The 35 best movies on Netflix right now

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf

A sweet, deeply personal portrayal of female adolescence that’s more attuned to the bonds between girlfriends than casual flings with boys, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s beautiful Lady Bird flutters with the attractively loose rhythms of youth.

Watch if you liked: Say Anything...

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel

A time capsule of a vanished New York and a portrait of twisted masculinity that still stings, Taxi Driver stands at the peak of the vital, gritty auteur-driven filmmaking that defined 1970s New Hollywood. Martin Scorsese’s vision of vigilantism is filled with an uncomfortable ambience, and Paul Schrader’s screenplay probes philosophical depths that are brought to vicious life by Robert De Niro’s unforgettable performance.

Watch if you liked: Joker

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo

The key movie of the Bush era, David Fincher’s masterpiece hides its true subject, obsession, under a maze of gruesome data. The city is terrorized by a ghost, and good men lose their way. It’s a movie about a serial killer that feels like it was written by one.

Watch if you liked: Mulholland Drive

Directors: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise

Cast: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris

Street gangs snap, rumble and leap in this intensely ambitious retelling of Romeo and Juliet, set amid a turf war between whites and Puerto Ricans in New York City. If the combination of hoodlums and balletic movement tempts you to laugh, the high artistry of Jerome Robbins’s choreography and Leonard Bernstein’s music (with lyrics by a young Stephen Sondheim) stare you down to awed silence. It’s a masterwork of musical tragedy. Can Spielberg’s upcoming remake match it?

Watch if you liked: Guys and Dolls

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick

Always dogged by the criticism of excessive caricaturing, the Coens took a leap into the unknown with this Book of Job–like reminiscence, inspired, in part, by their own ’60s Jewish boyhoods. It vibrates with humor, sadness and a scary mystique (“Accept the mystery” is a key line of dialogue).

Watch if you liked: Barton Fink

Director: Sergio Leone

Cast: Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale

It’s funny how the Western’s greatest summation work—a triumph of buried political commentary and purest epic cinema—happened to be made by Italians. Don’t let that hold you back. Henry Fonda’s icy stare, composer Ennio Morricone’s twangy guitars of doom and the monumental Charles Bronson as the last gunfighter (“an ancient race…”) are three reasons of a million to saddle up.

Watch if you liked: The Hateful Eight

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman

Are these not the most euphoric 12 opening minutes of any movie? It may be Steven Spielberg’s greatest triumph simply for unearthing the pleasure of the chase, extending the kinetic magic for a perfect two hours and then hiding it in a dusty warehouse as if to say: It’s your turn—go find it.

Watch if you liked: Tomb Raider

Director: Barry Jenkins

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes

What happens to kids who don’t quite fit in? They become adults who don’t quite fit in—but the gift of Barry Jenkins’s masterly coming-of-age story is its unspoken conviction that, even in a harsh world, there’s a place for everyone. Quietly, Moonlight teases out a last-act solace that’s exquisite.

Watch if you liked: The Florida Project

Director: Asif Kapadia

Cast: Documentary

Anyone with a beating heart will be forgiven for allowing it to break during this unflinching and thoughtful account of the life and death of the soul singer Amy Winehouse. A shattering and sensitive documentary, it's largely shot on phones and Camcorders, capturing casual chats or, more cruelly, moments with foil and crack.

Watch if you liked: 20 Feet from Stardom

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner

Hailee Steinfeld has the knack of being able to play a teenager at peak asshole while garnering huge sympathy, as she slowly learns that nobody’s got the secret to being happy—everyone feels alone and empty. A most memorable character that you will recognize (in the mirror), she’s up there with Cher from Clueless or Ellen Page's Juno. Watch and wince.

Watch if you liked: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Director: Spike Lee

Cast: Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo

It may lack some of the stylistic flourishes and agitprop edge of his early work, but this biopic of civil rights activist and Nation of Islam figurehead is still unmistakeably a Spike Lee joint. If the first hour contains most of the drama, it’s the later scenes that constitute the lesson: how to achieve black pride, power and dignity in the face of white oppression. Denzel Washington provides the fire and charisma, Lee provides the still all-too-timely message.

