The best Netflix Original slate is stacked. Like Rian Johnson whodunnits and Charlize Theron sci-fi epics, stacked.
Netflix’s content library is filled with blockbusters and indie darlings, but a good amount of those come courtesy of the streamer itself. Netflix’s original films are stacked with sci-fi action epics and sports comedies, and Oscar-winning aueteur entries. So, to whittle down the smorgasbord of choices, we’ve rounded up the best Netflix feature-length creations that deserve to be added to your queue.
You can see the full list of the best original movies on Netflix below:
Last updated on May 12, 2023.
25. The Luckiest Girl Alive
Year: 2022
Cast: Mila Kunis, Finn Wittrock, Connie Britton, Scoot McNairy
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 113 minutes
Director: Mike Barker
Trailer: Watch here
None of us are who we were in high school, but that’s especially true for Ani Fanelli, a New York City journalist on the cusp of having it all. Mila Kunis plays Ani as tough, street-smart, and a bit of a black sheep amongst the Manhattan elite whose circles she now navigates while trying to keep a lock on her troubled and violent past. But, when a documentary crew comes knocking, hoping to get Ani’s take on an infamous school shooting incident that she survived during her teenage years, old ghosts rise to the surface, threatening her carefully cultivated persona in ways she could never expect.
24. Luther: The Fallen Sun
Year: 2023
Cast: Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo, Andy Serkis
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 129 minutes
Director: Jamie Payne
Trailer: Watch here
Idris Elba returns as the brilliant but troubled copper, John Luther, in this thrilling mystery from Netflix. Would it help to know Luther’s disgraced-detective origins via the BBC drama? Sure. But just jumping straight into this cat-and-mouse game between the on-the-run anti-hero and Andy Serkis’ twisted serial killer might also be a hell of a lot of fun.
23. Set It Up
Year: 2018
Cast: Glen Powell, Zoey Deutch
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 105 minutes
Director: Claire Scanlon
Trailer: Watch here
Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell star in this office rom-com with a bit of a twist. Instead of the two young co-stars falling in love, it’s Deutch and Powell who try to set up their overbearing, workaholic bosses with each other so that they can get a break from their demanding jobs. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs play the employers from hell, and Deutch and Powell put themselves through the paces to make the pair fall in love, and to make us laugh. It’s superficial, it’s cute, and it’s proof that Glen Powell has always been charming.
22. Eurovision Song Contest: A Song of Ice and Fire
Year: 2020
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Will Ferrell, Dan Stevens
Genre: Comedy, Musical
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 123 minutes
Director: David Dobkin
Trailer: Watch here
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams take on the planet’s most-watched singing competition with this campy comedy about an Icelandic duo named Fire Saga, who are set on achieving glory on the world’s biggest stage. Ferrell and McAdams play Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, artists chosen to represent their nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, a real competition that features musicians from all over the world, who are often performing in wild get-ups. Dan Stevens almost steals the show while Pierce Brosnan and Demi Lovato make appearances. We’re calling it now: “Volcano Man” is going to be a bop for the ages.
21. White Noise
Year: 2022
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 136 minutes
Director: Noah Baumbach
Trailer: Watch here
Director Noah Baumbach partners (again) with Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver to adapt a work of fiction many said could never translate on screen. Based on a 1985 novel of the same name, this Netflix film follows a blended family living in ’80s-era Ohio whose lives are upended when a contamination event throws everything into chaos. Driver plays a meek, uninspired professor name Jack, Gerwig his neurotic, death-obsessed wife named Babette. The two share a fear of dying that’s only exacerbated when a train accident causes a cloud of chemical waste to envelop their small town. It’s absurdist comedy with heart and a surprisingly fun dance number at the end.
20. The Wonder
Year: 2022
Cast: Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Kila Lord Cassidy
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Trailer: Watch here
Florence Pugh delivers a devastating-yet-subtle performance in this period drama that deep dives into the superstition and oppression that surrounds religion in a small hamlet in the Irish Midlands. Pugh plays Lib, a young nurse with a dark past who’s hired to investigate whether a young girl who claims to be touched by God is a miracle or a fraud. It’s a tense, slow-plotting thriller, one that gives Pugh ample space to show off her skills amidst a gorgeous backdrop of rainy, rolling hills.
19. Do Revenge
Year: 2022
Cast: Maya Hawke, Camila Mendes, Austin Abrams
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 118 minutes
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Trailer: Watch here
Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes star in this teen comedy filled with cheeky winks to the genre’s early aughts classics. Mendes plays Drea, a popular student at an elite private school whose reputation is trashed after her boyfriend (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) leaks an intimate video of her. She seeks revenge and enlists the help of the school’s new girl Eleanor (Hawke) who undergoes a makeover to infiltrate the popular clique Drea once belonged to and destroy them from the inside. Come for the “Glenn-ergy” of it all, stay for the plot twist near the film’s end.
