25 of the best movies on Netflix right now

What’s the best movie I can watch on Netflix? We’ve all asked ourselves the question, only to spend the next 15 minutes scrolling through the streaming service’s oddly specific genre menus, and getting overwhelmed by the constantly shifting trend menus. Netflix’s huge catalogue of movies, combined with its inscrutable recommendations algorithm, can make finding something to watch feel more like a chore than a way to unwind when really what you want are the good movies. No… the best movies.

We’re here to help. For those suffering from choice paralysis in February, we’ve narrowed down your options to 25 of our favorite current movies on the platform. These run the gamut from taut thrillers and horror classics to eccentric comedies and the best Netflix originals. We’ll be updating this list monthly as Netflix cycles movies in and out of its library, so be sure to check back next time you’re stuck in front of the Netflix home screen.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street

The sensation that launched a franchise, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street lives on as a horror masterpiece decades later. Teenager Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and her friends become the targets of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a deceased serial killer now haunting (and hunting) people in their dreams. As Nancy’s friends start dying in their sleep one by one, she tries desperately to stay awake to survive. A timeless slasher that might also keep you from sleeping, Elm Street and Krueger have staying power for a reason. —Pete Volk

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Army of the Dead

Any movie where a team of misfits, led by Dave Bautista, has to rob a Las Vegas vault is automatically great. Army of the Dead adds zombies to the equation. The movie takes place in a near future in which a deadly virus creates zombies, but the outbreak ends up contained inside Las Vegas, which becomes infected territory. This is among the biggest and loudest heist movies on this list, blending the zombie-killing of later Resident Evil movies with all the tension of safe cracking. The real key to this movie’s greatness and fun, though, is Bautista, who is without question the most interesting and sensitive of the giant-man action stars. He counterbalances the bombastic premise with genuine heart and is endlessly watchable as a zombie-killing, one-man army. —Austen Goslin

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Avengement

Scott Adkins stars in Jesse V. Johnson’s bare-knuckle crime drama Avengement as Cain Burgess, a prisoner who escapes police custody and embarks on a mission of revenge against his brother (Craig Fairbrass). Accosted daily by a killer sent by his brother in order to silence him, Cain transforms from a competent brawler into a steel-toothed weapon of destruction, honing his skills and biding his time to enact vengeance on all those who betrayed him. Inspired by Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 film Harakiri, Avengement is an engrossing, gut-churning, and viscerally exciting revenge drama with impressive action and well-done performances. —Toussaint Egan

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Baahubali: The Beginning

In Western terms, this Tollywood production, the most expensive Indian film at the time of its release, is like a biblical epic by way of Marvel Studios, with a little Hamlet and Step Up thrown in for good measure. The Beginning chronicles the life of Shivudu, an adventurer with superhuman strength who escapes his provincial life by scaling a skyscraper-sized waterfall, aides and romances a rebel warrior named Avanthika, then teams up with her to rescue a kidnapped queen from an evil emperor. Exploding with hyper-choreographed fight sequences and CG spectacle (not to mention a handful of musical numbers with equal bravura), The Beginning is 159 minutes of mythical excess, going big like only Indian film can, and resting on the muscular shoulders of its hero, the single-name actor Prabhas. If you fall hard for it, get pumped — this is only part one. The twist leads into Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, another two-and-a-half-hour epic currently streaming on Netflix. —Matt Patches

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Blackhat

A sleek and sexy thriller that makes hacking look extremely cool, Michael Mann’s unfairly maligned Blackhat stands tall as a high mark in digital filmmaking. It is peak Mann — if you’re not a fan of the Heat director’s work, your mileage may vary. In the film, Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a captain in the P.L.A.’s cyber warfare unit, is tasked with getting to the bottom of a computer attack that melts down a nuclear power plant in Hong Kong. While liaising with the FBI investigation, Chen insists on the aid of his old friend Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth, who has never been hotter or cooler), an imprisoned genius hacker. When Hathaway and Chen’s sister (Tang Wei), a networking engineer also helping with the case, fall for each other, it adds an extra wrinkle to an already high stakes situation. Viola Davis and Holt McClanahan feature as FBI agents who aren’t super happy to have to rely on a notorious criminal.

