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The best movies available to watch on Apple TV right now

From acclaimed dramas to animated adventures, these Apple TV movies span genres and showcase the streaming service’s growing film catalog

Apple $AAPL -0.28% TV has long been known primarily for its television lineup, with movies feeling like an afterthought compared to the prestige series dominating awards conversations. This reputation has started to shift. The platform has quietly built up a genuinely strong film catalog, spanning awards contenders, animated family fare, and plenty in between.

This shift shows up across the service’s growing library. Established directors working at the peak of their craft sit alongside newer voices still building their reputations. Some entries arrived with massive awards attention already attached. Others found smaller but devoted audiences through word of mouth instead of any major marketing push. A few represent genre experiments that shouldn’t work on paper but somehow land anyway, proof that Apple’s film slate has grown considerably more adventurous than its early years suggested.

The 10 movies below appear in Time Out, covering the top entries from a larger roundup of the best films currently available on the platform. Each entry covers the director, cast, and what makes the film worth streaming tonight. Apple’s catalog rewards viewers willing to look past the algorithm’s first few suggestions, since some of its strongest work sits several rows down the homepage, waiting for someone to actually press play. That’s especially true for movies released without much fanfare, the kind that build reputations slowly through recommendations instead of trailers. Between true crime epics, animated folklore, and true-story thrillers about a video game, the range on offer here says something about how far the platform’s ambitions have come. Some of these films arrived through big-budget studio partnerships, while others came from smaller production companies Apple simply chose to back. This variety in scale hasn’t come at the expense of quality control, since the titles below hold up against anything currently streaming elsewhere, regardless of budget or pedigree.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon exposes a forgotten crime

Martin Scorsese adapted David Grann’s nonfiction book into this sprawling true-crime epic, delivering a devastating account of violence and greed directed at the Osage Nation in the early twentieth century. The film centers on a documented conspiracy involving white settlers systematically targeting wealthy Osage families for their oil-rich land rights, treating the historical crime with the seriousness it demands instead of sensationalizing the material.

Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio anchor the film with plenty of star power, playing characters whose outward charm masks quietly sinister intentions as the conspiracy unfolds. Lily Gladstone matches their screen presence entirely, delivering an equally compelling performance as an Osage woman caught directly at the center of the murderous scheme targeting her own community and family.

This balanced ensemble work lends the film considerable emotional weight beyond typical historical drama conventions, since Gladstone’s perspective keeps the story grounded in actual human cost instead of treating the Osage community as background to the male leads’ performances. Scorsese’s direction throughout maintains careful attention to period detail and cultural specificity, avoiding easy shortcuts in depicting a community whose history remains underrepresented in mainstream American cinema.

The film’s considerable runtime, running well past three hours, reflects the actual scope of the story Scorsese wanted to tell, though viewers should plan accordingly before settling in for a single sitting. This length ultimately serves the material well, giving the conspiracy room to unfold with the patience and detail this history deserves, rather than compressing it into a more conventional runtime.

Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto shot much of the film on location in Oklahoma, giving the production a tangible sense of place that grounds the story’s larger historical themes within specific, recognizable landscapes. This commitment to authentic settings extended to hiring numerous Osage advisors and crew members throughout production, ensuring the film’s depiction of Osage culture and customs was accurate rather than relying on generic period-piece shortcuts.

2. F1: The Movie turns pit stops into pure spectacle

Joseph Kosinski directed this racing drama following a familiar but reliable formula, sending a washed-up former star back into competition specifically to mentor a promising newcomer while chasing one last shot at redemption. Kosinski previously demonstrated genuine skill with this exact narrative structure in “Top Gun: Maverick,” and he brings that same momentum to the considerably different world of Formula 1 racing.

Brad Pitt stars as a once-great driver who helps guide a struggling racing team back toward competitiveness, partly by exploiting loopholes buried in the sport’s own rulebook. This morally ambiguous approach to winning adds complexity to Pitt’s character beyond typical sports-movie heroics, though critics have noted his performance reads as either intentionally aloof or simply disengaged, depending on individual interpretation.

Regardless of how audiences read Pitt’s choices, the film’s racing sequences deliver plenty of visceral excitement, capturing believable speed and danger in ways that translate effectively even on a home screen. This technical achievement matters considerably here, since a racing film ultimately lives or dies based on whether the racing itself generates actual tension and visual excitement.

Javier Bardem, Damson Idris, and Kerry Condon round out a supporting cast that fleshes out the team dynamics around Pitt’s central character throughout the film’s considerable runtime, giving the racing world real texture. This ensemble work gives “F1: The Movie” enough narrative texture to sustain interest between racing sequences,........

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