Critic Craig Mathieson has combed the Netflix Australia archives, writing the definitive list of the best 50 movies currently available to stream.
See also
* All new movies & series on Netflix
* All new streaming movies & series
* The 50 best movies on Stan
’71 (2014)
Watch on NetflixStaying alive is just the beginning in Yann Demange’s gripping thriller, which stars Jack O’Connell as a young British soldier separated from his unit and running for his life after peacekeeping duties in sectarian Belfast spiral out of control. Chaotically choreographed set-pieces are matched by grim lessons: no individual can prosper by bestowing blind faith on an organisation.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
WATCH ON NETFLIXFrom the dawn of time to a point beyond it, Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking science-fiction epic about a secretive mission to Jupiter is concerned with achieving control—from Kubrick’s realisation of hitherto unimaginable visual effects to the alien monoliths that have set humanity on the path to evolution. The movie’s key character, the HAL 9000, is a computer that decides humans are an impediment to its work. That’s the director writ large.
Ali (2001)
WATCH ON NETFLIXWisely focusing on the tumultuous 10 year period between 1964 and 1974—when Muhammad Ali (Will Smith) won the heavyweight title and had it stripped before
winning it back, faced imprisonment, and married and divorced twice—Michael Mann’s biopic is rarely troubled by the scale of the subject’s life. It’s a deeply involving character study and political critique that builds to a mesmerising peak.
All the President’s Men (1976)
Watch on NetflixAlan J Pakula’s riveting procedural about the pair of young Washington Post reporters—Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman)—whose dogged coverage of the 1972 Watergate break-in eventually brought down U.S. President Richard Nixon, is a study of institutional strength and individual fortitude. Masterful deep focus newsroom shots convey the struggle in striking terms.
Animal Kingdom (2011)
Watch on NetflixA deadly quiet film about the clash between a crime clan and various strands of the Victorian police force, David Michôd’s debut reveals a world where control is an illusion and the only certainty is oblivion. The focus moves between the telescopic and the chokingly tight, with unerring performances from Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville.
Athena (2022)
Watch on NetflixBeginning with an audacious opening sequence overflowing with righteous fury, Romain Gavras’ saw-toothed drama about open warfare on a Parisian housing estate and the torn allegiance of the brothers at the centre of it is that rare film: one where technical bravado and emotional clarity go hand in hand.
Atlantics (2019)
Watch on NetflixAn otherworldly love story for our age of displacement, Mati Diop’s remarkable debut feature is a beguiling mix of social realism and supernatural longing. A young Senegalese couple, Ada (Mama Bineta Sane) and Souleiman (Ibrahima Traore), are torn apart when Souleiman tries to leave for Europe—only to return in a different form.
Barbarian (2022)
WATCH ON NETFLIXA slow burn horror film about ownership and the different—but nonetheless connected—generations of misogynistic violence, Zach Cregger’s low budget feature begins with the unsettling double booking of a Detroit rental house, before tearing its dimensions apart with hidden tunnels and historic crimes. It packs an almighty kick.
Barbie (2023)
WATCH ON NETFLIXGreta Gerwig’s maximalist feminist comedy, which turns a historic toy line into an existential satire into a delightfully scathing social critique, is that rare Hollywood beast: an event film with an appeal that hasn’t dissipated with the headlines. If anything, the performances of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are only richer and funnier with the passing of time.
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Watch on NetflixOne of the very first Netflix originals. The savage, scarring plight of African child soldiers—with Idris Elba as their abusive, messianic leader—is captured with vivid strokes and lasting pain in this drama from True Detective (and latest 007 film No Time to Die) director Cary Joji Fukunaga.
Booksmart (2019)
Where to watchOlivia Wilde repurposed the high school comedy with feminist wit, deadpan farce, and a stop-motion animated nightmare, as high school graduation leads to a crisis of confidence for Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein’s nerdy double act. The duo’s pleasure-seeking antics are both funny and illuminating, whether they’re at a bizarre party or misreading their crushes.
Cam (2018)
Watch on NetflixDaniel Goldhaber’s online reprise of body horror is a bracing example of the genre’s new and instructively weird indie wave. It traces with throbbing unease the psychological fracture of an approval-fueled (and paid) cam girl (Madeline Brewer) when a doppelganger takes control of her video feed.
Cargo (2018)
Watch on NetflixFor once an Australian genre film—in this case about society’s collapse after a zombie apocalypse—that makes more use of this country than the landscape. On the run with his baby daughter, Andy (Martin Freeman) finds himself in a perilous world starting anew, with Indigenous history and the crimes against it pushed to the fore.