With sharp digital cinematography and unforgettable set pieces, Blackhat explores our changing global relationship to technology. Mann makes tangible the microscopic computer systems that run the world: An extreme close-up of internal wires leading to a motherboard like a vast interconnected highway; a computer fan that sounds like a jet engine. Events that in other films would be shown as a boring stroke of keys are instead depicted as hypnotic processes happening under the surface of the visible world. —Pete Volk

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Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Johnnie To is one of our great modern directors, equally adept in hard-boiled triad crime dramas and light-hearted romantic comedies alike. 2011’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart falls in the latter category, and is one of the many high marks of the Hong Kong director’s legendary career. Fresh off the end of a long-term relationship, Chi-yan (Gao Yuanyuan) is an analyst for an investment bank who finds herself in the middle of a love triangle. On one side, there’s Sean (Louis Koo), a CEO who works across the street from Chi-yan and yearns for her through the tall corporate glass windows that separate them. On the other, there’s Kevin (the always-dreamy Daniel Wu), an alcoholic former architect who helps Chi-Yan move on and is inspired by her to start creating again. What follows is a sincere, funny, and truly charming romantic time. —PV

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The Exorcist

An all-time classic for a reason, The Exorcist is just as terrifying now as when it caused a mild national panic on release in 1973. When a young girl (Linda Blair) starts behaving very strangely, her mother tries anything and everything to get her help, leading to … well, you know the title of the film. The realism of a mother’s desire to keep her daughter safe in an uncontrollable world set against a supernatural conflict pulls you right in from the very beginning, and keeps its hold on you far beyond the end of its two hour run-time. —PV

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Fast Color

Julia Hart’s 2018 superhero drama Fast Color stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Black Mirror, Loki) as Ruth, a homeless wanderer with inexplicable powers who returns to her family home after years of hiding from the police. Reunited with her mother Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and her young daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney), who both possess the same powers as her, Ruth attempts to regain control over her abilities and reconcile with Lila, all while eluding the authorities who seek to capture and study her. As we wrote back in our review, Fast Color is less a “superhero” film as it is an intimate family drama set in a speculative universe à la 2016’s Midnight Special. The spectacle on display is not the manifestation of Ruth’s powers, but in the masterful trio of performances at its center combining to create a story as poignant as it is exhilarating. —TE

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Gattaca

Andrew Niccol has never made a better film than Gattaca, period. The director has dabbled with visually impressive sci-fi dystopias in films like 2011’s In Time or 2018’s Anon, but neither of those have managed to surpass that sheer lightning-in-a-bottle ingenuity of his directorial debut. Set in a future “not-too-distant” from our own, Niccol’s film stars Ethan Hawke as Vincent Freeman, a supposedly “inferior” man born into a society defined by a eugenically-organized caste system who yearns to pursue his dream of becoming an astronaut. Defying the institutional roadblocks of his time, Vincent assumes the identity of Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law), a eugenically exceptional athlete in order to work as navigator at the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation. When Gattaca’s administrator is mysteriously killed just days before Vincent’s mission to Titan, he’ll have to allude the suspicions of the investigators tasked with solving the murder as well as those of his co-worker Irene Cassini (Uma Thurman). With a brilliantly evocative score composed by Michael Nyman, a powerful animating trio of performances by Hawke, Thurman, and Law, and an impeccably stylish retro-futuristic aesthetic, Gattaca is soul-stirring science fiction. —TE

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The God Committee

Kelsey Grammer and Julia Stiles star in The God Committee as Andre Boxer and Jordan Taylor, two heart surgeons at a New York hospital who find their conscience, and relationship, put the test when the recipient of an inbound donor heart dies before their operation. With the heart due to expire in less than an hour, they and their fellow transplant committee members must decide between the lives of three potential recipients who will receive the heart. Jumping back and forth between the committee meeting and the consequences several years later, The God Committee is a sober and tense drama that puts in stark focus the cold calculus of decisions that underscore the effort of preserving human life. Grammer and Stiles are terrific, as is Colman Domingo in a standout role as a lawyer-turned-priest who joins the committee as legal counsel. —TE

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Hell or High Water

Scratch a Western movie, and you’ll usually find a study of masculinity and what it means to be a man. And whenever two men wind up in opposition — which is most of the genre right there — it’s usually a study in contrasting forms of manhood. The traditional good-vs.-evil face-off does come up a lot, but just as often, Westerns explore the contrast between strong men and cunning ones, whether it’s in classics like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, modern followers like The Power of the Dog, or genre-hybrid thrillers like the excellent Hell or High Water, which turns a modern-day thriller about bank robbers into a complicated rumination on masculinity, the history of the West, and the nature of outlaws.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as stickup artists with a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid vibe; Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham play the aging Texas rangers trying to run them down. Pine and Foster’s characters have a Great Big Scheme that the movie keeps under wraps until a key point, but in the meantime, there’s plenty of action, both on the outlaws’ side and the side of the men hunting them. It’s a thoughtful and nuanced film about the lines of civilization and the people who draw them in ways that benefit themselves, but it’s also a gripping adventure, suitable for sneaking in subtle messages while keeping people entertained — like all the best Westerns. —Tasha Robinson

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Killing Them Softly

Andrew Dominik’s pitch-black 2012 neo-noir Killing Them Softly stars Brad Pitt as Jackie Cogan, a mob enforcer tasked with restoring order in the wake of three small-time crooks’ attempt to rob a Mafia poker game. Set in Boston on the euphoric cusp of Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States, Killing Them Softly is a bitter, bleak, and blistering crime thriller with a climactic final speech whose words will stay with you long after the credits roll. —TE

