The 30 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now

This post is updated regularly as movies leave and enter Netflix. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.

With hundreds of films from around the world on the streaming giant that changed the game, how does one even know what to watch when they fire up their Netflix? Start here! We’ve gone through the many films available on the platform and pared down the selection to 30 must-see titles, including acclaimed dramas, action films, comedies, horror flicks, and even stuff for the whole family, with Netflix Originals peppered in throughout, alongside its licensed films. No algorithm nonsense here: Our picks represent the personal favorites of seasoned movie critics, and they’re updated every week and month to include or remove films that join or depart from the streaming service. This list represents the best of Netflix’s movie offerings, and it starts with a new rotating critic’s pick of the week.

This Week’s Critic’s Pick

*Born on the Fourth of July

Year: 1989
Runtime: 2h 24m
Director: Oliver Stone

The director of the Best Picture-winning Platoon returned to Vietnam era with a very different film that’s more about coming home than going to war. Tom Cruise gives one of the best performances of his career as Ron Kovic, an average American kid forced into combat, who came home paralyzed and in a country that had no idea what to do with its veterans. It’s a very moving drama that landed eight Oscar nominations, including Cruise’s first, and won a second trophy for Oliver Stone.

Drama

Ali

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 36m
Director: Michael Mann

Michael Mann directed this 2001 biopic of one of the most important figures of the 20th century, Muhammad Ali. Will Smith does possibly the best film work of his career as the legendary boxer, civil rights icon, and all-around role model, and Mann approaches the life of Ali with his own unique craftsmanship. This appears to be the original theatrical edition and not one of the alternate versions later released FYI.

American Gangster

Year: 2007
Runtime: 2h 36m
Director: Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott directed this epic gangster picture that saw two of the most charismatic actors of their generation work together on their first major project (no offense, Virtuosity fans). Denzel Washington plays this loose variation on the life of Frank Lucas, a legendary criminal who revolutionized the drug trade; Russell Crowe plays the detective who brought him down. Both men are great, but this is an awesome ensemble piece with great supporting work from a dozen or so character actors.

*Blow

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 3m
Director: Ted Demme

Ted Demme directed this adaptation of Bruce Porter’s book of the same name that’s loosely based on the true story of American cocaine smuggler George Jung, played by Johnny Depp. Jung got involved with the Medellin drug cartel in unexpected and dangerous ways. Depp is ably supported by Penelope Cruz, Franke Potente, Rachel Griffiths, and Ray Liotta. This film did reasonably well at the box office but really blew up into a modern crime classic on DVD.

Parasite

Year: 2019
Runtime: 2h 12m
Director: Bong Joon-ho

Remember when this incredible film actually won the Oscar for Best Picture? It felt like anything was possible. Already a half-decade old, take a chance to revisit Bong’s masterpiece, a scathing thriller that shifts issues of class and privilege into an unforgettable piece of storytelling.

Past Lives

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Celine Song

A Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominee, this phenomenal film hasn’t been on Netflix before, and it’s truly a must-see, one of the best films of the decade. It stars the excellent Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as a couple who were close as children but reunite years later after she immigrated to the United States. It’s as much a story of what people leave behind when they change their entire lives as it is a traditional story of unrequited love. It’s beautiful and unforgettable.

The Place Beyond the Pines

Year: 2012
Runtime: 2h 20m
Director: Derek Cianfrance

Derek Cianfrance’s 2013 crime drama divided audiences when it was released but it’s definitely worth a reappreciation now. Anchored by a great ensemble, including Ryan Gosling, Ben Mendelsohn, Mahershala Ali, and Bradley Cooper, this is a story of the ripple effect of criminal behavior, and how it can impact across the generations. It’s smarter and better in every way than it got credit for when it was released.

Rear Window

Year: 1954
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

In June 2025, Netflix did something very cool, dropping six late-career films by the Master of Suspense, under the banner of “The Alfred Hitchcock Collection.” Rear Window is the best gateway to this incredible career, but you can also watch Vertigo, The Birds, Frenzy, and more. And you can even top it off with the Sir Anthony Hopkins biopic Hitchcock.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Benjamin Ree

A young man named Mats Steen succumbed to a horrible degenerative disease with which he was born, and his parents discovered that he had an incredibly rich online life in World of Warcraft. Benjamin Ree uses footage from the actual game to tell a moving story of how people can connect across the world through online lives that are powerful and important. Bring tissues for this one.

