clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile
A pale, long-haired woman seated next to a man with slick black hair and pencil moustache clad in a velvet suit coat and tie. Image: Warner Home Video

Filed under:

The best movies leaving Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and HBO Max at the end of January 2023

Catch up with these movies before they leave streaming at the end of the month

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

It’s the end of the month, so you know what that means, Polygon readers: A new group of movies leaving their respective streaming services.

After the flurry of typical arrivals and departures when the calendar turned to 2023, there is once again plenty of good movies leaving streaming services at the end of January. The entertainment team at Polygon has highlighted the best of the best on each streaming service, and will do so again next week to tell you the best of what’s new in February.

Without further ado, here’s the list. We’ve got comedies on Netflix, dramas on Hulu, sci-fi fairytales on Prime Video, and much more to fill your heart’s delight and your weekend plans.


Leaving Netflix

The Addams Family

A pale, long-haired woman seated next to a man with slick black hair and pencil moustache clad in a velvet suit coat and tie. Image: Warner Home Video

Genre: Black comedy/fantasy
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd

If watching Wednesday sparked your interest, but you wanted some more family out of the spooky, kooky Addams family, why not visit one of the older incarnations? The 1990s movies have an electric cast, with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston leading the family as Gomez and Morticia. Christina Ricci’s Wednesday is still perhaps the most iconic. (Sorry, Jenna Ortega!! There’s a reason she was also in the Netflix show!) It’s funny and delights in the macabre without ever being too scary for young viewers. The movie follows the family reconnecting with long-lost Uncle Fester (played here by Christopher Lloyd) — but is it really Fester, or the adopted son of a con artist looking to scam the Addams family out of their fortune? The intrigue! —Petrana Radulovic

The Addams Family leaves Netflix on Feb. 1.

The Paper Tigers

Ron Yuan and Ray Hopper in The Paper Tigers Image: Well Go USA Entertainment

Genre: Action/comedy
Run time: 1h 48m
Director: Tran Quoc Bao
Cast: Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, Mykel Shannon Jenkins

A heartfelt comedy about former martial arts prodigies who have grown into listless middle-aged men but are now thrown back together after the death of their former master, The Paper Tigers hits all the notes you want. It’s funny, it’s sweet, the action scenes kick ass (choreographed by the YouTube sensations The Martial Club, who also appear in the movie and choreographed the fights in Everything Everywhere All at Once) — it’s the charming kind of low-budget action comedy we get far too few of these days. Make sure you check it out when you have the chance. —Pete Volk

The Paper Tigers leaves Netflix on Feb. 1.

Leaving Hulu

Ernest & Celestine

An adorable mouse whispers in an adorable bear’s ear after lifting up the bear’s hat in Ernest & Celestine. Image: GKids

Genre: Comedy/adventure
Run time: 1h 20m
Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner
Cast: Lambert Wilson, Pauline Brunner (original); Forest Whitaker, Mackenzie Foy (dub)

A cozy little hidden gem of a movie, Ernest & Celestine came out in the U.S. the same year as Frozen and thus was doomed to be lost in the “Let It Go” fanfare. Animated just like a storybook, Ernest & Celestine tells the story of a precocious orphan mouse who befriends a reluctant bear named Ernest. At first it seems like a simple tale of “gruff man becomes a dad figure to a small child,” but the movie dives into the interspecies conflicts with more nuance than Zootopia would a few years later. Ernest and Celestine both stand by one another when they are put on trial by their respective governments for potentially betraying their species (like I said — it gets deep!). The story is thought-provoking and the animation feels like a warm cup of tea. —PR

Ernest & Celestine leaves Hulu on Jan. 28.

Mamma Mia!

A group of women marching and singing in tandem while singing. Image: Universal Pictures

Genre: Musical romance
Run time: 1h 48m
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Amanda Seyfried

Mamma Mia! is the perfect antidote to dreary winter days — look at those warm, sunny beaches, the aquamarine ocean waters, the ABBA! Most of the cast was drunk on ouzo (a strong Greek liquor) during filming, and you can absolutely tell that they’re just having the time of their lives. Can Pierce Brosnan sing? Not really! But he and Meryl Streep are just so damn charming together that we’ll forgive it. Everyone loves the dads, but Mamma Mia! at its core is a celebration of womanhood — with Sophie, Donna, Tanya, and Rosie leading the charge, and the three dads (and Sky) just sitting around and looking pretty. Sit back, relax, and let the isle of Kalokairi sweep you away to the sweet serenade of “Dancing Queen.” —笔搁

Mamma Mia! leaves Hulu on Jan. 31.

