As 2025 winds down, it’s the perfect excuse to catch up on those hidden gem movies you missed—because what better way to recover from your holiday hangover than streaming from your couch?
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We’ve got three picks to make you think, flich with fear, and maybe even ugly cry—sometimes all at once. And yes, all three are available now via a handy streaming service.
Train Dreams
Released just days before the much flashier, much-anticipated final season of Stranger Things, the ethereal Train Dreams was tragically overlooked by mainstream audiences.
Adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella and reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s films, such as The Thin Red Line (1998), Train Dreams explores how even an ordinary life can hold profound depth and quiet wonder. Director Clint Bentley crafts a poignant tale of a simple man whose unassuming existence reveals unexpected richness as it unfolds.
Running just 1 hour and 42 minutes, the film presents a poignant portrait of Robert Grainier (played by a stoic and perfectly cast Joel Edgerton), a logger and railroad worker navigating a life of unexpected depth and beauty in early 20th-century America.
While a film like Forrest Gump tells the sweeping story of a man haphazardly involved in virtually every major pop culture moment of the mid-20th century, Train Dreams goes in the opposite direction. It shows a seemingly ordinary life painted with moments of violence, loss, simple joy, youth, old age, and the mundane. By the end, you’ll feel as though you’ve lived a full life yourself—and maybe learned a lesson or two along the way.
To top it all off, the film ends with the Nick Cave song “Train Dreams,” which is sure to make even the most grit-filled viewer feel like someone is chopping onions nearby as the credits roll.
You can watch the film now on Netflix.
Good Boy
2025 was a great year for horror movies. We had fun stuff like Companion and Weapons, crowd pleasers like Sinners, and even managed to get some old school gothic horror in with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
Yet, a truly unique horror film that may have slipped past even the most die-hard fans stars… a dog.
Good Boy snuck into theaters in October with quite a hook: It’s a haunted-house tale told through the eyes of an adorable dog. But don’t let the cute pooch fool you—this is no ordinary ghost story. Todd (played physically by director Ben Leonberg and voiced by Shane Jensen) takes his trusty retriever, Indy (the director’s actual dog), to a remote house while grappling with a cancer diagnosis. What begins as a standard jump scare horror flick soon becomes a meditation on accepting our own mortality.
In his feature-length debut, Leonberg took on the monumental task of directing a lead who can’t speak and has no thumbs: his own dog. The editing process, which took three years, resulted in a remarkably expressive canine performance. Indy is immediately empathetic, and clever editing uses his simplest glances and movements to suggest he’s seeing things that go bump (or bark) in the night.
You can catch Good Boy now on AMC+ and Shudder.
Sovereign
Finally, our last pick sees a beloved sitcom star and a prolific child actor take on surprising turns in a sobering crime thriller.
Loosely based on true events, Sovereign follows single father Jerry (Nick Offerman) as he indoctrinates his son Joe (Jacob Tremblay) into the sovereign citizen movement, rejecting laws as mere suggestions and pursuing “true freedom.” As Jerry’s beliefs deepen, they clash with a police chief (Dennis Quaid) devoted to upholding the very laws Jerry seeks to dismantle.
Judging by the thumbnail and poster art—grim-faced leads brandishing firearms—you might mistake Sovereign for a classic geezer teaser, the kind of movie where Liam Neeson grumbles, creaks, and effortlessly takes down dudes a quarter of his age.
However, the film (which dropped back in June) features intense, emotionally charged scenes between the leads along with smart political commentary from writer/director Christian Swegal.
Offerman, known for his role as the gruff but lovable Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, plays against type. Here, he plays a menacing, desperate, and hypocritical character. Between this and recent dramatic turns in shows like Devs and The Last of Us, it’s clear he has serious chops.
Meanwhile, Jacob Tremblay—who seems to have grown up overnight since 2015’s Room—is now a teen. His portrayal of Joe, who just wants to fit in but is constantly derailed by his father, is emotionally nuanced and quietly powerful, making the film’s final act all the more of a gut punch.
Sovereign is streaming on Hulu.