The best movies new to streaming this January

Happy New Year, Polygon readers! 2024 is dead and gone; long live 2025, or at least for the next… *glares at calendar* 361 days. The year is starting off strong with a ton of highly anticipated theatrical releases, including Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, and Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. If you’re looking for something to watch from the comfort of your home, though, there’s just as many options to choose from, if not more! This month, we’ve got a Christopher Nolan masterpiece that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakthrough debut starring Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds, and arguably the best Batman movie ever made. Let’s dive in and see what this month has in store! Table of Contents Editor’s pick: Interstellar [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/32-512.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Sci-fi drama Director: Christopher Nolan Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain It’s been a decade since the initial, wildly successful release of Interstellar. Now, just a few weeks after its return to theaters in IMAX and 70mm, it’s on Netflix for you to enjoy as many times as you want. But if you haven’t seen it recently, and you missed the theatrical revival, you should still revisit Nolan’s galactic masterpiece. There are plenty of great reasons to give Interstellar another look, including the fact that it’s probably even better than you remember it being. But in the years since Oppenheimer, it’s become clear that Interstellar marks an interesting midpoint in Nolan’s career. The director has always been fascinated with time, but this is the first point in his career where he really starts to examine how time affects the humanity of his characters. It’s a much more mature and dramatic approach to the concept than movies like Inception, but it’s also a critical experiment on the road to making his Best Picture-winning biopic too. —Austen Goslin New on Netflix Melancholia [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/melancholia-01.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Sci-fi drama Director: Lars von Trier Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård Lars von Trier’s Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette) as Justine, a young bride who experiences a depressive episode on the eve of her wedding. When a rogue planet known as Melancholia appears hurtling toward Earth on a collision course, Justine’s sister Claire struggles to maintain composure in the face of imminent disaster, while Justine navigates a strange euphoric resignation that washes over her in the planet’s last days. Melancholia is an achingly beautiful, somber, and harrowing journey through depression and ennui and one of von Trier’s finest films to date. —Toussaint Egan New on Hulu Heat [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/heat-01.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Heist drama Director: Michael Mann Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Tom Sizemore Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller stars Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna, an eccentric and hyper-competent police detective caught in a tense cat-and-mouse struggle, and Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley, a career criminal. It’s a film made of moments and set-pieces that could comprise an entire third-act finale in a lesser movie. Here, they exist in a triumphant assemblage of carefully interlocking components, working in concert with the precision of a Swiss timepiece. Pacino and De Niro deliver two of their greatest performances as a pair of obsessive workaholics whose razor-sharp proficiency at their trades comes at the cost of all they otherwise love or hold dear. Dante Spinotti’s cinematography transforms the vast cityscape of Los Angeles into a shimmering expanse of lights strobing across the surface of a sea of pitch darkness, a den of moral inequity from which no soul emerges wholly clean or unscathed. —TE New on Max Batman: Mask of the Phantasm [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20081000/maskofthephantasm.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Superhero drama Directors: Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm Cast: Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Dana Delany Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is one of the greatest Batman films of all time, full stop. Initially produced by Batman: The Animated Series producers Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm as a direct-to-video feature before being released in theaters, 1993’s Mask of the Phantasm pits the Dark Knight against a mysterious new enemy alongside his longtime nemesis the Joker. The film probes at the inherent tragedy and history of the character with a level of nuance and depth that few subsequent incarnations (live-action or otherwise) have successfully attempted since, conjuring a portrait of fatalistic loss and heartbreak that endures to this day. —TE New on Prime Video Boogie Nights [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/boogie_nights-785632408-large.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Drama Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds There’s no other movie quite like Boogie Nights. Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’70s-set epic is at once one of the funniest movies ever made, and one of the most tragic. The film follows nearly a dozen characters in and around the adult film industry just as the advent of mass-produced home video took over the old-world artistry that made them fall in love with the industry in the first place. Anderson presents each of these characters, and their complications and flaws, with care and love, building a beautiful world of found family and the occasional tragedy that can only come as one era of art gives way to another. —AG New on Criterion Channel Minority Report [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24225264/48__678_.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Genre: Sci-fi action Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton This is a slightly complicated recommendation, not because there’s anything wrong with Minority Report, but rather because it’s the perfect jumping-off point to recommend an entire series of movies that’s being highlighted on Criterion Channel this month: Surveillance Cinema. This Criterion feature is all about the surveillance state and characters who have a sneaking suspicion they’re being watched. It includes an excellent mix of absolute classics (THX 1138, The Conversation, Body Double, Gattaca, The Truman Show) and movies you may not have seen before (The Anderson Tapes, Death Watch, Sliver, The End of Violence, and Demonlover). Also included in this series is Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, and what better place to start when talking about surveillance? This paranoid thriller follows John Anderton (Tom Cruise) in a near future where nearly all crime is prevented via predictions from a few state-kept individuals with psychic powers. However, when the system accuses John of a pre-crime, he wonders whether or not his society’s justice system is entirely fair or not and sets off to prove his innocence. —AG