12 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now

As recently as 2023, you’d have to hunt high and low on Netflix for any movie that first flickered on a big screen in the last millennium. These days, though, the granddaddy of streaming services offers a surprisingly deep catalog of 20th-century classics, including Oscar winners like Amadeus and The Guns of Navarone, alongside more recent offerings with a well-deserved reputation for excellence, such as the genre mash-up Everything Everywhere All at Once. Plus, Netflix has produced some compelling fare of its own, including nature docs like My Octopus Teacher. Here are a dozen current titles worth adding to your watch queue.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Erich Maria Remarque’s unflinching novel about World War I has inspired two Oscar winners: the 1930 black-and-white gem and this gripping remake, which used every modern filmmaking technique to bring you right into the trenches with a group of young German soldiers whose idealism is quickly shattered by the stark reality of the conflict. Edward Berger’s 2022 German-language epic nabbed an eye-popping nine Oscar nominations and took home four (for international feature film, cinematography, original score and production design).

Watch it now: All Quiet on the Western Front

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Amadeus (1984)

Miloš Forman reinvented the biopic with this lush period drama about the rise of an impish brat named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played with rakish charm by Tom Hulce) and the sinister scheming of an older composer (F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri) who understands all too well whom history will deem the true musical genius of the era. The film deservedly won eight Oscars, including best picture, and it still holds up as an entertaining period piece.

Watch it now: Amadeus

The Babadook (2014)

You might want to keep the lights on after watching this brilliantly creepy Australian horror film. A widowed single mom’s emotionally troubled young son has been acting out in school and finds no comfort when he stumbles on a macabre black-and-white picture book about a top-hatted ghoul. This is the rare horror film that crawls deep under your skin without buckets of blood or cheap jump scares.

Watch it now: The Babadook

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Denzel Washington steps out of the pages of Walter Mosley’s bestselling mystery novels as Easy Rawlins, a WWII veteran in 1940s L.A. who’s hired to find a missing white woman (Jennifer Beals) last seen in the city’s Black jazz clubs. But what was billed as a quick job soon becomes a nightmare. Washington smolders as a good man who gets in way over his head, while director Carl Franklin’s storytelling is stylish and as taut as the strings on an upright bass.

Watch it now: Devil in a Blue Dress