The 30 best movies to watch on Netflix: August 2022

What’s one of the best film I can watch on Netflix? We’ve all requested ourselves the query, solely to spend the following quarter-hour scrolling by way of the streaming service’s oddly particular style menus and getting overwhelmed by the continually shifting development menus. Netflix’s enormous catalog of films, mixed with its inscrutable suggestions algorithm, could make discovering one thing to look at really feel extra like a chore than a option to unwind when actually what you need is the nice films — no, the greatest films.

We’re right here to assist. For these affected by selection paralysis in Could, we’ve narrowed down your choices to 30 of our favourite present films on the platform. These run the gamut from taut thrillers and horror classics to eccentric comedies and one of the best Netflix originals. We’ll be updating this record month-to-month as Netflix cycles films out and in of its library, so you should definitely verify again subsequent time you’re caught in entrance of the Netflix dwelling display screen. Our newest replace has added Blood and Bone, Hustle, Depart No Hint, Michael Clayton, and Unfriended.

A Nightmare on Elm Avenue

A clawed glove reaches out from the waters of a bathtub towards a sleeping woman in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The feeling that launched a franchise, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Avenue lives on as a horror masterpiece a long time later. Teenager Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and her pals develop into the targets of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a deceased serial killer now haunting (and looking) individuals of their desires. As Nancy’s pals begin dying of their sleep one after the other, she tries desperately to remain awake to outlive. A timeless slasher that may additionally maintain you from sleeping, Elm Avenue and Krueger have endurance for a cause. —Pete Volk

Argo

Ben Affleck directs and stars within the 2012 historic thriller Argo as Tony Mendez, a CIA exfiltration specialist tasked with rescuing six former workers members of the American embassy in Tehran throughout the 1979 Iran hostage disaster. His plan? Journey to Iran beneath the guise of a Hollywood producer engaged on a movie primarily based on Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Gentle, disguise the six hostages as his Canadian movie crew, and safely rescue them earlier than anybody discovers in any other case. Affleck’s movie takes an unlikely however true story and turns it right into a riveting drama powered by assured route, terrific performances, and glorious enhancing. —Toussaint Egan

Baahubali: The Starting

Baahubali: The Beginning - prabhas as baahubali carrying a giant fountain

In Western phrases, this Tollywood manufacturing, the most costly Indian movie on the time of its launch, is sort of a biblical epic by means of Marvel Studios, with somewhat Hamlet and Step Up thrown in for good measure. The Starting chronicles the lifetime of Shivudu, an adventurer with superhuman energy who escapes his provincial life by scaling a skyscraper-sized waterfall, aids and romances a insurgent warrior named Avanthika, then groups up along with her to rescue a kidnapped queen from an evil emperor. Exploding with hyper-choreographed battle sequences and CG spectacle (to not point out a handful of musical numbers with equal bravura), The Starting is 159 minutes of legendary extra, going massive like solely Indian movie can and resting on the muscular shoulders of its hero, the single-name actor Prabhas. In the event you fall onerous for it, get pumped — that is solely half one. The twist leads into Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, one other two-and-a-half-hour epic at the moment streaming on Netflix. —Matt Patches

Blackhat

A modern and attractive thriller that makes hacking look extraordinarily cool, Michael Mann’s unfairly maligned Blackhat stands tall as a excessive mark in digital filmmaking. It’s peak Mann — in the event you’re not a fan of the Warmth director’s work, your mileage could range. Within the movie, Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a captain within the PLA’s cyber warfare unit, is tasked with attending to the underside of a pc assault that melts down a nuclear energy plant in Hong Kong. Whereas liaising with the FBI investigation, Chen insists on assistance from his previous good friend Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth, who has by no means been hotter or cooler), an imprisoned genius hacker. When Hathaway and Chen’s sister (Tang Wei), a networking engineer additionally serving to with the case, fall for one another, it provides an additional wrinkle to an already excessive stakes scenario. Viola Davis and Holt McCallany function as FBI brokers who aren’t tremendous joyful to need to depend on a infamous legal.

