The 45 best movies on Netflix right now

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Ajona, Austin Amelio

Richard Linklater’s most purely entertaining film since School of Rock stars Glen Powell as a nerdy college professor who discovers an oddly specific hidden talent: impersonating hitmen in undercover police stings. Powell finally gets a lead role worthy of his dimpled charm, and he turns in a virtuoso comic performance. The plot hinges on his affair with a gorgeous mark (Ajona), but if the movie was nothing but Powell donning different disguises and entrapping suspects, it’d still be one of Netflix’s best comedies. 

Director: Edward Berger

Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer

A 2023 Oscar nominee in practically every non-acting category, this visceral adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel is actually built on the quality of its actors. Sure, the Great War battle scenes – great blasts of blood-flecked carnage filmed at the tip of a bayonet – are thunderous, the central three-note musical motif underpins it all with deep foreboding and its two storylines are expertly stitched together. But it’s newcomer Felix Kammerer as raw recruit Paul Bäumer and Albrecht Schuch as his pal Kat who’ll stay with you: perfect embodiments of haunted young men under fire.

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh

Free of the exposition of the first film, the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic gets straight to the good stuff: heartstopping action sequences, astounding special effects, gladiatorial combat involving a bald albino Austin Butler and the burgeoning romance between Timothee Chalamet’s would-be messiah and Zendaya’s rebel warrior.

Director: Jane Campion

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Jane Campion’s first film in a decade is set among the dusty valleys of Montana circa 1920, but as an examination of how toxic masculinity eats the soul, it might as well take place on today’s Reddit forums. Benedict Cumberbatch stows away his Shakespearean elocution to inhabit Phil Burbank, a bullying, chain-smoking rancher with unexpressable desires he keeps padlocked behind a veneer of brutish machismo. It’s a role that plays utterly against type, but Cumberbatch turns in career-best work. 

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik

It’s the first non-English movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture and the highest-grossing Korean film ever in several countries, but those accolades don’t reflect just how thrilling, funny and fucked-up Bong Joon-ho’s genre-mashed class satire truly is. An impoverished family cons their way into the home of a wealthy one, until the scheme inevitably goes sideways, in some ways predictable, others very much not. If you haven’t seen it in awhile, or not at all, take advantage – it’s one of the 21st century’s best.

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb

In this uncommonly smart action-thriller, the police department in a small Alabama town has made a habit of bending the law in order to fill their own coffers… until they mess with the wrong civilian. So far, so pulpy. But director Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room, Blue Ruin) has more on his mind than just kicking ass – namely, civil asset forfeiture, a complex legal issue he manages to weave into a simple genre structure. Make no mistake, though: the movie still kicks tremendous ass, mostly thanks to The Underground Railroad’s Aaron Pierre, phenomenal as an ex-Marine with a particular set of skills and a score to settle.

Director: Martin Scorsese 

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro

Yes, it’s long, but so is your all-day Peaky Blinders rewatch. And yeah, the much-ballyhooed ‘de-aging’ technology is not particularly effective when Robert De Niro still walks (and kicks) like a man in his late ’70s. Still, a three-and-a-half-hour crime epic from the undisputed living master of the crime epic is worth the investment, particularly in the case of this sprawling biography of Frank Sheeran, the career gangster who may know a thing or two about the ‘mysterious’ disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. If you must, there are ways to break it up into smaller chunks so it plays like a miniseries. However you want to watch it, just do it.

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada

How did the best Godzilla movie ever come along 70 years after the original? Set in the direct aftermath of World War II, the big lizard rises from the ocean to stomp the rubble of an already decimated Japan. He looks more badass than ever, but what really makes the film stand out is the unusually compelling human story at his giant feet, involving a disgraced kamikaze pilot (Kamiki) in search of redemption.

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard

Olivia Colman is quietly devastating in this psychological drama, based on the 2006 Elena Ferrante novel, which also marks an assured directorial debut for Maggie Gyllenhaal. While vacationing on a small, somewhat claustrophobic Greek island, Leda (Colman) grows increasingly fixated on a young mother (Dakota Johnson) whose struggles have her flashing back to her own difficulties adjusting to being a parent. Few films have ever observed the mental hardships of motherhood with such frankness.

