The 25 Best Movies on Netflix to Stream Right Now (2024)

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 Glen 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 Graffiti

Release year: 1973

Director: George Lucas

Notable cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Harrison Ford

Nostalgia has never been quite so powerful on film as it was in this 1970s movie about a group of friends in 1962, whiling away the last night of the adolescent summer of their lives. On the other side of this night wait jobs, responsibilities, and Vietnam. It’s amazing to watch George Lucas (along with producer Francis Ford Coppola) play out all these humanistic storylines now that he’s so eternally tied to the space opera of the Star Wars universe, but American Graffiti really pulls you into its vibe of characters yearning to crest that hill, not knowing the value of the heedlessness they’re currently enjoying. While performances by Richard Dreyfuss and Mackenzie Phillips especially stand out, it’s Cindy Williams—Shirley from Laverne & Shirley herself—who gives the film’s strongest turn.

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.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Release year: 2022

Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Notable cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong

We’ve had a year to let the fervor of EEAAO’s best-picture run die down. Now you can just appreciate what a fun, inventive, and surprisingly emotional movie this is. The Daniels have such a great touch for absurdity that’s grounded in real character beats—which means every time that this movie threatens to fly off into weightlessness with its jokes about hot dog fingers or Raccacoonie, there’s a reminder that the family relationships at work are what’s really driving this story. That said, it’s the spectacle that separates Everything Everywhere from everything else. It’s also not every day that you can watch three Oscar-winning performances in a single movie. Michelle Yeoh is giving especially career-crowning work.

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 co*cky bravado and winking charm better than anyone in movies today.

Homecoming

Release year: 2019

Director: Beyoncé

Notable cast: Beyoncé

If you didn’t catch Renaissance during its theatrical run, or you did but need to keep that energy going, Netflix has Beyoncé’s other brilliant concert film ready and waiting for you. Homecoming presents an intimate look at Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance, one of the defining events of a career that has not exactly lacked for defining events. No Beyoncé fan needs this blurb to tell them what this film offers, but if you’ve never seen Beyoncé perform live and want to see the kind of epic-scale spectacle that one artist is capable of, check this one out.

Hulk

Release year: 2003

Director: Ang Lee

Notable cast: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte

The course of 20 years can easily turn a disastrous flop of a movie into a compelling curiosity. That’s definitely the case with Ang Lee’s take on the Hulk, attempted five years before the MCU kicked off, and miles more idiosyncratic than any other comic book superhero adaptation you’ve seen. Lee’s film was not received well by superhero fans or critics, but time—and the oppressive sameness of the modern-day superhero genre—has turned Lee’s tricks, like recreating comic panels, into thrilling ahead-of-their-time gambits. It’s the $137 million experimental movie that Lee made in between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. Ya gotta check it out.

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.

The Killer

Release year: 2023

Director: David Fincher

Notable cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell

David Fincher, the meticulous director behind The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is back with the story of a meticulous assassin whose carefully planned hit job goes awry. The assassin is played by Michael Fassbender, who is a gift to both understated intensity and bucket hats. This one is incredibly violent but also frequently darkly funny, and it’s hard to pass up a movie that has one great Tilda Swinton scene.

King Richard

Release year: 2021

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Notable cast: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Tony Goldwyn

Forget everything else about the 2022 Oscars, and just remember that Will Smith won for a career-highlight performance as Richard Williams, the determined and stubborn father-coach of Venus and Serena Williams. Given what a character the real-life Williams is, Smith’s performance was always going to tower over the rest of the film. But don’t sleep on a stellar array of supporting performances, led by the Oscar-nominated Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Oracene “Brandy” Price. Demi Singleton and especially Saniyya Sidney are incredibly self-possessed as Serena and Venus, respectively, while Jon Bernthal gives tennis shorts a very good name.

