Faithful readers of the Watch List know of my longstanding exasperation with Netflix, the one service everyone has that’s also the one service with the weakest movie line-up (by far). Every six months or so I like to take stock of what’s actually on Netflix besides in-house series, international series, crappy movies from other countries, and Jim Gaffigan stand-up specials. The service features around 3,500 feature films at any given time, all but a handful from the last decade and bewilderingly few of which you’ve ever heard of. Allow me to assist: Following are the 127 movies on Netflix that are worth a damn, arranged alphabetically within rough genre approximation and with each title linked to its trailer on YouTube.
By “worth a damn,” I mean watchable in the “no harm, no foul” sense, because sometimes you just want a half-decent storyline and attractive actors to get you from supper to bedtime. Those movies I consider actually quite good and are therefore especially recommended are in bold. Your mileage may vary – and I expect to hear from most of you in due course – but at the very least this should give you a start.
DRAMAS
All Quiet on the Western Front
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (above)
Christine (above)
Sankofa (above)
COMEDIES
Emily the Criminal (above)
The Forty-Year-Old Version (No, that isn’t a typo.)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
DOCUMENTARIES
The Battered Bastards of Baseball
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
CLASSICS (or Netflix’s definition thereof)
Croupier (above)
ACTION/HORROR/SCI-FI/SUSPENSE
Crimson Peak (above)
ROMANCE
UNCATEGORIZABLE
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
I Lost My Body (above)
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
Thoughts? Don’t hesitate to weigh in.
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