5 Disney+ Movies Lighting Up the Stream This Week (October 20

Looking for a good movie to watch this week and just can’t be bothered to endlessly browse Disney+’s massive movie library? Yeah, no one can…except me.

My family loves a mix of light-hearted animated films (to put them in a good mood), sprawling epic adventures (to take them to exotic lands), and, with spooky season fast approaching, weird, even frightening choices. That’s precisely what I have in store for you with this week’s movies to watch on Disney+.

1

Elio

Pixar simply knows how to make beautiful and touching animated films. A lonely 11 year old child Elio He still mourns the loss of his parents and struggles to find his place in the world. He is obsessed with space and aliens and wants nothing more than to be in the universe with them. After Elio sends tons of messages into space, Earth is visited by a peaceful amalgam of alien races known as the Communiverse, who mistake Elio for Earth’s ambassador and teleport him to their massive ship. But the bad guy, Lord Grigon (voiced by Brad Garrett), appears and threatens to blow everyone up, and Elio volunteers to expose him, with the help of Grigon’s adorably squishy son, Gloordon, who becomes Elio’s best friend.

You will like Elioand it will probably make you cry. It has all the feels of most Pixar films, with its childhood themes of loneliness and acceptance, wrapped in a spectacular animated alien world that Disney does so well.

Elio

Release date

June 20, 2025

Runtime

98 minutes

Director

Adrian Molina, Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian

2

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Almost as polarizing as Die hardthe question many ask about Tim Burton’s groundbreaking work The Nightmare Before Christmas is this: is this a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? We can debate it in the comments below, but one thing is certain: the musical, dark fantasy, stop-motion epic is a must-see for both seasons.

Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon and sung by Danny Elfman) is the spooky king of Halloween Town who accidentally stumbles into the magical, festive world of Christmas Town. Enchanted and obsessed, Jack hatches a plan to bring Christmas fun to his own world (by kidnapping Santa) and taking Santa’s place in Christmas Town, instead of delivering horrible and grotesque gifts to all the children. The only one who watches over Jack is Sally (Catherine O’Hara), a rag doll in love with Jack who tries to warn him of the disaster of his idea, in vain.

3

Edward Scissorhands

Another Tim Burton masterpiece, Edward Scissorhands, is, once again, required viewing for spooky season. I’ve always loved it for its satirical critique of the falsity of suburban life, while providing one of the most fascinating and tragic characters in cinematic history. Johnny Depp plays Edward, the unfinished creation of a lonely inventor (Vincent Price) who dies before he can finish, leaving the man-boy pale and leather-clad with razor-sharp blades for fingers. Edward is taken in by the well-meaning Avon Lady, Peg (Dianne Wiest), who takes him home to her pastel-colored neighborhood, where he is eaten alive by its gossipy and treacherous residents, who use him for his talents. Edward Scissorhands is a gothic tale of unrequited love and acceptance, wrapped in shredded black leather.

4

Queen Rock Montreal

I came across Queen Rock Montreal digging through the Disney+ library (my algorithm doesn’t push this kind of content to the forefront), and I’m so glad I did. I’m certainly not a die-hard Queen fan, but I’ve always admired and been in awe of the band and of Freddie Mercury, who was just a once-in-a-lifetime talent. This hour and a half live concert film from 2024 is explosive.

Filmed during a two-night stint at the Montreal Forum during the band’s 1981 “The Game” tour, Queen Rock Montreal has been restored from 35mm footage and upgraded to 4K Ultra HD and IMAX Enhanced formats, and is also presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, if you have supported equipment. It’s a visual and aural experience, as Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon soar through Queen hits like Bohemian Rhapsody, Someone to love, we’ll rock you, And Another one bites the dust.

5

Avatar: The Way of Water

As a huge fan of James Cameron’s monstrous Avatar films, I recently re-watched Avatar: The Way of Water as a sort of preparation for a few things that are going to happen – the first is Fire and Water: making the Avatar films which will be released on Disney+ on November 7, and the second, of course, is the third in the series, Avatar: Fire and Ashwhich is scheduled for theatrical release on December 19.

The way of water is Cameron’s second cinematic world epic, in which Marine-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his partner Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their family are forced to leave their forest home as human colonizers, who want Jake dead, threaten to return. They flee to the ocean world of Metkayina, where they must start over and learn the ways of its inhabitants – it’s literally a reverse fish-out-of-water scenario. But trouble seems to find Jake, as Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), driven by revenge, tracks them down, threatening to destroy the Metkayina.

Told using all the visually stunning CGI techniques that the Avatar films pioneered, The way of water is a feast for the eyes and ears, with emotionally charged performances beautifully delivered in a way that only motion capture can, with actors able to emote with each other as they would in more traditional cinema, making for a truly authentic feel.

Here are some of the best movies to watch on Disney+ this week. There are also plenty of great shows on Disney+, so there’s plenty to keep you entertained.

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