Which Apple TV original movies are worth watching?

It makes sense that it would start like this for Apple, which only launched Apple TV in November 2019. “Hala,” which is about a teenage Pakistani-American girl who is starting to rebel against her religiously strict family, was a Sundance movie. Apple Original Films (the film branch of the Apple TV branch of Apple) bought the distribution rights, briefly put it in a few theaters, and then put it on the streaming service. So, while Apple TV didn’t have anything to do with producing “Hala,” the idea of “Using our largesse to buy the rights to a coming-of-age Sundance movie for our new streaming service” is where a project like this begins.

“The Banker” is a period piece starring Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson about bankers (back when it was unheard of for guys who look like Mackie and Jackson to be bankers), made independently on a low budget. Again, Apple put its money and weight behind distributing it. The movie hit streaming on March 6, 2020, which, morbid though the thought is, was not yet the time of the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people at home looking for anything to watch. Plus, there’s some sordid behind-the-scenes stuff that probably didn’t help.

There’s a good chance this is the first Apple TV movie you’ve heard of, in part because it stars Tom Hanks and because Apple gave it a big push in terms of promotion. This, however, is a bleak tale of COVID-19 derailing the film industry (and so, for all our sakes, this will be the last time we evoke COVID). “Greyhound,” a solid naval drama, shockingly for a Hanks movie, set during World War II, was a Sony film. It was on the schedule for June 2020. That didn’t happen. Sony sold the distribution rights to Apple, which then pushed “Greyhound” as its first big, exclusive film.

Sofia Coppola made a Bill Murray movie for Apple TV and, at best, you’re probably thinking, “Oh yeah, that rings a bell.” It’s a solid little dramedy, too! Apple did actually produce this one, alongside A24, and it was well-received by critics and those who saw it. Maybe it was too light and too slight to really stand the test of time, though. Hey, sometimes movies just flit across your consciousness, but that isn’t inherently a criticism.

If you’re familiar with 2009’s “The Secret of Kells,” “Wolfwalkers” is the third film about Irish folklore by animation director Tomm Moore. So, you know, an acquired taste. The kind of movie released in theaters in Ireland and France and, like, Norway. In America, though, Apple TV became the home for “Wolfwalkers,” where it was probably only watched by people who had seen “The Secret of Kells.”

Hey, remember Justin Timberlake? Sometimes he acted in stuff, and he was good at it on occasion! Timberlake got good reviews for “Palmer” from those who saw it. Apple TV boasted that it did well on the platform at the time it was released in January 2021, but clearly, at the time, they had only a handful of films it was competing with. The film, about Timberlake as an ex-con, is kind of a nothing film. It’s about as generic as a drama gets.

Remember when fools believed Tom Holland might have a career outside of Spider-Man? We know he’s in “The Odyssey,” but Holland is Spider-Man, and Spider-Man is him, and anytime he’s stepped out of blockbuster, action-y, quippy roles, it hasn’t gone well. Holland shouldn’t have been starring in a serious drama about drug addiction and crime. The Russo brothers shouldn’t have been directing it. “Cherry” did make a splash for Apple TV, but as an Apple TV movie, it got panned.

Sometimes you fall backward into an Oscar. Look, Apple Films saw something in “CODA,” as did pretty much everybody at Sundance. There was a proper bidding war, with Apple paying a reported $25 million for the distribution rights. To be honest, though, “CODA” didn’t make a big splash. It wasn’t a sensation. Even from an awards perspective, people thought Troy Kotsur had a good chance, but that was about it. In the wake of, well, we said wouldn’t evoke a certain global pandemic again, but that, Hollywood wanted a “nice things are nice” Oscars. In lieu of giving Best Picture to the dark, cynical “The Power of the Dog,” Best Picture went to a bittersweet dramedy in “CODA,” and Apple TV got a Best Picture winner before Netflix.

Apple TV figured, “Well, the last time we bought the rights to a Tom Hanks movie from a studio that can’t get it in theaters, it worked out,” so they tried it again. Since nobody remembers “Finch” exists, clearly this was a swing and a miss. Apple secured the rights from Universal after the plans to put it in theaters imploded, but this was no “Greyhound.” A sci-fi story about a man teaching a robot to take care of his dog when he dies, called “Finch,” just didn’t stand out to people.