Director: Celine Song

Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro 

Celine Song’s slow-motion heartbreaker about unrealised romance is more romantic than many movies where love comes to full flower. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are former childhood sweethearts trying, and ultimately failing, to reconnect in adulthood, impeded by geography, individual ambitions and the relationships that bloom in the interim. Pour one out for John Magaro as Lee’s husband, who quietly realises he’s the third wheel in his own marriage.

Director: SS Rajamouli

Cast: Ram Charan, NT Rama Rao Jr, Ajay Devgn

An absolute blast of a blockbuster, this Telugu-language epic is India's second-biggest box office smash of all-time. It’s a sweeping piece of historical fiction focused on two true-life revolutionaries who fought against British colonialists in the 1920s. It truly has it all: musical numbers, over-the-top action sequences, lavish set design – as one Twitter user put it, it is perhaps the finest example of the Bollywood (or in this case, ‘Tollywood’) maxim: ‘Just do the coolest thing you can think of and the movie will be good.’  

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak

Netflix has been rightly criticized for the dearth of older movies in its catalog, but the streamer recently went and threw a few bones to cinephiles by dropping a set of Alfred Hitchcock classics, including arguably his greatest film, this psychosexual thriller starring Jimmy Stewart as a police detective developing a dangerous obsession with Kim Novak. (Hey, who among us…?) Rear Window, The Birds, Psycho and the underrated Frenzy are also currently streaming. Seriously: watch them all.

Director: George C Wolfe

Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman

Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman power this August Wilson adaptation about the clash between the titular ‘Mother of the Blues’ and a young trumpeter at a recording studio in 1920s Chicago. The late Boseman, in particular, brings a tense, tragic and ultimately deeply human soul to what turned out to be his final performance.

Director: Jeymes Samuel

Cast: Jonathan Majors, Regina King, Idris Elba, Delroy Lindo, Zazie Beetz, LaKeith Stanfield

Each member of The Harder They Fall’s cast is a headturner on their own, so imagine the rush of seeing them as dueling posses. But the red-hot ensemble is just one of the draws of Jeymes’ hyper-stylised, cordite-choked Black western, which is chock full of kinetic camera work, frenzied action, expertly deployed needle drops and desert landscapes painted crimson amid heavy gunfire. This isn’t your daddy’s oater. 

Director: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Vanessa Hudgens

If the phrase ‘a musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda’ makes you nauseous, please, take an antacid and consider giving this Lin-Manuel Miranda musical a shot. Adapted from late Rent scribe Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical play, it eschews big, over-the-top song-and-dance numbers for more realistic performances favouring narrative over flash. But it’s Andrew Garfield, playing a young Larson struggling to finish his first play, who really ties the whole thing together.

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast: Taron Edgerton, Jason Bateman, Danielle Deadwyler

A TSA agent is blackmailed into allowing a possibly dangerous package aboard a flight in this thriller from director Jaume Collet-Serra, purveyor of such entertaining trash as Orphan, The Shallows and, more recently, 2025’s The Woman in the Yard. Say what you want about the guy, but he knows what audiences want: it’s currently Netflix’s second most-watched Original movie of all time. Are you among the few holdouts? Give in – it’s the kind of slickly-made B-movie you can’t turn off, perhaps against your better judgement.

Director: Chris Sanders

Voice cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor

A visual and emotional stunner, this impossibly heartwarming animated story of a lost robot and the makeshift family it builds for itself in the dense Pacific Northwest forest recalls the glory days of Pixar. Washing ashore after a shipwreck, a service droid finds purpose caring for the local wildlife, particularly an orphaned gosling. Don’t let your adult feelings toward AI turn you off – and make sure to have tissues handy. 

