The great conundrum of the streaming age is that dozens, if not hundreds, of movies are available at your fingertips to stream—but the best movies on Netflix can be extremely hard to decide on. Let this list be your guide as you navigate Netflix’s catalog of feature films. hese 25 movies feature something for everyone—comedy, adult drama, Oscar winners, animation, Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington, Greta Gerwig. From some of the best movies of recent years to a few stone-cold classics, you’re sure to find plenty worth checking out without wasting half your life on a never-ending scroll.
Amadeus
Release Year: 1984
Director: Milos Forman
Notable Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Simon Callow, Christine Ebersole
The Oscars of the 1980s have a reputation for stuffiness that is sometimes deserved, sometimes not. But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking Milos Forman’s adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play about a reckless young talent named Mozart is anything but a kick. Hulce gives his best performance as the title character, whose utter heedlessness in the face of the talent he’d been bestowed makes for the perfect counterpart for a jealous mentor. F. Murray Abraham won the Oscar for his role as the jealous and petty Salieri, a perfect instance of a villain taking over a film from its hero. This being Forman’s second Oscar win for best picture, it’s fun to compare Amadeus to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which only recently left Netflix. Hopefully you were able to make this double feature happen.
American Graffiti
Release Year: 1973
Director: George Lucas
Notable Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Harrison Ford
Nostalgia has never been quite so powerful on film as it was in this 1970s movie about a group of friends in 1962, whiling away the last night of the adolescent real summer of their lives. On the other side of this night wait jobs, responsibilities, and Vietnam. It’s amazing to watch George Lucas (along with producer Francis Ford Coppola) play out all these humanistic storylines now that he’s so eternally tied to the space opera of the Star Wars universe, but American Graffiti really pulls you into its vibe of characters yearning to crest that hill, not knowing the value of the heedlessness they’re currently enjoying. Standout performances by Dreyfuss and Phillips especially, but it’s Cindy Williams — Shirley from Laverne & Shirley herself — who gives the film’s strongest turn.
Boyz n the Hood
Release Year: 1991
Director: John Singleton
Notable Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Morris Chestnut
The late John Singleton became the first Black nominee for the Oscar for best director (as well as the youngest nominee in history) for this film about friends living in South Central Los Angeles. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Tre, a teenager living with his father (Laurence Fishburne) in Crenshaw. The film deals with the way gang culture impacts the lives of Tre and his friends, played by Morris Chestnut and Ice Cube. With Regina King and Angela Bassett in supporting roles, the film is a collection of some of the best Black talent of the ’90s. It’s a landmark film, one of the best movies on Netflix right now, with some heart-wrenching, career-best performances.
Burning
Release Year: 2018
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Notable Cast: Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, Steven Yeun
Director Lee Chang-dong crafts an insidious psychological thriller out of what first seems to be a story of young love. Yoo Ah-in plays a young man who falls for a girl (Jeon Jong-seo) shortly before she leaves South Korea for a trip to Africa and returns with… not exactly a boyfriend, but he’s played by Steven Yeun, so you can see why Yoo’s character would feel threatened. What follows is a game of psychological paranoia, unreliable perceptions, and possible murder. Yeun in particular gets to dig into his role as a plausible villain, making cryptic threats (or are they?) seeming unnervingly charming. It’s one of his best performances.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Release Year: 2022
Director: Daniels
Notable Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong
We’ve had a year to let the fervor of EEAAO‘s best picture run die down. Now you can just appreciate what a fun, inventive, and surprisingly emotional movie this is. The Daniels have such a great touch for absurdity that’s grounded in real character beats—which means every time that this movie threatens to fly off into weightlessness with is jokes about hot-dog fingers or Racacoonie, there’s a reminder that the family relationships at work are what’s really driving this story. That said, it’s the spectacle that separates Everything Everywhere from everything else. It’s also not every day that you can watch three Oscar-winning performances in a single movie. Michelle Yeoh especially is giving career-crowning work.
