100 Best Movies on Pluto TV Right Now

A24 + Steve Buscemi = ?. 

In “Lean on Pete,” Buscemi plays a guy called Del Montgomery (of course), who is a racetrack horse owner in Portland, Oregon. He befriends a kid, Charley (Charlie Plummer in an amazing performance), who had been abandoned by his family and is new to Portland. 

Together they take care of Montgomery’s only horse, until the kid discovers that the horse is set to be slaughtered. He embarks on an impossible journey across the U.S. to try to save the horse while also looking for his family. 

This movie flew under most peoples’ radars. It is truly amazing. If you like “Lean on Pete” you should watch other A24 gems like “Lady Bird” or “The Florida Project.”

Perfect for Halloween marathons with friends, The Return of the Living Dead treads the now well-worn template of zombie apocalypse movies with outstanding practical effects and a refreshingly unserious attitude. What the film might lack in terms of character writing or deeper themes, it more than makes up for with a relentless forward momentum. There isn’t any grand mission to be accomplished when these morticians collide with a group of young punks, other than understanding what drives the undead creatures outside in order to survive the night. As a result, this is a movie that lives firmly in the moment, with thrills aplenty and its greatest moments found in the freaked-out reactions of its ensemble cast. The late James Karen, with his hilariously exaggerated hollering and whimpering, only nearly steals the show from the film’s wonderful animatronics and disgusting prosthetic makeup. It’s a great zombie movie for the reluctant horror newbie.

Argentina, 1985 is a legal drama about how a prosecutor and his young team were able to mount evidence—despite all threats and odds—against the officials behind a brutal military dictatorship. The public trial is supposedly the first of its kind in Latin America, a marker of true democracy that made a hero out of Julio Strassera and Moreno Ocampo, who both led the case.

Despite the presence of very serious themes, there are moments of lighthearted humor here that work to stress the film’s underlying message of goodwill and perseverance. Argentina, 1985 competed at major festivals this 2022, and it’s Argentina’s official entry at the 2023 Academy Awards.

In this 3D documentary, Werner Herzog takes a dive into the Chauvet Cave in Southern France. From archaeology and anthropology to master perfumery, scientists across disciplines have studied the cave with a palpable enthusiasm—making their best guesses about each cave drawing, based on the data that can be collected without destroying the site. It’s fascinating to hear how they hypothesize where they can find new entrances, or how prehistoric humans could have made music. Cave of Forgotten Dreams turns a regular documentary into a profound meditation about the human soul, creation, and human history. Herzog compiles clips of his interviews with the scientists alongside footage of the cave itself and his own narration, and mixes it with an ethereal score to turn this exploration into a religious epiphany.

Only a writer of Albert Brooks’ comedic and perceptive talents could turn the premise of an insecure middle-aged man having romantic trouble into something genuinely funny and poignant. Brooks appears as his signature brand of self-loathing boomer here: he plays John Henderson, a middling novelist who’s recently gone through a second divorce. When he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to start afresh in his forties, John first decides he needs to get to the bottom of his recurring failures with women. In keeping with the neurotic preoccupations of his characters, Brooks has John take the psychoanalytic approach by going back to the source: his mother. 

To better get to the root of his hang-ups, John temporarily moves back in with Mrs Henderson, whom Debbie Reynolds plays as a hilariously blithe foil to her manic, insecure son. Brooks and Reynolds’ fractious rapport is tortuously true to life: John finds her petty habits maddening, while she doesn’t seem to understand his life or his work — an obliviousness that, it turns out, might run the other way, too. Cleverly turning the self-obsessions of its lead character on its head, Mother is a wry comedy full of insight and unexpected sweetness.

Don’t be fooled—despite being a three-hour documentary, Hoop Dreams is just as thrilling, heartbreaking, and cinematic as any sports film out there. Unlike them, however, Hoop Dreams is less of an uplifting feel-good story than it is an honest and sobering look at how the education system has failed Black communities. It’s not a complete downer, though, since we follow two hardworking and inspiring boys committed to lifting their families from poverty. While more privileged players can afford to treat basketball as a hobby, to Arthur and William, basketball is a lifeline, a rare chance to enjoy better opportunities and give their families a better life. Imagine carrying that on your shoulders while training, studying, looking for colleges, and surviving teenhood. It’s a lot, but director Steve James weaves it all beautifully. James divides the chapter into freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years, following Arthur and William as they start on the same footing, diverge and live parallel lives (one in private school, the other in public), and eventually meet again during their final years in school. Their journeys are riveting, not least because we also get to know their families, friends, hopes, and dreams. This is riveting cinema, as socially conscious as it is competitively thrilling.

Like many coming-of-age films about films, it’s easy to assume that Last Film Show would be a derivative of all-time film classic Cinema Paradiso. Both films from opposite corners of the world, separated by more than three decades, do share that awe of cinema from a projection booth. However, unlike Paradiso, the awe of Last Film Show is also tempered by the rural poverty its young protagonist faces. Samay learns projection from a film booth, and learns community is formed through the screen, but he also learns it through snatching the few reels that passes through their village, manually experimenting with scrap material, and recreating the same light and shadows through its fundamentals. These scenes are precocious because of the children, but it makes for a more interesting take, because Samay’s journey proves that cinema truly is worth saving, even without the money. It’s undeniably awe-inducing with Pan Nalin’s stunning shots and semi-autobiographical story.

We take it for granted now, but Michael Mann’s feature debut Thief was one of the first crime thrillers that took style and substance very seriously—so much so that its neon-lit, rain-soaked, slightly tilted shots continue to be markers of the genre. Thief is visually and sonically stunning, but the titular criminal, Frank, is most remarkable. Caan plays him with such heart, you have to wonder if he’s gone through the same things. Here’s a guy who was handed a tough hand. Violence is the only life he’s known, but he aspires for a better one, filled with a nice home, a happy family, and financial security. His means may be illegal, but our ends are the same: we all just want a comfortable life. How Frank pursues it with such ferocity is thrilling and tragic to watch.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is Sidney Lumet’s last film, and in many ways, it distills what the director explored in his prolific body of work: What is justice? And does everyone deserve it? Shot digitally at a time when the concept was still quite new, Before the Devil moves fast and takes us uncomfortably close to the lives of three desperate men: cash-strapped Hank (Hawke), corrupt Andy (Seymour-Hoffman), and vengeful Charles (Finney). The same tragic events unfold through their perspectives, but in any case, we get to see what drives them to do such horrid things. Are we suppose to sympathize with them? It’s a question that will nag you long after the credits roll.

FBI agents Rupert and Alan (Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) visit Jim Crow-era Mississippi to investigate the disapperance of three civil rights activists. They find out soon enough, however, that answers won’t come easy when local officials and police have ties with the KKK. There’s no shortage of films like Mississippi Burning, but it stands out by simply being well-made. The cinematography is stunning (it won the Oscar that year) and the script is sharp, but the real highlights are Hackman, Dafoe, and Frances McDormand, the latter of whom plays the wife of a violently racist sherrif. The film is difficult to watch to be sure, but as long violence and prejudice reign supreme, it’s also a necessary one. Apart from winning the Oscar for Best Cinematography, the film also sweeped Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations mainly for Hackman and McDormand, and for directing, editing, and sound.