Hulu’s days are numbered. We don’t know precisely when it’s happening, but Disney has made it clear that, at some point this year, the 19-year-old streaming service will shut down and be absorbed into Disney Plus. I, for one, welcome the change if only to reduce the number of streaming services I feel the need to subscribe to. Still, there’s a part of me that will miss saying the name of a streaming service that sounds a bit like I’m making a bird call.
While Hulu is perhaps best known for edgy original shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and Ramy (and less-edgy originals like Only Murders in the Building), it’s also been a great home for movies — and we don’t just mean rewatching Palm Springs for the umpteenth time. Hulu is chock full of great films worth checking out that probably won’t make the cut when the streaming service shuts down and those originals migrate over to Disney Plus.
With that in mind, here are three true cinematic masterpieces hidden on Hulu, buried deep beneath reruns of American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy.
3
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Coen brothers have made a lot of truly great films. The funniest of which is probably The Big Lebowski, while their overall best are most likely Fargo and No Country for Old Men. However, their tightest, sharpest writing can be found in the 2000 comedy/musical O Brother, Where Art Thou? Simply put, it’s their single greatest screenplay.
The Great Depression-set O Brother, Where Art Thou? is about three inmates who escape from prison while on a work assignment. They go in search of buried treasure stashed by the leader of the trio, the fast-talking con-man Ulysses Everett McGill, played by George Clooney, who is so funny in this movie it’ll make you wish he did more comedies. His two companions are John Turturro as the temperamental Pete and Tim Blake Nelson as the dim-witted Delmar. Together, they go on a wild journey through 1930s Mississippi where they encounter seductive women, a crazed bank robber, a violent Bible salesman and they even thwart a lynching by the KKK.
While not a textbook adaptation, the journey they go on has parallels to the ancient Greek text The Odyssey by Homer (which the Coen brothers famously claim never to have read despite making a movie about it). There are also wonderful, catchy blues and bluegrass songs throughout the film, most famously “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” which makes the boys a musical sensation in the movie and became a hit in the real world too.
But the movie’s greatest strength is its script, which features non-stop rapidfire funny jokes and turns of phrase, along with several running jokes and repeated lines that carry through the movie. All of which is presented in a heightened early 20th century Southern dialect. Carried largely by Clooney’s character — who never can shut up — the screenplay for O Brother, Where Art Thou? is absolutely airtight without a single missed opportunity.
2
The Bob’s Burgers Movie
Growing up, the kinds of sitcoms I liked starring families were ones like Everybody Loves Raymond, The Simpsons and All in the Family. Shows where, sure, they all loved each other, but they spent most of their time arguing and getting on each other’s nerves. After all, comedy is defined by conflict and that’s what made these families funny. With that, I never quite understood the appeal of Bob’s Burgers where the family actually gets along and is really supportive of one another. Plus, there’s a lot of singing in the show, so that further deterred me.
Then I actually watched Bob’s Burgers.
Within a couple of episodes, I was entirely hooked. Yes, the characters fought way less than most funny sitcom families do, but there’s enough edge and weirdness to save it from being milquetoast crap like Full House. Linda is a loud, excitable, not-too-bright mom who often drinks too much wine and is voiced by the hilarious comedian John Roberts (doing an impression of his own mother). Each of the children is weird in their own way, with the rascally bunny-hat-wearing youngest child Louise (Kristen Schaal), the spotlight-loving middle child Gene (Eugene Mirman), and the hormonal teenage girl Tina (Dan Mintz). It’s the surly voice of Bob though, played by cartoon voiceover icon H. Jon Benjamin, that holds it all together with a tinge of sarcasm that prevents the show from ever getting too sweet.
Also, the songs are great and funny and I get excited every time one of the Belcher family members breaks into singing, which is usually a few times each season.
The entire series is streaming on Hulu, but if you’ve already watched each episode multiple times, it’s worth revisiting The Bob’s Burgers Movie. The 2022 film plays like a really good, long episode of the show. There’s also a handful of catchy songs in this semi-musical movie. If you’ve never watched Bob’s Burgers but wonder why the show has been running for almost 20 years, season 1, episode 1 is a good place to start, but the movie ain’t a bad entry point either.
1
The Last King of Scotland
I defy anyone to watch Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland and not be filled with a sense of dread and abject terror.
The 2006 movie, which won Whitaker an Academy Award, is about a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who visits the country of Uganda on a humanitarian mission where he gets pulled into the inner circle around Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin (Whitaker). The story of the film was fictionalized; McAvoy’s character wasn’t a real person. Idi Amin, however, very much was.
The self-proclaimed “President for Life” of Uganda came to power in 1971 and became known for slaughtering his own people and feeding his political enemies to crocodiles. For a deeper understanding of his reign, the Criterion documentary General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait makes for a great companion piece to The Last King of Scotland, which necessarily tightens up Amin’s eight-year rule to make for a compact thriller.
Whitaker captures every bit of Amin’s evil through his explosive tirades and dead-eyed staring, while also pulling off the magnetism that made Amin popular to begin with. The performance is so good and so deeply frightening that it seems to transcend acting and border on something close to possession by the then-recently deceased dictator.