Frances Ha
Release Year: 2012
Director: Noah Baumbach
Notable Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen
One of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s earliest collaborations as screenwriters (Baumbach directed) was this contemporary black-and-white story about a young woman (Gerwig) trying to deal with the fact that she’s seemingly the last person her age to have figured her life out. In what would become a hallmark of Gerwig’s work to come, she manages to pull off story beats and character traits that might otherwise come off as twee or annoying by committing hard to finding insight and compassion in Frances’s story. The supporting cast is killer, with Mickey Sumner as Frances’s estranged best friend and Michael Zegen as her star-crossed would-be love interest taking place of prominence. But Adam Driver, Grace Gummer, and Charlotte d’Amboise get great scenes to play as well.
Girls Trip
Release Year: 2017
Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Notable Cast: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Queen Latifah
Without even looking at your playlists, I can tell that you don’t have enough comedy in your streaming diet. So I’m prescribing this 2017 ensemble comedy about four friends on a trip to the Essence Fest in New Orleans. At the time, Tiffany Haddish got a boatload of praise for her off-the-wall performance, miming sex acts with grapefruits and talking about putting drugs in her booty hole. She even got Oscar buzz. It’s a wild performance, but the praise overshadowed the rest of this stellar ensemble—especially Regina Hall, who might be Hollywood’s most underrated actress. Watch and see if I’m right.
Homecoming
Release Year: 2019
Director: Beyoncé
Notable Cast: Beyoncé
If you weren’t able to catch Renaissance during its theatrical run, or you did and you need to keep that energy going, Netflix has Beyoncé’s other brilliant concert film ready and waiting for you. Homecoming presents an intimate look at Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance, one of the defining events of a career that has not exactly lacked for defining events. No Beyoncé fan needs this blurb to tell them what this film offers, but if you’ve never seen Beyoncé perform live and want to see the kind of epic-scale spectacle that one artist is capable of, check this one out.
Inside Man
Release Year: 2006
Director: Spike Lee
Notable Cast: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer
Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a heist movie, and Inside Man delivers in a big way. Spike Lee’s clever direction always leaves the viewer (as well as Denzel Washington’s cop character) with the uneasy feeling that there’s something about this bank heist that they’re not quite grasping. Clive Owen has engineered his plan with Swiss watch precision, but there’s something missing. It’s a thrill to try and figure out what that might be, especially once Jodie Foster enters the frame as an amoral fixer out to keep her employer’s secrets safe. When you’re Spike Lee, you get to cast from the very top shelf, and you can’t ask for more than a cast including Washington, Owen, Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. This is old-school ’70s-style filmmaking at its finest.
It Follows
Release Year: 2014
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Notable Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto
One of the most terrifying horror movies of the last decade—full stop—in addition to one of the best horror movies on Netflix. Writer and director David Robert Mitchell gets maximum creativity out of a micro budget in this movie about a curse that passes from person to person when they have sex. That curse comes as a creature that can take the form of any person and is visible only to its intended victim as it relentlessly pursues them. The simplicity of the monster’s motivations is matched only by its various guises, from an old woman, to a terrifyingly tall man, to someone you know. There are levels of metaphor at work here, but Mitchell never lets any kind of thematic message outweigh the gut-level terror.
The Killer
Release Year: 2023
Director: David Fincher
Notable Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell
David Fincher, the meticulous director behind The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is back with the story of a meticulous assassin whose carefully planned hit job goes awry. The assassin is played by Michael Fassbender, who is a gift to understated intensity and to bucket hats. This one is incredibly violent but also frequently darkly funny, and it’s hard to pass up a movie that has one great Tilda Swinton scene.
King Richard
Release Year: 2021
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Notable Cast: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Tony Goldwyn
Forget everything else about the 2022 Oscars, and just remember that Will Smith won for a career-highlight performance as Richard Williams, the determined and stubborn father/coach of Venus and Serena Williams. Given what a character the real-life Williams is, Smith’s performance was always going to tower over the rest of the film. But don’t sleep on a stellar array of supporting performance, led by the Oscar-nominated Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Oracene “Brandy” Williams. Demi Singleton and especially Saniyya Sidney are incredibly self-possessed as Serena and Venus, respectively, while Jon Bernthal gives tennis shorts a very good name.
