The best movies new to Netflix, Max, Prime, and Hulu this February

It’s only been one month since the year started (can you believe it?), and there are a ton of exciting new releases in February to look forward to. Captain America: Brave New World and Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey are the movies to see in theaters this month, while Scott Derrickson’s sci-fi horror film The Gorge premieres on Apple TV Plus. If you’re looking for even more great movies to stream from the comfort of your home this February, you’ve come to the right place.

This month, we’ve got a beautiful period drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis, an idiosyncratic comedy about an eccentric concierge, an underrated crime comedy set in 1980s Los Angeles, and more.

Here are the best movies new to streaming services you should watch this month!

Editor’s pick: Phantom Thread

Where to watch: Criterion Channel
Genre: Period drama
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, Vicky Krieps

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 historical drama Phantom Thread follows the story of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), an irascible haute couture dressmaker in 1950s London whose carefully cultivated lifestyle is upset by his ongoing love affair with his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps), a strong-willed woman with ambitions and desires of her own.

In his most recent film role to date, Day-Lewis is unsurprisingly masterful in his portrayal of Woodcock as an artist whose capricious infatuations and fastidious inflexibility prove unbearable to all except Alma, who discovers a… let’s say unconventional way of leveling the power dynamic in their relationship. Top that with an exquisite score by Jonny Greenwood and beautiful costume designs by Mark Bridges and you’ve got what is undoubtedly one of Anderson’s finest films to date. —Toussaint Egan

Genre: Neo-noir action
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice

In the nearly 10 years since it was first released, Hollywood still hasn’t made a movie as funny as The Nice Guys. The movie stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as private eyes reluctantly thrown together on a mysterious case that takes them all through 1970s Los Angeles, from adult film industry parties to the top of the United States government.

But for all the fun silliness of The Nice Guys’ actual plot, the movie’s most hilarious charm comes from the interplay of its two lead actors. Crowe was born to play a no-nonsense straight man who’s twice as large and intimidating as anyone else in the movie, and watching him deal with Gosling’s slacker nitwit character never gets old. Even better is the fact that the movie is absolutely packed with the kind of physical comedy that’s been sorely lacking in Hollywood over the last few decades. The whole thing adds up to an absolutely fantastic movie that’s constantly begging for a rewatch. —Austen Goslin

Genre: Comedy drama
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric

There are a lot of right answers when it comes to the question of what your favorite Wes Anderson movie is, but it’s likely that all told, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the director’s masterpiece. The movie follows the life story of a man who started his time at the hotel as a lowly bellboy, taken under the wing of the hotel’s legendary concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). The story follows the adventures the two go on together, including seeing the hotel through the end of a peaceful era and the rise of fascism in Europe.

While the subject matter may sound heavy, part of the key to the movie’s excellence is the deftness with which Anderson handles its tone. He uses his signature whimsy and talent for twee aesthetic sensibilities to counterbalance the heaviness of the movie’s themes, turning the whole movie into the kind of safe haven from doom that the hotel itself comes to represent in the story. It’s the most effective weaponization of self-awareness that Anderson has ever employed, and makes The Grand Budapest Hotel a particularly lofty achievement, even in a career full of classics. —AG

Genre: Biographical drama
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall

What better way to ring in Black History Month than by watching Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed biopic of one of the most divisive and iconic civil rights activists of his time? Based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the film roughly follows the same arc as its inspiration, charting the late human rights activist and firebrand from his formative years in Boston to his tenure as a member of the Nation of Islam and untimely death at the age of 39. Denzel Washington delivers one of the defining performances of his career, capturing the emotional complexity and intellectual depth of Malcolm’s life. If you’re looking for a compelling drama about a complicated, flawed, and thoroughly inspiring historical figure, this is the one to watch this month. —TE

Genre: Sci-fi action
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

For all the greatness of the later Mission: Impossible movies, it was Edge of Tomorrow that truly kicked off Tom Cruise’s mid-career renaissance. And that’s not too surprising, considering that Tom Cruise has never made a better movie about being Tom Cruise than this one.

This sci-fi spin on Groundhog Day follows Cruise as a military officer in a future where the world is in a war of annihilation with a race of sentient alien machines. But far from a battle-hardened commander or a decorated hero of the conflict, Cruise’s character is just a PR person, a figurehead with no combat experience and a disdainful view of the soldiers around him… at least until he gets stuck in a time loop and realizes he’s going to have to do his part to save humanity. Meanwhile, the one taking on the more traditional movie-star role is Emily Blunt, who plays a true war hero who takes it upon herself to train Cruise again and again.

This excellent premise gives us the chance to see the one thing we almost never get to see Cruise do on screen: fail. He fails over and over and over again, dying meaninglessly each time until he finally starts to succeed, because he knows that all it takes is one right runthrough of the loop to save the world. It’s Tom Cruise’s moviemaking philosophy in miniature, and it’s beautiful, fun, and, of course, incredibly entertaining to watch. —AG