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Last Updated: April 23rd
The Netflix name has meant many things during the company’s relatively short existence: a source for DVDs by mail, a pioneer of online streaming, a network responsible for some of the best shows not on TV, as the first half of the phrase that ends “and chill.” It’s never quite evolved, however, into what some have hoped it would, as the source for must see movies, new and old. When it comes to good films, Netflix’s streaming service isn’t close to being what it was at its height as a DVD-by-mail service: a place to watch anything from anywhere and any time. Looking for something new and indie? Netflix probably has you covered. Looking for something beyond that description? The service is hit or miss.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t great films on the streaming service right now. There are. Narrowing them down to just 30 of the best Netflix films wasn’t easy. Nonetheless, here’s a ranked list of the best movies on Netflix streaming no film lover should miss, all of them just a simple click away.
Related: The 20 Scariest Movies On Netflix Right Now, Ranked
Focus Features
30. The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)
Ryan Gosling reteams with his Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance for an episodic, multi-generational story of crime and consequences in upstate New York. Some sections work better than others, but the cast is terrific throughout and Cianfrance directs with a deep feel for the setting.
Disney
29. Moana (2016)
Moana suffered a bit by being released the same year as Disney’s Oscar-winning Zootopia (which is also a fine film, and also available on Netflix). But it more than stands on its own, thanks to its thoughtful coming-of-age story rooted in South Pacific folklore, a fun performance from Dwayne Johnson, and its earworm-y songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia. (“Consider the coconut…” Just try not finishing that line once you’ve seen the movie.)
Disney / Lucasfilm
28. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
With Disney and Netflix squaring up against each other in what’s shaping up to be a streaming service war, it’s unclear what future, if any, the Star Wars films will have on the service. But for now you can enjoy Rogue One, the first of a series of anthology films set alongside the action of the main saga. This one concerns the attempt to secure the plans to the Death Star that preceded Star Wars: A New Hope, following Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) as she joins a ragtag bunch of rebels determined to beat the odds and strike a blow against the Empire, no matter the cost. Directed by Gareth Edwards — but with significant reshoots overseen by Tony Gilroy — it’s an unusual entry in the series, one not afraid to plunge into the dark, morally ambiguous underside of the Star Wars universe while still remaining very much a Star Wars movie.
Focus Features
27. Milk (2008)
Gus Van Sant’s biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated alongside San Francisco mayor George Moscone in 1978, went through years of stop-start development before finally making it to the screens in 2008. (At one point, Robin Williams was supposed to play Milk.) But it’s hard to imagine a better version of the story, or a more sympathetic performance than the one delivered by Sean Penn, who plays Milk with a mix of openheartedness and dogged determination. Those qualities extend to the film itself, which doesn’t back away from the anger and sense of injustice behind Milk’s struggle but whose sense of humanity extends to a three-dimensional depiction of Milk’s assassin, city supervisor Dan White. It’s history realized with an emphasis on humanity, and the passions of those pushing for change against extraordinary resistance.
New World
26. Heathers (1988)
At the tail end of a decade of teen films dominated by John Hughes movies came Heathers, which turned Hughes’ observations of high school cliques into black comedy. There’s no Saturday-morning detention long enough to bring peace to the warring factions of Westerburg High, so outsider JD (Christian Slater) decides to expose the underlying hypocrisy with the help of Veronica (Winona Ryder) — but without telling her there will be a corpse or two involved. Though much-imitated, Daniel Waters’ screenplay remains a model of dark wit. It’s still the take-no-prisoners high-school comedy all others want to be.
Paramount Pictures
25. Trading Places (1982)
One of the quintessential ‘80s comedies, the John Landis-directed Trading Places contrasts the lives of the haves and the have-nots when a pair of billionaire brothers decide to conduct an experiment in the irresolvable nature-versus-nurture debate by forcing a wealthy doofus (Dan Aykroyd) and a low-level con man (Eddie Murphy) to swap positions. Both Aykroyd and Murphy are in top form here as they team up to unravel the scheme, an effort that eventually involves a prostitute played by Jamie Lee Curtis and a gorilla.