The Room Next Door

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 46m
Director: Pedro Almodovar

Arguably the most underrated film of 2024, this drama is a showcase for the remarkable talents of its stars: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The latter plays a journalist who is dying of cancer, who asks an old friend of hers to move into the room next door as she plans her end of life. A movie about finding the beauty in every minute we have on this planet, this one is a gem.

Action

Dunkirk

Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 46m
Director: Christopher Nolan

The Dark Knight director returned to his homeland to tell one of its most formative war stories in the evacuation of British soldiers from northern France in 1940. Telling a story of land, sea, and air evacuations simultaneously, Dunkirk is a technical marvel, a film that only a filmmaker as ambitious and crazy as Nolan could even consider, much less pull off. Don’t watch this one on your phone. And turn it up loud.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 28m
Director: George Miller

One of the best films of 2024 has finally been added to Netflix, joining its partner Fury Road, which is also available on the streaming giant (consider this an entry for both). Ignore the haters, this is robust action filmmaking at its greatest, serving as a prequel to Fury Road but also a fantastic film in its own right. Anya Taylor-Joy captures Furiosa as a survivor in a desperate world, but it’s Chris Hemsworth who steals the movie, sketching a tyrant too power-mad to comprehend his own stupidity.

Godzilla Minus One

Year: 2023
Runtime: 2h 5m
Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Netflix stunned people when they stealthily dropped this worldwide hit on their service, making a movie that wasn’t even on VOD finally available at home. The winner of the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, Godzilla Minus One is a masterful blend of action and social commentary, considered by many to be among the best in this generations-spanning franchise.

*Mission: Impossible

Year: 1996
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Brian De Palma

The saga of Ethan Hunt appears to finally be over with the release of The Final Reckoning — so it’s time for a marathon! Go back to where it all began with a film that looks downright quaint now compared to the sequels but a film that still plays perfectly and then continue the journey through the next four films in the franchise, ending with the excellent Rogue Nation. (You’ll have to finish the marathon elsewhere, for now.)

Rebel Ridge

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 11m
Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Future superstar Aaron Pierre stars in the latest from the phenomenal director behind Blue Ruin and Green Room, proving again that he is one of the best at tight action filmmaking. Wasting no time, Rebel Ridge opens with Pierre’s character essentially robbed by smalltown cops while he’s trying to take bail money to his cousin. The former military specialist doesn’t take that well. This is one of the best Netflix originals in a long time.

Sicario

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve has become one of the biggest directors in the world on the back of beloved films like Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, but this was really his breakthrough, a 2015 thriller about an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) who gets drawn into the war between the U.S. government and the Mexican drug cartels. Benicio Del Toro gives one of the best performances of his career here.

*Starship Troopers

Year: 1997
Runtime: 2h 9m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

The bugs! No one else but the director of Robocop could have made this unforgettable sci-fi/action epic about giant bugs from outer space. On the surface, it’s a wildly entertaining action movie about young soldiers trying to stop an unimaginable force. Dig deeper and you’ll find richly rewarding satirical levels about the military complex and even fascism. However you enjoy it, just enjoy it while you can.

*The Town

Year: 2010
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Ben Affleck

Adapted from a Chuck Hogan novel, this is an essential modern crime movie, especially for the city of Boston. Affleck, Jeremy Renner (Oscar-nominated), Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, and Chris Cooper star in the story of a group of bank robbers from Boston who set out to pull the ultimate job, robbing Fenway Park.

Comedy

*Anchorman

Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Adam McKay

Comedy history changed in 2004 with the introduction of an egocentric news anchorman from San Diego. Set in the 1970s, Anchorman gave Will Ferrell arguably his best film character as Ron Burgundy, a man caught between his career and his love for his new co-anchor, played by Christina Applegate. A blissfully goofy movie, this felt like an instant classic, a movie that people started quoting the day it came out. (Note: The sequel is also on Netflix.)

*The Blues Brothers

Year: 1980
Runtime: 2h 12m
Director: John Landis

One of the most beloved comedies of all time, this 1980 musical classic stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as Jake and Elwood Blues, characters they developed together on Saturday Night Live. The humor in this John Landis classic has held up, but the music really holds it together, including appearances from James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and Chaka Khan.

