The great conundrum of the streaming age is that dozens, if not hundreds, of movies are available at your fingertips to stream—but it can be extremely hard to decide on the best movies on Netflix. Let this list be your guide as you navigate Netflix’s catalog of feature films. These 25 movies feature something for everyone—comedy, sports, big green monsters of all kinds, Daniel Craig, Laura Dern, and Glenn Powell. 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.
Ali
Release year: 2001
Director: Michael Mann
Notable cast: Will Smith, Jon Voight, Jamie Foxx
If all biopics of legendary sports figures were as intense, intelligent, and well cast as Michael Mann’s take on the life of Muhammad Ali, the biopic would have a much better reputation than it currently does. Back in 2001, Will Smith was still mostly known as the July Fourth weekend blockbuster guy. His transformation into the legendarily loquacious and opinionated boxer changed how audiences, and especially critics, saw him. Mann finds plenty to work with when it comes to his traditional themes of tortured masculinity and self-determination, and the film also has a few great supporting performances, including a Jamie Foxx turn that also announced his intentions to level up from sitcom comedian to dramatic film actor.
American Psycho
Release Year: 2000
Director: Mary Harron
Notable Cast: Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto
Before he was Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale played another handsome, rich urbanite who was concealing a secret dark side. In Mary Harron’s clever, unsettling, and utterly brash adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, Bale plays Patrick Bateman: investment banker by day, bloodthirsty killer by night, Phil Collins fan pretty much always. American Psycho is both a satire of the unrepentant greed and materialism of the Reagan ’80s as well as a horror movie about what happens when greed and materialism take human form. Depending on how you see the movie, Patrick Bateman is either a metaphor for the terrifyingly amoral id of American capitalism, or the actual embodiment of it. Either way, Harron and Bale team up for an over-the-top portrait of a killer like you’ve never seen.
Back to the Future
Release Year: 1985
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Notable Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
It’s a classic for a reason. Marty McFly’s trip through time to play matchmaker for his mom and dad is one of the great adventure comedies of the ’80s. If you’re intimately familiar with the world of flux capacitors, Calvin Klein underwear, and the musical stylings of Marvin Berry, you can stream up your fave whenever you want. If you somehow have made it this far in life without having seen Back to the Future, you really do owe it to yourself.
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Release Year: 2022
Director: Halina Reijn
Notable Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Myha’la Herrold, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson
A big, expensive house, a group of friends whose bonds are strained, an approaching hurricane that’s going to knock out the power—these are all ingredients for a primo murder mystery. Bodies Bodies Bodies melds that with a layer of aggressively self-lacerating Gen Z humor, buoyed by stars Amandla Stenberg, Myha’la Herrold, Rachel Sennott, and Lee Pace. The result is a funny, modern, stylish good time. With director Halina Reijn set to direct Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in this fall’s Babygirl, the time to get onboard with her is now.
The Breakfast Club
Release Year: 1985
Director: John Hughes
Notable Cast: Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but the Brat Pack is back, baby! Kinda! Demi Moore got raves for her new movie at Cannes. Andrew McCarthy made a documentary where he confronted the magazine writer who coined that pejorative term. Molly Ringwald and Jon Cryer both have relatives on Claim to Fame this summer. And there was a week there where everybody was logging St. Elmo’s Fire on Letterboxd for some reason. What better way to lean into that nostalgia than with perhaps the quintessential Brat Pack movie, The Breakfast Club? Five high schoolers from different social strata get stuck doing Saturday detention together. The angst, it is so pure! John Hughes helped define an entire era for teenagers with this one movie, and for that reason alone, it’s a classic.
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?) while seeming unnervingly charming. It’s one of his best performances.
Captain Phillips
Release Year: 2013
Director: Paul Greengrass
Notable Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi
The meme that emerged from this movie was Abdi’s pirate character saying, “I’m the captain now.” But there is truly so much more to Captain Phillips than that. Based on the real-life story of an American cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates, the film stars Hanks as the titular captain straddling the line between reassuring competence and all-too-human vulnerability. It’s one of his best performances in a long and very impressive career, and the fact that he somehow didn’t get an Oscar nomination for it is one of life’s great puzzlers. Regardless, Greengrass tells a gripping story, and when all that tension releases at the very end, Hanks delivers something special.