CJ Entertainment
24. Mother (2009)
Not to be confused with mother! — Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 horror film/religious allegory/ecological warning/parable about artistic creation — this 2009 film from Bong Joon-Ho does double duty as a crime thriller and a depiction of the extremes maternal devotion and take a person. Kim Hye-ja — a fixture of Korean television — searches for the truth when her developmentally disabled son is accused of murder. But her quest for justice takes her to unexpected places. (Bong’s Okja, also very much worth your time, is also available on Netflix.)
23. The Hateful Eight (2015)
It seems almost perverse to think about watching The Hateful Eight at home, given how big a deal Quentin Tarantino made of its 70mm format at the time of its release. And while it looks great on the big screen it’s not like that’s an option right now. And, in some ways, the film feels just at home on the small screen, since it’s at heart a chamber mystery that brings together a collection of unsavory characters (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh among them) as mystery and murder unfold in their ranks.
Miramax Films
22. Gangs Of New York (2002)
In re-telling the story of an unsettled New York in the middle of the 19th century, Martin Scorsese got the opportunity to work on a scale that few filmmakers get to work, recreating a vanished Manhattan on the lot of Italy’s Cincecitta. The resulting film doesn’t always match his ambitions, but for long stretches, it’s as good as anything Scorsese has ever done and features one of Daniel Day Lewis’ most memorable characters, the theatrical gang leader Bill The Butcher.
Screen Australia
21. The Babadook (2014)
One of the best horror films of recent years (and among the best horror movies on Netflix), Australian director Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, like all great horror, has roots in real fears. In this case it’s a mother’s (Essie Davis, fantastic) fear that her love for her troubled son might be overwhelmed by her resentment of him and the burden he’s placed on her life. Enter a storybook monster followed by one unsettling scene after another.
Getty Image
20. Dead Poets Society (1989)
Peter Weir’s beloved story of repression and rebellion at an elite prep school at the end of the 1950s features one of Robin Williams’ best dramatic performances and features a cast of ascending stars that includes Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Josh Charles. Though Weir occasionally lets Williams indulge a little too much, it’s a moving film that’s justifiably endured over the years.
Newmarket Films
19. Donnie Darko (2001)
A flop in 2001 that became a cult hit, Richard Kelly’s debut stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a kid in ‘80s Virginia haunted by… something. He sees visions of the end of the world and a man in a scary rabbit costume, but the deeper he plunges into the mystery, the closer he comes to realize that he might be at the heart of it. The mechanics of the sci-fi mechanics of the film have been picked to death by its fans partly explained by Kelly’s subsequently released, and not as effective, director’s cut. But its real strength comes from its unnerving atmosphere and doom-laden romantic tone.
Criterion
18. The Thin Blue Line (1988)
It’s rare that a film can be said to have changed the direction of a genre and changed the world, but that’s the case with The Thin Blue Line. An investigation into a miscarriage of justice in Texas, the film got a wrongfully convicted man out of prison and pioneered the use of re-enactments in documentaries. That’s been for good and for ill over the years, but director Errol Morris uses it as a powerful tool to show how justice is often a matter of storytelling, and sometimes storytelling involves lies that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
17. The Sixth Sense (1999)
Hijinks-y teen movies and all, 1999 was an impressive year for good movies. Magnolia, Fight Club, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, The Matrix… The list goes on and on. Among those entries is M. Night Shyamalan’s first big release, and one of his best (behind Unbreakable, of course). This was a simpler time, before seeing his name in trailers garnered skepticism. Centered on a boy who can’t separate the dead from the living and his child psychologist with issues of his own, The Sixth Sense remains one of four horror movies to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s endlessly tense, driven by strong performances from the two leads over jump scares. It’s held up well, even if it’s established a tough hurdle for the director’s future efforts to clear.
Netflix
16. Mudbound (2017)
Netflix spent much of 2017 trying to establish itself as an alternative to movie theaters as a place to find quality new films. The results were mostly strong, and none stronger than Mudbound, Dee Rees’ story of two families — one white and one black — sharing the same Mississippi land in the years before and after World War II. Rees combines stunning images, compelling storytelling, and the work of a fine cast (that includes Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan, Garett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Mary J. Blige) to unspool a complex tale about the forces the connect black and white Americans and the slow-to-die injustices that keep them apart.