Da 5 Bloods (2020)
Watch on NetflixIn telling the story of a group of black Vietnam War veterans returning to the country, to search both for loot and the memory of their fallen leader (the late Chadwick Boseman, in flashback), Spike Lee serves up a maximal mix of political commentary, time-shifting storytelling, sharp performances and B movie action sequences.
The Dark Knight (2008)
WATCH ON NETFLIXWith Heath Ledger’s Joker—a jittery, nihilistic force who feels like a city’s dread come to life—as the antagonist, Christopher Nolan took the Batman franchise to a new level. Nolan grounds the superhero epic in the streets and gives a muscular authenticity to the obsessive deeds of Christian Bale’s masked vigilante.
The Dry (2021)
Watch on NetflixAn outback noir thriller about culpability and regret, Robert Connolly’s box office hit stars Eric Bana as a financial crimes police officer who returns to the hometown he fled as a teenager to investigate a horrific crime attributed to his best friend. Less interested in plot twists than allowing the drought-stricken landscape and its frayed inhabitants to take hold, it’s a masterful Australian genre piece.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Watch on NetflixA Gilliam-esque visit to the tax office, inter-generational immigrant trauma, hot dog hands, inter-dimensional warfare… It’s easy to say that the latest absurdist comedy from directing duo The Daniels is a lot, but everything in this madcap story has purpose and pathos and it’s delivered with a magisterial lead performance by Michelle Yeoh.
Get Out (2017)
Watch on NetflixFew films have better captured the tenor of the times than comic Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, a compelling horror film about the dispossession of African-Americans that stars Daniel Kaluuya as a Black photographer invited to visit the family home of his white girlfriend. Peele memorably turns awkwardness and tolerance into menace and terror, as history threatens to repeat itself.
Hell or High Water (2016)
Watch on NetflixThe western is brilliantly reincarnated as an end-of-the-line dissection of inequality, as communities collapse, people break, and institutions corrupt. In response, a wary pair of brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) go on a bank-robbing spree to avoid foreclosure, while pursued by an ornery Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges).
Hit Man (2024)
WATCH ON NETFLIXA wildly entertaining romantic thriller grounded in noir classics such as Double Indemnity, with a hint of screwball farce, this Richard Linklater feature is a leading man showcase for Glenn Powell, who plays a professor whose side gig is pretending to be a contract killer for police stings. The staid academic finds role-playing liberating, to the point where he stays in character and dates Adria Arjona’s prospective client.
The Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
WATCH ON NETFLIXA warmly eccentric coming-of-age comedy about the need to belong and our struggle to accept it, Taika Waititi’s New Zealand adventure has a pair of wonderfully judged lead performances. As a dismissive 12-year-old and the grumpy farmer who becomes his unlikely foster carer, Julian Dennison and Sam Neill are terrific together whether forging a bond or dodging a surprisingly dedicated social worker.
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)
Watch on NetflixMacon Blair’s Sundance Film Festival winner is a comic vigilante thriller with Lynchian trace elements. Common decency motivates the unlikely heroes—Melanie Lynskey’s nursing assistant and Elijah Woods’ nunchucks-wielding neighbour—on an increasingly dangerous quest.
In Bruges (2008)
Watch on NetflixThe feature debut of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is a pithy and blackly comic crime drama about two hitmen—a simpatico Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell—hiding out in Belgium after a job goes wrong. It’s a post-Tarantino crime flick, but McDonagh’s writing allows for mordant humour, ludicrously logical conversations, and a kind of spiritual transference, before Ralph Fiennes arrives as the duo’s terrifying boss.
In the Loop (2009)
Watch on NetflixBefore Veep and The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci took the political players from his scathing Whitehall comedy The Thick of It to Washington D.C. as a vastly unorganised coalition prepares for a war in the Middle East that has everything except a reason. Doctoring documents and insulting each other with gusto—led by Peter Capaldi’s scalding adviser Malcolm Tucker—the handlers reveal international policy as a series of office crises.
The Irishman (2019)
Watch on NetflixA modern epic of American organised crime told through the ramifications of friendship and multiple generations of severed family, Martin Scorsese’s autumnal gangster tale convenes Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. The digital de-ageing is widespread, but ultimately this is a magisterial film of restraint and regret.
