Netflix’s content library is filled with blockbusters and indie darlings, but a good amount of those come courtesy of the streamer itself. The platform’s original slate is stacked — with sci-fi action epics and sports comedies, and Oscar-winning aueteur entries. So, to whittle down the smorgasbord of choices, we’ve rounded up the best Netflix feature-length creations that deserve to be added to your queue.
Last updated on February 17, 2023.
25. The Luckiest Girl Alive
Year: 2022
Cast: Mila Kunis, Finn Wittrock, Connie Britton, Scoot McNairy
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 113 minutes
Director: Mike Barker
Trailer: Watch here
None of us are who we were in high school, but that’s especially true for Ani Fanelli, a New York City journalist on the cusp of having it all. Mila Kunis plays Ani as tough, street-smart, and a bit of a black sheep amongst the Manhattan elite whose circles she now navigates while trying to keep a lock on her troubled and violent past. But, when a documentary crew comes knocking, hoping to get Ani’s take on an infamous school shooting incident that she survived during her teenage years, old ghosts rise to the surface, threatening her carefully cultivated persona in ways she could never expect.
24. The Old Guard
Year: 2020
Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Rating: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Trailer: Watch here
Charlize Theron leads the cast of this inventive take on the traditional comic book movie. She plays an ancient, immortal warrior named Andy who leads a group of mercenaries that have been operating in the shadows for centuries. When the head of a Big Pharma company learns of their existence, he tries to weaponize their ability to cheat death, which causes big problems for the group and its newest member, a former Marine questioning her unique gifts.
23. Set It Up
Year: 2018
Cast: Glen Powell, Zoey Deutch
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 105 minutes
Director: Claire Scanlon
Trailer: Watch here
Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell star in this office rom-com with a bit of a twist. Instead of the two young co-stars falling in love, it’s Deutch and Powell who try to set up their overbearing, workaholic bosses with each other so that they can get a break from their demanding jobs. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs play the employers from hell, and Deutch and Powell put themselves through the paces to make the pair fall in love, and to make us laugh. It’s superficial, it’s cute, and it’s proof that Glen Powell has always been charming.
22. Eurovision Song Contest: A Song of Ice and Fire
Year: 2020
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Will Ferrell, Dan Stevens
Genre: Comedy, Musical
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 123 minutes
Director: David Dobkin
Trailer: Watch here
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams take on the planet’s most-watched singing competition with this campy comedy about an Icelandic duo named Fire Saga, who are set on achieving glory on the world’s biggest stage. Ferrell and McAdams play Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, artists chosen to represent their nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, a real competition that features musicians from all over the world, who are often performing in wild get-ups. Dan Stevens almost steals the show while Pierce Brosnan and Demi Lovato make appearances. We’re calling it now: “Volcano Man” is going to be a bop for the ages.
21. White Noise
Year: 2022
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 136 minutes
Director: Noah Baumbach
Trailer: Watch here
Director Noah Baumbach partners (again) with Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver to adapt a work of fiction many said could never translate on screen. Based on a 1985 novel of the same name, the story follows a blended family living in ’80s-era Ohio whose lives are upended when a contamination event throws everything into chaos. Driver plays a meek, uninspired professor name Jack, Gerwig his neurotic, death-obsessed wife named Babette. The two share a fear of dying that’s only exacerbated when a train accident causes a cloud of chemical waste to envelop their small town. It’s absurdist comedy with heart and a surprisingly fun dance number at the end.
20. The Wonder
Year: 2022
Cast: Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Kila Lord Cassidy
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Trailer: Watch here
Florence Pugh delivers a devastating-yet-subtle performance in this period drama that deep dives into the superstition and oppression that surrounds religion in a small hamlet in the Irish Midlands. Pugh plays Lib, a young nurse with a dark past who’s hired to investigate whether a young girl who claims to be touched by God is a miracle or a fraud. It’s a tense, slow-plotting thriller, one that gives Pugh ample space to show off her skills amidst a gorgeous backdrop of rainy, rolling hills.
19. Do Revenge
Year: 2022
Cast: Maya Hawke, Camila Mendes, Austin Abrams
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 118 minutes
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Trailer: Watch here
Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes star in this teen comedy filled with cheeky winks to the genre’s early aughts classics. Mendes plays Drea, a popular student at an elite private school whose reputation is trashed after her boyfriend (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) leaks an intimate video of her. She seeks revenge and enlists the help of the school’s new girl Eleanor (Hawke) who undergoes a makeover to infiltrate the popular clique Drea once belonged to and destroy them from the inside. Come for the “Glenn-ergy” of it all, stay for the plot twist near the film’s end.
