A British publication put together its fifteen best films on Disney+ earlier this year. Eight of them had nothing whatsoever to do with Disney.
Alien was on it. So was Heat. Titanic, Little Miss Sunshine, The Devil Wears Prada, Man on Fire, Sunshine, Rye Lane. Not one of them is a Disney film, a Pixar film, a Marvel film or a Star Wars film.
They are all on Disney+ in Britain, and most subscribers have no idea, because they looked at the mouse on the logo and drew a reasonable conclusion.
Why the catalogue is not what you think
Disney bought 20th Century Fox. That brought the Fox library, Searchlight, and FX with it — decades of adult film and drama that does not sit comfortably next to Frozen.
In Britain, all of it is carried under a tab called Star. There is no separate branding, no Fox logo, nothing to tell you that opening it leads somewhere entirely different. It is simply one more row to scroll past, and almost everybody does.
So that is where this article starts, because you already know about The Lion King.
The adult films hiding under Star
Heat (1995)
The definitive cops-and-robbers film, and the one every heist picture since has been quietly copying. Pacino and De Niro, one coffee-shop conversation that justifies the whole thing, and a shootout in downtown Los Angeles that still has not been bettered. Three hours, and it earns every minute.
Alien (1979)
Still frightening, nearly fifty years on, because it is a horror film that happens to be set in space rather than a space film with a monster in it. The creature is barely on screen. That is the point.
Titanic (1997)
Easy to be snobbish about and very hard to switch off once it has started. One of the largest films ever made in budget, scale and legacy, and the chemistry between the leads is the reason it works rather than the ship.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
A family drives a failing camper van across America so a small girl can enter a beauty pageant nobody wants her to win. Dark, warm, extremely funny, and the ending is one of the best in any comedy.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Perfectly paced, irresistibly entertaining, and the performance that defined Meryl Streep’s second act. It should not hold up as well as it does.
Man on Fire (2004)
Denzel Washington and Tony Scott both at full stretch. A bodyguard in Mexico City, a kidnapping, and a revenge film that goes considerably further than you expect. Violent, stylised and genuinely moving in places.
Sunshine (2007)
Danny Boyle sends a crew to restart the sun. The first two thirds are among the most beautiful science fiction ever shot, the last third divides people entirely, and the score is extraordinary.
Rye Lane (2023)
The best British romantic comedy in at least a decade. Two people walk around south London for a day. That is the whole plot and it is wonderful.
The hidden gems nobody watches
Different category: good films that never found their audience, and all of them Disney-owned, which means they are not going anywhere.
- Millions — Danny Boyle again, and his gentlest film by a distance. Two boys find a bag of money shortly before Britain joins the euro. Funnier and sadder than that sounds.
- Queen of Katwe — a girl from a Kampala slum becomes a chess champion. It should be sentimental and it is not.
- Big Hero 6 — the most underrated Disney animation of the last twenty years. San Fransokyo is a genuinely inventive piece of world-building, and Baymax deserves the affection he gets.
- Basil the Great Mouse Detective — 1986, Sherlock Holmes with mice, and far better than anybody expects.
- A Goofy Movie — a father-and-son road trip that has quietly become the one nineties Disney film people in their thirties are most sentimental about.
The ones you came for
Fair enough. The core libraries are deep and they are the reason the service exists.
Animation
The Lion King is Hamlet with lions and one of the best animated films ever made. Lilo and Stitch is arguably Disney’s finest work since the millennium and much stranger than its reputation. Finding Nemo and the Toy Story films are the Pixar high-water marks, and Toy Story is the rare trilogy that got better as it went. Turning Red is the best of the recent Pixar run. Hoppers arrived in 2026 and has been described, not unfairly, as Avatar for children.
Marvel
Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame are the peak of it, and watching them without the forty hours before is a strange experience. Our guide to every Marvel film and series in order sorts that out, including which films Britain is missing.
Star Wars
All twelve theatrical films, in their revised editions rather than the original cuts. Our guide to every Star Wars title in order covers that and three sensible ways to watch.
The advantage nobody mentions
Most of what is good on Disney+ will still be there next year.
Disney owns it. The animation, the Pixar run, Marvel, Star Wars and a great deal of the Fox library are not licensed in from somebody else, so they do not expire the way a Netflix recommendation does.
That is a genuine advantage and nobody states it. A list of the best films on Netflix UK is a perishable document. This one mostly is not. The exception is some of the licensed Fox material, which can move for the reasons our guide to why titles move between UK services explains.
One thing to sort out before you start
Alien and Heat are in the same app as Bluey.
Disney+ handles this reasonably well, with age filtering and separate children’s profiles, and the controls are among the better implementations. But they only hold if the adult profiles are locked with a PIN, because otherwise a child simply switches profile and the filtering is decorative.
Worth five minutes before you leave anybody alone with it. Our guides to parental controls and the best streaming service for families in the UK go through it.
Where the film catalogue falls short
- Nothing arrives weekly. Disney+ adds films in clusters around its own releases. Between them, the catalogue barely moves, which is why it suits rotating rather than holding. Our comparison of Disney+ and Netflix makes that case.
- World cinema is thin. Almost nothing outside English-language film. For that, BFI Player or MUBI, as our guide to where to watch classic films in the UK sets out.
- The interface buries Star. Which is the reason this article exists.
- No signposting of what is new. Disney+ is poor at telling you something has been added.
Common questions
Are there adult films on Disney+ UK?
Yes, a great many. Alien, Heat, Titanic, Man on Fire and much of the 20th Century Fox and Searchlight catalogue sit under the Star tab.
What is Star on Disney+?
The tab carrying Disney’s adult content in the UK, mostly from the Fox, Searchlight and FX libraries acquired with 20th Century Fox. It is the half of the service most subscribers never open.
Do films leave Disney+?
Disney-owned films do not. Some licensed Fox material can move. That makes Disney+ unusually stable compared with Netflix UK.
What is the best film on Disney+ UK?
Heat, if you want the best film. The Lion King, if you want the best Disney film. Rye Lane, if you want the one you have not seen.
Is Disney+ only for children?
No, and that misconception is the single biggest reason subscribers get poor value from it. Open the Star tab.
Is Avatar on Disney+?
Yes. It came across with the Fox acquisition, along with the rest of that library.
The short version
Open the Star tab. Alien, Heat, Titanic, Little Miss Sunshine and a decade of Searchlight sit behind it, and most subscribers have never looked. Then try Millions, Queen of Katwe and Big Hero 6, which are good and overlooked. And unlike a Netflix list, almost none of this will have disappeared by next year.
For the television side, see our guide to the best series on Disney+ UK, and for the service itself, our complete guide to Disney+ UK.