Universal
15. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
With the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker brain trust all dried up, Mel Brooks basking in his retirement, and the Friedberg-Seltzer menace threatening the sanctity of America’s cineplexes, longform parody was floating in the crapper. It was waiting to be flushed once and for all when along came David Wain to fish it out and clean it off with too-hip-for-school lunacy. The last day at Jewish summer program Camp Firewood spans everything from first love to heartbreak to broom-balancing contests to the threat of annihilation from space. The collected alumni of The State and a few welcome additions make for one of the greatest ensemble casts in recent comedy history, and every other line is a gem. When’s the perfect time to quote Wet Hot American Summer? Any time. Dinner. Literally, any time.
Universal
14. Schindler’s List (1993)
In 1993, Steven Spielberg released two movies: The highly entertaining Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, an adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s fact-based novel Schindler’s Ark, which tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a Nazi officer who actively works to save Jews from concentrations camps. The former again confirmed his reputation as the premier creator of crowd-pleasing Hollywood spectacles. The latter helped cement his status as a director whose artistry extended far beyond the ability to craft blockbusters. Liam Neeson stars as Schindler, and the film’s at once a depiction of his awakening conscience and an unsparing depiction of the Holocaust. Spielberg brings all his filmmaking power to bear on the film, which he was inspired to make in part by the rise of Holocaust deniers and a resurgence of interest in fascism at the time. Where some historical films feel stuck in their time, Schindler’s List remains an urgent act of remembrance that will remain timely as long as power and prejudice combine to make the world unsafe.
Tartan Films
13. Oldboy (2003)
Oh Dae-su, a man imprisoned for 15 years, searches for answers in this Korean director Park Chan-wook’s adaptation of the Japanese manga. Part film noir, part revenge story, Oldboy tells a raw tale of a smart but confused average Joe, and the action sequences reflect that. There’s no highly choreographed martial arts, no sword-swinging spectacle. Just a lot of brutality. The sucker punch of an ending will linger with you, nearly as much as the tense hallway fight that’s synonymous with Oldboy.
Miramax
12. City Of God (2002)
This Brazilian crime film is so sweeping and kinetic it occasionally lets viewers forget it’s fundamentally a tragedy. The story of gang life in a Rio slums, it’s directed (by Fernando Meirelles, with co-direction by Kátia Lund) with the propulsion of a Scorsese gangster movie, only the protagonists are teens who never really had a chance to live any other way (played by a cast that was then almost entirely new to acting).
Warner Bros.
11. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick returned to the topic of war and what it does to those who fight it with this bifurcated story of the war in Vietnam. As with his great 1958 film Paths of Glory, Kubrick opted to take the long view and look at war as an enterprise in all its dehumanizing absurdity. It’s a film less about a particular conflict than what it means to prepare for war — the first half of the movie — and what it means to fight it — the film’s second half. Both keep returning to the notion that to become a soldier is to surrender some essential part of one conscience, and that war at its heart makes us lesser beings than we might be without it. It’s a tough film filled with black comedy that captures the dark heart of what it means to take up arms against others.
Universal Pictures
10. Jackie Brown (1997)
There was a lot riding on Quentin Tarantino’s third film. What do you do when your last movie, Pulp Fiction became a sensation that countless films had tried to imitate in the years since its release? For Tarantino the answer was to take a book from one of his favorite authors — Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch — retrofit it as a vehicle for two of his favorite underemployed stars — Pam Grier and Robert Forster — and slow the pace down to a mellow groove. The result is a great, in Tarantino’s words, “hang out” movie in which much of the pleasure comes from just spending the time in the company of the characters. Forster and Grier are especially great as characters on the opposite side of the law who find themselves attracted to each other as the world around them grows more dangerous. Though it’s another crime film set in Los Angeles, Jackie Brown doesn’t try to top Pulp Fiction. Yet in going its own way, it proves its match.
Focus Features
9. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
What initially resembles puppy love between a pair of precocious children slowly, tenderly reveals itself to be something far more sophisticated and complex. Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, a pair of prodigies) both carry adult pain within their tiny hearts, and the solace they find in one another carries accordingly heavy emotional weight. As director Wes Anderson stages some of his most awe-inspiring sequences — the climactic flood like something out of F.W. Murnau’s wildest dreams, Suzy and Sam’s homemade Eden on the beach — a story about wayward adults and children grasping at their last chance for sanity expands until it fills the entire island.