With sharp digital cinematography and unforgettable set items, Blackhat explores our altering international relationship to expertise. Mann makes tangible the microscopic pc techniques that run the world: an excessive close-up of inner wires resulting in a motherboard like an unlimited interconnected freeway; a pc fan that feels like a jet engine. Occasions that in different movies can be proven as a boring stroke of keys are as a substitute depicted as hypnotic processes taking place beneath the floor of the seen world. —PV

Blade Runner 2049

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 stars Ryan Gosling as Officer “Okay,” a Blade Runner in Los Angeles whose discovery of a mysterious grave leads him on a search to search out Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former Blade Runner who could maintain the important thing to a thriller whose reply might rock the very basis of civilization as we all know it. Set 30 years after the occasions of Blade Runner (1982), Villeneuve’s movie resonates as powerfully as its predecessor, providing a sober glimpse at a world of dwindling assets and nascent local weather disaster that feels just like the pure end result of the wanton technological extra of Ridley Scott’s unique. Gosling is pitch-perfect in his portrayal of Okay, a replicant looking for a way of which means and function other than the function he was meant for. With extravagant moody set items, lovely lighting, tense motion, and memorable performances from Ford, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, and extra, Blade Runner 2049 is a worthy successor to some of the defining works of sci-fi cinema ever produce and a masterpiece all its personal. —TE

Blood and Bone

Pure direct-to-video martial arts goodness, Blood and Bone is a superb show of the motion subgenre and of Michael Jai White’s distinctive skills as a film star. From our record of one of the best motion films on Netflix:

Michael Jai White is a treasure round these elements and of the numerous glorious DTV motion films he has starred in, Blood and Bone could also be one of the best. White is Isaiah Bone, an ex-marine martial artist lately out of jail, who meets an eccentric native battle promoter named Pinball (Dante Basco) and begins coming into underground fights. When he falls deeper into the world of underground preventing, he learns simply how far the highly effective individuals who run the circuit will go to keep up their unlawful enterprise. With jaw-dropping fights that includes former skilled fighters Bob Sapp, Kimbo Slice, and Matt Mullins, Blood and Bone is an appropriately stellar automobile for White as a film star and as a display screen fighter. —PV

The Debt Collector

A buddy comedy by means of direct-to-video motion specialist Jesse V. Johnson, The Debt Collector is the primary of a sequence of two superb films starring Scott Adkins (Avengement) and Louis Mandylor (My Massive Fats Greek Wedding ceremony) as a wise-cracking duo amassing money owed for the mob. Adkins performs French, a down-on-his-luck martial arts teacher who turns to debt amassing to pay his personal money owed off. Mandylor performs a boy named Sue, the veteran debt collector French is paired up with for his first day of labor.

As the 2 get deeper into their work, they uncover a scheme that places a younger baby in danger, and take into account risking all of it themselves to assist. Adkins and Mandylor have terrific chemistry within the lead roles, bringing this out of the echelon of “stable DTV films” and into the realm of “nice hangout flicks.” Additionally, Tony Todd (Candyman) performs a mobster named Barbosa. –PV

Don’t Go Breaking My Coronary heart

Johnnie To is one in all our nice trendy administrators, equally adept in hard-boiled triad crime dramas and light-hearted romantic comedies alike. 2011’s Don’t Go Breaking My Coronary heart falls within the latter class, and is without doubt one of the many excessive marks of the Hong Kong director’s legendary profession. Recent off the tip of a long-term relationship, Chi-yan (Gao Yuanyuan) is an analyst for an funding financial institution who finds herself in the course of a love triangle. On one aspect, there’s Sean (Louis Koo), a CEO who works throughout the road from Chi-yan and yearns for her by way of the tall company glass home windows that separate them. On the opposite, there’s Kevin (the always-dreamy Daniel Wu), an alcoholic former architect who helps Chi-yan transfer on and is impressed by her to start out creating once more. What follows is a honest, humorous, and actually charming romantic time. —PV

Quick Shade

Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney) manifesting their powers in Fast Color.

Julia Hart’s 2018 superhero drama Quick Shade stars Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked (Black Mirror, Loki) as Ruth, a homeless wanderer with inexplicable powers who returns to her household dwelling after years of hiding from the police. Reunited along with her mom Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and her younger daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney), who each possess the identical powers as her, Ruth makes an attempt to regain management over her talents and reconcile with Lila, all whereas eluding the authorities who search to seize and examine her. As we wrote in our assessment, Quick Shade is much less a “superhero” movie as it’s an intimate household drama set in a speculative universe à la 2016’s Midnight Particular. The spectacle on show is just not the manifestation of Ruth’s powers, however within the masterful trio of performances at its heart combining to create a narrative as poignant as it’s exhilarating. —TE

