We’ve reached the end of the summer, and that means the blockbuster season is over. Weapons continues to impress audiences, as it should rule the theaters for the remaining two weeks of August.
Meanwhile, FAST services continue to offer some of the best free movies on streaming. Our picks for this weekend include a dark crime thriller, an iconic twist ending, and a moving sci-fi mystery.
We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best free movies, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.
In 2013, Jake Gyllenhaal became “Psycho Jake,” with unsettling roles in Prisoners, Enemy, and Nightcrawler. In Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal lost 30 pounds and suffered from sleep deprivation to play Lou Bloom, a petty thief who attempts to become a stringer — a cameraman who sells footage to the local news.
With a police scanner and his camcorder, Bloom spends his nights driving around the city, searching for crimes and accidents to film. When a news director (Rene Russo) says her station wants more graphic footage, Bloom takes the law into his hands and proves he will do whatever it takes to get the perfect shot. Gyllenhaal has never been more committed to a role, and honestly, it remains his best performance.
The Usual Suspects recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. The final twist remains one of cinema’s most memorable endings. Just in case you haven’t seen it, we’ll withhold that information. As for what we can tell you, The Usual Suspects examines a multi-million dollar heist that ended in bloodshed.
One of the survivors, Roger “Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey), is interrogated by U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri). Kujan wants the identity of Keyser Söze, the mastermind who orchestrated the heist. The crime thriller is the perfect example of how to keep the audience guessing until the final frame.
Stream The Usual Suspects on Pluto TV.
Speaking of surprises, Arrival also features a twist ending that is much more sincere and emotional than The Usual Suspects. When 12 alien spacecraft hover around various locations on Earth, the world’s most powerful nations race to understand the extraterrestrials.
The United States hires linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to spearhead their communication efforts. Louise surprisingly makes progress with the aliens, but she must work quickly before the other nations push for a world war. Arrival is a sci-fi masterpiece that serves as a conduit for a beautiful examination of human nature, loss, and time.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.