The 20 Best Movies on Netflix You Probably Havent Seen
Emily the Criminal.This article is regularly updated as movies enter and leave Netflix. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
Every week, as big-budget and star-studded productions like The Gray Man and Heart of Stone get pushed to the homepage by Netflix, dozens of smaller, quality films get buried by the algorithm. How do you find the movies lost in the streaming machine? We’re here to help with this rotating list of 20 hidden-gem films on the streaming giant that you probably haven’t seen. None of these films have ever won Best Picture at the Oscars. And they probably didn’t play theatrically in almost any city other than New York or Los Angeles, becoming easy to miss in the increasingly crowded streaming landscape. Whatever the case, there’s not a bad movie in here. Watch them all. (And don’t skip our list of the best movies on Netflix overall, either.)
6 Balloons
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 15m
Director: Marja Lewis Ryan
Dave Franco isn’t the first actor that people think of for an addiction drama, but he’s excellent in 6 Balloons as Seth, a young man who has relapsed into his addiction and only his sister Katie, played excellently by Abbi Jacobson of Broad City fame, can pull him out of his latest spiral. After premiering at SXSW in March 2018, this character piece was quickly shoved down the list of new releases on Netflix almost as soon as it came out. But it’s a strong drama about family, addiction, and the ties that both pull us down and save our lives.
6 Balloons netflixBlue Jay
Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: Alex Lehmann
Another tender character study that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves just happens to contain one of the best career performances of the award-winning Sarah Paulson. Ryan Murphy’s BFF stars as Amanda, who runs into her old high-school boyfriend Jim (excellently sketched by Mark Duplass) when he happens to be home selling his late mother’s house. Duplass and Paulson have excellent chemistry, completely believable as a long-ago couple wondering if they may have let their perfect match go.
Blue Jay netflixChristine
Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Antonio Campos
The director of The Devil All the Time and Max’s The Staircase helmed this unforgettable showcase for one of the best actresses of her generation: Rebecca Hall. The consistently great performer plays Christine Chubbuck, who became the first person to ever die by suicide on live television, the unforgettable act taking place during a news broadcast in Florida in 1974. Hall embodies a woman emotionally torn apart by the world around her until she feels like she has no other choice. It’s one of the best performances of the 2010s.
Christine netflix*Copenhagen
Year: 2014
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Mark Raso
Barely released in theaters, this indie film made its premiere at the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival, the low-budget cousin of Sundance that takes place at the same time. It’s a smart character study, the story of a man-child named William (Gethin Anthony) who meets a girl named Effy (Frederikke Dahl Hansen). They’re both at very different crossroads in their life, but it’s one of those meetings that sends their lives off in new directions. Copenhagen may be talky, but it’s undeniably engaging.
Copenhagen netflix*Descendant
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Margaret Brown
History isn’t really history in this excellent documentary that graced the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It’s the story of Africatown in Alabama, a community near Mobile that was founded by a group of West Africans brought to this country on the last slave ship, the Clotilda. As wreckage of the ship is excavated from the Mobile River, it brings with it ghosts that haunt this region to this day. A sharp dissection of this country’s racial wounds, it’s a timely, powerful piece of work.
Descendant netflix*Disobedience
Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Sebastian Lelio
The director of the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman co-wrote and directed this adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s 2006 novel of the same name. It’s a platform for a pair of fantastic performances from Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. Weisz plays a woman who returns to her Orthodox Jewish community, where she falls in love with a woman named Esti, played with nuance by McAdams. It’s partially a commentary on acceptance but also a film that feels true to its characters, and a reminder that the Rachels always deliver.
Disobedience netflix*Emily the Criminal
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: John Patton Ford
Aubrey Plaza did her best film work to date in this 2022 thriller that did kinda pop when it dropped on Netflix but still deserves a bigger audience. The White Lotus star plays Emily, a victim of the gig economy who finds an unusual job working a credit scam in Los Angeles. As she gets closer to physical danger, Emily almost seems to get stronger. Ford’s film is both a tense thriller and a commentary on what people have to do to survive the brutal, unforgiving economy of the 2020s.
Emily the Criminal netflix*Heavy
Year: 1995
Runtime: 1h 44m
Director: James Mangold
Long before he made blockbusters like Logan and Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, James Mangold made his directorial debut with this tender character study that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. It centers a fantastic performance from Pruitt Taylor Vince as an overweight cook who struggles through life. He sees hope in the form of a new waitress (Liv Tyler) at the bar owned by his mother (Shelley Winters).
Heavy netflixHis House
Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Remi Weekes
The pandemic likely pushed this film too far down the Netflix algorithm. It’s one of the best horror movies of the 2020s so far, the story of a refugee couple who discover that it’s not places that are haunted but people. Wunmi Mosaku of Lovecraft Country and Sope Dirisu of Gangs of London play a Sudanese couple trying to adjust to life in England, but there is something malevolent not only in their new home but carried with them from their old one.
