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Last Updated: May 18th
The Netflix name has meant many things, including the best shows not on TV. And while there are some glaring omissions in their selection of good movies, there’s still plenty to peruse. Narrowing them down to just 35 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 60 Best Shows On Netflix Right Now, Ranked
New Line Cinema
35. Seven (1995)
Run Time: 127 min, Metacritic Score: 65
David Fincher’s Seven follows a veteran detective on his way off the force (Morgan Freeman) and his begrudging, untested replacement (Brad Pitt) as they travel from poorly lit room to poorly lit room on the trail of a psychotic killer. The sin-driven murders are grizzly and grotesque but seem somewhat at home in the grungy, desolate world that Fincher creates. It’s certainly worth a fresh rewatch on a sunny day that’s a little too devoid of hopelessness.
Disney
34. Moana (2016)
Run Time: 107 min, Metacritic Score: 81
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
33. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Run Time: 133 min, Metacritic Score: 65
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
32. Milk (2008)
Run Time: 128 min, Metacritic Score: 84
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
31. Heathers (1988)
Run Time: 103 min, Metacritic Score: 73
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
30. Trading Places (1982)
Run Time: 118 min, Metacritic Score: 69
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.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
29. The Sixth Sense (1999)
Run Time: 107 min, Metacritic Score: 64
Hijinks-y teen movies and all, 1999 was an impressive year for 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.
CJ Entertainment
28. Mother (2009)
Run Time: 128 min, Metacritic Score: 79
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.)
27. The Hateful Eight (2015)
Run Time: 167 min, Metacritic Score: 68
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
26. Gangs Of New York (2002)
Run Time: 167 min, Metacritic Score: 72
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
25. The Babadook (2014)
Run Time: 93 min, Metacritic Score: 86
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
24. Dead Poets Society (1989)
Run Time: 128 min, Metacritic Score: 79
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
23. Donnie Darko (2001)
Run Time: 113 min, Metacritic Score: 71
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
22. The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Run Time: 103 min, Metacritic Score: 79
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.
Netflix
21. Mudbound (2017)
Run Time: 134 min, Metacritic Score: 85
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.
Focus Features
20. Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Run Time: 117 min, Metacritic Score: 84
Matthew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyer Club is a searing look at how the world failed the LGBTQ community during the devastating AIDS crisis. McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, a man diagnosed with the disease in the 80s during a time when the illness was still misunderstood and highly stigmatized. Woodruff went against the FDA and the law to smuggle in drugs to help those suffering from the disease, establishing a “Dallas Buyers Club” and fighting in court to the right to aid those in need. The story is all the more powerful because it’s true and McConaughey delivers one of the best performances of his career as Woodruff, a man who changes his entire outlook on life after being dealt a tragic blow.
A Band Apart/Miramax Films
19. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 (2003-04)
Run Time: 120 min, Metacritic Score: 69
A master assassin (Uma Thurman) is betrayed by her former associates and left for dead, only for her to awaken from her coma and vow to take uncompromising vengeance. Possible issues with director Quentin Tarantino aside, it’s impossible to say that watching his movies isn’t a distinct experience. Each piece of the Bride’s journey, while very different, fit together perfectly throughout the two films. Tarantino’s recognizable comedy, music, and slight self-indulgence come through in Kill Bill, which has just the right and an excessive amount of tongue-and-cheek and fake blood, respectively.
Tartan Films
18. Oldboy (2003)
Run Time: 120 min, Metacritic Score: 74
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
17. City Of God (2002)
Run Time: 130 min, Metacritic Score: 79
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.
16. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Run Time: 116 min, Metacritic Score: 76
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
15. Jackie Brown (1997)
Run Time: 154 min, Metacritic Score: 64
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.
Dreamworks/Netflix
14. Shrek (2001)
Run Time: 90 min, Metacritic Score: 84
We know what you’re thinking. Shrek? Really? An animated comedy about an ugly green ogre who rescues a princess, befriends a donkey, and saves a kingdom. Look, it’s a common misconception that Shrek was only for kids. Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz all voiced characters in the film, and there were plenty of mature jokes that probably flew right over the kiddos’ heads. Torturing a sweet Gingerbread Man, interspecies hookups, and a show-stopping song and dance number to wrap things up makes this a family-friendly comedy that the adults won’t snooze through.
Open Road
13. Spotlight (2015)
Run Time: 128 min, Metacritic Score: 93
Public scandal often makes for good drama, but that’s not why Todd McCarthy’s biographical re-telling of one of the most shocking cases of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church makes this list. Yes, the film has a famous list of names attached including Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton. Yes, it’s a true story about a group of investigative journalists working at the Boston Globe who uncovered decades-worth of corruption and molestation accusations buried by leaders of the church. But with McCarthy’s restrained direction, the film rejects the trope of glorifying its heroes and sensationalizing its narrative to instead give us an accurate, detailed, and unbiased look at history.
20th Century Fox
12. Lincoln (2012)
Run Time: 150 min, Metacritic Score: 86
Any historical drama with Daniel Day-Lewis starring is going to be worth a watch but Lincoln is Day-Lewis at his best. The actor’s eerily-accurate portrayal of one of the most famous presidents in the history of the United States is powerful and moving, even though everyone already knows the story of Lincoln’s terms in office and his eventual, tragic ending. The film touches on the Civil War, the fight for racial equality, the need to end slavery, and the president’s personal investment in the cause. Lincoln is a master-class in acting and an enthralling history lesson all in one.
Wild Bunch
11. Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013)
Run Time: 179 min, Metacritic Score: 88
When this French coming-of-age drama premiere in 2013 it sparked plenty of controversies. The film centers on a blooming romance between a naïve teenager named Adele and her free-spirited lover, Emma. Praised for painting an honest portrait of a lesbian romance on screen while also scrutinized for its sometimes graphic sexual content, the film marked a turning point in how the LGBTQ community was represented on film and gave people a heartbreaking look at a young woman discovering herself and her sexual identity in an unforgiving world.
Focus Features
10. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Run Time: 94 min, Metacritic Score: 84
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.
IFC Productions
9. Boyhood (2014)
Run Time: 165 min, Metacritic Score: 100
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
8. Carol (2015)
Run Time: 118 min, Metacritic Score: 95
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.
Universal
7. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Run Time: 129 min, Metacritic Score: 87
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
6. Y Tu Mama También (2002)
Run Time: 106 min, Metacritic Score: 88
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 Cinema
5. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
Run Time: 178 min, Metacritic Score: 92
Why Netflix only has the first of the trilogy (and not even the extended edition!) is a complete mystery. Maybe there are some out there who have yet to experience the full story and need a to get their feet wet in Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation. J.R.R. Tolkien’s story through Middle Earth starts with the finding of the one Ring, a powerful weapon in the hands of pure evil that needs to be destroyed by a group of warriors, Hobbits, and a wizard. The painstaking effort and artistry that went into its production emanate from every scene, and memorable performances and action sequences do the seminal books justice.
The Weinstein Company
4. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Run Time: 153 min, Metacritic Score: 69
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.
Universal
3. Schindler’s List (1993)
Run Time: 195 min, Metacritic Score: 93
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.
New Line
2. Boogie Nights (1997)
Run Time: 155 min, Metacritic Score: 85
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)
Run Time: 175 min, Metacritic Score: 100
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 Through May 2018:
Removed: Metropolis, Wet Hot American Summer, The Place Beyond The Pines
Added: Shrek, Lincoln, Spotlight, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Kill Bill, Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
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