netflix’s Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway expands on the world of the classic 1970s anime series, and Edge of Tomorrow on Paramount+ shows the past can be hard to escape at the best of times.
Here are WIRED’s picks of the best movies to watch right now.
Sure, The Mandalorian and Grogu has the dubious distinction of being the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie ever (only 2008’s animated Clone Wars performed worse). And yes, for fans of the Disney+ space western series, a full fourth season might have been more welcome (and the three seasons of homework beforehand may have put off wider audiences anyway). Yet this spinoff is, in its own way, the “purest” Star Wars movie in years, capturing the feel of the classic serials that originally inspired George Lucas all those decades ago.
