If you’re a Peacock subscriber and have gotten a bit tired of scrolling the same movie titles every night, I’m here to do the heavy lifting for you. Peacock’s library is full of movies spanning genres from comfort-watch classics to epic animation to newer movies that you might have missed in theaters.
If you’re like me and like to watch a few movies to unwind after work, then I’ve hand-picked five that I think you’ll like—all chosen because I’ve seen them, they’re legitimately good, and also because they all have a higher than 90% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Let’s go.
How to Train Your Dragon
If movie nights at your house include kids, as mine do, then the Dreamworks classic How to Train Your Dragon is a must-see, especially if you haven’t seen the 2025 live-action version yet (watch this first!). The Viking island of Berk has survived for centuries, largely by hunting and slaying dragons. Their leader, Stoick (Gerard Butler, 300), is one of the fiercest dragon slayers of all time, but his scrawny son, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, This Is the End), is definitely not. After secretly nursing a deadly Night Fury dragon back to health and befriending it, Hiccup discovers that dragons may not be the enemies they’d thought they were all these years. Convincing his tribe to stop killing them, however, might just be the epic task Hiccup needs to earn his father’s respect and save his people as well. A critical and box office smash, How to Train Your Dragon is funny, gorgeously animated, and unique.
Memento
Before Tenet, before Interstellar, and before Inception, Christopher Nolan bent everyone’s minds with 2000’s Memento. The Oscar-nominated psychological mystery-thriller is deliciously bonkers, as it follows the frantic activities of Leonard (Guy Pearce), a man desperately trying to find his wife’s killer. Leonard has a big problem, though—his short-term memory loss means that everything resets after about 10 minutes, and suddenly, making for some crazy and deadly situations. To combat this, Leonard relies on an intricate series of notes he leaves himself, as well as tattoos all over his body, for the important stuff. Things get even stickier when bartender Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss, The Matrix) and her shady associate Teddy (Joe Pantoliano, The Sopranos) start helping Leonard out, but are they really? Memento is one of Nolan’s best puzzle boxes, and you may need to watch it a couple of times. But Pearce is dazzling in it, as is the supporting cast, so watching it twice won’t be a chore.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. II
If you’ve never seen any of the Harry Potter films, first, where the heck have you been for the last 25 years? Second, if you have seen them, then you know that the only one that really matters is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. I’m joking (kind of), but while all the Potter films are on Peacock for you to pick and choose from, it’s this final episode I find myself watching over and over again when I need a Potter fix. In the darkest chapter of them all, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, Swiss Army Man), Hermione (Emma Watson, Beauty and the Beast), and Ron (Rupert Grint, Servant) race to destroy all the Horcruxes before they make their final stand against Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s List). I’ve always loved the Deathly Hallows installments because the stakes are higher, things get more serious (characters die!), and the magic gets way cooler than the younger Hogwarts years. It’s moodier, more emotional, and features some epic war scenes at Hogwarts for the ages.
M3GAN
The one where it all started, M3GAN was box office gold for Universal, raking in more than a reported $180 million from a budget of just $12 million, and spawning a creepy franchise, to boot. A slick, fast-paced, and darkly funny horror with an impressive 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating, MEGAN is all-in on AI-gone-wrong. When Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out), a robotics developer at a toy company, pushes through a lifelike android doll she’d been working on to help her grieving niece Cady (Violet McGraw, The Haunting of Hill House) get over her dead parents, what could go wrong? While M3GAN’s (played by Sweet Tooth‘s Amie Donald, with voice by Jenna Davis) directive is to “Protect Cady at all costs,” the doll soon takes things way too far, in some delightfully horrific ways. From its now-iconic hallway dance scene (those swinging arms!) to the doll’s chilling and often funny dialogue, M3GAN is a fun and easy watch.
Sicario
Let these names sink in for a second: Del Toro, Blunt, Brolin. Oh, and let’s not forget the man behind the camera, Villeneuve, and a script by Sheridan. Their surnames alone should be enough motivation for you to check out 2015’s Oscar-nominated Sicario, but just in case, let us count the ways. One of the benchmark drug crime action-thrillers of the last decade, Sicario is a brutal, slow-burning film that puts you undervocer in the dusty world of the U.S.-Mexico drug war of the early-mid 2010s. No stranger to playing action badasses from Edge of Tomorrow the year before, Emily Blunt stars as FBI agent Kate Macer, who joins a covert government task force led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), focused on taking out a deadly drug cartel. Mercer soon learns that the enigmatic “consultant” on the team, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), isn’t playing by the same rules, blurring the lines of morality. The action in Sicario is intense, depicting the brutality of the cartels and those hunting them alike. Between Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Dune) and Taylor Sheridan (Landman, Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown—the list goes on), Sicario is a grown-up thriller with something to say.
Whether you’re looking for a TV series to binge or a quick, low-commitment movie to throw on during the work week, Peacock might actually surprise you with its solid selection.
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