Gattaca

Andrew Niccol has by no means made a greater movie than Gattaca, interval. The director has dabbled with visually spectacular sci-fi dystopias in movies like 2011’s In Time or 2018’s Anon, however neither of these have managed to surpass that sheer lightning-in-a-bottle ingenuity of his directorial debut. Set in a future “not too distant” from our personal, Niccol’s movie stars Ethan Hawke as Vincent Freeman, a supposedly “inferior” man born right into a society outlined by a eugenically organized caste system who yearns to pursue his dream of changing into an astronaut. Defying the institutional roadblocks of his time, Vincent assumes the id of Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Legislation), a eugenically distinctive athlete, in an effort to work as navigator on the Gattaca Aerospace Company. When Gattaca’s administrator is mysteriously killed simply days earlier than Vincent’s mission to Titan, he’ll need to elude the suspicions of the investigators tasked with fixing the homicide in addition to these of his co-worker Irene Cassini (Uma Thurman). With a brilliantly evocative rating composed by Michael Nyman, a strong, animating trio of performances by Hawke, Thurman, and Legislation, and an impeccably fashionable retro-futuristic aesthetic, Gattaca is soul-stirring science fiction. —TE

Goodfellas

One in all Martin Scorsese’s most celebrated and memorable movies, and probably his final unimpeachable traditional, Goodfellas charts the rise and fall of a wannabe gangster who works his means into the Mob in Fifties Brooklyn, then finds the group’s focus and fortunes altering radically over the a long time that observe. Full of storytelling units that Scorsese went on to repeat again and again — notably the monologue-voiceover introduction of a complete pack of colourful gangster characters who don’t a lot matter — Goodfellas is stuffed with indelible dialogue and acquainted comedian bits (“I’m humorous how? I imply humorous like I’m a clown? I amuse you?”), it’s the sprawling saga of a legal watching the world change round him till he doesn’t acknowledge it anymore, made earlier than any of those tropes, traces, and units grew to become cliches as a result of so many individuals imitated Goodfellas. —Tasha Robinson

Hustle

One in all Netflix’s higher originals in latest reminiscence is that this ardour mission from the famously basketball-obsessed Adam Sandler, the place he performs a down-on-his-luck scout who wants to search out the proper prospect. With an all-star ensemble solid full of film stars (Sandler is joined by Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, and Robert Duvall) and NBA gamers alike (Juancho Hernangómez co-leads with Sandler, whereas Anthony Edwards, Boban Marjanović, and others give memorable supporting turns), Hustle is an inspiring and thrilling basketball film made by individuals who love the sport. —PV

The Ip Man films

All 5 films within the Ip Man sequence — the 4 predominant entries (all on Netflix) and the spinoff Grasp Z: Ip Man Legacy (not on Netflix, however on Peacock and Tubi, amongst others) — are terrific martial arts dramas. They’re an amazing beginning place for anybody trying to get into the style, and in addition a terrific consolation look ahead to fanatics of martial arts films.

Donnie Yen fully immerses himself because the stoic Ip Man, the Wing Chun grandmaster who taught Bruce Lee (performed by Danny Chan Kwok-kwan within the sequence), amongst others. Yen brings a pensiveness to the function to go along with his unbelievable martial arts prowess. All 4 films are directed by frequent Yen collaborator Wilson Yip and go from one all-time nice motion choreographer to a different: The primary two films had motion by Sammo Hung, and the following two by Yuen Woo-ping. These are fairly probably the 2 biggest to ever do it, and if that’s not sufficient to get you to tune in, I don’t know what’s. —PV

Lagaan

Ashutosh Gowariker’s timeless sports activities traditional stars Aamir Khan as Bhuvan, a assured younger man from a village that’s coping with each British oppression and a long-standing drought. When the depraved Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne, who’s deliriously good on this) challenges the village to a sport of cricket (which they have no idea the way to play) as a guess, with their owed taxes (which they can’t afford to pay) on the road, Bhuvan takes it upon himself to type a crew and study the sport. What follows is a hovering sports activities drama with humor, coronary heart, and a show-stopping match finale. Lagaan was nominated for an Oscar for Greatest International Language Movie on the 74th Academy Awards. —PV

Depart No Hint

Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace.

Probably the greatest movies of the 2010s, Debra Granik’s meditation on the fashionable world by way of two individuals remoted from it’s a unprecedented follow-up for the Winter’s Bone director. From our write-up of one of the best films new to streaming in July:

An Iraq Struggle veteran (Ben Foster) lives with PTSD and his 13-year-old daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) within the lush inexperienced woods exterior of Portland, Oregon. Remoted from the remainder of society, they work collectively to dwell a life with nature. However when the younger lady is seen by a jogger within the woods, she is detained by social companies and her father is arrested. A touching story about discovering your individual place on this planet and the comforts and limitations of household, Debra Granik’s 2018 drama is a contemporary masterpiece.