Director: Mati Diop

Cast: Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow, Ibrahima Traoré

Young lovers are separated in this wistful, atmospheric first feature from Mati Diop, the first black female director to compete for the Cannes Palme d’Or. Soon after we meet spirited teenager Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) in Dakar, she is grinning at Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré) across the road as traffic whizzes past, his solemn, lovelorn face holding secrets she doesn’t yet know. Soon there will be an ocean between them, and she will be left to wonder if he is alive or dead, while marrying a wealthy man she doesn’t love.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira 

In his deeply personal black and white marvel Roma, director Alfonso Cuarón dives into his Mexican boyhood with this absorbingly rich tribute to the resilient women who raised him – before expanding to gradually reveal the social and political canvas of 1970s Mexico City. It’s a stunner that should’ve been Netflix’s first Best Picture win… but then Green Book happened.

Director: Charlie Kaufman 

Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette

A young woman and her new boyfriend drive out to the country to visit his parents – and that’s about as far as this Charlie Kaufman brain-scrambler gets before the confusion sets in. Characters assume different names. Hallucinations occur. Scenes of a janitor cleaning a high school interrupt the main narrative. Disorientation is Kaufman’s signature, but his third film as writer-director nudges into Lynchian territory. And like Lynch, it’s best to think of it not as a puzzle in need of solving but a dream to be experienced.

Director: Nahnatchka Khan

Cast: Randall Park, Ali Wong, Michael Golamco

Proof that even relatively traditional romcoms can still transcend the genre just by being smart, spiky and sincere, Always Be My Maybe stars comedian Ali Wong and the always-charming Randall Park as reunited childhood friends traversing an adult relationship. That simple synopsis doesn’t nearly indicate the movie’s effortlessly breezy and surprisingly effective tone. And the Keanu Reeves cameo rules, because of course it does.

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Ed Norton, Janelle Monáe

Everyone seems to be having a blast on this sun-kissed murder-mystery that sticks a gentle knife into the back of the careless super rich and the odd tech baron. That is not always the sign of a good film, but here writer-director Rian Johnson keeps a willing, fun cast (Kate Hudson, Ed Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe) note-perfect so that the tone – part comic caper, part spoof, part thriller – lands throughout. And the plot? Well, someone gets offed and Daniel Craig’s Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc turns up to find out who did it.

Director: Ava DuVernay

Named after the slavery-abolishing Thirteenth Amendment, Ava DuVernay’s gripping, angry doc argues that incarceration has become the new slavery in America, with a wildly disproportionate Black prison population. 13th is an absolute must-see: one of those eye-opening documentaries that will change the way you see the world in an instant.

Director: Syreeta Singleton

Cast: Keke Palmer, SZA, Katt Williams

In this throwback to the urban hangout comedies of the ‘90s, Keke Palmer and R&B singer SZA are roommates and lifelong friends desperately trying to scrape together enough money to avoid eviction. It’s a low-key gem that has both Friday and Insecure in its DNA – Issa Rae, creator of the latter HBO show, is a co-producer – and makes you wonder why these kind of R-rated capers ever went away in the first place. Can we get more, please? Apparently, we can: a sequel is already in the works.

Directors: Michael Rianda

Voice cast: Danny McBride, Abbi Jacobson, Olivia Colman, Maya Rudolph 

Imagine Clark Griswold driving his family straight into the robot uprising from The Terminator – only with less swearing and nuclear blasts blowing people’s skin off – and you get this wildly imaginative, legit funny animated comedy. Danny McBride voices Rick, patriarch of the Mitchell clan, who shoves his wife and kids into the station wagon for one last family road trip before his daughter (Jacobson) goes off to college, only to encounter a digital apocalypse along the way. It’s insanely fun, which you can guess just by looking at the voice cast – and that doesn’t even include some of the truly awesome cameos.

Director: Radha Blank

Cast: Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin

A funny, honest and stirring statement from writer-director Radha Blank, The Forty-Year-Old Version stars its creator basically as herself, a playwright staring down middle age. With her creative career on the rocks, she pivots toward hip-hop, a medium perhaps even less hospitable to a woman on the precipice of 40. It’s an inspirational tale of artistic ambition – without being cloying or corny – that announces the arrival of a talent worth keeping both eyes on.