The Breakfast Club

Year: 1985
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: John Hughes

Few films of the ‘80s are more influential to this day than John Hughes’ mega-popular collection of misfits, a comedy that has basically been remade almost every year since it came out. Look at any of the modern teen comedies and you can pick out the Judd Nelsons, Anthony Michael Halls, Molly Ringwalds, and Ally Sheedys. See where a subgenre basically changed forever.

Midnight Run

Year: 1988
Runtime: 2h 6m
Director: Martin Brest

Martin Brest directed one of the best ‘80s buddy comedies in this gem of a movie that paired Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. The Oscar winner plays a bounty hunter assigned to bring back Grodin’s embezzling accountant, who stole money from the Chicago mob. Easier said than done. Grodin and De Niro have perfect comic chemistry.

*Wayne’s World

Year: 1992
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Penelope Spheeris

It’s hard to believe it’s been three decades since Wayne and Garth left their basement and made the jump to the big screen. The sequel bounces around the streamers a lot, but this more beloved 1992 original is harder to pin down. So decide if you’re worthy enough to watch it while you can. (Note: The sequel is also on Netflix.)

Horror

*Barbarian

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Zach Cregger

Georgina Marshall plays a woman who discovers that her AirBnB has been double-booked when she arrives and finds someone already staying there—the excellent Bill Skarsgard. Despite her instincts, she decides to stay too, and then things go very sideways, but not in the way you expect them to. A truly odd movie, this was a massive hit, making ten times its budget and producing roughly a million TikToks.

Psycho

Year: 1960
Runtime: 1h 48m
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Often on lists of the best movies ever made, Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller undeniably changed the genre forever. With its drastic POV shift and stunning mid-film murder, no one had ever seen a movie that played with structure like this one before. It’s still a riveting piece of work, a movie in which one can find new tricks and joys with every single viewing. It’s a masterpiece.

For Kids & Family

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson

The Oscar-winning director took his visionary skills to stop-motion animation with this instant classic, a retelling of the beloved fairy tale about the wooden boy who longed to be real. With spectacular voice work, this version reimagines Pinocchio during the period before World War II, allowing del Toro to explore his themes of innocence and violence again. It’s a deeply personal, beautiful film.

Klaus

Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: Sergio Pablos

A little movie that could, this animated Christmas adventure was so critically beloved that it competed with giants like Pixar and DreamWorks for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It’s a delightful little fable about a postman who ends up stationed so far to the north that he meets a reclusive toymaker there named Klaus. Yes, it’s a Santa Claus origin story. With lovely, old-fashioned style, this is the kind of joyous film that the whole family can watch any time of year.

Kubo & the Two Strings

Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Travis Knight

Great Laika films drop in and out of the streamers, but this masterpiece has actually been one of the hardest to see. Revisit the story of a young boy on a journey to defeat his evil aunts with the power of his strings, and the partnership of a snow monkey and a beetle. Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s also gorgeous and deeply moving, one of the best family films of the 2010s.

The LEGO Movie

Year: 2014
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

The meta-era of films that comment on their own existence that looks like it could reach its apex with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie owes a debt to this clever family film that took the concept of the LEGO toy and turned it into creative gold. Chris Pratt stars as an ordinary LEGO guy who finds himself on an extraordinary journey in a film that’s really about the power of the imagination, distilling the creative joy of playing with LEGOs into a captivating story.

Wendell & Wild

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 46m
Director: Henry Selick

The director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline finally returned this year with this clever and twisted tale co-written by Oscar winner Jordan Peele. The comedian also co-stars as one of the title characters, the literal demons for a girl who blames herself for the death of her parents. Selick is a master of stop-motion animation and this project allows him to stretch his visual prowess in new, gross ways. It’s a new Halloween classic (that can be watched any time, of course!)

The Wild Robot

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 41m
Director: Chris Sanders

This award-winning adaptation of the novel of the same name by Peter Brown is a gift to viewers of all ages. A blend of Monet and Miyazaki, it stars Lupita Nyong’o as Roz, a service robot who ends up mothering a goose named Brightbill (Kit Connor). It’s a beautiful, moving piece of family filmmaking.

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