This article is regularly updated as movies enter and leave Netflix. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
As you have probably noticed by now, the major streaming services (and/or their algorithms) are often eager to promote the big films almost everyone has already seen. Yes, School of Rock and Star Trek, two hugely popular titles, are available on Netflix. Feel free to rewatch them!
But what if you’re looking for something new? What if you want to watch a great movie you’ve never even heard of before today? Then this is the list for you: a collection of movies on Netflix that didn’t play theatrically in almost any city other than New York or Los Angeles and could easily be lost among the “bigger” movies that get pushed to the front of your Netflix page. There’s not a bad movie in here, and we’re willing to bet there are at least a few you haven’t seen. This is your chance to change that. (And for our main list of the 100 best movies on Netflix, click here.)
6 Balloons
Broad City star Abbi Jacobson proves she can handle drama as well as comedy in this harrowing story of addiction from writer-director Marja-Lewis Ryan. Jacobson plays Katie, sister to Seth, played by Dave Franco in his best career performance yet. Seth is a heroin addict, and he’s in a place Katie has seen him before, right on the edge of a relapse. While films about addiction aren’t rare, few recent ones are this effective at telling the story of not just the addict but the way addiction impacts loved ones. Netflix is very bad at promoting its original films, and this one was barely marketed after its 2018 SXSW premiere, dropping on the service before the festival was even over and then quickly being forgotten. Go find it.
Amanda Knox
Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn’s documentary about one of the most famous murder cases of the past decade has been relatively lost in the deep catalogue of true-crime stories on Netflix, with series like Making a Murderer and The Keepers getting the bulk of the promotion and attention. Trust us that any fan of crime documentaries should take the time to dig into this 2016 film about the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007. The British student was brutally killed in her own apartment in Perugia, Italy, at the age of 21, and the authorities went after Kercher’s flatmate, Amanda Knox, and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, almost immediately, despite some conflicting evidence. The documentary is a fascinating look at how many other factors beyond evidence can influence an investigation, including public pressure and perception of the suspects.
Atlantics
Mati Diop directed this 2019 critical darling, the first film by a Black woman to compete at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a riveting, haunting blend of genres, both finding something grounded in the way it captures the rarely seen reality of life on the Senegalese coast and something supernatural that emerges from the veracity of the storytelling. It’s about Ada, a woman who lives on the Atlantic Ocean with her partner Souleiman, who becomes one of many men who try to leave for more work opportunities. Working mostly with unknown actors, Diop’s filmmaking is personal and daring in ways you won’t really find elsewhere on Netflix.
The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Bill Pullman does some of his best later-career work in this Western written and directed by Jared Moshe, which was barely released by A24 back in 2017. What happens to all those sidekick characters in Westerns when their partners ride off into the sunset? That’s the basic idea here, tracking the journey of a man who has been a sidekick his whole life and now has to lead the way. Pullman is excellent, ably assisted by a cast that also includes Peter Fonda, Jim Caviezel, and Kathy Baker.
Blue Jay
On paper, this delicate character drama probably sounds like a movie you’ve seen dozens of times before (or hundreds if you go to Sundance). A relatively lost young man returns home in the middle of an emotional crisis and bumps into an old girlfriend. The man in this case is played by Mark Duplass, doing some of the best work of his career dramatically, and the ex-girlfriend is played by the simply always great Sarah Paulson. Like Richard Linklater’s Before movies, Blue Jay has a delicate, simple structure that’s based almost solely on dialogue that allows two performers to build completely three-dimensional characters, and Duplass and Paulson are totally up to the challenge.
Bright Star
Jane Campion is about to dominate awards season with her phenomenal The Power of the Dog (on Netflix in December 2021), so why not catch up with, believe it or not, her last feature film, 2009’s luminous Bright Star. Ben Whishaw stars as John Keats, the famous English poet, captured here in the last three years of his life, when he fell deeply in love with a woman named Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish. Inspired by Andrew Morton’s 1997 biography, this is a lyrical, romantic, beautiful drama.
Burning Cane
Writer-director Phillip Youmans became the first African American director to win the Founders Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. Also worth noting: Youmans was born in 2000. The teenage auteur impressed the fest jury with this lyrical debut about life in rural Louisiana. It’s essentially the story of a woman named Helen (Karen Kaia Livers) who is faced with difficult men in her life, including a self-destructive son, and an alcoholic pastor that’s played with searing power by the great Wendell Pierce of The Wire. Smart and original, Youmans’s films feels like the pronouncement of a major talent, even if it’s one that’s barely now old enough to drink.
