100 Best Movies on Roku Channel Right Now

Tilda Swinton stars in this gorgeous Italian production by Luca Guadagnino, part of the director’s “Desire Trilogy”, together with Call Me By Your Name and A Bigger Splash.

Swinton learned to speak Italian and some Russian for the movie, where she plays – to absolute perfection – the wife of a Milan textile mogul who starts having an affair with a cook.

It’s an elegant family drama that’s definitely more concerned with aesthetics than substance, but the setting in snowy Northern Italy and lush 35mm film make that very easy to look past.

Antoneta Kastrati’s debut feature film Zana follows Lume, who appears guarded and subdued as she goes about her daily routine: milking the cows, harvesting crops and flowers, hanging laundry out to dry. Part of Lume’s routine also includes visits to the doctor, accompanied by her mother-in-law and husband, who pressure her to conceive.

When conventional medical advice does not yield a viable pregnancy, Lume is brought to a witch doctor, and later a televangelist. The former suggests Lume may be cursed, while the latter insists she is possessed by a supernatural creature called a jinn. Lume appears largely apathetic, at least outwardly. But slowly, she starts to unravel—and with her undoing comes the reveal of the war that traumatized her. 

Kastrati’s family drama has elements of horror, but the real terror here is psychological. It makes for an important exploration of a deeply patriarchal society that is only beginning to heal the collective traumas of a complicated war, and how its violence continues to ripple through time and into domestic life. 

Little England is one of those rare cases in small-nation cinemas, where a film was equally appealing to mainstream and arthouse audiences. Upon its release, it was box office success and 2013’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature. Festival darling Pantelis Voulgaris equipped this interwar romantic drama with the attributes of an epic: it’s two hours and a half long, spans across decades, and is based on a novel of a notable size. Written by renowned author Ioanna Karystiani, who is also Voulgaris’s wife, “Little England” the novel was adapted in a riveting screenplay where love, jealousy, passion, and betrayal sizzle in a dangerous mix. As any good period drama, the emotional range is high, and the beauty in the premise—forbidden love—is a gift that keeps on giving. The film features two stellar lead performances, as Pinelopi Tsilika and Sofia Kokkali make their acting debuts as the two sisters, the latter being the face of a new, even more daring phase of Greek cinema today. 

Don’t be fooled—despite being a three-hour documentary, Hoop Dreams is just as thrilling, heartbreaking, and cinematic as any sports film out there. Unlike them, however, Hoop Dreams is less of an uplifting feel-good story than it is an honest and sobering look at how the education system has failed Black communities. It’s not a complete downer, though, since we follow two hardworking and inspiring boys committed to lifting their families from poverty. While more privileged players can afford to treat basketball as a hobby, to Arthur and William, basketball is a lifeline, a rare chance to enjoy better opportunities and give their families a better life. Imagine carrying that on your shoulders while training, studying, looking for colleges, and surviving teenhood. It’s a lot, but director Steve James weaves it all beautifully. James divides the chapter into freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years, following Arthur and William as they start on the same footing, diverge and live parallel lives (one in private school, the other in public), and eventually meet again during their final years in school. Their journeys are riveting, not least because we also get to know their families, friends, hopes, and dreams. This is riveting cinema, as socially conscious as it is competitively thrilling.

At the first few moments, Song Lang seemed to be something akin to Farewell My Concubine– the film takes a snapshot of a communist Asian country in a different time, through the lens of a regional opera form with painted faces, elaborate costumes, and captivating tunes. But there’s more to Song Lang than this. Tragedy isn’t prophesized through songs of an already existing opera (in fact, the film features all new tunes), but instead, it occurs because Dung, the loan shark, didn’t reflect on the past early enough for him to reclaim the art form his family once loved, a concern shared with cải lương as a declining genre. Song Lang is a moving drama, but it’s also a nostalgic time capsule of 1980s Saigon and cải lương as a whole.

A really weird and also heartwarming movie about Frank, the leader and singer/songwriter of a crazy band. He really grows on you with his big head. If you like movies with that funky edge (like Scott Pilgrim) this is especially something for you! Either way and regardless of your preferences, you’ll find Frank to be a sweet, sincere, likable and clever comedy.

Watching Carol is like reading a really interesting book while relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. It is one of those movies that you probably heard about during its Oscar run, and have since delayed actually viewing it. Well now that it is on Netflix and other streaming services you have no excuse! It’s refreshingly unique, incredibly charming, and features a kind of story that hasn’t been told very often – a love story between two women. Both characters played by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara attempt to live true to their own principles while facing unjust yet severe backlash from society. If you are open to it, the love story in this will stay with you forever.

An insightful and thoughtful Canadian coming-of-age drama, Giant Little Ones is about two seventeen-year-old best friends whose relationship changes after an incident one night. Spanning a quick 90 minutes, it manages to tell its story quickly and honestly, as it touches on themes of sexual identity not only for the teenagers but for their parents as well. And it has a great message about tolerance. It’s a lovely and wholesome movie. 

An incredible documentary about Matt Green, a man who decided to walk every street in New York City. That’s more than 8000 miles (more than the diameter of Earth) that he had been walking for six years up to the point of making this movie.  

Matt stops. And that’s the beauty of this documentary, where the filmmaker joins him for part of the journey. You quickly realize that the intrigue is not so much about Matt’s challenge, but about who he meets and what kind of experiences he goes through. You also realize (if you didn’t already) that New York is a place of unimaginable size, with incredibly lively and diverse human stories. Plus lots of other forms of life too: Matt doesn’t have a fixed place, so he cat-sits for shelter.

Fun fact: this is the first movie that actor Jesse Eisenberg ever produced!

Us and Them follows two former lovers who reminisce and reassess their decade-long relationship over one night. They both seem to be in better places, certainly financially if anything else, but their shared wistfulness for the past threatens to prove otherwise. 

The film was an immediate hit when it was first released in China, and it’s easy to see why. With just the right balance of realism, romance, and comedy, the movie makes for a simple but deeply moving and involving watch. You can’t help but root for the exes to get back together, even though you know as well as they do how minimal the chances of that happening are.