18. Matilda The Musical
Year: 2022
Cast: Alisha Weir, Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: PG
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Matthew Warchus
Trailer: Watch here
An adaptation of a Tony Award-winning musical, itself an adaptation of a Roald Dahl children’s book, this exquisitely-directed adventure is one of the best Netflix has delivered in quite a while. Most of that is thanks to the choreography, the music, and the dizzyingly-colorful sets, but newcomer Alisha Weir does excellent work as Matilda, a young, misunderstood girl with brains and gumption and parents who fail her time and time again. Emma Thompson is deliciously evil as Miss Trunchbull, and Lashana Lynch proves she’s an on-screen chameleon, following up her Woman King role with a heartbreaking, inspiring turn as Ms. Honey (the teacher we all wish we’d had).
17. Longest Third Date
Year: 2023
Cast: Khani Le, Matt Robertson
Genre: Documentary
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 83 minutes
Director: Brent Hodge
Trailer: Watch here
A strange, surprisingly compelling time capsule of a film, this doc chronicles the quick-moving relationship of Matt and Khani who match on Hinge and enjoy a whirlwind romance that’s interrupted in the unluckiest of ways when the Covid pandemic hits. What do you do when you’re stuck in a foreign country with a person you just met thanks to a worldwide shutdown that cuts you off from family, friends, and any sense of civilization? It’s a question we’ll thankfully never have to answer, but there’s a weird sense of entertainment and hope in watching these two figure it out.
16. The Platform
Year: 2019
Cast: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 94 minutes
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Trailer: Watch here
This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up, but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.
15. You People
Year: 2023
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Nia Long, Jonah Hill, Lauren London
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Kenya Barris
Trailer: Watch here
Kenya Barris tells another story focusing on interracial dynamics, this time with the help of a roster of comedic powerhouses. Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a young executive struggling to make a career change. He meets Amira by happy accident, but blending their Jewish and Black families prove difficult when Ezra fails to impress Amira’s father (Eddie Murphy) and Amira points out some issues of performative woke-ism in Ezra’s parents (Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Duchovny).
14. The Devil All The Time
Year: 2020
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan,
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
Director: Antonio Campos
Trailer: Watch here
This time-hopping drama set in the backwoods of West Virginia is basically an excuse for director Antonio Campos to assemble his own Avengers-style squad of Hollywood A-listers. Seriously, everyone’s in this movie: Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, that kid who played Dudley in the Harry Potter franchise. The whole gang’s living in shacks and picking up hitchhikers, only to murder them later and speaking in tongues and falling victim to generational trauma. It’s a heavy watch, and there’s not really a happy ending, but boy does Pattinson deliver a batsh*t crazy turn as a perverted preacher.
13. Hunger
Year: 2023
Cast: Nopachai Chaiyanam, Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 146 minutes
Director: Sitisiri Mongkolsiri
Trailer: Watch here
Thai filmmaker Sitisiri Mongkolsiri gives us his version of The Menu with this deliciously tense, inexplicably-eerie restaurant thriller. Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays Ayo, a young woman working at her family’s noodle shop who dreams of more. She gets it after scoring a job with a dictator-like food auteur in Nopachai Chaiyanam’s Chef Paul. Paul is uncompromising and abusive and Ayo subjects herself to that abuse in order to climb an imaginary ladder but, once she reaches the top, the view looks grim.
12. Okja
Year: 2017
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 120 minutes
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Trailer: Watch here
Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.
11. Hustle
Year: 2022
Cast: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Juancho Hernangómez
Genre: Sports, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Jeremiah Zagar
Trailer: Watch here
Adam Sandler has plenty of comedy favorites housed on Netflix, but we’re highlighting this one because Sandler gets to channel his everyman charm in a sports story that lets his comedic sensibilities control the game. He plays Stanley Sugerman, an aging 76ers scout, who discovers a potential NBA star during a pick-up game in Spain. Stanley risks his career and his family’s future to back the unknown player, eventually squaring off against his old boss and confronting his own troubled past to help someone else achieve their dreams on the court.
10. The King
Year: 2021
Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson
Genre: Historical, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 140 minutes
Director: Joel Edgerton
Trailer: Watch here
Timothee Chalamet is everywhere right now so really, are you that surprised he’s playing a boyish, rebellious King Henry V in this big-budget Shakespeare adaptation from Joel Edgerton? Chalamet and his bowl-cut bring Hal to life, the wayward prince forced to assume the throne after his father’s death. Hal has to grow up quickly to lead his men into battle against a bloodthirsty French foe (Robert Pattinson having too much fun with his overdramatic accent) and preserve England’s reign. It’s all medieval warfare and political intrigue and it’s held up by Chalamet who stands out — even amongst a stellar supporting cast.
9. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Year: 2020
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis, Toni Collette
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 134 minutes
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Trailer: Watch here
Charlie Kaufman’s latest film is based on a book of the same name and stars Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley as a young woman meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time — which normally would be a happy event except she’s secretly been planning to break up the with the guy. That guy is Jesse Plemons, who seems to be in everything these days, and along with Toni Collette and David Thewlis who play his parents, they make for hellish dinner mates. There’s a sinister vibe permeating everything about this straightforward plot so if you think you know how this ends, let us be the first to tell you: You don’t have a clue.
8. Bo Burnham: Inside
Year: 2021
Cast: Bo Burnham
Genre: Comedy, Music
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 86 minutes
Director: Bo Burnham
Trailer: Watch here
Bo Burnham distills our collective quarantined experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing, directing, starring in, composing, and editing this bleak-yet-hilarious bit of performance art that might be the most exciting, inventive thing we’ve seen yet. Is it a movie, a stand-up routine, or a comedy special? We really don’t know, but it’s damn funny so we’re putting it on this list. The self-deprecating humor and catchy tunes are here of course, but Burnham goes darker, crafting complete bangers about everything from the white savior complex to cancel culture, toxic masculinity, depression, and global economic inequality.
7. Triple Frontier
Year: 2019
Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Director: J.C. Chandor
Trailer: Watch here
This Netflix original heist thriller stars a whos-who of Hollywood hunks. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal play a group of former special ops bros who reunite to take down an infamous cartel kingpin and steal his profits in the process. Isaac and Affleck look to be the leaders of the team, two men fed up with risking their necks for a country that doesn’t look after them once they’re back on home soil, and Isaac’s A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor is at the helm, which means a couple of plot twists and some high stakes action are in store.
6. Da 5 Bloods
Year: 2020
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman, Jonathan Majors
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 154 minutes
Director: Spike Lee
Trailer: Watch here
Any Spike Lee joint is worth a watch, but this genre-bending thriller about a group of black Vietnam War vets returning to the battlefield decades later feels especially timely. That’s because Lee manages to shed light on a little-known part of our shared history: the way our country treated Black soldiers returning from the war, but he also raises the stakes with a subplot that includes a buried treasure hunt and a heartwrenching mission to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade. The cast, which includes Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman in one of his final roles, is brilliant, the story is gripping, and the direction is top notch.
5. Pamela: A Love Story
Year: 2023
Cast: Pamela Anderson
Genre: Documentary
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 112 minutes
Director: Ryan White
Trailer: Watch here
After decades of having her image stolen, twisted, and used for others’ gain — most recently in the critically-acclaimed Hulu series Pam & Tommy — Pamela Anderson is finally defining her legacy on her terms. The result is this brief but powerful documentary that rehashes painful plot points in the star’s life — some we already know and some we don’t — but through Pam’s eyes. She’s brutally candid and bravely vulnerable throughout it all, whether it’s visiting past diary entries on her boxes of legal pads or recounting childhood abuse. Whoever you thought Pamela Anderson was, this doc will likely prove you wrong.
4. Roma
Year: 2018
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 135 minutes
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Trailer: Watch here
Academy Award-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico City named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
3. Glass Onion
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Craig, Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, Edward Norton
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Crime
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 140 minutes
Director: Rian Johnson
Trailer: Watch here
Rian Johnson delivers a deliriously fun follow-up to his breakout 2019 murder mystery with Daniel Craig returning to play famed detective Benoit Blanc. This time around, Blanc, equipped with a colorful new wardrobe and his same slow, Southern drawl, heads to Greece to investigate a murder amongst a group of friends reuniting for an island holiday. Most of the culprits are out-of-touch elites — to the nth degree — with stars like Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Edward Norton playing supermodels, Twitch streamers, politicians, and tech moguls who are as ridiculous as they are corrupt.
2. The Irishman
Year: 2019
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
Genre: Biography, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 209 minutes
Director: Martin Scorsese
Trailer: Watch here
Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama mostly based on a true story. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion project to be, with some interesting de-aging CGI that does its best to show the scope of Scorsese’s storytelling.
1. All Quiet on the Western Front
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 148 minutes
Director: Edward Berger
Trailer: Watch here
Sometimes the best argument against war is to show it fully, in all its brutality and heartbreak, and inevitable devastation. That’s what this film does well, following the story of a young, idealistic German boy who enlists to serve his country during World War I — and its nine Oscar nominations are proof of that. Instead of finding glory and honor on the battlefield, he and his friends witness unimaginable horrors while struggling to survive in a wasteland created by man’s greed and insatiable appetite for violence.
