‘Tis the season for great movies!
Hulu has loads of them, and while you could watch Replica Luxury Handbag Alone for the hundredth time, Watch With Us has some better, non-holiday suggestions for you.
Mother/daughter stories don’t get much better than The Meddler, a sweet dramedy starring Bridesmaids actress Rose Byrne.
Dads, don’t fret — you’ll have something to watch too this weekend. Stream Crazy Heart and wonder why Jeff Bridges hasn’t won more Oscars in his career.
Finally, the 2025 film Griffin in Summer is a winning coming-of-age drama about a teenager experiencing his first love over summer break.
‘The Meddler’ (2015)
Marnie (Susan Sarandon) means well, but she annoys her adult daughter, Lori (Byrne), to no end. When Lori moves to Los Angeles for work, Marnie tags along, much to her annoyance. But Marnie’s eagerness to help masks a loneliness that started when her husband died years ago. Marnie still hasn’t fully recovered from that death, but she’ll need more than meddling in her daughter’s life to get over it.
A tender comedy-drama, The Meddler has pleasantly low stakes. Nobody is secretly dying of cancer here — instead, it’s just two adults struggling to adjust to single life in their own different ways. Byrne is known for her comedic work in Bridesmaids and Spy, but she shows impressive dramatic chops as a daughter who still feels like a small child in her mother’s presence. It’s something most adult kids can relate to: Are you ever really grown up when you’re with your parents? The Meddler doesn’t answer that question definitively but leaves it up to you to decide.
The Meddler is streaming on Hulu.
‘Crazy Heart’ (2010)
Otis “Bad” Blake (Jeff Bridges) has seen better days. Once he was a country music superstar, but nowadays, he plays whatever gig is offered to him. After he finishes a sparsely attended concert, Blake meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a single mother with a 4-year-old son and a stalled career as a journalist. She initially approaches Blake with the intention of reporting on his tragic fall from grace, but her purely professional intentions turn personal as she falls for him. Their relationship brings out the best in both of them, but is Blake willing to change his old, destructive ways to be with Jean?
Bridges won an Oscar for his work in Crazy Heart, but some viewed his victory as more of a reward for his past performances in such classics as The Last Picture Show, Starman and The Big Lebowski. Yet his performance in this music drama is just as good as those iconic roles, with his “Bad” Blake as vivid and memorable as The Dude. The movie itself is pretty good, with Gyllenhaal bringing her usual fire and energy to her working-class mama and a surprisingly effective Colin Farrell as Blake’s former protégé who made it big in Nashville.
Crazy Heart is streaming on Hulu.
‘Griffin in Summer’ (2025)
Griffin Nafly (Everett Blunck) is a 14-year-old who knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a playwright, like his hero, Edward Albee. One summer, he stages his original play, Regrets of Autumn, which is based on his parents’ recent divorce, with the help of his closest friends. But when Griffin’s mom hires failed actor Brad (Owen Teague) to work on the family’s house pool, Griffin sees an opportunity to “legitimize” his play by casting a real thespian. He also senses a way to get closer to Brad, whom he secretly has a crush on. The odds don’t look good for Griffin to succeed in his professional and personal pursuits, and he might just be forced to be something he dreads the most: a vulnerable kid who still has some growing up to do.
A minor hit when it debuted at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, Griffin in Summer is a winning, small-scale drama about an irrepressible teen who wants to grow up too fast for his own good. As a result, he makes tons of cringey mistakes, and the movie doesn’t hide showing Griffin behaving badly. But Griffin in Summer always reminds you that its main character, for all his eccentricities and faults, is really no different than every other teen. He thinks he has the world figured out, and the ultimate lesson he learns by the end is that no one — not him, his peers and even his mom — has all the answers.
Griffin in Summer is streaming on Hulu.