The Lobster (2015)
WATCH ON NETFLIXA dystopian comedy of gloriously deadpan dimensions, the English language debut of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos turns relationships into a bureaucratic nightmare as Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell and Lea Seydoux bring to life a truly cutting vision. It’s savagely sublime, paving the way for The Favourite and Poor Things.
The Lost Daughter (2021)
Watch on NetflixIn tandem with a piercing Jessie Buckley performance as her younger self in flashback, Olivia Colman finds compelling, uncomfortable depths as a lone traveller whose book-laden Greek holiday reveals a growing obsession with Dakota Johnson’s fellow tourist. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s outstanding directorial debut is a psychological thriller that explores not just maternal instincts and power, but the very nature of sympathy.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe best action film of this century, or of all time? Either way, George Miller rebooted his post-apocalyptic franchise with Tom Hardy as the taciturn anti-hero and Charlize Theron as a feminist rebel for the ages to create a magisterial automotive experience. “Fang it!” screams one of the road warriors—and this movie absolutely does.
Marriage Story (2019)
Watch on NetflixDivorce is an institutional act of mutual destruction and a plumbing of personal limits in Noah Baumbach’s east coast vs west coast drama, about the marital division of a Los Angeles actor (Scarlett Johansson) and a New York theatre director (Adam Driver). With Sondheim segues and Hollywood mores, it’s a painfully compelling experience.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
Watch on NetflixBaumbach’s vision of the artistic family—exasperating, cruelly cutting, and righteously blind to tragedy—finds full expression in this study of a needy, retired New York sculptor (Dustin Hoffman) and his children (including Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler). Each character comes into bracing focus.
Moneyball (2011)
Watch on NetflixA sports film ultimately about learning to understand what you’re worth, Bennett Miller’s reappraisal of Michael Lewis’ non-fiction best-seller was a turning point for Brad Pitt. Playing Billy Beane, a baseball team’s manager deploying statistical analysis to buck tradition, the actor brings years of the character’s frustration to just beneath the surface of his performance.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)
Watch on NetflixA satire of the life of Jesus Christ, organised religion, and the Biblical epic—amongst other targets—Monty Python’s legendary comedy troupe sketches blossomed into a complete and self-contained work with a movie both hilarious and defiant. Is there a better send-off than Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?
A Most Wanted Man (2014)
WATCH ON NETFLIXThe War on Terror brought John le Carre’s spy novels back to prominence. This adaptation from Australian writer Andrew Bovell and Dutch director Anton Corbijn is a studious depiction of a German spymaster in Hamburg, played with soulful pessimism by Philip Seymour Hoffman, trying to penetrate terrorist cells with tradecraft while seeing off American interference.
Mudbound (2017)
Watch on NetflixNominated for four Academy Awards, Dee Rees’ mighty film is a study of historic divisions set in segregated rural Mississippi in the 1940s. But it has such a poetically tragic sense of the characters—led by Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke and Jason Mitchell—and their limitations that it transcends the period setting.
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
Watch on NetflixOne of the many animated masterpieces directed by revered Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki and released by Japan’s Studio Ghibli, this children’s classic about a pair of young sisters going through upheavals in their new country home is joyously specific and universally felt, complete with a memorably tactile titular character.
The Night Comes For Us (2018)
Watch on NetflixThis is a gift from the action film gods: an unrelenting Indonesian production boasting a bone-crunching connection of R-rated violence and inventive fight choreography. When an assassin, Ito (Joe Taslim), relents on a hit, his triad sends everyone they have to kill him. And they have a lot.
Nightcrawler (2014)
Watch on NetflixAmbitious and amoral, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom is a Los Angeles loner whose corporate ambitions transfer from petty theft to freelance cameraman when he discovers the hunger of local news for freshly shot carnage. He’s a sociopath, and in Dan Gilroy’s remarkable directorial debut there appears to be few limits to what he’s capable of; a dinner scene with Rene Russo’s news director is spellbinding in its implied malfeasance.
Okja (2017)
Watch on NetflixAs Parasite made clear, the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho makes masterfully thrilling movies about capitalism’s crimes. They can sweep you up, but also leave scars. Here a young girl, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) tries to save her genetically modified super pig from its corporate owners—dual Tilda Swinton roles—amidst heart-fluttering flourishes and cruel realities.
Outside In (2018)
Watch on NetflixLynn Shelton was a totemic figure in American independent filmmaking, framing a movement with Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister. One of her final features, Outside In, stars Jay Duplass, Edie Falco and Kaitlyn Dever in the story of a man returned home from 20 years in jail whose reckonings are captured with great empathy.