Christine
In 1974, Florida reported Christine Chubbuck shot herself on the evening news. Four decades later, Antonio Campos made a film about this startling tragedy, and gave the great Rebecca Hall the platform to give the best performance of her career. Hall is mesmerizing, adding depth and nuance to what could have been a clichéd portrayal of mental illness and depression. Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, and J. Smith-Cameron co-star in a drama that can be tough to watch but is ultimately enlightening and rewarding.
Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
Co-directors Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, where it won the Audience Award, before premiering on Netflix in March 2020. While it did get an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary (inexplicably losing to My Octopus Teacher), it feels largely underseen, and it’s something that could inspire anyone. The story of Camp Jened, an upstate summer camp for disabled teens in New York in the ‘70s, it’s far more than your traditional manipulative doc, capturing how enabling people can inspire them for the rest of their lives. The people of Camp Jened became powerful voices in the disability rights movement, and it all started at camp.
Croupier
There was a brief window in which it appeared that Clive Owen would someday put on the big, shiny shoes of James Bond and play the most famous spy in the world. That never happened (and seems unlikely now), but anyone wondering how that conversation got started should check out his breakthrough in this 1998 neo-noir film from director Mike Hodges. The underrated actor plays Jack Manfred, a writer who takes a job as a croupier in a casino, where he gets drawn into the underworld of gambling and the personalities it attracts. It’s a smart movie with a star-making performance by Owen.
Cut Throat City
Wu-Tang Forever! The amazing RZA of the Wu-Tang never gets enough attention for his musical genius, and the same holds true for his cinematic contributions, whether it’s acting in films like The Dead Don’t Die or composing the scores for films like Kill Bill. Even his directorial efforts are underappreciated — like this film that got lost in the pandemic after an aborted SXSW premiere. An old-fashioned action flick with social purpose, it stars Shameik Moore as one of four friends in New Orleans whose life is forever upended by Hurricane Katrina. With few options, they turn to a crime lord played by T.I. and are asked to participate in a heist. A tough, challenging, ambitious movie, this one also has a great supporting cast that includes Terrence Howard, Ethan Hawke, and Wesley Snipes.
Girl on the Third Floor
If you miss the days of grisly body horror like we do, check into this gnarly 2019 about a man remodeling a house who makes some very bad decisions and uncovers something more than mold hidden in the walls. Wrestler C.M. Punk is legitimately excellent as the lead, channeling a “Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead” energy. He plays Don Koch, a man who should have considered remodeling his personality before he started tearing down the walls of a haunted house.
His House
Netflix has a lot of original horror films but there’s arguably none better than this thriller that they picked up out of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. A phenomenal marriage of issues around refugee displacement (which makes it very current in 2021) with traditional elements of the haunted house film, it’s a riveting piece of work that also announced the arrival of clear future stars Sope Dirisu of Gangs of London and Wunmi Mosaku of Lovecraft Country. The pair play a refugee couple from South Sudan who are forced to move to an English town that seems pretty unwelcoming. If that’s not terrifying enough, their new house feels pretty haunted, but Remi Weekes’s film is more about how it is people who can’t leave their ghosts behind and not places.
I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck’s 2016 documentary about James Baldwin gained new fame and relevance in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, during which it was often cited as must-watch material to understand where the country is now by reflecting on Baldwin’s insight about where it’s been. Available on Netflix, Peck’s film works from an unfinished manuscript by Baldwin titled Remember This House, which examines the history of racism in this country. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the film moves through Baldwin’s memories of the civil rights movement, including leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary (and it probably should have won).
The Kindergarten Teacher
Sara Colangelo’s 2018 remake of Nadav Lapid’s hit 2014 Israeli film was one of the most-buzzed movies at Sundance the year it premiered, but it feels like one of those Netflix Originals that got lost in a service that releases something new every week. A character-driven drama like this is bound to get lost in the shuffle. Dig in and find the story of Lisa Spinelli, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal in one of the best performances of 2018. She’s a Staten Island kindergarten teacher who is startled when one of her students, a sweet boy named Jimmy, starts reciting beautiful poetry. Has she found a new child prodigy? Can she save him before society destroys his artistic impulses? What would the modern world do to someone like Mozart? Gyllenhaal perfectly balances the passion and potential danger within a character who becomes obsessed with a child. You won’t forget this one.