Easy A
Release Year: 2010
Director: Will Gluck
Notable Cast: Emma Stone, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci
Before she became a two-time best-actress winner, Emma Stone had one of her big breakthrough roles with this teen comedy about a high schooler who pretends to have sex with her gay bestie only to end up with a promiscuous reputation. Hey, look, it was 2010. This was considered edgy. The story, loosely—very loosely—based on The Scarlet Letter, is good enough for basic teen comedy fare, but Stone’s performance greatly elevates it. It’s absolute, must-see, Winona-in-Heathers–, Alicia-in-Clueless–level stuff. Whether she’s singing in the shower, telling off some idiot classmate, or feeling romantic feelings for the high school mascot (Penn Badgley), she’s every bit a movie star.
The Equalizer 3
Release Year: 2023
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Notable Cast: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning
There are plenty of reasons to see The Equalizer 3, most of them having to do with how good Denzel Washington is at this kind of no-fuss, crowd-pleasing action movie. Or how well he and director Antoine Fuqua tend to work together after films like The Magnificent Seven and Training Day (not to mention the previous two Equalizer films). But the sneakily best reason to fire up The Equalizer 3 is that it features the reunion of Denzel with Dakota Fanning, 20 years after they both starred in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire.
Frances Ha
Release year: 2013
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 figure her life out. In what would become a hallmark of Gerwig’s future work, 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 places of prominence taken by Mickey Sumner as Frances’s estranged best friend and Michael Zegen as her star-crossed would-be love interest. But Adam Driver, Grace Gummer, and Charlotte d’Amboise get great scenes to play as well.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Release year: 2022
Director: Rian Johnson
Notable cast: Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson
Rian Johnson followed up his hilarious and clever 2019 film, Knives Out, with a brand-new Benoit Blanc mystery that, true to its title, put the mystery right out into the open for anyone observant enough to see it. As a storytelling device, it was a bold move, but it announced that Johnson would be relying on a stellar cast to keep the audience hopping from one foot to the next. That they did, from Janelle Monáe’s double dip as twin antagonists, to Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista as two different flavors of empty-headed influencer, to Kathryn Hahn and Leslie Odom Jr. as guilt-ridden acolytes—and especially Edward Norton as the film’s detestably ludicrous tech billionaire. Even if you’re not up to the challenge of solving the mystery, Glass Onion is a hoot and a half, one of the best times to be had on your couch.
Godzilla Minus One
Release year: 2023
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Notable cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Munetaka Aoki
If you’re already a Godzilla fan, Takashi Yamazaki’s origin story offers a fresh take that doesn’t sacrifice on action. If you’re not all that into Godzilla movies, definitely try this one out. There is a very low bar to entry here, as well as an incredibly user-friendly story and characters that are easy to invest in even if you’re not obsessing over Godzilla lore. At a time when action-blockbuster franchises are losing their steam left and right, it’s thrilling to watch such a venerated property rejuvenate itself simply by making a no-frills picture with a compellingly human story.
Hit Man
Release year: 2024
Director: Richard Linklater
Notable cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona
It’s an onslaught of charm as Richard Linklater reteams with his Everybody Wants Some!! actor Glen Powell for a wildly clever, funny, sexy crowd-pleaser that bowled over audiences at last year’s film festivals. Powell plays a college professor who moonlights with the New Orleans PD and gets roped into pretending to be a killer-for-hire for a sting operation. His character proves to be quite good at faking it, which gets him in deep with Adria Arjona, playing a beautiful prospective client. Linklater knows how to keep a light, propulsive tone, while Powell is walking the line between cocky bravado and winking charm better than anyone in movies today.
It Follows
Release year: 2015
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-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.
Magic Mike XXL
Release Year: 2015
Director: Gregory Jacobs
Notable Cast: Channing Tatum, Jada Pinkett Smith, Joe Manganiello
Steven Soderbergh’s first Magic Mike movie was a canny blend of fleshy pleasures and the hard realities of the 2010s economy. It was a great movie with some great performances and a smart script. Yet Magic Mike XXL ditches all that economic angst for a male stripper road trip odyssey to Myrtle Beach—the best decision made for a movie sequel this side of Mad Max Fury Road. Tatum, Manganiello, Adam Rodriguez, Matt Bomer, and Kevin Nash have by this point attained a familial chemistry that is absolutely unbeatable, and new characters played by the likes of Jada Pinkett Smith and Andie MacDowell provide for some sexy, fun, feisty encounters. This movie includes the single best mini-mart scene of all time. I’m not sure what else you need.
