The 20 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now

Groundhog Day (1993, PG)

The rom-com that helped name a whole genre of time-loop movies continues to delight, especially the way it plays off the curmudgeonly charm of Bill Murray, 75, as a sad-sack local weatherman who attempts to woo his new field producer (Andie MacDowell, 67). These days, she’d probably ring HR for a coworker repeatedly and clumsily hitting on her. But in this case, there’s something inspiriting about watching a hapless guy win over a woman way out of his league, all through trial and error.

Watch it: Groundhog Day

Hit Man (2024, R)

This sexy caper is loosely based on the true story of a mild-mannered psychology professor who’s recruited by the police to catch folks who want to hire a hitman. Glen Powell is hilarious as a guy who uses his psych background to alter his appearance and persona to suit each would-be criminal — at least until he meets a woman (Adria Arjona) whom he manages to persuade to back down from her felonious intentions. Or does he? The final third delivers more twists than a pretzel factory. And director Richard Linklater, 65, brings his quirky sensibility to this savvy blend of film noir, buddy cop comedy and screwball romance.

Watch it: Hit Man

Jay Kelly (2025, R)

George Clooney, 64, plays to type in this meta comedic character study about a major Hollywood star in the midst of an existential crisis after playing fictional characters for decades. Director Noah Baumbach, 56, who cowrote the script with Emily Mortimer, 54, pries a terrific performance out of Adam Sandler, 59, as the manager of Clooney’s titular character. Both stars won big at AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards: Clooney for best actor and Sandberg for career achievement. (Go behind the scenes at the ceremony here.)

Watch it: Jay Kelly

KPop Demon Hunters (2025, PG)

Your grandkids have probably watched this animated musical dozens of times, but it’s worth catching up to Netflix’s biggest-ever hit. An all-female trio of Korean pop stars moonlights as demon hunters — and then encounters a rival all-boy group who are secretly baddies seeking to trick their human fans into forfeiting their souls to a demon king. The wittily rendered anime-style fantasy action sequences are interrupted by musical numbers that are liable to get stuck in your head for weeks.

Watch it: KPop Demon Hunters

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

A man forges an unlikely bond with a wild octopus living in an underwater kelp forest off the coast of South Africa in this Oscar-winning documentary, which is unlike any nature film you’ve seen before. Sure, it’s beautiful to look at. And you learn plenty about cephalopods and their ability to survive even after attacks by pygmy sharks. But filmmaker and protagonist Craig Foster also draws lessons from his sea buddy that apply to his relationships on land. It’s proof of just how much we humans can learn from the natural world.

Watch it: My Octopus Teacher

Parasite (2019, R)

This class-conscious parable from Korean director Bong Joon Ho, 56, deservedly became the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. We follow a family on the verge of destitution, living in an often-flooded basement apartment and stealing Wi-Fi from a nearby café. But then the son scores a gig tutoring the daughter of a wealthy businessman in an impossibly lovely mansion on a hill, and proceeds to engineer jobs for the rest of his family in the same household. The final act is full of surprises, managing to walk the fine line between menacing and uplifting.

Watch it: Parasite

The Perfect Neighbor (2025, R)

This true-crime doc is both riveting and infuriating — the story of a white Florida woman who shoots and kills her neighbor, a Black mother of four, after complaining about the kids playing in a vacant lot nearby. Instead of preaching or browbeating us with lessons, director Geeta Gandbhir, 55, unspools two years’ worth of police body-cam footage covering the periods before, during and after the fatal shots were fired in 2023. The faces tell the story, without the need for embellishment.

Watch it: The Perfect Neighbor

The Piano Lesson (2024, PG-13)

One of the best plays by the late August Wilson finally gets the big-screen treatment, with a starry cast (many of whom, like Samuel L. Jackson, 77, appeared in an acclaimed 2022 Broadway revival). Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington play Depression-era siblings locked in a bitter dispute over what to do with a family heirloom, a piano carved by an enslaved ancestor. There are no easy answers, but a lot of searing performances in the directing debut of Malcolm Washington (John David’s brother and Denzel’s son).

Watch it: The Piano Lesson

Rebel Ridge (2024, R)

Aaron Pierre delivers a star-making performance as a soft-talking Marine veteran who comes up against a corrupt all-white police force in rural Louisiana (led by Don Johnson, 76). After seizing his life savings — including the $10,000 he was planning to use for his cousin’s bail — the cops set up a series of bureaucratic obstacles that escalate to ever more corrupt police action against an innocent Black man. This is a taut little action film that will entertain and infuriate you in equal measure.

Watch it: Rebel Ridge

Rustin (2023, PG-13)

Bayard Rustin, one of the most overlooked figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, gets the spotlight in a biopic from award-winning director George C. Wolfe, 71, and executive producers Barack, 64, and Michelle Obama, 61. Colman Domingo earned a Movies for Grownups best actor award for his performance as Rustin, who took the lead organizing the historic 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech — but who also faced blowback within the Black community as an openly gay man.

Watch it: Rustin

Train Dreams (2025, PG-13)

Joel Edgerton, 51, delivers a career-best performance as a regular working-class guy in the early 20th-century West who toils in a series of jobs suited to that time and place: railroad construction, logging and farming. Clint Bentley’s film, based on a 2011 novella by the late Denis Johnson, is steeped in poetic cinematic imagery as well as blunt depictions of tragedy.

Watch it: Train Dreams

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025, PG-13)

In the third mystery in the wonderfully twisty franchise from director Rian Johnson, 52, former 007 Daniel Craig, 57, returns as the unorthodox detective Benoit Blanc with an equally unorthodox Foghorn Leghorn accent. But this heaven-sent lark is dominated by Josh O’Connor as a young priest with a violent past, and Josh Brolin, 57, as an imperious monsignor who’s found stabbed to death in a locked church alcove with no obvious means of escape. There’s a parish full of suspects, of course, and starry cameos galore.

Watch it: Wake Up Dead Man

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024, PG)

Wallace and Gromit may be the best comedy duo since Laurel and Hardy. Wallace, a cheese-loving Brit with a passion for overly elaborate inventions, is well-served by his unflappable, always-silent dog, Gromit, who’s typically tasked with bailing his master out of scrapes. In this latest Claymation adventure, the duo face an old foe — the stone-cold penguin Feathers McGraw — in a caper with hilarious callbacks to classic films like Cape Fear, Mission: Impossible and just about every James Bond film.

Watch it: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot (2024, PG)

Who says animated flicks are just for kids? Sure, your grandchildren will be charmed by this cinematic yarn about a high-tech robot who’s shipwrecked on a remote island and befriends the local animals there. But grownups will also appreciate the robot Roz’s efforts to mentor an orphaned gosling and teach it to take to the sky on its own. There’s an old-fashioned sense of craftsmanship and storytelling at work here.

Watch it: The Wild Robot

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, R)

Leonardo DiCaprio, 51, is deliciously sleazy as a real-life stockbroker who slithered through the 1980s and ‘90s, making a fortune on “pump and dump” schemes that swindled his middle-class investors. Director Martin Scorsese, 83, captures both the allure and the emptiness of his amoral protagonist, and he gets blue-chip performances from a supporting cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, 56, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie.

Watch it: The Wolf of Wall Street