Living

Release year: 2022

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Notable cast: Bill Nighy

This is an understated hidden gem that wouldn’t normally jump out while you’re scrolling through choices—but it’s so worth it. Based on a 1952 Akira Kurosawa film, which itself was inspired (at least in part) by the Tolstoy novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the movie has a script adapted by the great Kazuo Ishiguro. Bill Nighy stars as a 1950s London gentleman, a mostly unremarkable bureaucrat, who receives a terminal diagnosis. Making the decision to die by suicide rather than slowly fade away, Nighy’s Rodney goes away to a seaside town, where he enjoys a lovely evening of conversation and song, unencumbered by the concerns of daily life. The story goes on from there, with Nighy giving one of the best performances of his career. The film is far from flashy, but there are bursts of emotion that make it unforgettable.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Release year: 2022

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Notable cast: Jenny Slate, Dean Fleischer Camp, Isabella Rossellini

If you’ve ever seen the online shorts that Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp made about the titular diminutive little shell, you’ve already fallen in love with their pea-size point of view on the world. In their fleshed-out a story for the full-length movie, Marcel remains as precocious and observant as ever. But we also get more of a look into their world, which includes a grandmother voiced by the great Isabella Rossellini. She’s the embodiment of grace and curiosity, and the familial relationship is one that both the actors and the animators play so well. There’s a childlike simplicity to the way this film looks that sometimes masks just how achingly heartfelt it can be.

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.

Molly’s Game

Release year: 2017

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Notable cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong

Following Aaron Sorkin’s work in the worlds of politics, cable news, and Facebook, who knew his best movie would be about high-stakes poker games? Molly Bloom’s story is a true one, though Sorkin wrestles in his own pet themes of authenticity and honor (Molly’s got both). He also shoehorns in some unwelcome dime-store psychoanalysis about fathers and daughters. But it’s easy to set that aside when the world-building of Molly’s poker empire is done with such panache. Jessica Chastain gives a better performance in this than she does in the movie that won her an Oscar, which isn’t so much a slight against the latter as it is high praise for the former. And if you’re a Succession fan, you can’t miss Jeremy Strong’s performance as Molly’s deeply vile first boss.

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.

Shrek

Release year: 2001

Director: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson

Notable cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow

It’s weird to realize that we’ve only had Shrek in the culture for 23 years. It feels like Shrek has always been with us: acting as the butt of silly jokes about trolls and swamps, changing the way we all pronounce donkey, giving Smash Mouth’s “All Star” eternal life as an earworm. This was such a hit when it debuted that it garnered best-picture buzz (and actually won the first-ever Oscar for best animated feature). Now there’s a quaint nostalgia to going back to the beginning, when Shrek met Donkey and fell in love with Fiona. All the fairy-tale jokes were fresh in this one! It’s a perfect stream-and-relax movie.

Something’s Gotta Give

Release Year: 2003

Director: Nancy Meyers

Notable cast: Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet

Before everybody started to bully Nancy Meyers over her fancy kitchens, we appreciated her for writing top-notch romantic comedies about people over 50. There’s no better example than this movie in which a successful, single playwright, portrayed by Diane Keaton, falls for a womanizer, played by Jack Nicholson, while he’s recuperating in her impeccable Hamptons beach house. Keaton got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her performance, which tilts from righteous to smitten to distraught with precise timing. She and Nicholson make for a perfectly sparky match, and the supporting performances—especially Keanu Reeves as a doctor who’s also into Keaton—are excellent. It’s an impeccable comfort watch, and if you’re very into sweater-and-pant combos that cover a variety of shades of white, all the better.

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.

The Woman King

Release year: 2022

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Notable cast: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega

As the great sage and poet of our time, Ariana DeBose, once put it: “Viola Davis, my woman king.” Truer words have never been spoken. Oscar winner Davis does indeed play the titular woman king in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical action drama. The film depicts the real-life story of the Agojie, the all-female warrior battalion that safeguarded the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa during the 17th to 19th centuries. The film is a thrilling action epic with tremendously staged and photographed battle scenes, bolstered by strong performances by Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, John Boyega, and Sheila Atim. There’s a throwback quality to the film’s commitment to storytelling through action, and Davis is an iconic and powerful presence at the film’s center.