Misplaced Bullet

Alban Lenoir as Lino peeling around a corner in his red muscle car in Lost Bullet.

This French crime thriller executes a easy premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an skilled mechanic pressured to work for soiled cops. When he’s framed for a homicide he didn’t commit, he has to search out the one factor that may show his innocence: a misplaced bullet in a lacking automotive. With high-octane motion sequences and nice automotive stunts, this can be a 92-minute thrill trip by way of and thru. —PV

Margin Name

Jeremy Irons as CEO John Tuld in Margin Call.

J.C. Chandor’s 2011 movie Margin Name takes place over the span of 24 hours, following the staff of a prestigious Wall Avenue funding financial institution as they battle to grasp and reply to what’s going to finally be generally known as the worldwide monetary disaster of 2008. Whereas maybe not as approachable or didactic as Adam McKay’s The Massive Quick, Chandor’s movie nonetheless manages to rework monetary esotericism into riveting drama by way of the energy of its casts’ performances. Paul Bettany is terrific right here, as are Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore, however the standout efficiency by far is Jeremy Irons, who delivers a outstanding scene throughout the movie’s climax that’s as charismatic as it’s disquietingly chilling. —TE

Michael Clayton

This taut authorized thriller leaves Netflix on the finish of the month, so catch it whilst you can (we’ll have a full record of one of the best films to look at earlier than they go away nearer to the month’s finish). From our record of one of the best thrillers you may watch at dwelling:

One in all George Clooney’s biggest performances, Michael Clayton was the directorial debut of Tony Gilroy (author of the primary 4 Bourne films and co-writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). Michael Clayton (Clooney) is an off-the-books legal professional who acts as a fixer for the wealthy and highly effective. After Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), one other legal professional at his agency, has a breakdown throughout a deposition for a class-action lawsuit in opposition to an agricultural firm, Michael is assigned to bail Arthur out of jail and assist him get his act collectively. As Michael learns extra in regards to the reality of the lawsuit and drastic occasions pile up, authorized thriller rapidly transforms into conspiracy thriller straight away traditional. —PV

The Evening Comes For Us

Joe Taslim stands in front of a “Safety starts with me” sign touting a shotgun facing several men on fire in The Night Comes for Us.

The Evening Comes for Us simply fucking whips, OK? Why waste time on subtlety and preamble; the movie definitely doesn’t! Indonesian motion thrillers have been having fun with a renaissance interval ever since Gareth Evans’ 2011 movie The Raid kicked the door down and mollywhopped every little thing else in sight. Timo Tjahjanto’s 2018 movie definitely follows within the footsteps of Evans’ personal, with The Raid star Joe Taslim starring right here as Ito, a gangland enforcer who betrays his Triad crime household by sparing the life of a kid and making an attempt to flee the nation. Fellow The Raid star Iko Uwais exhibits up right here as Arian, Ito’s childhood good friend and fellow enforcer, who’s tasked with looking down Ito and recovering the lady. The motion comes quick and frenzied right here, with kinetic choreography and dazzling handheld cinematography that makes each punch, fall, and stab rely. If you have to get your adrenaline pumping, throw this one on. —TE

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal stars within the neo-noir thriller Nightcrawler as Lou, an unscrupulous hustler who muscle tissue into the cutthroat world of freelance crime journalism. As his status grows, Lou resorts to ever extra malicious and unethical means to remain on high and one step forward of his competitors. The unambiguous portrayal of Lou’s sociopathic tendencies is a key focus of the movie, along with his aforementioned behaviors being immediately linked to his success as a so-called nightcrawler. With lovely nighttime cinematography, tense motion, and a career-best efficiency by Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler is a surprising and unsettling movie that may follow you lengthy after it’s over. —TE

Paddington

2014’s Paddington is as whimsical and earnest as it’s creative and shocking. Ben Whishaw stars because the Peruvian bear cub who stows aboard a lifeboat to London in the hunt for a brand new dwelling. Granted protected haven by the kindly Brown household, Paddington units out in seek for the explorer who way back visited his homeland and befriended his household whereas eluding the numerous perils and pitfalls of the large metropolis.

