It can be tough to figure out what to stream
next in Netflix's vast library, but don't
worry.
From incredible underrated gems to timeless
favorites that you haven't thought about in
years, we've rounded up some of the best movies
on Netflix right now.
Some filmmakers fall flat on their faces when
they make their first movie, but Duncan Jones
is one of the few directors who more than
delivered the goods with his feature film
debut.
Titled simply Moon, Jones' debut is not just
a staggeringly assured first outing, it's
also one of the best sci-fi films produced
in the 21st century.
Set almost entirely on the lunar surface,
the film follows a contract worker who's spent
the duration of his three-year contract in
near-total isolation.
On the cusp of fulfilling his obligations
and heading home to see his wife and daughter,
Sam's intensely isolated existence takes a
surprising turn when he finds himself the
victim of a near-fatal mining accident.
Sam Rockwell delivers densely layered work
that turns what's essentially a one-man show
into a complex, heartbreaking character study
in the psychiatry of self, solitude, and science
run amok.
This stylized little film simply must be seen
to be believed.
It's hard to believe that over 20 years have
passed since David Fincher terrorized the
moviegoing public with this brutalist tale
of biblical morality run amok.
But somehow, the decades haven't dulled the
soul-crushing impact of Fincher's alluring
detective tale.
In fact, it's possible that Seven may be even
more disturbing today than it was when it
hit theaters in 1995.
"Oh god!
Oh god!"
The film follows a rookie detective and his
veteran partner on the hunt for a vicious
serial killer who's using the seven deadly
sins as motive.
The murders figure prominently in Seven's
nightmarish narrative, so before you press
play, please note that this film is not for
the weak of heart.
"Come on, he's insane.
Look.
Right now he's probably dancing around in
his grandma's panties, yeah, rubbing himself
in peanut butter."
Seven is the sort of movie that seeps into
your skin and never really scrubs clean.
That's generally a good thing, because as
difficult as Fincher's film can be to sit
through, it's a genuinely unsettling crime
thriller crafted with undeniable skill and
uncompromising vision.
And once you watch it, you'll never see a
Fed-Ex commercial the same way again.
"What will it bring?
An old friend."
Some movies aim to dazzle the eye, others
to touch the heart, and others to move the
mind.
The best films do all of those things at once,
and Guillermo del Toro has essentially specialized
in making movies that do exactly that.
Of all the director's features, few feel more
personal or visionary than his 2006 masterpiece
Pan's Labyrinth.
Hoping to evade the violence of the Spanish
Civil War, Ofelia, a bookish pre-teen, and
her mother are whisked off to an isolated
estate.
Along the way, she meets a fairy that takes
her to a centuries-old faun, a mythical creature
who informs Ofelia she's a princess, and can
claim her throne only if she survives three
harrowing feats of bravery.
Del Toro pulls inspired performances from
his cast, conjures images as thrilling as
they are terrifying, and finds untold depths
of beauty within fantastical landscapes thus
making a film that dazzles the eye, touches
the heart, and moves the mind in ways most
movies cannot fathom.
While there really isn't much we can say about
Christopher Nolan's comic book masterpiece
that hasn't already been said, it's worth
noting that people still talk about The Dark
Knight like it hit theaters last week, and
still revere the film as the comic adaptation
that forever changed the game.
"The Dark Knight … It came!”
A limited edition $299 Dark Knight DVD with
bonus footage special comments and a Christian
Bale autograph."
The good news is that the folks at Netflix
have apparently recognized that, and have
re-added The Dark Knight to their long list
of offerings.
That means you can once again bear witness
to the pulse-pounding caper that introduces
the marvelous Joker to Gotham.
You can once again re-live the heartache and
heroism that drives the Dark Knight to perform
increasingly death-defying deeds.
You can once again watch Gordon squirm through
the right and wrong sides of the law, and
watch the unexpected birth of Two-Face in
tow.
And you can once again give yourself over
to the Batman movie that we needed and deserved.
Quentin Tarantino's eighth film, The Hateful
Eight, takes place in the aftermath of the
Civil War.
We're introduced to eight people who get snowed
in at a roadside pitstop, and as the title
asserts, none of them are particularly savory
characters.
There's a lot of talking, a lot of bloodshed,
and a lot of Tarantino-ness all around.
"You gotta kick it open...what?...
KICK IT OPEN!"
As a Western, sure, The Hateful Eight is no
Fistful of Dollars.
But as Nerdist very effectively argues, it's
not a Western at all — it's a horror movie.
For starters, as Tarantino himself explained,
it was most directly inspired by John Carpenter's
1982 body horror film The Thing.
On top of that, the musical score includes
tracks from The Thing and The Exorcist II,
deliberately adding to the sense that monsters
are lurking, even if they turn out to be human
after all.
"Now I am calling you a liar, Señor Bob"
During the '90s, Wesley Snipes tried like
crazy to get a big-screen version of Marvel's
Black Panther into production, according to
The Hollywood Reporter.
It never quite came together, but a couple
of decades later, CGI technology advanced
enough to bring the radical, tech-centric
world of Wakanda to life.
