One of 2025’s very best movies is finally available to stream at home

The Oscar-winning film has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and has been compared to The Godfather.

Streaming via NOW and directed by Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux), the three-hour-plus historical drama epic revolves around Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and visionary architect László Tóth (a stunning Adrien Brody). This is as he arrives in the US in 1947, in the hopes of rebuilding his life and his work there.

Initially living in poverty, Tóth eventually meets the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (a never better Guy Pearce), who recognises his talent for building.

Van Buren commissions the architect to build a grand community centre in Philadelphia, a sprawling process that will take years.

Initially delighted by the work, Tóth comes to realise that power and legacy "come at a heavy cost".

The Brutalist was co-written by Brady and Mona Fastvold (The Testament of Ann Lee). It also features amongst its ensemble cast Alessandro Nivola (The Many Saints of Newark), Emma Laird (Mayor of Kingstown), Felicity Jones (Rogue One), Isaach de Bankolé (Ghost Dog), Joe Alwyn (Conversations with Friends), Raffey Cassidy (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and Stacy Martin (The Childhood of a Leader).

The movie's massive in-scope story about the struggles immigrants and artists can face - combined with the big, bold direction and the stunning performances - results in a film that feels as earth-shaking and towering as the monument Tóth is hired to erect.

It's no surprise that The Brutalist earned rave reviews - 93% on Rotten Tomatoes - and was nominated for 10 Oscars.

The movie won three: Best Actor for Brody, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.

You can check out some of the glowing reviews for The Brutalist below:

Daily Telegraph (UK): "As a state-of-the-US historical epic, it boasts all the thematic heft of Once Upon a Time in America or There Will Be Blood. But it’s also acted with the colour and fizz of a classical Hollywood comic drama."

Empire: "Brady Corbet’s seismic drama reaches for the sky as it surveys the soul of a man and a nation. There will be Oscars."

The Hollywood Reporter: "Brody has seldom been better, bringing tremendous gravitas but also a pain that gnaws at László’s prideful sense of self, one of purpose and destiny. It’s a towering performance; seeing the architect treated like garbage is crushing."

Independent (UK): "It’s not a film to devour, but to be devoured by. There’s such a weight to it that it creates its own field of gravity."

Little White Lies: "In three-and-a-half hours, Corbet deconstructs the myth of America with scalpel precision, working in the same sharp geometric lines as his protagonist."

Screen Rex: "It's hard not to be taken with The Brutalist. It’s a film that jostles comparisons to cinematic yardsticks like Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood, The Godfather, and Oppenheimer."

Vanity Fair: "Brody and Pearce vividly manifest Corbet’s arguments about the clash between art and money, between the old world and the new. When they are blazing away on screen together, The Brutalist swells to epic size."

Ahead of the film's release in cinemas last January, JOE interviewed Brody, Corbet, Jones and Pearce about the film.

It's co-writer and director told us that despite The Brutalist's vast acclaim, the movie faced a lot of challenges to get made.

Partly this was down to Covid-19. The movie was initially announced in 2020 with a much different cast before the pandemic caused shooting delays, resulting in an actor shake-up.

As Corbet revealed to JOE: "It was predominantly Covid that really kept taking us down. I mean, we got kneecapped at least three times, maybe four.

"I actually travelled somewhere to start pre-production, and then it would all fall apart again for various reasons."

But there were other challenges as well. In his winning speech at the Golden Globe for Best Drama, Corbet opened up about how he was told The Brutalist was "undistributable", "that no one would come out and see it" and that it "wouldn't work".

When JOE spoke to Corbet, we asked him what specific issues people had with the movie, as well as when in the development of The Brutalist that this happened.

"Throughout the entire process," the co-writer and director confessed, before adding:

"There was a period where the film was submitted to the 20 to 30 companies that tend to finance films in this kind of $10-15 million range, which was the amount of money that we were looking for.

"But essentially, really everyone passed on the film and then throughout the process, there were a lot of folks that were, let's just say, 'very concerned' about the film's runtime and I think that people were just concerned about the film in general because it doesn't really fit into a box that tidily.

"That said, we had many extraordinary champions and I am forever indebted to my producers on this project who produced the film alongside me because they never wavered. They always had the courage of their convictions.

"I would just like to take the opportunity to really prop them up because they took big big risks, very big personal risks financially speaking.

"I'm mostly just thrilled that for them and for the rest of my team that those risks on this particular project have paid off."

Also, during the conversation - when discussing the difficulties The Brutalist faced getting made - Corbet said:

"Every film is so challenging to make right now. If you're making a 90-minute movie that is considerably less ambitious than this one, it's still an extraordinary challenge to get off the ground.

"So when this comes across a lot of folks' desks that are there to try to suss out on behalf of their company what could possibly be successful, they tend to make decisions that are pretty risk averse in an effort to protect their jobs - which is easy enough to understand."

Corbet also said he finds it interesting that, despite this, the films that were a part of last season's awards conversation were "all pretty radical".

He stated at the time: "I think that it's extraordinary to see that the majority of the movies are independent, the majority of the films are original, and the stuff which is the contrary has been sort of iced out.

"Clearly, audiences are thirsty for films that have a signature, that are unique, that are daring. And yet I think that's anti-intuitive for a lot of the folks that are empowered to greenlight these projects."

Speaking about what he would like to see more of in Hollywood, he stated: "I personally think that we should be making more daring films for somewhat less money - a reasonable amount of money, where people are actually paid what they're worth.

"But spending hundreds of millions of dollars over and over again, unless it is a very very special project, is largely unnecessary and excessive."

The Brutalist has been made available to stream in Ireland and the UK via NOW.

The version of the movie on streaming contains a one-minute interval at its midway point, as opposed to the 15-minute interval that was a part of its cinema showings.