Lingua Franca
Isabel Sandoval wrote and directed this phenomenal drama about an undocumented Filipina trans woman who works in Brooklyn named Olivia, also played by Sandoval. She has been caring for an elderly Russian woman there in Brighton Beach but she’s running out of chances to become a legal immigrant when she meets Alex (an excellent Eamon Farren), Olga’s grandson and begins a romance. This is a warm and nuanced study of the immigrant experience and trans rights that we don’t often see in American indie dramas and announces Sandoval as a talent to watch.
Loving
It’s hard to say that any recent Oscar nominee is underseen, but this drama from 2016 feels like it’s been largely forgotten, and that’s a shame. Featuring two of the best performances of that year, this is Jeff Nichols’s telling of the story of the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia, a Supreme Court decision that basically allowed for interracial marriage in this country in 1967. Yes, as recently as that date it was still illegal in many states for people of different races to marry. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga (an Oscar nominee for Best Actress) play Richard and Mildred Loving, an unassuming couple who just wanted to live life in love and peace but had to fight to do so. This is a smart, empathetic drama that eschews flashy Oscar bait theatrics to present two completely genuine people.
*Middle of Nowhere
Long before she became such a powerful figure in Hollywood, Ava DuVernay directed a gentle drama about a woman torn between her convict husband and a new man in her life. Emayatzy Corinealdi plays Ruby, a nurse in Compton, who visits her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) behind bars. She meets Brian (David Oyelowo) and realizes that her life has been defined by someone she can’t even touch. It’s a smart, character-driven drama with subtle direction by DuVernay that won her an award at Sundance in 2012.
Mr. Roosevelt
The charming Noël Wells wrote, directed, and stars in this SXSW hit that was barely released in theaters, meaning you probably haven’t seen it. The former star of Master of None and Saturday Night Live plays Emily Martin, a young woman who returns to her hometown after the death of her cat, which gives the film its title. At home, she’s forced back into the life of an ex-boyfriend, played by Nick Thune. Not only is Wells sweet and funny, she has a strong voice as a writer-director, imbuing with honesty and heart a film that could have felt like hundreds of other fest hits. She may become a major independent filmmaker. Watch this before she does.
The Night Comes for Us
If you liked the Raid movies and you haven’t seen this 2018 Timo Tjahjanto film, then you’re doing something wrong with your life. Think of this as The Raid on Steroids. Sure, there’s a plot about a Triad soldier who makes people angry when he refuses to shoot a child, but it’s merely a skeleton for some of the most insane action you’ve ever seen. Imagine a kung fu movie in which people have knives and axes and other sharp objects instead of just their fists of fury. This is an angry, bloody mess, but there’s a rhythm and a beauty to the action choreography that’s inspired, too. It’s a movie that finds a way to make gore glorious.
*The Nightingale
Jennifer Kent followed up The Babadook with this stunning sophomore effort, a brutal tale of violence and vengeance. Aisling Franciosi of Game of Thrones (she played Lyanna Stark) stars as Clare, a servant for the Colonial force in Australia in 1825. After being raped by a Lieutenant (Sam Claflin) and watching her infant child be murdered, Clare finds an Aboriginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr) to help her track down her oppressors. Franciosi is stunning in a film that should come with a number of trigger warnings but never shies away from the viciousness of man.
Our Idiot Brother
Sometimes a charming cast is all one wants on Netflix, and this 2011 Sundance comedy definitely fits that requirement. The wonderfully likable trio of Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, and Emily Mortimer play sisters, while the title of this film from Jesse Peretz (Juliet, Naked) refers to a character played by maybe the most likable actor in the world, Paul Rudd. It’s kind of a somewhat predictable comedy about a lackadaisical brother who causes trouble for his more traditional sisters, but it’s also an incredibly easy movie to watch thanks to the strength of its stars
The Outpost
Rod Lurie (The Contender) directed this intense adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name by CNN’s Jake Tapper. It tells the story of the Battle of Kamdesh, one of the most devastating attacks in the war in Afghanistan, in which 300 Taliban members assaulted an American outpost in the eastern part of the country. Lurie takes a very thorough approach, presenting key events leading up to the attack in an ensemble fashion, allowing various members of his excellent young cast to take center stage, including Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, Orlando Bloom, Jack Kesy, and Will Attenborough. But the real draw here is the assault itself, which is harrowing in ways that war films often aren’t allowed to be.