Nicole Kidman and Peter Calpadi ship devilishly charming performances because the movie’s antagonists, whereas Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville are equally noteworthy because the vivacious Mrs. Brown and her stuffy risk-averse husband. Full with sharp writing, intriguing set items, and a great deal of inventive bodily comedy, Paddington is an absolute delight. —TE

The Paper Tigers

Tran Quoc Bao’s kung fu motion comedy stars Alain Uy, Ron Yuan (Mulan), and Mykel Shannon Jenkins because the eponymous Paper Tigers: three former martial arts prodigies who, after a lifetime of strenuous coaching and onerous preventing, have grown into beleaguered middle-aged nobodies. However when their grasp is murdered, the three swear an oath to avenge his reminiscence and convey his killer to justice. If that sounds critical, please know this falls into the Apatowian camp of Dumb Man comedy. —TE

Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 historic drama Phantom Thread follows the story of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), an irascible high fashion dressmaker in Fifties London whose rigorously cultivated way of life is upset by his ongoing love affair along with his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps), a strong-willed girl with ambitions and needs of her personal. His ultimate movie function to this point, Day-Lewis is unsurprisingly masterful in his portrayal of Woodcock as an artist whose capricious infatuations and fastidious inflexibility show insufferable to all besides Alma, who discovers a … let’s say unconventional means of leveling the facility dynamic of their relationship. High that with beautiful rating by Jonny Greenwood and exquisite costume designs by Mark Bridges and also you’ve obtained what’s undoubtedly one in all Anderson’s most interesting movies to this point. —TE

RRR

Rama and Bheem are tossed in the air by the crowd in RRR.

One in all our favourite films of the 12 months, RRR is an epic bromance for the ages stuffed to the brim with jaw-dropping motion sequences, unforgettable music numbers, and two guys simply being dudes. In the event you can, you need to take into account watching it within the unique Telugu language model on Zee5. In the event you can’t, the Hindi dub on Netflix remains to be properly price your time. —PV

Starship Troopers

A satirical adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the identical identify, Paul Verhoeven’s biting 1997 sci-fi movie Starship Troopers takes place in a far-off future the place the Federation, a fascistic navy group that guidelines the Earth by way of a planetwide system of obligatory conscription, instigates a full-scale warfare in opposition to a fearsome race of big alien bugs. Although derided when it was first launched, the movie has skilled a reappraisal within the a long time since to such a degree that it’s now championed as among the finest and most perceptive science fiction movies of its period. Would you prefer to know extra? —TE

The Gifted Mr. Ripley

Marge (Paltrow) and Dickie (Law) embrace as Ripley (Damon) stands next to them.

Matt Damon stars in The Gifted Mr. Ripley as Tom Ripley, an underachiever with an unsettling knack for deceiving others. After being mistaken for an previous Princeton classmate of Dickie (Jude Legislation), a rich socialite residing in Italy, Tom is employed by Dickie’s father to retrieve his son in alternate for $1,000. In befriending Dickie and his fiancé, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tom’s ever-evolving grift morphs right into a twisted love-hate obsession with Dickie and his way of life, a life which Tom will resort to something — something — to own.

With an excellent efficiency by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dickie’s lewd, boisterous, and uncannily perceptive good friend Freddie and terrific supporting performances by Cate Blanchett and Jack Davenport, The Gifted Mr. Ripley is a tense, emotional thriller whose labyrinthine twists and turns can have you rooting for a monster. —TE

Unfriended

Unfriended is a horror film with a gimmick. The entire thing takes place on a laptop computer display screen, because the motion unfolds over a Skype name between a gaggle of pals. When an unknown (and unseen) participant mysteriously joins the decision, pals begin to die one after the other in a terrifying and charming sequence of occasions. The immersion of Unfriended by way of the system of the pc display screen is masterful, and I extremely advocate watching it on a laptop computer in the event you can for max impact. —PV

From our record of one of the best horror films on Netflix:

Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended pulls the audiences by way of the display screen — nearly actually. Considered solely from the angle of a pc desktop, 2014 supernatural horror movie facilities round a Skype name between a gaggle of highschool college students who’re joined by an unknown presence recognized solely as “billie227.” What at first seems to be a prank swiftly morphs into one thing far more horrific, because the mysterious stranger begins to disclose terrifying secrets and techniques about every of the chums earlier than killing them off one after the other. Unfriended is totally gripping extrapolation of our always-online world; a world the place vengeful poltergeists and doxxing exist side-by-side and no secret or offense goes undiscovered or unpunished. —TE

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The 30 best movies to watch on Netflix: August 2022

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