Watch if you liked: Selma

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks

Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller (starring Ryan Gosling as a stoic stick man) is a throwback to the neon-lit loner cinema of the 1980s, especially the brooding action pictures of Walter Hill and Michael Mann. Refn gets the situational details pitch-perfect, from the low-rent body shops and eateries of less-glamorous L.A. to that most recognizable of local activities: late-night cruising.

Watch if you liked: The Driver

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Cast: Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton

Hollywood, take note: When it comes to post-apocalyptic thrillers, audiences are fine with a little bit of crazy—or an avalanche of it. Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean thriller, set on a speeding train containing the last of humanity, found room for class warfare, bizarre humor and a snobby Thatcherite turn by the mighty Tilda Swinton.

Watch if you liked: Mad Max: Fury Road

Directors: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle

When the film first came out, being the right age (an advanced 13) helped with one's appreciation of the troupe’s lunatic clomping over the Scottish Highlands. If you can regress far enough, you’ll probably still find several bits just as funny: “It’s just a flesh wound,” etc.

Watch if you liked: Excalibur

Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Cast: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld

A case could be made that, of all the superheroes, Spidey is the one most identified with New York City. These are his canyons to swing through. (When Sam Raimi released his 2002 Spider-Man shortly after 9/11, scenes of civic pride brought NYC viewers to tears.) Loaded with Brooklyn attitude, this more recent animated take is a worthy Oscar winner, boldly styled and fun.

Watch if you liked: Shazam!

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.

Watch if you liked: Hannah and Her Sisters

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Documentary (?)

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.

Watch if you liked: The Last Waltz

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.

Watch if you liked: Monos

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie

The story of a 17th-century family forced to resettle near some very haunted woods, Robert Eggers’s 2015 debut is manna for horror puritans, but not much fun for actual Puritans. It’s a movie that has stunned audiences—not with shock effects or gore, but with a dank climate of clouded judgment and furious domestic retribution.

Watch if you liked: Hereditary

Director: James Ivory

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave

Merchant Ivory turned again and again to E.M. Forster, and they must have been in sync with his convoluted prose style, because they got the tone right every time. Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter excel in this Oscar-winning adaptation of what many consider Forster’s greatest work.

Watch if you liked: Downton Abbey

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden

In a surreal edge-of-town hotel, it’s compulsory for singles to find a partner, under the watch of an oppressive staff. If you don’t within 45 days, you’ll be surgically turned into an animal of your choice (star Colin Farrell has already decided to be a lobster). This is a movie in quote marks, tongue-in-cheek storytelling that uses absurdity to hold a mirror to how we live and love.

Watch if you liked: The Favourite

Director: Josh and Benny Safdie

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Benny Safdie, Barkhad Abdi

This crime thriller from filmmaking brothers Benny and Josh Safdie is cocky, grubby and electric. It features Robert Pattinson on top form as Connie, a charismatic, quick-thinking chancer who we first meet extracting his mentally challenged brother Nick (Benny Safdie) from a therapy session so they can spend the morning robbing a bank. Once the Brooklyn bank job goes south, the film stays on the move, running, punching, tumbling, stumbling over 24 hours as the fallout drags us through streets, vehicles, homes, jail, a hospital, a theme park and more.

Watch if you liked: Uncut Gems (2019)

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac

Screenwriter Alex Garland wrote 28 Days Later… and Sunshine; he apparently learned a lot from director Danny Boyle about stylish futurism. For Garland’s first foray behind the camera, he takes on the topics of artificial intelligence and corporate greed.

Watch if you liked: Arrival

Director: J.C. Chandor

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo

Following up All Is Lost, writer-director J.C. Chandor doubles down on a complex tale of NYC economic competition starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain as married criminals mixing it up during the brutal winter of 1981. For its ambitious grasp, the movie is peerless—in the same league as prime Sidney Lumet.

Watch if you liked: Scarface