The Age of Innocence

A distressed woman wraps her arms around a man from behind as she rests her head against his back, visible tears in her eyes. Image: The Criterion Collection

Genre: Historical drama/romance
Run time: 2h 19m
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

Genteel, 19th-century drawing-room drama might not seem like Martin Scorsese’s usual bag, although what he finds in this adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel about a tortuous love triangle in New York high society — betrayal, repression and emotional violence as individuals strain to find their place in a tightly codified, strictly hierarchical social world — maybe isn’t that different from Goodfellas after all. It’s just that it’s all about frocks, swooning, and party invitations. Where it does differ from most of his filmography is in its interest in the relationship between men and women, rather than men and other men. The costumes, cinematography, and sets create a fantastically detailed, claustrophobically ornate stage for the film’s intense romantic drama, and even the great Daniel Day-Lewis is all but blown off the screen by a brilliant Michelle Pfeiffer in perhaps her greatest role. —Oli Welsh

Age of Innocence leaves Hulu on Jan. 31.

Leaving HBO Max

Jurassic Park

jurassic park ending: the t-rex defeats the raptors in the jurassic park lobby as a “when the dinosaurs ruled the earth” banner falls from the ceiling Image: Universal Pictures

Genre: Sci-fi/action
Run time: 2h 7m
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur adventure hardly needs introduction — but did you know that Spielberg ran postproduction on Jurassic Park at the same time he was shooting Schindler’s List in Poland, returning from a traumatic set staging the Holocaust every day to supervise digital effects shots of dinosaur hijinks? He was effectively putting the prestige cap on his career with one hand while reinventing the form of popular movies (for at least the second time) with the other. It’s an almost offensive display of mastery from one director, but any consideration of that melts away when you sit down and watch the spellbinding movies — especially this one, a populist marvel that’s exciting, scary, and more sophisticated and self-aware than you think. Check out the director surrogate John Hammond (played by actual director Richard Attenborough), a circus-born entertainer with the world’s most dangerous case of imposter syndrome, sitting amid his ruined park, lamenting, “I wanted to show them something that was real.” As the critic Adam Nayman put it: “an authentically thoughtful blockbuster with something interesting to say about itself and the contradictions of trying to use state-of-the-art technology to re-create the past.” —翱奥

Jurassic Park leaves HBO Max on Jan. 31.

Leaving Prime Video

The Color of Money

Two men shooting white pool hall balls at a pool table. Image: Touchstone Home Entertainment

Genre: Sports/drama
Run time: 1h 59m
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

In the mid-1980s, Martin Scorsese was mostly kicking around picking up work-for-hire jobs as he tried to get The Last Temptation of Christ off the ground. They weren’t passion projects of his, but yuppie nightmare After Hours and classical sports drama The Color of Money are still some of his most pleasurable movies: well-crafted studio pictures helmed by a ridiculously overqualified director who gave them his signature fidgety urgency. The Color of Money is a sequel to ’60s classic The Hustler, with Paul Newman reprising the role of pool-hall hustler Fast Eddie. It’s a slow but satisfying tale, smoothly told.

The real show here is the passing of the torch from one authentic screen idol to another: Newman, aging with preternatural grace and silvery charm, and Tom Cruise as Eddie’s protege Vincent, in the days when he was still comfortable channeling his asshole energy. (The film was released after Cruise went supernova with Top Gun, but shot before.) Newman won an Oscar, but Cruise nearly steals the whole film in one astonishing sequence of him dancing around the pool table to angular, howling ’80s rock, posing as he rips off trick shots. Scorsese’s camera, completely seduced by his arrogant strutting and explosive sense of self, glides and dances with him. It’s impossible to look away. —翱奥

The Color of Money leaves Prime Video on Jan. 31.

In the Heat of the Night

A man in a blue suit (Sidney Poitier) and a police officer (Rod Steiger) sit at opposite ends of a navy blue bench bolted to the floor against a painted brick wall. Image: The Criterion Channel

Genre: Mystery/drama
Run time: 1h 50m
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates

The late, great Sidney Poitier delivers a calm, charismatic, and career-defining performance in Norman Jewison’s 1967 neo-noir mystery drama as Virgil (“They call me Mr. Tibbs!”) Tibbs, a Philadelphia police detective who is wrongly arrested on suspicion of murdering a prominent local businessman while traveling through Mississippi to visit his elderly mother. When Virgil’s identity and innocence is verified, police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) begrudgingly asks him for his help in solving the murder.

The significance of In the Heat of the Night, both with regard to its subject matter and the timing of its release, cannot be overstated. The story of a white policeman in the American South having to reckon with Virgil’s deductive prowess and studious intelligence and ultimately accept him as an equal resonated deeply with audiences during the peak of the civil rights movement, and feels just as radical and important viewed in 2023 as it did back then. The scene between Poitier and the genteel racist Eric Endicott (Larry Gates) in the latter’s greenhouse is literally one for the history books. —罢贰

In the Heat of the Night leaves Prime Video on Jan. 31.

What to Watch

The best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix this March

What to Watch

The 27 best movies on Netflix right now

What to Watch

The best TV of 2024 so far

View all stories in What to Watch
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news
news