The Weinstein Company
8. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino’s take on the World War II movie is a typically tough-to-pin-down riff on genre films that zigs when it looks like it’s going to zag, features scene with conversations as tense as any gunfight, and ultimately reveals itself as an exercise in showing how fiction can overwrite reality. All that and it features one of Brad Pitt’s toughest, funniest performances and helped introduce to the world to the wonders of Christoph Waltz.
IFC Productions
7. Boyhood (2014)
A lot of films can claim to be one of a kind but few can back up that claim like Richard Linklatter’s Boyhood. Shot between 2002 and 2013, it follows the progress of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a Texas kid being raised by a single mother (Patricia Arquette) and occasionally visited by his absent father (Ethan Hawke). With a few exceptions, the episodic film is short on big dramatic moments, letting a lot of major milestones play out offscreen. Instead it mostly just checks in on Ethan each year, watching as time passes, Ethan’s relationships shift, and the title starts to lose its meaning as adulthood looms. It’s a remarkable, deeply moving film made all the more amazing by how effortless Linklater makes it seem, as if we were just being given the privilege of watching a life take shape.
StudioCanal/The Weinstein Company
6. Carol (2015)
Patricia Highsmith made her name with dark, misanthropic thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. But her early work also included The Price of Salt, a novel about the relationship between a showgirl and an older married woman. With his typical graceful command, Todd Haynes turned into Carol, an emotionally rich story of a dangerous romance between characters played by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. A melancholy haze envelops the movie, suggestive of the world that wants to keep the two lovers apart. But it’s the passion between the protagonists and the hopefulness that fuels it, that gives the movie its fire.
Kino Lorber
5. Metropolis (1927)
It’s impossible to imagine science fiction filmmaking without Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s depiction of a future divided into haves and have-nots and threatening to collapse because of it. But Metropolis is more than just a landmark that influenced what followed: It’s an astounding, immersive experience filled with remarkable visuals and an operatic sense of drama.
Universal
4. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
If ever a fifth head were to be carved into Mount Rushmore, it would probably be Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch (at least until the publication of Go Set A Watchman, but let’s not talk about that). Peck’s performance as Harper Lee’s hero — who defends an innocent black man against accusations of rape — embodies everything that’s good and decent about American ideals in the middle of a film very much aware of how often the country fails to live up to those ideals.
Criterion
3. Y Tu Mama También (2002)
After a stint in Hollywood, Alfonso Cuarón returned to Mexico for this story of two privileged high school boys (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) who road trip with an older woman (Maribel Verdú) in search of an unspoiled stretch of beach. In the process, they discover freedom like they’d never imagined — and maybe more freedom than they can handle. Cuarón’s stylish film plays out against the backdrop of Mexican political upheaval and plays with notions of upturning the established order on scales both large and small, all the while suggesting that no paradise lasts forever.
New Line
2. Boogie Nights (1997)
Wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson synthesized all his greatest influences — Scorsese’s hyperkinetic camerawork, Altman’s profound empathy for human suffering, Tarantino’s flair for sleazy L.A. dialogue — into something completely original in his breakout film. Not even out of his twenties, and Anderson conducted a flawless ensemble cast including Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, and a headstrong kid named Mark Wahlberg in a sweeping statement on Hollywood, America, and cinema in general. In turns side-splittingly funny and unspeakably dark, teeming with life in every meticulously constructed frame, traversing two decades in the life of an industry at a pivotal moment of flux, Boogie Nights remains one of the greatest American films to come out of the ’90s.
Paramount
1. The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974): Francis Ford Coppola has made many remarkable movies, but there’s no doubt his obituary will lead with The Godfather films. In Mario Puzo’s bestselling story of a mafia family, Coppola found the perfect outlet for his filmmaking skills and thematic obsessions: family, morality the nature of America, and the Italian-American immigrant experience. Shot with a command of darkness and shadows that would make Rembrandt proud, they marry a propulsive narrative to memorable characters whose pursuit of the American dream leads them to do things they once couldn’t imagine doing. Released just two years apart, they’re extraordinary accomplishments, with Part II enriching and improving on the first installment. (There’s a third movie, released years later, that’s worth a look but falls well short of these originals.)
Recent Changes For April 2018:
Removed: Sunset Boulevard
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