16 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch on Disney+ Right Now

Hamilton (2020)

You may not have gotten to Broadway to be in the room where it happens, but now you can experience Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning musical at home — with the entire original cast (including Miranda himself in the title role). The actor-musician’s hip-hop opera on the life of founding father Alexander Hamilton is a mesmerizing achievement — and watching at home allows you to pause, rewind and catch all the wordplay of his lightning-fast lyrics.

Watch: Hamilton

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Director Wes Anderson has a much-memed affinity for visually stylized filmmaking that naturally lends itself to the fussiness of stop-motion animation. He followed his Oscar-nominated 2009 gem Fantastic Mr. Fox with this oddly prophetic film about the outbreak of a “canine flu” in Japan that leads a totalitarian leader to quarantine all the nation’s pups on a remote island ordinarily used for waste disposal. There, the refugees lead an insurrection that’s as charming as the imagery.

Watch: Isle of Dogs

The Muppet Show (1976-1981, 5 seasons)

Younger generations might think of Jim Henson’s creations as kid stuff — but this show was a prime-time sensation that played off grown-up popular culture in a savvy way that still holds up. Of course, the ’70s references and even the variety-show format may be off-putting to millennials and Gen Z, but older fans will savor the assortment of sketches, musical numbers, and hilarious interstitial bits. (As well as “very special guests” like George Burns, Danny Kaye and Lena Horne.) For a deeper dive, the 2024 documentary Jim Henson Idea Man explores the genius of the man who turned his mother’s green felt coat into the immortal Kermit the Frog.

Watch: The Muppet Show

The Princess Bride (1987)

Rob Reiner’s adaptation of the William Goldman novel became an instant classic — a fractured retelling of a fairy tale about a farmhand-turned-pirate (Cary Elwes) and his quest to reunite with his childhood love, Buttercup (Robin Wright). “Is this a kissing book?” young Fred Savage asks his grandpa (Peter Falk) in alarm whenever the story takes a romantic turn. Rest assured, the love story is presented along with swashbuckling adventures that include a vengeance-seeking swordsman (Mandy Patinkin), a giant from Greenland (André the Giant) and a hapless Sicilian villain named Vizzini (Wallace Shawn).

Watch: The Princess Bride

Queen of Katwe (2016)

Who doesn’t love an underdog? This fact-based competition film from director Mira Nair focuses on perhaps the biggest underdog of all: a 10-year-old girl in Kampala, Uganda, who spends most days with her mom (Lupita Nyong’o) and younger brother sell maize at the local market. With the help of a local teacher (David Oyelowo), she discovers she has an aptitude for chess that might just lift her family out of the slums. Nair manages to make the chess tournament as edge-of-your-seat thrilling as any World Series game decided in the final at-bat.

Watch: Queen of Katwe

The Straight Story (1999)

David Lynch, the auteur behind unorthodox, boundary-pushing films (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead) took a hard left turn into conventional storytelling with this yarn about a WWII vet in rural Iowa (Richard Farnsworth, who earned an Oscar nod for his performance). After learning that his long-estranged brother (Harry Dean Stanton) has had a stroke, he sets out in his John Deere lawn tractor to make the 240-mile trip to see him and mend fences. It’s a slice of Americana that is naturally sweet, without a hint of saccharine or sentimentality.

Watch: The Straight Story

Summer of Soul (2021)

It was the summer of 1969. Just a few hours drive south of the Woodstock, N.Y., farmland where a music festival defined a generation, another seminal event took place that attracted a lot less attention. The Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place over six weekends, attracted acts like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, and Sly and the Family Stone to commemorate a transitional moment in Black history. Ahmir Thompson, better known as the musician Questlove, earned an Oscar for his documentary about the event, which featured archival footage that had not been seen in decades.

Watch: Summer of Soul

Up (2009)

Animated movies aren’t just for kids. Pixar’s Oscar-winning Up proved that in its opening sequence, a wordless depiction of the life of a loving couple who longed for children and a trip to South America that they never quite realized. Now widowed, Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) decides to fulfill that long-held dream by rigging balloons to his home for an airborne adventure (that includes a neighborhood boy as stowaway). This is peak Pixar.

Watch: Up

West Side Story (2021)

Steven Spielberg’s update of the 1961 best picture winner boasts breakout performances by Rachel Zegler as Maria (soon to play Juliet on Broadway) as well as Ariana DeBose in her Oscar-winning turn as the sassy Anita. The original Anita, 92-year-old Rita Moreno, also turns up as the truce-seeking neighborhood shopkeeper in Tony Kushner’s smart reworking of the original script. The film arrived just as cinemas were reopening midpandemic, and never got the acclaim (or viewership) that it deserved.

Watch: West Side Story

Wings of Life (2011)

In addition to his many other achievements, Walt Disney helped invent the modern nature documentary — and the studio has produced some absolute stunners over the years (many available for streaming). One of our faves is this study of the symbiosis between plants and animals, captured with specialized cameras as well as slow motion and time-lapse photography. Added bonus: The legendary Meryl Streep narrates the entire film, from the perspective of a flower.

Watch: Wings of Life

 

World Eats Bread (2024, 1 season)

There’s nothing carbitrary about this three-part docuseries celebrating the culinary wonder that is bread — from San Francisco’s signature sourdough to Guatemalan corn tortillas to the no-knead Turkish flatbread known as Ramadan pide.

Watch: World Eats Bread