The 11 best movies to check out on Hulu in November

In James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted, Winona Ryder plays Susanna Kaysen, an 18-year-old woman who spends 18 months in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt in 1967. The all-star cast includes Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Angela Bettis, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave, and Whoopi Goldberg. Jolie won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Lisa Rowe, an institutionalized sociopath who bonds with Susanna. The movie is based on the 1993 memoir of the same name by Kaysen.

One interesting aspect of Ridley Scott’s historical action-drama The Last Duel—set in medieval France—is that the story leading up to the titular last duel is divided into three distinct chapters, each one giving a different character’s conflicting perspective of the events prior to the duel. Matt Damon stars as Jean de Carrouges, a knight who challenges Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a duel after Carrouges’ wife (Jodie Comer) accuses Le Gris of raping her. Although the movie received positive reviews for its performances and cinematography, the budget-busting epic bombed in theaters when it was released during the pandemic. It’s not up there with Blade Runner or Alien as one of Scott’s best, but fans of the director and the lead actors should give this one a peek now that it’s available again on Hulu.

After prematurely announcing his retirement, Steven Soderbergh returned to direct Channing Tatum one last time as Mike Lane—a former male stripper whose furniture business went belly-up during the pandemic—in Magic Mike’s Last Dance. Salma Hayek plays Maxandra Mendoza, a wealthy socialite who flies Mike from Florida to London to help her produce a stage play with lots of male flesh on display. Although not as much fun as the previous two Magic Mike movies—Matthew McConaughey is sorely missed—Tatum fans won’t mind seeing his dance moves one last time on-screen.

Richard Donner’s supernatural horror film The Omen starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, and Billie Whitelaw is about young Damien Thorn, the prophesied Antichrist, and the mysterious deaths that occur around the little boy with the “666" birthmark on his scalp. The Omen was nominated for two Oscars, winning Best Original Score for Jerry Goldsmith. The movie spawned several inferior sequels and three of them—Damien: Omen II, Omen III: The Final Conflict, and Omen IV: The Awakening—are also available on Hulu this month.

In Guillermo del Toro’s futuristic sci-fi dream project Pacific Rim, the only thing standing between humanity and wave after wave of colossal Kaiju monsters are Jaegers—giant humanoid mechas each controlled by two pilots. The monster mash starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Rob Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman spawned a sequel, a video game, and an anime series. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd writes, “What Pacific Rim lacks in originality it largely makes up for in boyish enthusiasm—an infectious affection for cocky flyboys, titanic mechanical men, and (especially) the mythically colossal villains.”

The baseball documentary The League looks at the creation and launch of the Negro League during the first half of the 20th century. Directed by Samuel D. Pollard, the doc showcases archival footage and never-before-seen interviews with players such as Satchel Paige, Buck O’Neil, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron. Never before has the impact of Black players on America’s national pastime and Black communities been explored in such depth in a documentary. Maya Angelou is just one of several African-American icons who appear in The League to provide historical context.

Director-writer Hubert Davis explores the history of racism in Canadian hockey, a predominantly white sport, in the documentary Black Ice. The movie blends interviews with past players such as Willie O’Ree, the first Black player in the National Hockey League, and former professional hockey player Akim Aliu with the stories of today’s stars, including P.K. Subban and Wayne Simmonds. Davis doesn’t pull any punches, shining a spotlight on systemic racism in the sport that stretches all the way back to 1865.

Alex Holmes’ The Last Rider is the true story of cyclist Greg LeMond, the first American to win the Tour de France. After being shot and nearly killed during an off-season hunting trip, LeMond recovered and won the 1989 Tour de France by only eight seconds—the tightest margin of victory in the race’s history. The doc features exclusive interviews with LeMond, his wife, Kathy, and never-before-seen footage.

Hulu, like all the other streaming providers, starts to add holiday favorites to its streaming library around Thanksgiving. One movie they’re adding this year is Elf, the beloved favorite starring Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human raised by Santa’s elves who travels to New York to meet his biological father. Jon Favreau directed the Christmas comedy classic also starring James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Edward Asner, and Bob Newhart. The film’s popularity spawned Broadway’s Elf: The Musical as well as the stop-motion holiday special Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is the third movie in the Vacation series starring Chevy Chase as Clark W. “Sparky” Griswold Jr. and Beverly D’Angelo as his wife, Ellen Griswold. In this installment, their children—Audrey and Russell—are played by Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki, respectively. Based on a short story by John Hughes published in National Lampoon magazine, Christmas Vacation is about the mayhem that ensues when relatives visit the Griswolds for Christmas. This yuck fest, also starring Randy Quaid and Dianne Ladd, is now considered a holiday classic and is one of the best and highest-grossing Vacation movies.

Just because Halloween is almost in the rearview mirror doesn’t mean that audiences’ appetite for horror gets packed away with all the scary decorations. In the supernatural horror film Consecration, Jenna Malone plays an English woman named Grace who travels to a convent on the Isle of Skye to uncover the truth about the death of her priest brother, whom she discovers was a suspect in a murder investigation. If you line up for Catholic-themed horror such as The Nun II and The Exorcist: Believer, check out Consecration to see more spooky nuns in creepy churches.