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins, Tom Burke

Part love letter, part sworn affidavit, David Fincher’s Citizen Kane making-of story never lets Hollywood off the hook. It’s fulsome in its love for a medium that Orson Welles (Tom Burke) reinvents with his 1941 opu, but damning of its studio owners’ cynicism and reactionary streak. Shot through with monochromatic elegance, it evokes a long-lost period in dazzling scale and detail. Gary Oldman’s boozy, outspoken screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, who whirls through it like a human tornado, is a joy to watch.

Director: Juel Taylor

Cast: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx

Is the title a spoiler? Maybe, but it’s only one of several twists you won’t see coming in this hyper-original mash-up of sci-fi and Blaxploitation from first-timer Juel Taylor. A wonderful John Boyega is a drug dealer who seemingly dies in a motel shootout, only to wake up at home the next day. Enlisting the help of a local pimp (Jamie Foxx) and sex worker (Teyonah Parris) to figure out what happened, he uncovers much more than he bargained for.

Director: Spike Lee

Cast: Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Chadwick Boseman

Spike Lee’s corrective to the history of the Vietnam War foregrounds the Black Americans who fought and died in a conflict that they had little stake in. It’s a political treatise wrapped in a treasure hunt that twists and turns in unexpected directions. It also has fired-up performances, especially from Delroy Lindo and Clarke Peters as veterans returning to the country in search of buried gold and Chadwick Boseman as the old comrade whose memory they seek to honour.

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits

The Coen brothers’ comedic western felt like another of their patented silly diversions designed to placate audiences before the arrival of another ‘serious’ work, but with the future of the siblings’ partnership up in the air, it could end up being their swan song as a duo. Told in six parts, the film contains both the odd laughs and existential drama the brothers are known for, along with their signature stylisation. Honestly, there are worse notes to go out on.

Director: Azazel Jacobs

Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon

Get Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne and Carrie Coon acting together in a confined space and good things will happen. In this moving, messy drama, writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit) sequesters them in a cramped New York City apartment as estranged siblings awaiting the imminent death of their father and watches the emotional dams burst. Although staged like a play, it never feels restricted – and the performances, of course, are wonderfully lived-in.

Director: Kirsten Johnson

This gloriously humane meta-doc has documentarian Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson) steeling herself for the death of her dad by asking him to act it out. Repeatedly. Gamely Dick Johnson, a newly retired psychiatrist, goes along with it. The result is a wonderful, off-beat watch that explores how we relate to grief and loss with hilarious candour. It’s about dads and their daughters, life and loss, celebration and commemoration. 

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo, Marlon Joubert, Luisa Ranieri

Like Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, this is an auteurist memoir, based on Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s youth in Naples, and the sudden tragedy that spurred his coming of age. Before that moment, Sorrentino renders wistful adolescent memories in fantastically intimate detail, recalling sexual awakenings, family dinners and Diego Maradona’s famously controversial goal against England, which gives the movie its title.

Director: Noah Baumbach

Cast: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern

At this point, Marriage Story might be more widely remembered for the ‘Adam Driver banging on a wall’ meme – 2019 was, after all, several lifetimes ago now. But Noah Baumbach’s heartbreaking slow burn about a dissolving relationship represents the apex of Netflix’s original projects. It’s among the most nuanced and realistic depictions of the emotional toll of divorce ever put to film, and contains career-highlight performances from both Driver and Scarlett Johansson.

Director: Joe Mantello

Cast: Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells

Joe Mantello takes the directing chair on this film adaptation of the 1968 eponymous play. This is actually the second version of the movie—the first one was released in 1970—and it stars the full cast of the play's 2018 Broadway revival, a roster comprised of only openly gay actors. The material is extremely heavy, the cinematography on-point and the acting will absolutely break your heart.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Just as Bob Dylan often wore a magician’s white face (or even a plastic mask) on this 1975 tour, director Scorsese is having fun with the truth, infusing his flow with subtle fictionalizations that may outfox you. Among Scorsese’s co-conspirators are Sharon Stone and Michael Murphy, appearing as “presidential candidate” Jack Tanner.