Marriage Story
Release year: 2019
Director: Noah Baumbach
Notable cast: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern
After spending the early years of his career making acidic movies about the failures of family and the insufferability of Brooklyn academics, Noah Baumbach made a few movies with his now wife, Greta Gerwig, and came out the other end a more empathetic, wise, and generous filmmaker. There are still sharp edges in Marriage Story, such as when Driver’s character cuts his estranged wife to the quick by telling her she’s just like her mother. But Marriage Story is also a warm and forgiving film about the end of marriage, the courtroom sharks whom exes set upon each other (Laura Dern won a well-deserved Oscar, but Ray Liotta and Alan Alda do A+ work here as well), and the ways that people hold on to family even after a marriage is over.
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 latest film. Natalie Portman plays an actor whose next role will be a Mary Kay Letourneau–esque figure, so she goes to visit this woman (Julianne Moore) and her family more than 20 years after the scandal in order to do research for her performance. This one was 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 newer movies on Netflix.
Muriel’s Wedding
Release Year: 1995
Director: P.J. Hogan
Notable Cast: Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths
Toni Collette’s breakthrough movie was a charming, kooky, ABBA-packed Aussie comedy from the man who would soon after direct My Best Friend’s Wedding. P.J. Hogan: defining rom-com nuptials for the 1990s. Collette plays the titular Muriel, a small-town girl who has internalized everybody else’s low opinion of her and only wants to find her own big, bright, beautiful happily-ever-after. Getting there is a comedic and often bittersweet ride, and the movie is as much about Muriel’s friendship with Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) as it is with any dream husband.
The Nest
Release year: 2020
Director: Sean Durkin
Notable cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon
Sean Durkin—who just directed Zac Efron in The Iron Claw—has a knack for bringing spooky vibes to non-spooky stories, and he uses that ability to great effect in The Nest. Jude Law and Carrie Coon play a married couple in the ’80s who move to England so that 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 a 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 pays her to date their sheltered 19-year-old son so that he’s not a complete 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 each other 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 is 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 perverse psycho-thriller aspect of the twist, makes for a movie that has been oft-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.
Reality Bites
Release Year: 1994
Director: Ben Stiller
Notable Cast: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn
If you ask a random person to name the definitive movie about Gen X in the ’90s, you’ll most likely get Reality Bites as your answer. That’s both emotionally true and should by all rights lead to a much longer discussion about how nothing this polished should be the standard bearer for the grungiest of generations. Regardless, Reality Bites rules, and it will make you nostalgic for things you never even experienced—like working at the GAP, or getting high and trying to name all the episodes of Good Times. Ryder and Hawke manage to sell the heck out of a romance that should absolutely horrify anyone with critical thinking skills, but it works, damn it. Did we always speak in a nonstop barrage of pop-culture references, or did movies like Reality Bites just teach us to do that? Best to watch the movie again and discuss it in depth.
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 features action scenes in which 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.
Serial Mom
Release Year: 1994
Director: John Waters
Notable Cast: Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard
It says something that one of John Waters’s most mainstream and accessible movies is about a seemingly perfect suburban mom who secretly makes obscene phone calls and commits serial murder to maintain her strict sense of moral order. Kathleen Turner gives one of her best performances as an unhinged housewife, while Waters has a blast poking fun at the plastic sheen of the suburbs. It’s essentially a trojan horse for Waters’s typically demented sense of humor, featuring Sam Waterston as Turner’s befuddled husband, Ricki Lake as her tragic daughter, and a pre-Scream Matthew Lillard, center-part haircut and all, as her son.
The Wiz
Release Year: 1978
Director: Sidney Lumet
Notable Cast: Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Lena Horne
If you simply can’t wait until November to see Wicked, perhaps whet your appetite with another sideways vision of Oz. The Wizard of Oz gets reimagined in 1970s Harlem in this film adaptation of the Broadway musical. Diana Ross, then in her mid-30s, stepped into the role of teenage Dorothy, longing to visit a place far beyond her home. Filmmaking legend Sidney Lumet faced mixed reactions to his film, but in hindsight, there’s much fascination to be found in the way in which the film transforms New York City into the Land of Oz. With a screenplay adaptation by Joel Schumacher and Quincy Jones adapting the songs, The Wiz is a one-of-a-kind big swing of a movie, the likes of which few would dare to take.