Living
Release Year: 2022
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Notable Cast: Bill Nighy
This is an understated hidden gem that wouldn’t normally jump out at you while scrolling through a menu—but it’s so worth it. It’s based on a 1952 Akira Kurosawa film, which itself was inspired (at least in part) by the Tolstoy story The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and adapted for the screen by the great Kazuo Ishiguro. Bill Nighy stars as a 1950s London gentleman, a mostly unremarkable bureaucrat, who receives a terminal diagnosis. Making the decision to commit suicide rather than fade slowly away, Nighy goes away to a seaside town, and there he spends a lovely evening of conversation, song, and life unencumbered by the concerns of daily life. The story goes on from there, with Nighy giving one of the best performances of his career. The film is far from flashy, but there are bursts of emotion that make it unforgettable.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Release Year: 2022
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Notable Cast: Jenny Slate, Dean Fleischer Camp, Isabella Rossellini,
If you’ve ever seen the online shorts that Slate and Fleischer Camp did for the titular diminutive little shell, you’ve already fallen in love with their pea-sized point of view on the world. In fleshing out a story for a full-length movie, Marcel remains as precocious and observant as ever. But we also get more of a look into their world, including a grandmother, voiced by the great Isabella Rossellini. She’s the embodiment of grace and curiosity, and the familial relationship is one that both actresses and the animators play so well. There’s a childlike simplicity to the way this film looks that sometimes masks just how achingly heartfelt it can be.
May December
Release Year: 2023
Director: Todd Haynes
Notable Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton
Popular fascination with the subjects of trashy tabloid scandals is only one of the many themes at work in Todd Haynes’s new film. Natalie Portman plays an actress whose next role will be a Mary Kay Letourneau figure nearly 20 years after her scandal, so she’s gone to visit this woman (Julianne Moore) and her family in order to research her performance. This one’s been all over year-end top-10 lists and awards ballots, with Portman and Moore delivering some of their best work and Charles Melton giving a true breakthrough performance in what’s easily one of the best new movies on Netflix.
Molly’s Game
Release Year: 2017
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Notable Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong
Who knew that after the worlds of politics, cable news, and Facebook, Aaron Sorkin’s best movie would be about high-stakes poker games? Molly Bloom’s story is a true one, though Sorkin wrestles in his own pet themes of authenticity and honor (Molly’s got both). He also shoehorns in some unwelcome dime-store psychoanalysis about fathers and daughters. But it’s easy to set that aside when the world-building of Molly’s Texas Hold ‘Em empire is done with such panache. Jessica Chastain gives a better performance in this than she does in the movie she won an Oscar for, which isn’t so much a slight against the latter than high praise for the former. And if you’re a Succession fan, you can’t miss Jeremy Strong’s performance as Molly’s deeply vile first boss.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Release Year: 1975
Director: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
Notable Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin
One of the greatest and most quotable films of all time, and easily one of the best comedy films on Netflix, from Britain’s famed Monty Python comedy troupe. This retelling of the Arthurian myth is just nonstop silliness, from clomping around horseless but with coconut sound effects, to French-accented castle guards, to a killer bunny rabbit (“look at the bones!”). With Spamalot back with a Broadway revival, it makes sense that its source material should be back in the zeitgeist as well. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin are at their absolute funniest, and you can’t really ask for better than that.
The Nest
Release Year: 2020
Director: Sean Durkin
Notable Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon
Sean Durkin— who just directed Efron in The Iron Claw—has a knack of bringing spooky vibes to non-spooky stories, and he uses that ability to great effect in The Nest. Law and Coon play a married couple in the ’80s who move to England so Law can make a splash in the markets (he absolutely does not make a splash in the markets). Stranded all day in a half-empty country house, Coon watches her husband fail and her children become strangers to her, which is when the real emotional fireworks start. Coon brings a barbed and combative energy to her character, while Law is fascinating as a man who’s fighting a losing battle with capitalism and the sense of worth he can only get from being a man with money. It’s top-notch psychological drama that sometimes feels like a haunted house movie, only the ghosts are 1980s capitalism.