Outside In
The consistent Lynn Shelton co-wrote this drama with star Jay Duplass, and it marks the best work to date of either one. The Transparent star plays Chris, a 38-year-old just released from prison after spending more than half his life behind bars. Naturally, he’s still developmentally closer to being 18 than he is to 38, and this is reflected in a quick attachment to his former high-school teacher Carol, who supported him during his incarceration and is played by the always great Edie Falco. This is a nuanced, graceful character piece about two people with very different life experiences who find themselves drawn to each other. When people say they don’t make dramas for adults like they used to, point them to this movie.
*Paddleton
Mark Duplass and Ray Romano are splendid in this delicate dramedy that centers a kind of male friendship that isn’t often seen in film. They play a pair of ordinary guys who live in a mundane apartment building, where proximity has made them friends. When Michael (Romano) is diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, he decides to end his life on his own terms, which includes spending time hanging out with his buddy Andy (Duplass). The actors find grace notes in a moving screenplay.
Piercing
Nicolas Pesce (Eyes of My Mother) wrote and directed an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ryu Murakami, and it’s already developed something of a cult following since its 2018 Sundance premiere and brief 2019 theatrical release. Christopher Abbott is fantastic (he always is) as a serial killer who pretends to go on a business trip but it’s really to feed his need to kill so he can go back to his family again. He hires a sex worker, played by Mia Wasikowska, with the intention her being his next victim, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Tight and effective, this is a different kind of two-hander for a pair of wonderful young actors.
The Platform
It made some waves in early 2020 when it dropped on Netflix, but the way that the events of the world have exposed inequity even more since then makes it even more essential to the catalog of the streaming service. It’s a fantastic concept — a futuristic prison has been constructed vertically with a large platform that goes down the tower once a day, covered in food. Of course, people at the top have everything they need, and they could ration in a way that kept everyone fed, but that goes against the human instinct of greed. A powerful, terrifying genre film, The Platform also has a message about conflict and community that seems to grow with each passing day.
*Private Life
Tamara Jenkins wrote and directed a very personal dramedy about the pain and process of fertility treatments. Kathryn Hahn does her best acting work to date as Rachel, half of a middle-aged New York couple with Paul Giamatti’s Richard. They are trying desperately to have a child, which leads to unimaginable expenses, physical difficulty, and cracks in their relationship. Jenkins’s script feels like eavesdropping on real people, a truth further amplified by her phenomenal lead performers.
Results
Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls got a lot of buzz in 2018, even winning some awards for its great central performance by Regina Hall. If you liked it, check out Bujalski’s last film, another movie about a very unique working environment. The irascible Kevin Corrigan stars as Danny, one of those zhlubs who suddenly finds himself wealthy and has no idea what to do with his money or his time. Why not get a personal trainer? This decision brings him into the lives of a local gym owner named Trevor (Guy Pearce) and his best employee, Kat (Cobie Smulders). The star of How I Met Your Mother is wonderful here in yet another Bujalski film that’s always about character and never quite what you expect it to be.
Screwball
Billy Corben’s documentary comes that wonderful subgenre of films that could be called “stranger than fiction.” Someday, someone will make an award-winning black comedy about the Biogenesis scandal that rocked Major League Baseball, but it probably won’t be as hysterical as hearing the story straight from the mouths of the men who lived it. Even if you think you know all the details of the Florida company that fed performance-enhancing drugs to major athletes, you probably don’t know all of the wonderful details (especially when it comes to the insane life of Alex Rodriguez, whom you will never be able to look at the same way again).
Sweetheart
The great Kiersey Clemons plays Jennifer, a woman who washes up on a deserted island after a shipwreck that kills her friend and sends the other passengers into the water. She’s alone, fighting against the elements and figuring out how to survive. And then she discovers, well, she’s not alone. A blend of monster movie plot points, gender commentary, and survivor story, this is a great indie horror gem that deserves a bigger audience. Watch it before your best friend tells you to.
