10 Best Netflix Original Movies (So Far), Ranked
From its humble beginnings as a pioneering movie-by-mail rental service in the late ’90s and early 2000s to its market dominance today, Netflix is the biggest entertainment streaming service in the world. With hundreds of millions of active users logging in every day, the prevalence of Netflix in the entertainment industry has (for better and worse) set a precedent for the future of at-home entertainment and video streaming.
Being the titan of the industry, it’s no surprise that Netflix has ventured into the creation of original content for its extensive media library. There have been hundreds of Netflix original movies and television shows developed since the company’s very first original programming, House of Cards, in 2013. Over a decade later, it’s time to look back and make a selection of the best Netflix Original movies that the service has to offer. This list will rank them based on their overall quality and how much they have contributed to Netflix’s reputation.
10
‘The Stranger’ (2022)
Joel Edgerton looks concerned as Mark, while Sean Harris as Henry looks menacingly over his shoulder in The Stranger.Image via Netflix
A circumstantial conversation between two strangers on a bus leads to a sturdy friendship between Mark (Joel Edgerton) and Henry (Sean Harris). The latter is a rugged and damaged soul who finds comfort in the friendship of Mark. However, neither man is completely honest about who they really are, and eventually, their deepest secrets begin to surface. Not only is it a massively underrated movie in its own right, but The Stranger is also an impressive genre movie that stands out as one of the best in recent memory. Edgerton and Harris both deliver career-best performances— the evolution of their friendship and what develops from it keep the narrative rooted firmly in strong character writing. Like the best crime thrillers, The Stranger keeps the viewer guessing, delivering some shocking twists and indulging in a consistently grim atmosphere.
9
‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ (2022)
Image via Netflix
A darker telling of the beloved children’s tale, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio begins with a wish to bring a wooden marionette named Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) to life. With his father, Geppetto (David Bradley), and Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), Pinocchio learns what it means to be human in his pursuit of a purpose. The marriage of the timeless source material and visionary director Guillermo del Toro’s distinct and imaginative flair is one that was bound for success. Not only is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio immaculately presented, but it breathes new and exciting life into a story that could’ve felt familiar. This fairy tale isn’t afraid to challenge even its youngest viewers with some intense and daunting themes, yet the movie never lacks fun and colorful spectacle. It was a long wait, but Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was certainly worth it.
8
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (2022)
Three soldiers in the trenches in All Quiet on the Western Front.Image via Netflix
Another telling of the 1929 novel of the same name, as well as a cinematic update of the 1930 movie from Lewis Milestone, All Quiet on the Western Front is every bit as powerful as its predecessor. The movie follows Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer), a 17-year-old German student who is eager to enlist in the Imperial German Army alongside his classmates. Baumer’s patriotism is stifled as he is deployed onto the front lines and comes into direct contact with the horrific violence and brutality of warfare. Almost 100 years separated from the original, Netflix’s adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front is just as gritty, terrifying, and visceral as it should be. While the production is considerably glossier and larger-scale, the narrative remains compact and focuses on the emotional damage war inflicts. All Quiet on the Western Front is a relentlessly bleak war movie, but it remains a potent cautionary tale and a warning that should be heeded.
7
‘Marriage Story’ (2019)
Scarlett Johansson holding Adam Driver’s head as he kneels in front of her in ‘Marriage Story’ scene.Image via Netflix
Theater director Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) and his actress wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are in the midst of an exhaustive and grueling divorce. As tensions between them grow, the means by which they emotionally harm each other only get more intense. The holy bonds of marriage aren’t always easy to sustain. Marriage Story is a simply brilliant piece of humanist filmmaking that is often profoundly powerful. Acclaimed writer and director Noah Baumbach outdid himself here; Marriage Story is one of the most passionate romance movies of the 21st century. Both Driver and Johansson are at the top of their games, embodying their complex characters with a level of finesse and grace that is all too uncommon. Marriage Story isn’t always easy to watch, but it is always engrossing and thoroughly impactful.
