With the calendar turning 2023 this month, a new cyclical start is a good time to dive into history - to remind us how things have and haven’t changed - and social relationships - to remind us of how things can (and sometimes, maybe cannot) change. These seven films streaming on Hulu this month explore humans’ potential to make a mess, come together, and chart different kinds of histories and progress through individual, and collective living. This month, let’s get into what action - and stasis - make.

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A League Of Their Own (1992)

Geena Davis and Tom Hanks in 'A League of Their Own' (1992).
Columbia Pictures

Available: January 1 | Director: Penny Marshall | Writer: Kim Wilson, Kelly Candaele, Lowell Ganz

Cast: Geena Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell

The Illinois-based Rockford Peaches, the team depicted in the film, is one of the founding members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In the early 1940s, the league was formed to keep up public interest in baseball by employing women players, since the majority of men players were overseas in World War II. With authentic personalities and relationship dynamics between characters, the film is a historic and emotional story.

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The Breakfast Club (1985)

the-breakfast-club-library-20th-century-films-to-see

Available: January 1 | Writer & Director: John Hughes

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy

The Breakfast Club is one of the finest contemporary, American films that offer an education not only in the we-are-more-similar-than-we-are-different philosophy, but a film that establishes, through an excellent script and ensemble cast acting, what those core feelings, and values that come from sentiment, are that bring us together or threaten to move us spaces apart.

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The King of Comedy (1982)

Rupert Pupkin, played by Robert De Niro, and Jerry Langford, played by Jerry Lewis, hysterically laughing in The King of Comedy
Image via 20th Century Fox

Available: January 1 | Director: Martin Scorsese | Writer: Paul D. Zimmerman

Cast: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard

The King of Comedy is a meta-dark comedy set in the show business industry. Robert De Niro plays Rupert Pupkin, a man whose struggle is not so much towards fame as it is about the clarity needed to see oneself and one’s goals clearly, an artist or another vocation, notwithstanding. While the comedy is here, so is the darkness of drama: behind that need to be applauded and accepted, what remains, or is exposed?

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The Proposal (2009)

Sandra Bullock proposes to Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal
Image Via Touchstone Pictures

Available: January 1| Director: Anne Fletcher | Writer: Peter Chiarelli

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Betty White

Filmed in oceanside Rockport, Massachusetts as a stand-in for Sitka, Canada, The Proposal leans on Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds’ superb comedic acting, alongside a warm-hearted, quirky ensemble cast. Their chemistry is excellent. The two are a fit from the start, and we watch them struggle, ala the delicious, messy unraveling of a rom-com. Plus, it’s really fun to watch Bullock’s Type A overdrive morph into where she feels best but has been scared to go: home.

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Snatch (2000)

Snatch-Jason-Statham-Brad-Pitt
Image Via Sony Pictures Releasing

Available: January 1 | Writer & Director: Guy Ritchie

Cast: Brad Pitt, Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones, Benicio del Toro

Snatch follows a diverse group of characters, including bookmakers, jewelers, promoters, and robbers, on their journey to recover a stolen diamond. A crime story made comedic, due to an often slapstick mayhem the group creates, and encounters, the film tracks in fast dialogue, friendship, and enough mystery to keep crime fans interested in the human drama. If you enjoy the Ocean Eleven franchise, give Snatch a try.

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One Fine Day (1996)

Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney in One Fine Day
Image via 20th Century Studios

Available: January 1

Director: Michael Hoffman

Writer: Terrel Seltzer, Ellen Simon

Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, George Clooney, Anna Maria Horsford

Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney make an adorable anti-pair in this film as single parents with one child each, both of them on work deadlines for the day. In retrospect (the film came out in 1996), the film is making understated commentary about the very real challenges single parents face when they do not have support networks. The film, though, takes the theme as comedy, but there are moments when the reality of single parenthood lay bare.

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Love, Gilda (2018)A still of Gilda Radner in the documentary Love Gilda

Available: January 31 | Director: Lisa D’Apolito

Love, Gilda follows Jewish-American comedienne Gilda Radner, the first person hired as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. Voiced by present-day comedians and comediennes, Radner’s notes come to new life by being read aloud. In it are her reflections on the industry, her work, and her own life, together revealing a profile of one of the most influential and talented contemporary artists in the comedy profession, especially for the women who would come after her.