Sword of Trust
The wonderful Lynn Shelton died unexpectedly in 2020, but her last film is on Netflix waiting to be discovered. Shelton gave her partner Marc Maron his best film role to date, and dropped him into an ensemble that includes Michaela Watkins, Toby Huss, Dan Bakkedahl, Jillian Bell, and Shelton herself, giving a fantastic performance that now feels all the more poignant. It’s the story of a couple who inherit a sword reportedly used by General Sherman in the Civil War. Maron plays the pawn shop owner who gets tangled up in the plan to sell it for a large amount of money. It’s a funny and smart character study.
Synchronic
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead rock. The pair of filmmakers behind Spring and The Endless delivered their most ambitious film to date in 2019 when this sci-fi action flick premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie play a pair of New Orleans paramedics who get caught up in a new street drug that just so happens to offer time travel as one of its side effects. Complex and ambitious, it’s unlike most anything else on Netflix.
Take Me
Chicagoan Pat Healy has become one of the most consistent character actors of his generation, starring in terrific movies big (The Post) and small (Cheap Thrills). He’s constantly working, and he has used that capital to direct his first feature, a clever screwball comedy starring himself and Orange Is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling. Ray (Healy) runs a unique business that one can use for a sort of very intense intervention: People ask Ray to kidnap them. (For example, he absconds with a man who regularly cheats on his diet to force him to shape up.) But after Anna (Schilling) hires Ray, she starts to push the rules, and, well, things get truly odd. It’s sort of a screwball thriller, if there is such a thing. Well, there is now.
*Tangerine
Before he made headlines with The Florida Project and Red Rocket, Sean Baker co-wrote and directed a 2015 dramedy about sex workers in Los Angeles. With organic, genuine performances from Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, and James Ransone, this tale of a sex worker who discovers her boyfriend has been cheating on her pulses with the energy of L.A., amplified by the fact that the whole film was shot on three iPhone 5S devices.
Tramps
This is a perfect example of a movie that feels truly buried by Netflix. If a studio had released this delightful romantic dramedy in theaters, even just in major cities, people would have noticed. It’s smart, funny, and contains a pair of wonderful young performances. But it got hidden on Netflix in April 2017, and no one talks about it. Get your search function going and find the story of Danny (Callum Turner) and Ellie (Grace Van Patten), two struggling New Yorkers drawn together over a mysterious briefcase. Even if the narrative gets a little goofy, the infectious energy of the two leads keeps this flick, which is basically a caper movie, humming.
The Water Man
The excellent actor David Oyelowo (Selma) made his directorial debut with the 2021 family drama The Water Man, a film that premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival to mixed reviews. It’s not perfect, but what elevates it is how much Oyelowo refuses to talk down to his young adult audience, making a movie that feels more like the Amblin adventure flicks of the ‘80s than modern kids movies. Gunner Boone (Lonnie Chavis) is an 11-year-old who has just moved to a rural town in Oregon with his ailing mother (Rosario Dawson). When it looks like she’s not going to get better, he ventures into the woods in search of an urban legend who can save her life.
What Happened Miss Simone?
Liz Garbus, one of the best documentary directors out there, pulls apart the life of the fascinating Nina Simone in this Oscar-nominated Netflix original that came out early in the days of the streaming service’s ascendance and so may have been missed by the millions of subscribers since then. It premiered at the 2015 Sundance film festival and tells the life story of Simone, who was way more than just a powerful singer to her fans, using her fame to fight for civil rights while also fighting to maintain her privacy. Garbus incorporates previously unseen archival footage with interviews with Simone’s daughter and friends in a way that feels respectful of Simone’s life and powerful impact on arts and humanity.
Whose Streets?
The best documentary yet about the uprising in Ferguson after the killing of Michael Brown, this 2017 flick gained more relevance after the protests of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. It’s a striking on-the-ground look at life in the days following the Brown murder and the protests that became violent examples of the divisions in these communities, and around the world. It gains most of its strength by virtue of seeing through the eyes of the people who were there, often using their own footage of riots and protests, and focusing on the men and women fighting for civil rights in their own streets.
*Yes, God, Yes
Fans of Netflix’s Stranger Things should check out star Natalia Dyer’s great work in Karen Maine’s 2019 SXSW dramedy. Dyer plays a high school junior in a Catholic school in the Midwest in 2000 (a.k.a. not a great time or place for a young woman trying to figure out her own sexuality.) Coming-of-age indie films are a dime a dozen, but Maine’s has a vulnerability and honesty that’s rare, amplified by the great work of Dyer who appears to have a long future ahead of her post-Stranger Things.