6
‘tick, tick… BOOM!’ (2021)
Jonathan Larson (portayed by Andrew Garfield) falls asleep at his keyboard in ‘Tick, Tick… Boom!’ (2021)Image via Netflix
In 1990 New York, Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) is a young, aspiring theater composer who’s on the brink of giving up on his passion. With his 30th birthday quickly approaching, Jonathan believes that his window is closing as he struggles to manage his career obligations and fierce ambition. Sometimes, disillusion and doubt can provoke the most brilliant of ideas. tick, tick… BOOM! is an especially exciting and rousing docudrama that benefits from a career-best performance from the often underappreciated Andrew Garfield. There’s just something inherently compelling when it comes to movies about the creation of art, and Broadway legend Lin-Manuel Miranda was simply the perfect choice to helm a project such as this. tick, tick… BOOM! is an energetic, electrifying, and utterly heartfelt ode to the power of inspiration and the rewards that ambition can yield.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best PictureIs Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
Parasite
Everything Everywhere
Oppenheimer
Birdman
No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I’m watching one kind of film and then reveals I’m watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I’m watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you’re still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I’m living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I’m still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you’re watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what’s left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn’t scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I’ve just seen something I can’t fully explain but can’t stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I’ve been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I’ve just seen cinema doing something it’s never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
5
‘May December’ (2023)
Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in front of the mirror in May December.Image via Netflix
In the picturesque Savannah, Georgia, the middle-aged Gracie (Julianne Moore) lives a quiet life with her husband Joe (Charles Melton). But it wasn’t always so quiet; two decades prior, Gracie was the teacher of the underage Joe, and the emotional turmoil of the tabloid controversy still lingers. Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is cast to portray Gracie in a movie adaptation of the events and stays with Gracie as a means of studying for the role. May December is a rich, contemplative, and thoroughly engaging melodrama that packs a strong, melancholic punch. Moore and Portman are exceptional, complemented by the sharp screenplay and precise direction from established director Todd Haynes. Few movies walk a tonal tightrope as effectively. May December is a quiet triumph, but a triumph nonetheless, and among the very best original content that Netflix has ever put out.
4
‘Okja’ (2017)
A young girl next to Okja the super pig in ‘Okja’Image via Netflix
Throughout a decade, young girl Mija (An Seo Hyun) has been the caretaker and friend to Okja, a scientific marvel known as a “super pig.” The lovable beast and Mija have formed an inseparable bond, but their friendship is jeopardized when Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the CEO of the genetics company that created Okja, wishes to take the creature back to New York. Mija will stop at nothing to ensure that her friend returns home with her. Okja is a soulful, endearing, and fiercely original piece of filmmaking that finds visionary Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho at his most playful. As fun and charming as Okja can be, the movie never loses sight of its passionate messaging. Netflix allowing Bong Joon Ho the creative freedom to make something as strange and unique as Okja was an idea that could never fail, and the result is a movie that entertains just as often as it warms hearts.
3
‘Roma’ (2018)
Cleo holding a child while looking out a window in Roma (2018).Image via Netflix
Set in 1970s Mexico City, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is a housekeeper working for a wealthy family. Cleo forms a close bond with the children, the other housekeeper, Adela (Nancy Garcia), and especially the mother of the household, Sofia (Marina de Tavira). Hers is a story of love, loss, and finding hope in the darkest of times.
Roma is a semiautobiographical depiction of director Alfonso Cuarón’s upbringing in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma district, and that personal touch only enhances what is an undeniably powerful movie. Roma is a beautiful and consistently moving memoir that finds Cuarón at his most tender as a filmmaker; every frame is lovingly captured and achingly nostalgic. The results speak for themselves—Roma would go on to win Best Foreign Language Film at the 2019 Academy Awards, and Cuarón would receive his second Best Director win.
2
‘The Power of the Dog’ (2021)
Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank standing in an open field in The Power of the Dog.Image via Netflix
Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a charismatic rancher who consistently fascinates those he comes into contact with. What many wouldn’t know about Phil, however, is the thick veil he uses to cover up a history of pain and deep sorrow. When his brother George (Jesse Plemons) brings home a new wife and son, Phil’s abusive tendencies eventually give way to profound self-realization. In a movie as dense and thematically rich as The Power of the Dog, no stones are left unturned. It’s a bold, creative endeavor that intrigues just as often as it disturbs. With enthralling drama and striking visuals, director Jane Campion crafts a movie that shares a similar DNA to genre classics of old but offers a timely and fresh perspective. The Power of the Dog earned Campion her first Best Director Oscar, and few would argue that it wasn’t wholly deserving.
1
‘The Irishman’ (2019)
Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), and Bill Buffalino (Ray Romano) looking up towards the sky off camera in “The Irishman”Image via Netflix
War veteran turned hit-man for the Bufalino crime family, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) reflects on a life that earned him wealth but cost him the connections with those whom he cared for most. His heaviest burden is his involvement in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and one of Frank’s closest friends. The Irishman feels like the conclusion to an entire genre. Introspective and weighty yet still slickly entertaining, The Irishman is a monumental achievement that doubles as a love letter to a bygone era of filmmaking. It’s impossible not to be giddy with excitement watching De Niro and Joe Pesci share the screen again. The Irishman is the Avengers: Endgame of mob movies: epic, elegantly presented, and a product of pure passion.
The Irishman
Release Date
November 27, 2019
Runtime
210 minutes
Writers
Steven Zaillian
تم النشر: 2026-07-03 00:12:00
مصدر: collider.com