Director: Cary Fukunaga

Cast: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Emmanuel Affadzi

An uncompromising portrait of one boy's experience as a child soldier in an unnamed African country, this one is tough to watch, but especially worthy. It's everything you'd imagine: civil war, family break-up, isolation, indoctrination, murder, rape. They're all here, along with a thrilling sense of survival.

Director: Jeremiah Zagar

Cast: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Juancho Hernangómez 

Uncut Gems has cycled off Netflix for the moment, but if you need your fix of Adam Sandler acting alongside professional basketball players, this sports dramedy will do’er. Here, Sandler plays an NBA talent scout named Stanley Sugerman who’s grown sick of the grind, until his discovery of a talented Spanish player (real-life baller Juancho Hernangómez) reignites his passion for the game. It sounds like another grating Sandler vanity project on paper, but this one turns out to be quite good and charming. 

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Gabrielle Reid

Bursting out of a relatively weak Sundance lineup, writer-director Tamara Jenkins's first movie in more than a decade shows the maker of The Savages in flinty form. Her new one is a comedy about the heartwrenching calculations of in vitro fertilization. If that doesn't sound like a laugh riot, let us re-introduce you to the effortlessly wry Paul Giamatti and a revelatory Kathryn Hahn.

Director: Bradley Cooper

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan

There’s a thin line separating a ‘passion project’ from a ‘deranged act of vanity', and Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic nuzzles up pretty close to it. Ultimately, though, it stays on the right side of the divide, predominantly through the writer-director-star’s remarkable transformation into the legendary composer, which goes far beyond his controversial prosthetic proboscis. He also deserves credit for avoiding both hagiography and a typical cradle-to-grave structure, instead focusing on Bernstein’s tumultuous marriage to Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan, also fantastic) and closeted bisexuality. 

Director: Sandi Tan

Propelled by a decades-spanning mystery as unsettling as any in a David Lynch film, Sandi Tan’s gloriously personal documentary is a vivid scrapbook about growing up a cinephile and a misfit. It’s both a nostalgic throwback to ’80s and ’90s Singapore, where the filmmaker’s artistic appetite blossomed, and an emotional reconciliation with her past, which was interrupted by a shocking theft.

Director: JA Bayona

Cast: Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardella, Matías Recalt

JA Bayona really knows his way around a flare gun and a first-aid kit. The Spanish filmmaker broke through with tsunami drama The Impossible and his status as a kind of arthouse Irwin Allen gains more kudos with this gripping account of the 1971 Andes plane disaster. If you've seen Alive, the Hollywood version of the story, you'll know what to expect: a dwindling bunch of young men resort to cannibalism to stay alive in the mountains awaiting rescue. Bayona's version balances thrills with tragedy with real sensitivity. Grab a blanket and hold on tight.

Directors: Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar

This Oscar-winning doc has a tonne of pertinent things to say about working culture and globalisation. It follows the takeover of an Ohioan auto glass factory by a Chinese company. It should be a good news story of thousands of American jobs saved and a town’s welfare protected, but the truth is far more complicated. The question of whether Chinese and American workers can collaborate successfully takes the film from Moraine, Ohio to Fuqing, China. 

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Carter, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Aaron Sorkin manages to pack in the sense of political and social turmoil of late-1960s America into this ferociously articulate courtroom drama about the Chicago Seven, a group of anti-war protestors blamed for rioting outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The director is on unshowy form here, letting the story speak for itself, while the terrific ensemble cast equally keep things nicely understated. Truly stirring stuff.

Director: Leigh Janiak

Cast: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr

Netflix scored a shocking number of screams with its trio of hard-R adaptations of RL Stine’s PG-rated paperback series. The trilogy-starter, 1994, is the best of the bunch, a film that relishes in gnarly kills but also capably riffs on ‘90s slasher fare like Scream to craft a throwback crowd-pleaser destined to be a sleepover staple. Horror purists, meanwhile, should be appeased by the movie's committment to overkill, particularly a nasty run in with a bread slicer.