The 25 Best Movies on Netflix to Stream Right Now

3 weeks ago 2

The great conundrum of the streaming age is that dozens, if not hundreds, of movies are available at your fingertips to stream—but it can be extremely hard to decide on the best movies on Netflix. Let this list be your guide as you navigate Netflix’s catalog of feature films. These 25 movies feature something for everyone—science fiction, romance, Channing Tatum, Tom Cruise, and Anna Kendrick. From some of the best movies of recent years to a few stone-cold classics, you’re sure to find plenty worth checking out without wasting half your life on a never-ending scroll.

Ali

Release Year: 2001

Director: Michael Mann

Notable Cast: Will Smith, Jon Voight, Jamie Foxx

If all biopics of legendary sports figures were as intense, intelligent, and well cast as Michael Mann’s take on the life of Muhammad Ali, the biopic would have a much better reputation than it currently does. Back in 2001, Will Smith was still mostly known as the July Fourth weekend blockbuster guy. His transformation into the legendarily loquacious and opinionated boxer changed how audiences, and especially critics, saw him. Mann finds plenty to work with when it comes to his traditional themes of tortured masculinity and self-determination, and the film also has a few great supporting performances, including a Jamie Foxx turn that also announced his intentions to level up from sitcom comedian to dramatic film actor.

American Psycho

Release Year: 2000

Director: Mary Harron

Notable Cast: Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto

Before he was Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale played another handsome, rich urbanite who was concealing a secret dark side. In Mary Harron’s clever, unsettling, and utterly brash adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, Bale plays Patrick Bateman: investment banker by day, bloodthirsty killer by night, Phil Collins fan pretty much always. American Psycho is both a satire of the unrepentant greed and materialism of the Reagan ’80s as well as a horror movie about what happens when greed and materialism take human form. Depending on how you see the movie, Patrick Bateman is either a metaphor for the terrifyingly amoral id of American capitalism, or the actual embodiment of it. Either way, Harron and Bale team up for an over-the-top portrait of a killer like you’ve never seen.