No Hard Feelings
Release Year: 2023
Director: Gene Stupnitsky
Notable Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman
It’s not exactly a surprise that Jennifer Lawrence turns out to be incredible at broad comedy. But it’s still a hilarious thrill to watch her tear into a role like this one. She plays a Long Island townie who needs to make some extra money, so a rich couple pay her to date their sheltered 19-year-old son so he’s not a completely antisocial disaster when he enters Princeton in the fall. The son is played by breakthrough talent Andrew Barth Feldman, and he and Lawrence have tremendously sweet comedic chemistry with one another in one of the best comedy movies on Netflix. No Hard Feelings rides the line of friend-com and rom-com, but it’s so winning, and Lawrence’s beachfront naked fight scene is worth a stream all on its own.
Oldboy
Release Year: 2003
Director: Park Chan-wook
Notable Cast: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung
Revenge was a dish best served in the most messed-up, psychologically damaging way possible in Park Chan-wook’s groundbreaking film. Park combines the grimy aesthetic of a crime drama with the elaborate cruelty of a horror movie. That, mixed with the twisted psycho-thriller aspect of the twist, makes for a movie that has been often imitated over the last 20 years, but never quite duplicated. (Apologies to Spike Lee’s unfortunately lifeless 2013 remake.) If you don’t know where this movie is headed, do yourself a favor and watch it immediately before you get spoiled.
Shrek
Release Year: 2001
Director: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jensen
Notable Cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow
It’s weird to think we’ve only had Shrek in the culture for less than 25 years. It feels like Shrek has always been with us: as the butt of silly jokes about trolls and swamps, changing the way we all pronounce “donkey,” giving Smash Mouth’s “All Star” eternal life as an earworm. This was such a hit when it debuted that it garnered best picture buzz (and actually won the first-ever Oscar for best animated feature). Now there’s a quaint nostalgia to going back to the beginning, when Shrek met Donkey and fell in love with Fiona. All the fairy-tale jokes were fresh in this one! It’s a perfect stream-and-relax movie.
Something’s Gotta Give
Starting February 1
Release Year: 2003
Director: Nancy Meyers
Notable Cast: Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet
Before everybody started to bully Nancy Meyers for her fancy kitchens, we appreciated her for writing top-notch romantic comedies about people over 50. There’s no better example than this movie, where successful, single playwright Diane Keaton falls for womanizing Jack Nicholson while he’s recuperating in her impeccable Hamptons beach house. Keaton got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her performance, which tilts from righteous to smitten to distraught with precision timing. She and Nicholson make for a perfectly sparky match, and the supporting performances — especially Keanu Reeves as a doctor who’s also into Keaton — are excellent. It’s an impeccable comfort watch, and if you’re very into sweater and pant combos that cover a variety of shades of white, all the better.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Release Year: 2023
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Notable Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman
The sequel to 2018 animated superhero story lives up to the first film’s visual splendor, and in fact goes beyond it. Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) is back again as Spider-Man, hopping interdimensional portals in order to battle the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) and romance Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld). While the live-action Marvel movies are slumping trying to get their own multiverse storyline off of the ground, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s animated multiverse is in full chaotic swing, making for one of the best family movies on Netflix. New voices this time around include Oscar Isaac as Miguel O’Hara, Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk, and Issa Rae as Spider-Woman.
RRR
Release Year: 2022
Director: S.S. Rajamouli
Notable Cast: N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan
This record-breaking Indian action epic was an Oscar winner last year for best original song, thanks to one of the most eye-popping, energetic musical numbers in years: “Naatu Naatu.” And the music is only part of the appeal for this movie, which tells an oversized story about brotherhood and revolution and action scenes where a tiger just comes flying right at the screen. There are set pieces in this movie that will have you breaking out in applause in your living room. In terms of international action blockbusters that have hit big in the United States, this is a singular achievement; nothing else in America is remotely like this film.
The Woman King
Release Year: 2022
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Notable Cast: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega
As the great sage and poet of our time, Ariana DeBose, once put it: “Viola Davis, my woman king.” Truer words have never been spoken. Oscar-winner Viola Davis does indeed play the titular Woman King in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical action drama. The film depicts the real-life story of the Agojie, the all-female warrior battalion who safeguarded the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa during the 17th to 19th centuries. The film is a thrilling action epic, with tremendously staged and photographed battle scenes, bolstered by strong performances by Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, John Boyega, and Sheila Atim. There’s a throwback quality to the film’s commitment to storytelling through action, and Davis is an iconic and powerful presence at the film’s center.
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