In theory, Apple was giving itself a prestige drama in “Swan Song,” and do recall this was before “CODA” was considered a real Oscar play, much less before it won Best Picture. After all, this is a heady sci-fi movie about Big Ideas starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. While Ali did indeed get a BAFTA nomination, “Swan Song” did not deliver like “CODA.”

After the Coen brothers stopped making movies together, Ethan went on to make gratingly-quirky, searingly-unfunny crime comedies with his wife. Meanwhile, Joel and his wife opted to collaborate on an oh-so-serious, uninventive take on William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” Of course, his wife is three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand, so that helps. Having Denzel Washington play Macbeth also was to this movie’s benefit. This is a good adaptation of the play, but it is not a standout adaptation of an oft-told story.

“Have we done a sappy YA romance adaptation yet? No? Let’s do one then.” This, we assume, was the long and short of the decision to adapt the 2010 novel “The Sky is Everywhere.” To borrow a phrase from “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” this movie stars no one and features nothing. Sorry to fans of the book.

At the forefront of the first bubbling of “There are these people called Gen Z and some of them are making movies,” there was Connor Raiff. He wasn’t the only one, of course, but his second film, “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” won the Audience Award at Sundance, and then Apple spent big on its rights. The dramedy about a college student starting up a relationship with a thirtysomething mother didn’t click in that James L. Brooks way, though. Raiff hasn’t directed a movie since.

“Luck” definitely had the feeling of Apple TV trying to do a Pixar-style movie, and indeed it is a riff on (ripoff of?) Pixar. However, it was done by the newly minted Skydance Animation, which had hired former Pixar bigwig John Lasseter, to be released by Paramount. You know the drill by now. Apple bought the rights from Paramount so that they could do big-tent animation. Instead, “Luck” kind of flopped. It didn’t even get an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.

“CODA” had yet to win Best Picture when Apple put its full weight behind the production of “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” Based on a true story, this war dramedy also had Peter Farrelly attached to it in the wake of “Green Book” winning Best Picture. Of course, “Green Book” winning Best Picture so shook Hollywood that the takeaway was, “A movie like that can’t win Best Picture ever again.” Which is to say, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” was a real blip on the radar.

Apple had two dramedies at the same TIFF in 2022! This was certainly a smaller, less-showy movie than “Beer Run,” though. Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke play estranged half-brothers reuniting in the wake of their father’s death. So, you know, about as generic as a festival dramedy gets. Indeed, “Raymond & Ray” was not well received critically, and it did not make much of an impact for Apple TV.

“Causeway” did make a splash, though. This is the 2022 film that got Apple an Oscar nomination. Not for Jennifer Lawrence, who produced it as a serious project to star in. Instead, Brian Tyree Henry scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination. That put “Causeway” on the map for casual film enthusiasts and probably drew more people to Apple TV than “Beer Run” and “Raymond & Ray” combined.

This is a musical “Christmas Carol” adaptation starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds that didn’t get bad reviews, and yet we feel like it didn’t really have a moment. Even during the holiday season in 2022, we’re trying to recall how much, if at all, we heard talk of “Spirited.” Maybe that is a real sign of just where Ferrell and Reynolds’ careers were at the time.

Whoops, in multiple ways, for Apple. When Apple won a bidding war in 2020 for this Oscar bait drama starring Will Smith as a man who runs away from slavery, the executives and assorted bigwigs were probably thinking, “We’ll be the ones with the film that wins Will Smith his Oscar.” Then, a couple of things happened. One, Smith won Best Actor for 2021’s “King Richard,” so there was no way he ever was going to win for “Emancipation.” Two, the night he won that award, he also slapped Chris Rock on stage like a lunatic, squandering decades of goodwill in one moment. By the end of 2022, Apple was sneaking “Emancipation” onto its streaming service and biting the bullet on taking that loss.

A crime thriller built out of an A24 and Apple Film collaboration that is told from the separate perspectives of the main characters? With Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, and John Lithgow in the cast? Sounds promising. It’s fine, which may be why it’s not well-remembered. “Sharper” isn’t the kind of movie you recommend to people (other than lovers of the genre in question), but it’s also not the kind of movie you complain to people about.

Given the craven I.P. mining that has consumed Hollywood, you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Wait, they made a ‘Tetris’ movie?” Fret not; this is not some movie about, like, sentient blocks or what have you. No, it’s a based-on-a-true-story thriller (with a solid amount of wry comedy) about the quest to get the rights to “Tetris” away from the clutches of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It’s not accurate down to the last detail, but it’s an unexpectedly good story.