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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

A visually distinct Arthurian adaptation, Guy Ritchie’s 2017 film is unlike any other, for better and for worse. After Uther (Eric Bana), successfully defeats the evil mage Mordred in a massive siege (which could also be described as Lord of the Rings: King Arthur, giant war elephants and all), he is betrayed by his brother Vortigern (a constantly smirking Jude Law), leaving the baby Arthur (Charlie Hunnam plays adult Arthur) an orphan. Growing up on the streets, Arthur grows into your typical Guy Ritchie tough guy protagonist (Medieval variant), but is haunted by nightmares of his parents’ death. When he pulls Excalibur from the stone … well, you know, it’s King Arthur.

With jarring, frantic editing, electrifying use of speed-ramping in the climactic action scenes, and a rip-roaring score, the film has a palpable identity, but that also means this adaptation is certainly not for everyone. The script is a mess, cobbled together from multiple previous unproduced attempts at an Arthur movie, but the film is truly remarkable in the ways it pushes digital filmmaking’s limits, including some of the best montage sequences in recent Hollywood memory. If you’re willing to have a silly time with an overwhelming visual feast, give it a stab. —PV

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Lost Bullet

This French crime thriller executes a simple premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an expert mechanic forced to work for dirty cops. When he’s framed for a murder he did not commit, he has to find the one thing that can prove his innocence: a lost bullet in a missing car. With high-octane action sequences and great car stunts, this is a 92-minute thrill ride through-and-through. —PV

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Middle of Nowhere

Ava DuVernay’s 2012 drama Middle of Nowhere centers on the story of Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a nurse living in Compton, California separated from her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) who has been arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison. While regularly visiting Derek and attempting to negotiate his parole, Ruby meets Brian (David Oyelowo), a bus driver whom she eventually pursues a romantic relationship with. As she struggles to reconcile her growing attraction to Brian with her lingering attachment to Derek, new discoveries are brought to light that force Ruby to reckon with the consequences of both her and her husband’s choices as she attempts to move towards an uncertain future. Beautiful, evocative, and thoroughly heart wrenching, Middle of Nowhere is a stirring portrait of finding truth in love and vice-versa. —TE

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The Night Comes For Us

The Night Comes for Us just fucking whips, okay? Why waste time on subtlety and preamble; the film certainly doesn’t! Indonesian action thrillers have been enjoying a renaissance period ever since Gareth Evans’ 2011 film The Raid kicked the door down and mollywhopped everything else in sight. Timo Tjahjanto’s 2018 film certainly follows in the footsteps of Evans’ own, with The Raid star Joe Taslim starring here as Ito, a gangland enforcer who betrays his Triad crime family by sparing the life of a child and attempting to flee the country. Fellow The Raid star Iko Uwais shows up here as Arian, Ito’s childhood friend and fellow enforcer, who is tasked with hunting down Ito and recovering the girl. The action comes fast and frenzied here, with kinetic choreography and dazzling handheld cinematography that makes every punch, fall, and stab count. If you need to get your adrenaline pumping, throw this one on. —TE

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The Paper Tigers

Quoc Bao Tran’s Kung-fu action comedy stars Alain Uy, Ron Yuan (Mulan), and Mykel Shannon Jenkins as the eponymous Paper Tigers: three former martial arts prodigies who, after a lifetime of strenuous training and hard fighting, have grown into beleaguered middle-aged nobodies. But when their master is murdered, the three swear an oath to avenge his memory and bring his killer to justice. If that sounds serious, please know this falls into the Apatowian camp of Dumb Man comedy. —TE

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Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 historical drama Phantom Thread follows the story of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), an irascible haute couture dressmaker in 1950s London whose carefully cultivated lifestyle is upset by his ongoing love affair with his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps), a strong-willed woman with ambitions and desires of her own. His final film role to date, Day-Lewis is unsurprisingly masterful in his portrayal of Woodcock as an artist whose capricious infatuations and fastidious inflexibility proves unbearable to all except Alma, who discovers a … let’s say, unconventional way of leveling the power dynamic in their relationship. Top that with exquisite score by Jonny Greenwood and beautiful costume designs by Mark Bridges and you’ve got what is undoubtedly one of Anderson’s finest films to date. —TE

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Psychokinesis

From Korean animator Yeon Sang-ho — best known for his jump to live action, 2016’s zombie knockout Train to Busan (also on Netflix) — Psychokinesis follows Shin, a bumbling, borderline-alcoholic security guard who drinks from a mountain spring recently infected by a meteorite and gains telekinetic powers. Ryu Seung-ryong is a joy as the oaf, who’s learning to control his abilities just as his estranged daughter re-enters his life and sucks him into a real-estate-driven class war. Psychokinesis plays Shin’s “fighting style” for laughs, and while it’s not as cartoonish as Chinese director Stephen Chow’s genre hybrids, the movie can make the flying object mayhem both cheeky and thrilling. The political edge gives weight to Shin’s superpowered decisions, but Sang-ho never loses sight of why everyone showed up: to push the psychic conceit to bigger and bigger heights. —MP

