GoKawiilFall 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.
The Mandalorian & Grogu
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.
This stand-alone adventure finds Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his apprentice-slash-adopted-son Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) running jobs for the New Republic but, after being sent on the trail of an Imperial officer turned warlord, getting swept up in a battle against twin Hutt crimelords, battling hordes of alien monsters, and shooting their way through a factory’s worth of droids. Best of all, though, is that while there are plenty of nods for hardcore Star Wars fans, this isn’t trying to establish a new “saga” or a pivotally important entry in the wider lore. It’s just two hours of solidly enjoyable swashbuckling adventure. Star Wars could do with more like this.
The Wild Robot
Dreamworks Animation has had a solid streak recently, but The Wild Robot stands as one of the studio’s best films ever. A gorgeously animated ode to the power and importance of the natural world, it follows Universal Robots ROZZUM Unit 7134—soon shortened to “Roz” (Lupita Nyong’o)—who becomes the stand-in mother for baby gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor) after being stranded on an isolated island. Guided by the fox Fink (Pedro Pascal, again) and the opossum Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), Roz struggles to raise the infant, desperately trying to teach him to fly in time for migration season—and before her manufacturers track her down.