And from the surprisingly good “Tetris,” we go to a movie that sits in the pit that the romantic comedy fell into. People were intrigued enough about a romcom starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas that this movie drew a lot of viewers, but it’s pretty much uniformly considered absolute garbage. The complaint of, “Why does every comedy movie have somebody with a gun in it now?” is front and center in “Ghosted,” and this may be the worst film on Apple TV.

“Al Gore’s daughter and her current husband, the guy from OK Go, directed a period piece comedy about the Beanie Babies craze” is a real thing that happened. We will note that Kristin Gore was a writer on “Futurama” (when it was a good show), so it’s not like she’s shown herself incapable as a writer. She also co-directed “The Beanie Bubble,” though, and while this could have been a fun dark comedy, it’s just kind of a shrug.

John Carney, the guy who makes small dramedies about musicians, was at it again with “Flora and Son.” Of his films, though, this one made the least impact. Eve Hewson plays a single mom who takes an old guitar out of the trash to try to give her estranged teenage son some direction in life. This was yet another case of Apple winning a Sundance bidding war, but it was not another “CODA” in terms of success, though the movie was well-received.

Hmm…how to parse the success of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” As a film, it’s really good, so we’ll start there. Apple also got itself the cachet of working with Martin Scorsese, as a venerated living director as there is, and backed a prestige drama with a massive budget. Unlike Netflix, Apple was down to give “Killers of the Flower Moon” a theatrical release, which brought in over $150 million. It also got 10 Oscar nominations. On the other hand, it wasn’t received as classic Scorsese, and it won zero of those 10 Oscars. All told, though, Apple wanted to play in the big leagues on the Oscar front and get in good with an iconic director, and that worked out.

Of course, going into a drama not known enough to even be forgotten right after “Flower Moon” probably bolsters the idea that one was a big success for Apple TV. Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, and Jeremy Allen White were all sufficiently known by 2023 as to not have any of them be a discovery in this movie. There is honestly nothing interesting to say about “Fingernails.” Actual fingernails are a more interesting topic.

Ahh, now here’s a big Oscar-y swing and a miss we can sink our teeth (or fingernails, if you prefer) into. In the same year, Apple took two big swings on Oscar-winning directors making historical epics. Ridley Scott delivered a bombastic biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte. “Napoleon” was received more lukewarmly than “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but it actually did better at the box office.

“Every comedy needs a gun” rears its inane head once again. To be fair, do you expect anything less from a Mark Wahlberg vehicle? Wahlberg plays an unremarkable family man who – surprise! – used to be a government assassin. A bunch of dumb stuff happens. The kind of people who watch Mark Wahlberg movies watched this, but that’s not a small audience, to be fair to Apple.

The biggest-picture version of this plot of “Argylle” offers promise. A mild-mannered, reclusive author finds herself pulled into the world of espionage because her most-recent novel turned out to hew too closely to reality. Plus, the cast of this movie is impressive on paper. This is very much an “on paper” movie, though. In execution, “Argylle” was lacking, which is perhaps why it ended up getting dumped into theaters in February before hitting Apple TV.

Apple grabbed the rights to “Fancy Dance,” assuming they would be able to tout it as starring Best Actress winner Lily Gladstone. That is speculation, but it makes sense. This is a small drama that was at Sundance in 2023, the same year “Killers of the Flower Moon” came out. In February 2024, right before the Oscars, Apple bought the rights to “Fancy Dance.” Then, Emma Stone won Best Actress. So, if you tossed aside “Fancy Dance,” you are likely hearing it for the first time.

A period piece romantic comedy with two proper movie stars (Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum), apparently “Fly Me to the Moon” tested well enough with audiences that Apple opted to give it a theatrical release. They also went heavy on the promotion, as this is one of the Apple movies we recall seeing marketing for as much as any. Then, well, the reviews were mixed, and the box office was lacking. The effort was appreciated, though.

Damon and Affleck, back together! Let’s just overlook the fact that it’s Casey, and not Ben! Casey, to be fair, is as strong an actor as his brother, and Doug Liman is no slouch when it comes to action. He’s directed such films as “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” This one, though, didn’t really make a big impact. It just sort of came and went, perhaps simply filling out Apple TV’s back catalog of films (and adding a couple more famous faces to said catalog).