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Raw

Titane director Julia Ducournau’s 2016 feature debut Raw is neither for the faint of heart nor weak of stomach. A coming of age body horror drama following a veterinarian student’s growing hunger for human flesh, Raw is an appropriately titled film of horrific appetites and the many consequences borne out of them. Garance Marillier and Ella Rumpf’s lead performances as Justine and her amoral carnivorous sister Alexia are riveting, the pacing is taut, and the gore is as engrossing as it is thoroughly gut-churning. –TE

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Sorry to Bother You

Boots Riley’s 2018 black comedy Sorry to Bother You follows Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a telemarketer from Oakland dispirited by his thankless job pitching products to predominantly white customers over the phone. Things quickly take a turn for what at first seems the better when Cassius learns to use his “white voice,” propelling him to success as he shoots up the corporate ladder to the venerated position of “Power Caller.” Absurd, hilarious, and unapologetically political, Sorry to Bother You is an unabashedly unique film filled with twists that’ll have you scratching your head as frequently as you’ll be shouting at the screen. —TE

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Starship Troopers

A satirical adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name, Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 biting sci-fi film Starship Troopers takes place in a far off future where the Federation, a fascistic military organization that rules the Earth through a planet-wide system of mandatory conscription, instigates a full-scale war against a fearsome race of giant alien insects. Though derided when it first released, the film has since experienced a reappraisal in the decades since to such a point that it’s now championed as one of the best and most perceptive science-fiction films of its era. Would you like to know more? —TE

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Cab Passenger: [after Raphael jumps over the cab hood] What the heck was that?

Cab Driver: Looked like sort of a big turtle in a trench coat.

[pause]

Cab Driver: You’re going to LaGuardia, right?

Delightfully silly and overwhelmingly ’90s (for better and worse), the original TMNT is a fun time for all ages. The movie follows intrepid TV reporter April O’Neill (Judith Hoag) as she works with the turtles to stop a crime ring taking over New York City. The suits — designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, one of the Muppet master’s last projects — look incredible, and bring a real tangibility to this appropriately comic book-like adaptation. The use of real suits also allowed for talent specialization (different performers were used for puppetry, voice acting, martial arts scenes, and skateboarding stunts), allowing the production to swap in different people under the suit without breaking audience immersion. Produced by legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest and distributed by New Line Cinema, TMNT was a surprise box office smash hit, holding the record for highest-grossing independent film until Blair With Project. It’s also got a very young Sam Rockwell in a minor role! —PV

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The Town

Ben Affleck’s 2010 American crime thriller The Town follows the story of a crew of bank robbers living in Charlestown, Boston. Following a successful heist, things become complicated for the group’s leader Doug (Affleck) when he finds himself falling in love with Claire (Rebecca Hall), the assistant manager of the bank who they had taken hostage and left unscathed. As Doug attempts to reconcile his feelings for Claire with his obligations to his partners, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) is relentless in his mission to bring Doug and his cohorts to justice. With a host of fantastic performances, fierce gunfights, a captivating climax and sobering denouement, The Town is yet another stunning accomplishment in Affleck’s career as a director. —TE

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Uncut Gems

2019’s Uncut Gems is a contemporary crime drama shot through the frenetic rhythm and terror of a heart attack. Adam Sandler, far from just a simple case of stunt casting, delivers an electrifying performance as Howard Ratner, a New York jeweler and gambling addict who comes into possession of a rare black opal that might finally settle his outstanding debts once and for all. The only catch is that Howard’s worst enemy is himself, and his habitual attempt to fleece and manipulate everyone from his family, friends, and acquaintances in search of his next big score imperils both his life and the lives of those around him. With a powerful orchestral EDM score courtesy of Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), dazzling performances by Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, and Kevin Garnett as himself, Uncut Gems is an unforgettable film that plays out like a pulse-pounding Greek tragedy set in 2010s New York. —TE

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Warrior

Quality sports dramas are a rare thing in Hollywood. In Warrior, two estranged brothers — one a former Marine and one-time wrestling prodigy (Tom Hardy), the other a former MMA pro-turned-high school physics teacher (Joel Edgerton) — compete in a massive MMA tournament, with more at stake than just the big cash prize. Gavin O’Connor’s heartfelt siblings-destined-to-collide story features terrific central performances, terrific MMA fight scenes (second unit director J.J. Perry is a modern action legend), and a strong tournament narrative structure that holds the whole thing together. —PV