His House netflix*I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Year: 2020
Runtime: 2h 14m
Director: Charlie Kaufman
The writer of Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind proved a perfect fit for the adaptation of 2016 surreal thriller of the same name by Iain Reid. Jessie Buckley rocks as a woman who goes with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents for the first time, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis. Or does she? Could she not even exist? As Kaufman’s film gets more and more surreal, it becomes increasingly rewarding, a study of identity, loss, and regret wrapped up in a rivetingly made film.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things netflixThe Kindergarten Teacher
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: Sara Colangelo
Maggie Gyllenhaal does the best film work of her underrated career in this remake of the 2014 Israeli film of the same name. She plays Lisa Spinelli, an average Staten Island kindergarten teacher who becomes convinced that one of her students is a master poet. What would you do if you thought you had stumbled onto a true artistic prodigy? What boundaries would you cross? This is a challenging, fascinating character study.
The Kindergarten Teacher netflix*Living
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Bill Nighy earned his first Oscar nomination for this moving drama, but it still feels like hardly anyone has seen this movie. Cinephiles may have avoided it because it’s a remake of an undeniable masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru. While remaking classics generally leads to disaster, Oliver Hermanus’s approach here is moving and confident. It helps to have a nuanced script by the great Kazuo Ishiguro, who also landed an Oscar nod for this tale of a bureaucrat who learns how to live when he’s told he’s going to die.
Living netflixMr. Roosevelt
Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director: Noël Wells
One of the featured players on Saturday Night Live in the 2010s, Noël Wells released this one-woman show in 2017. She wrote, directed, and stars as Emily Martin, a young woman who comes home to deal with her dead cat and finds herself forced to deal with some of the people she left behind. It’s a smart semi-rom-com that also allows itself to be a little silly. We just wish Wells would make another film soon.
Mr. Roosevelt netflix*The Mustang
Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnere
Matthias Schoenaerts stars in this drama about an inmate who finds himself through a program built around training wild horses. Yes, the metaphor is a bit overdone, but Schoenaerts’s grounded performance anchors the melodrama, ably assisted by Jason Mitchell, Gideon Adlon, Connie Britton, and Bruce Dern in supporting roles. It’s also based on an actual program that unites convicts and horses in Nevada.
The Mustang netflixOutside In
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Lynn Shelton
The fantastic Lynn Shelton left us way too early in 2020, but it feels like her filmography can still be discovered by thousands of viewers. This is possibly her most underrated drama, a 2017 film about two people who form a very unlikely and uncertain bond. Jay Duplass plays a man released from prison after serving two decades behind bars for murder. He decides to find one of the final supportive people in his life, his high-school teacher, played perfectly by Edie Falco.
Outside In netflix*Prayers for the Stolen
Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Tatiana Huezo
Life is deadly, especially for young women in many small villages in Mexico, especially near the border. Tatiana Juezo’s excellent drama tells the tale of girls in San Miguel, Jalisco, and what they are forced to do to avoid being kidnapped by the drug cartel and sold into the human-trafficking network. Their mothers hide them in holes in the ground and cut their hair to make them look more like boys. It’s a shattering piece of dramatic work, a blend of nonfiction storytelling and melodrama that’s unforgettable.
Prayers for the Stolen netflixPrivate Life
Year: 2018
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Pregnancy isn’t easy for everyone. In fact, there are thousands of couples who struggle with the painful and expensive fertility process, as captured in this stellar drama that should have landed its stars Paul Giamatti and especially Kathryn Hahn Oscar nominations. They play Richard and Rachel, an NYC couple who are trying so hard to have a baby that it becomes a landscape-shifting factor in their relationship. This is smart, empathetic filmmaking that you really should see.
Private Life netflix*To Leslie
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Michael Morris
One of the most shocking Oscar nominations of all time for Andrea Riseborough likely led thousands more people to this film than would have otherwise seen it, but it still feels underseen enough to qualify for this list. Ignore the controversy and just admire Riseborough’s genuine, lived-in performance as Leslie, a woman who won the lottery and then lost everything to alcoholism. There are some clichés, but they all fall away under the truthful gaze of Riseborough’s performance.
To Leslie netflix*We the Animals
Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Jeremiah Zagar
Zagar adapted Justin Torres’s acclaimed novel of the same name into this dreamlike coming-of-age feature about a group of brothers growing up in the wilderness of upstate New York. A challenging examination of family, sexuality, maturity, and violence, We the Animals was shot on 16-mm. film, giving it an added layer of truth. And yet Zagar also blends a poet’s eye with the truth, which makes his film feel like memory as much as reality — the kind of memory that shapes us for decades to come.
We the Animals netflix*The Wonder
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Sebastian Lelio
What would you do if you suspected an actual miracle might be happening? What if the alternate explanation is even more horrifying? Florence Pugh is excellent as an English nurse who is asked to study a young woman who claims to be surviving without sustenance. Is she being used by her parents and the community? Or could she be a real wonder? This is a powerful period piece that didn’t get enough attention when it dropped in late 2022.
The Wonder netflixRelated
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