That's just what director Ryan Coogler accomplishes
in Black Panther, delivering a vividly realized
vision of the fictional nation that appears
advanced beyond our wildest dreams, but also
feels like human beings actually live there.
Coogler also ingeniously uses the setting
as a plot device in a Shakespearean tale of
palace politics, tribal traditions, and ideological
conflicts.
He populates that narrative with richly developed
characters and propels it forward with some
of the most electrifying action sequences
the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever seen.
That he also delivers a politically subversive
film along the way is what qualifies Black
Panther as one of the best Marvel movies to
date.
"Wakanda forever!”
“Wakanda forever!"
Robert Eggers' haunting folktale The Witch
is one of the films that helped set the bar
for current horror trends.
Eggers' masterfully executed chiller wowed
audiences at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival,
and actually made a few bucks in its initial
theatrical release, even if it didn't exactly
set the box office on fire.
Behind marvelous critical buzz and equally
solid word of mouth, The Witch has more than
found its audience after the fact, with many
hailing it as the one of the best horror films
of the decade.
Eggers' film follows a 17th century family
whose devoutly puritanical existence falls
apart under the weight of unspeakable tragedies,
which may or may not be influenced by an evil
lurking in a nearby forest.
Eggers' film is a bleak, intensely atmospheric
study in gothic Americana that features a
star-making turn from Anya Taylor-Joy.
It's the sort of film that you simply have
to see to believe.
2016's Hush is definitely a movie you can't
miss.
The premise is simple: Maddie, a deaf and
mute author, is staying in her isolated house
deep in the Alabama woods when a masked killer
appears at her window.
While that concept could easily devolve into
another run-of-the-mill suspense flick, Hush
has no problem upping the thrill factor with
deft camera work, unrelenting suspense, and
a truly amazing performance from actress Kate
Siegel.
She portrays Maddie as strong, capable, and
intelligent — a breath of fresh air for
a female role in a horror movie.
Of course, the sound design in Hush is top-notch.
Director Mike Flanagan uses Maddie's disability
to keep the constant threat of danger looming.
He never gets gimmicky with his portrayal
of Maddie's deafness, giving us exactly as
much as we need to feel the fear of never
knowing what's behind us.
With 1998's The Truman Show, funnyman Jim
Carrey's oddball layers were stripped away
to reveal a serious actor who could be both
silly and sincere.
He stars as Truman Burbank, a quiet, everyday
guy who just so happens to be the star of
the world's largest reality show.
The catch?
Truman doesn't know he's on a show.
Since birth, every moment of his life has
been filmed and broadcast to the world.
All his neighbors and friends — even his
wife — are actors in the show.
He's never left his hometown, because his
hometown is a giant film set.
"Good morning!
...Morning!...
Good morning!...
Oh and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon,
good evening, and good night."
Couple Carrey's remarkable depth with beautiful
direction and a heartfelt story, and The Truman
Show is easily one of the best movies of the
late '90s, and one of the best on Netflix
right now.
So here's the formula for the 2015 film Room.
You take a room.
You put two people in it.
And then you center it all around a thrilling,
emotional struggle that builds until the entire
audience is questioning everything they thought
they knew about life, family, and love.
Once Room starts going, it never slows down.
The beauty of the film comes unquestionably
from Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, who play
the mother and son locked in a room.
They're visited periodically by a mysterious
man with unpleasant motives, and the rest
of the time they occupy themselves by playing
games, telling stories, and for Larson's character
trying not to focus on the hell of spending
the rest of their lives in the room.
"Why don't we try your cake?”
“No!”
“Jack.
Let’s try a bite of it.”
“I said no!"
It's their bond, with all its ups and downs,
that anchors the movie and drives everything
that happens.
If you've been on the fence about Room, queue
it up now and don't worry.
It won't disappoint.
Director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie
Kaufman teamed up for 2006's Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind.
Equal parts quirky sci-fi farce and heartfelt
romantic drama, the film follows a man and
woman who each have memories of their relationship
scientifically removed from their brain after
a rocky breakup.
In lesser hands, it may have been silly.
With Gondry and Kaufman guiding the narrative,
Eternal Sunshine instead plays out as a near-flawless
mix of genres that seamlessly blends Gondry's
lo-fi craftsmanship with Kaufman's grounded,
insightful romantic fable.
Anchored by powerful lead performances, Eternal
Sunshine is a bold, funny, endlessly creative
little film that manages to be wildly romantic
and anti-romantic in equal measure, and somehow
satisfies emotionally on both fronts.
One of the more unsung films in A24's lineup
is the harrowing mindbender of a thriller
Enemy.
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal in a revelatory dual
performance, the film follows a quiet man
who unwittingly finds his doppelgänger and
proceeds to have a full-blown crisis of identity.
Along the way, the pair's lives become a tangled
web of secrets, obsessions, and lust that
threatens to upend each of their existences.
Enemy is an artistically and narratively ambitious
film worthy of the sort of in-depth examination
typically reserved for great works of literature.
It's one of the most hauntingly ambiguous
thrillers you'll ever see, with a bold blend
of stark visuals and a near-suffocating sense
of atmospheric dread.
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