18. Matilda The Musical
Year: 2022
Cast: Alisha Weir, Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: PG
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Matthew Warchus
Trailer: Watch here
An adaptation of a Tony Award-winning musical, itself an adaptation of a Roald Dahl children’s book, this exquisitely-directed adventure is one of the best Netflix has delivered in quite a while. Most of that is thanks to the choreography, the music, and the dizzyingly-colorful sets, but newcomer Alisha Weir does excellent work as Matilda, a young, misunderstood girl with brains and gumption and parents who fail her time and time again. Emma Thompson is deliciously evil as Miss Trunchbull, and Lashana Lynch proves she’s an on-screen chameleon, following up her Woman King role with a heartbreaking, inspiring turn as Ms. Honey (the teacher we all wish we’d had).
17. The Lost Daughter
Year: 2021
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 121 minutes
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Trailer: Watch here
Dakota Johnson and Olivia Colman star in this tense drama from first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal. Colman plays Leda, a woman on vacation in Greece who’s forced to confront her own shortcomings as a mother when she befriends Nina (Johnson) a new mom struggling to keep her head above water. The film teeters between the past, with Jessie Buckley playing Leda as a young, overwhelmed, absentee mom, and Colman, who makes increasingly problematic choices in her attempt to get closer to Nina and find some kind of redemption.
16. The Platform
Year: 2019
Cast: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 94 minutes
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Trailer: Watch here
This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up, but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.
15. You People
Year: 2023
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Nia Long, Jonah Hill, Lauren London
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Kenya Barris
Trailer: Watch here
Kenya Barris tells another story focusing on interracial dynamics, this time with the help of a roster of comedic powerhouses. Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a young executive struggling to make a career change. He meets Amira by happy accident, but blending their Jewish and Black families prove difficult when Ezra fails to impress Amira’s father (Eddie Murphy) and Amira points out some issues of performative woke-ism in Ezra’s parents (Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Duchovny).
14. The Devil All The Time
Year: 2020
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan,
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
Director: Antonio Campos
Trailer: Watch here
This time-hopping drama set in the backwoods of West Virginia is basically an excuse for director Antonio Campos to assemble his own Avengers-style squad of Hollywood A-listers. Seriously, everyone’s in this movie: Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, that kid who played Dudley in the Harry Potter franchise. The whole gang’s living in shacks and picking up hitchhikers, only to murder them later and speaking in tongues and falling victim to generational trauma. It’s a heavy watch, and there’s not really a happy ending, but boy does Pattinson deliver a batsh*t crazy turn as a perverted preacher.
13. The Harder They Fall
Year: 2021
Cast: Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield
Genre: Western, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 139 minutes
Director: Jeymes Samuel
Trailer: Watch here
Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, and LaKeith Stanfield star in this slick, stylish Western from relative newcomer Jeymes Samuel. Majors plays a vengeful outlaw who decides to track down his longtime enemy (Elba) when he learns he’s been busted out of prison. The two men assemble their respective gangs for a dusty, lawless cat-and-mouse game set to a soundtrack from Jay-Z. It’s probably the coolest entry in the genre in quite a while.
12. Okja
Year: 2017
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 120 minutes
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Trailer: Watch here
Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.
11. Hustle
Year: 2022
Cast: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Juancho Hernangómez
Genre: Sports, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Jeremiah Zagar
Trailer: Watch here
Adam Sandler has plenty of comedy favorites housed on Netflix, but we’re highlighting this one because Sandler gets to channel his everyman charm in a sports story that lets his comedic sensibilities control the game. He plays Stanley Sugerman, an aging 76ers scout, who discovers a potential NBA star during a pick-up game in Spain. Stanley risks his career and his family’s future to back the unknown player, eventually squaring off against his old boss and confronting his own troubled past to help someone else achieve their dreams on the court.
10. Tick Tick Boom!
Year: 2021
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesus
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 120 minutes
Director: Lin Manuel-Miranda
Trailer: Watch here
Lin Manuel-Miranda hops into the director’s chair for the first time with this musical biopic about famed Broadway composer Jonathan Larson. Andrew Garfield completely transforms himself to play the tortured artist who would one day give us Rent. In this outing, Larson is still searching for inspiration for his next play while battling grief and a debilitating awareness of life’s deadline. The supporting cast (Vanessa Hudgens, Alexandra Shipp) are all good, but this is Garfield’s moment and he proves his multifaceted talent extends beyond his Marvel superhero contributions.
9. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Year: 2020
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis, Toni Collette
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 134 minutes
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Trailer: Watch here
Charlie Kaufman’s latest film is based on a book of the same name and stars Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley as a young woman meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time — which normally would be a happy event except she’s secretly been planning to break up the with the guy. That guy is Jesse Plemons, who seems to be in everything these days, and along with Toni Collette and David Thewlis who play his parents, they make for hellish dinner mates. There’s a sinister vibe permeating everything about this straightforward plot so if you think you know how this ends, let us be the first to tell you: You don’t have a clue.
8. Bo Burnham: Inside
Year: 2021
Cast: Bo Burnham
Genre: Comedy, Music
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 86 minutes
Director: Bo Burnham
Trailer: Watch here
Bo Burnham distills our collective quarantined experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing, directing, starring in, composing, and editing this bleak-yet-hilarious bit of performance art that might be the most exciting, inventive thing we’ve seen yet. Is it a movie, a stand-up routine, or a comedy special? We really don’t know, but it’s damn funny so we’re putting it on this list. The self-deprecating humor and catchy tunes are here of course, but Burnham goes darker, crafting complete bangers about everything from the white savior complex to cancel culture, toxic masculinity, depression, and global economic inequality.
7. The Pale Blue Eye
Year: 2022
Cast: Christian Bale, Harry Melling
Genre: Crime, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 128 minutes
Director: Scott Cooper
Trailer: Watch here
Yes, Rian Johnson’s crime mystery is more fun than this dreary period thriller. But, if you like some jump scares and Victorian-era horror elements in your murder investigations then this is the whodunnit for you. Christian Bale commands as Augustus Landor, a weary and hardened detective called to investigate the death of a young West Point cadet and Harry Melling plays his assistant of sorts, a curious young soldier the world would one-day know as Edgar Allan Poe.
6. Da 5 Bloods
Year: 2020
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman, Jonathan Majors
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 154 minutes
Director: Spike Lee
Trailer: Watch here
Any Spike Lee joint is worth a watch, but this genre-bending thriller about a group of black Vietnam War vets returning to the battlefield decades later feels especially timely. That’s because Lee manages to shed light on a little-known part of our shared history: the way our country treated Black soldiers returning from the war, but he also raises the stakes with a subplot that includes a buried treasure hunt and a heartwrenching mission to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade. The cast, which includes Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman in one of his final roles, is brilliant, the story is gripping, and the direction is top notch.
5. Pinocchio
Year: 2022
Cast: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Cate Blanchett
Genre: Animation, Family
Rating: PG
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Trailer: Watch here
Guillermo del Toro brings his trademark whimsy and love for dark fantasy to this adaptation of a beloved childhood fairytale, told this time in stop-motion animation form. Of the two Pinocchio retellings fans were given this year, del Toro’s is undoubtedly the superior work, rehashing the familiar plotline — a wooden puppet brought to life as the son of his carver — and setting it amidst the backdrop of Fascist Italy before and during the Second World War. It’s grim and mesmerizing and surprisingly moving, even if you can predict most of its trajectory.
4. Roma
Year: 2018
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 135 minutes
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Trailer: Watch here
Oscar-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in Mexico City named Cleo, the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
3. Glass Onion
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Craig, Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, Edward Norton
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Crime
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 140 minutes
Director: Rian Johnson
Trailer: Watch here
Rian Johnson delivers a deliriously fun follow-up to his breakout 2019 murder mystery with Daniel Craig returning to play famed detective Benoit Blanc. This time around, Blanc, equipped with a colorful new wardrobe and his same slow, Southern drawl, heads to Greece to investigate a murder amongst a group of friends reuniting for an island holiday. Most of the culprits are out-of-touch elites — to the nth degree — with stars like Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Edward Norton playing supermodels, Twitch streamers, politicians, and tech moguls who are as ridiculous as they are corrupt.
2. The Irishman
Year: 2019
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
Genre: Biography, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 209 minutes
Director: Martin Scorsese
Trailer: Watch here
Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama based on actual events. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion project to be, with some interesting de-aging CGI that does its best to show the scope of Scorsese’s storytelling.
1. All Quiet on the Western Front
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 148 minutes
Director: Edward Berger
Trailer: Watch here
Sometimes the best argument against war is to show it fully, in all its brutality and heartbreak, and inevitable devastation. That’s what this film does well, following the story of a young, idealistic German boy who enlists to serve his country during World War I. Instead of finding glory and honor on the battlefield, he and his friends witness unimaginable horrors while struggling to survive in a wasteland created by man’s greed and insatiable appetite for violence.
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