Speaking of adding famous faces to a back catalog. “Wolfs” reunited George Clooney and Brad Pitt in a movie that really tried to capture the same mood as the “Ocean’s” films. Originally, it was going to get a theatrical release, but then Apple decided just to make it a streaming film. In a way, that worked, because reported “Wolfs” became the most-watched movie on Apple TV. In another way, that play proved a mistake, as it alienated the key figures involved, including director Jon Watts, who expressly said he opted against a considered sequel because he was annoyed that Apple pulled the rug out from under him on the theatrical release.

A prestige World War II movie, with a racial component, starring Oscar darling Saoirse Ronan? “Blitz” was in the early Oscar predictions conversations for 2024, but “early” is the key word there. That Oscar buzz fizzled out, and it ended up with zero nominations. That was a real blow to the bulletproofness of Ronan. 

The year 2025 is when Apple Film really had a proper movie slate. Oscar plays, well-known directors, blockbusters, dumb popcorn fodder, and even a sequel. If “The Gorge” is any of those things, it’s dumb popcorn fodder. Apple didn’t give this one, a sci-fi story starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, any theatrical run. That probably speaks to a sense that the reaction would be muted, but apparently a ton of people checked it out on Apple TV, so it worked in that sense.

This is the kind of movie made less often these days, so it is nice to see a studio like Apple using its largesse to deliver this movie, even if it is a C+ at best. John Krasinski and Natalie Portman star. Guy Ritchie directs. It’s a globetrotting adventure story not based on existing material. “Fountain of Youth” is the kind of movie that lives on streaming services these days, but Apple TV needs more films like this for its catalog.

Domhnall Gleeson is in this and in “Fountain of Youth.” His first name remains hard to remember how to spell. That’s about the most interesting thing we have to say about “Echo Valley,” which stars Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. Can’t win ‘em all, Apple.

Apple won this one, though, in a major way. Many scoffed at “F1.” Is Brad Pitt a movie star anymore? Will a movie about F1 really get American audiences into theaters? Owing to the big budget, people had their knives out for “F1.” Then it turned out to be a massive hit, generating $634.1 million worldwide. That’s before considering how many subscriptions to Apple TV it may have, well, driven. Plus, “F1” was well-received, and it got a Best Picture nomination. A smash success. Also, a good movie.

Then, there’s “Highest 2 Lowest.” Spike Lee and Denzel Washington working together again? Well, the film’s brief run at the box office was a disaster, and it didn’t get a single Oscar nomination. It’s solid, but it just struggled to find an audience. Hey, Apple gets to have a Spike Lee and Denzel Washington joint. That’s not a bad idea.

Brett Goldstein had been working on “All of You” for years. Finally, he and his co-writer and the film’s director, William Bridges, got it made. After it debuted at TIFF, Apple bought the rights. It’s not unrelated Goldstein found an American audience through his role in “Ted Lasso,” an Apple TV show.

“The Lost Bus” is weird to parse because it delivers, like, the bare minimum to be considered a success. A true story with a lot of stakes and stress, the film got some buzz, but not a ton. It got good reviews, but always with a caveat. “The Lost Bus” got Oscar attention…in that it got one nomination for Best Visual Effects. You watch it once, you find it solid, and you contentedly move on.

Why? The hook of “The Family Plan,” which is not a good movie, is that Wahlberg’s family didn’t know he used to be a government assassin. What juice does a sequel have? Did Apple want to be in the Wahlberg business that badly? Again, why? He seems pretty unpleasant, all things considered!

Here’s the thing about Jonah Hill: He’s a bad director. Like, remarkably bad. He co-wrote “Outcome”; he’s got a supporting role in it, and he directed it. This might be the worst Apple TV movie? It’s definitely the one that is most likely to get on your nerves.

Umm, so, in 1997, apparently John Travolta wrote a children’s book. It’s about planes and family and stuff. He produced, wrote, directed, and has a role in this film adaptation of his book. His daughter is in the movie. Is it only an hour long? This is weird. We don't know why this happened.

As to not end on John Travolta’s bizarre vanity project, we’ll throw in Apple TV’s late July release of “The Dink.” It’s a sports comedy about pickleball starring Jake Johnson. “The Dink” seems a little tongue-in-cheek, and pickleball is still just relevant enough for this movie not to feel wholly late to the game. It seems designed to be a breezy at-home watch on some late-summer night. Which, you know, is what a proper streaming service needs to have in the mix.