Parasite (2019)
WATCH ON NETFLIXBong Joon-ho extracts a heavy price for his subversive mastery of genres. In his Academy Awards-dominating study of inequality—equal parts Bunuel and Hitchcock—he gets you to barrack for wrongdoing and mistake jealousy for necessity. Architecture and amorality flourish in an astoundingly complete feature.
The Platform (2019)
Watch on NetflixInequality assumes a vertical axis in this dystopian Spanish-language horror movie, which is equal parts existential theatre work and science-fiction allegory. In a vast concrete prison inmates are randomly assigned levels visited by a vast banquet that travels downwards. Those at the top initially feast, those at the bottom eventually starve. Left furious by the cruel reality, one newcomer tries to make a difference.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Watch on NetflixJane Campion’s first feature film in 12 years is a riveting psychological drama that makes you look anew at every scene you’ve already succumbed to. A never-better Benedict Cumberbatch is the 1925 Montana rancher who treats domineering cruelty as his pleasure, only to lose his bearings when his brother brings a widow and her teenage son into his masculine realm.
Private Life (2018)
Watch on NetflixAs a downtown Manhattan couple trying to have a baby on the difficult side of 40, Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti’s characters provide bittersweet experience amid the piercing observations of Tamara Jenkins’ domestic drama. Lives get messed up and worn down, until you reach the enduring bedrock of the couple’s connection.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Watch on NetflixYou do not get Hollywood studio films like this anymore: a baroque revenge western from Sam Raimi rifled through with Evil Dead camera techniques as Sharon Stone’s gunslinger takes on Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio. High noon takes on a whole new meaning.
Roma (2018)
Watch on NetflixTitanic as an act of social memory, intimate as personal memoir, and shot in exquisite black and white, Alfonso Cuaron’s depiction of an indigenous maid (Yalitza Aparicio) and her relationship with the 1970s Mexico City family that employs—and implores—her is magisterial piece of filmmaking.
Samson & Delilah (2009)
WATCH ON NETFLIXWarwick Thornton’s debut feature about two teenagers—Samson (Rowan McNamara) and Delilah (Marissa Gibson)—who live in an isolated settlement in central Australia before fleeing together to Alice Springs is devastating as a work of social realism. But it wouldn’t have such remarkable strength if it wasn’t for their shared love, which is detailed with comic gestures, unwavering dedication, and harsh endurance.
Scream (1996)
WATCH ON NETFLIXWriter Kevin Williamson took the teenage VHS cassette horror experience back into the multiplex with this self-referential horror, expertly crafted by veteran
director Wes Craven. A slasher film that explicitly acknowledges the genre with a new masked murderer in Ghostface, it put Neve Campbell at the centre of a high school killing spree that begins with Drew Barrymore’s now iconic cameo.
Selma (2014)
WATCH ON NETFLIXIn Ava DuVernay’s spellbinding drama about a bloody 1960s campaign for civil rights in America’s south, you see the true power of protest and the terrible reality of defying what is institutionally wrong. With David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo as, respectively, the Rev Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta, personal and political costs are measured with exacting compassion and striking detail.
The Social Network (2010)
WATCH ON NETFLIXScreenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher witheringly dissect online culture and venture capitalism through the origin tale of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). With women’s verdicts bookending the movie, the drama moves from Harvard to Palo Alto, echoing previous American studies of wealth and power (such as Citizen Kane) as Zuckerberg’s relationships end in legal hubris.
Space Sweepers (2021)
Watch on NetflixWith Kim Tae-ri as the coolest ship’s captain a space opera has seen since Han Solo, this orbital South Korean adventure fizzes up familiar elements—ragtag crew, a very special child everyone’s pursuing, a lippy android and hull-scraping chases—to provide an irreverent but impeccably composed update of the sci-fi blockbuster.
Uncut Gems (2020)
Watch on NetflixA pair of excellent Adam Sandler performances make this list; please do not watch any other of his Netflix originals. With its echoes of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, this pressure cooker thriller, made with signature style by siblings Josh and Benny Safdie, stars the comic as a hustling NYC jeweller constantly raising the stakes of his own bets.
Under the Shadow (2016)
Watch on NetflixSet in 1980s wartime Tehran, Babak Anvari’s horror film about a menacing spirit nightmarishly mixes ancient myth and contemporary political repression to terrifying effect.
This guide is regularly updated to reflect changes in Netflix’s catalogue. For a list of capsule reviews that have been removed from this page because they are no longer available on the platform, visit here.
