50 Best Movies On Netflix You Haven’t Yet Seen

50 Best Movies On Netflix You Haven’t Yet Seen

November 8, 2024

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It is very easy to become lost in Netflix land and believe you’ve already seen everything worth watching. Rest assured, there is very little chance you have. For the second time we have curated a list of the best movie suggestions on Netflix: the best highly-rated, little-known titles available to stream. This is a list we update almost every week to adjust for new arrivals and expired titles.

agoodmovietowatch is your gateway to on-demand streaming services, but instead of recommending the same movies to you you’ve been hearing about for the past 20 years, we focus on the good ones that were overlooked. This way we introduce you to movies you haven’t yet seen, that you can watch immediately and love. To do this, we only recommend movies that have received a high rating from viewers combined with a high score from critics. This means that these movies have been appreciated by both, so you can trust that they’re awesome. We also only suggest movies that didn’t make a huge splash at the box office or which didn’t get the attention they deserved, so there is little chance you have already seen them. Below we count down again our best movie suggestions available to stream on Netflix Instant America. For other countries, visit agoodmovietowatch.com/netflix and use the region selector in the top bar to switch to your geography.

21. The Spectacular Now (2013)

best

8.9

Country

United States of America

Director

James Ponsoldt

Actors

Alex D'Lerma, Andre Royo, Bob Odenkirk, Brie Larson

Moods

A-list actors, Easy, Quirky

Everybody loves a good coming-of-age movie, but they have their trappings. Their youthful characters are often cartoonish, or perfect, or insanely inept. This is where The Spectacular Now achieves something that is indeed spectacular: it feels incredibly real. The film features Miles Teller (from Whiplash) as a charming, but slightly lost, heavily partying high-school senior named Sutter Keely. After waking up on a strange lawn after a long night, he is awoken by Aimee, played by Shailene Woodley, whose performance is as spectacular as the depth of this movie’s characters. What starts as a rebound fling for Keely eventually goes deeper and deeper, while his problems become more and more apparent to us, the viewers, to Aimee, and to his caring teacher, played by the incredible Andre Royo, who some of you might recognize as the iconic Bubbles from The Wire. If this premise sounds corny to you, think again, because this film has a deep respect for its characters and the journeys they must take. A sensitive drama with incredibly life-like performances.

22. I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

best

8.9

Country

Belgium, France, Switzerland

Director

Raoul Peck

Actors

Bob Dylan, Dick Cavett, H. Rap Brown, Harry Belafonte

Moods

Instructive, Smart, Thought-provoking

In a stunning and vivid (re-) introduction to the Black intellectual, author, and social critic, James Baldwin, this movie digs very deep into the American subconscious and racial history. It tells the story of America by telling the story of “the negro” in America, based on a book Baldwin started to write, which would have studied the famous assassinations of three of Baldwin’s friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. He wrote about 30 pages before he passed away in 1987. Haitian director and activist Raoul Peck picked up the project and made it into a movie, earning him an Academy Award nomination. Narrated by none other than Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro highlights, at the same time, Baldwin’s genius, his unique eloquence, and the beauty of his soul as a human being. It is a sad truth that Baldwin’s denouncements feel as relevant today as they did 50 years ago. As such, this movie serves as a sobering reminder of how far America still has to go. A mesmerizing experience!

23. Klaus (2019)

best

8.9

Country

Spain, UK

Director

Sergio Pablos

Actors

J.K. Simmons, Jason Schwartzman, Joan Cusack, Neda Margrethe Labba

Moods

Easy, Uplifting

Shot by Sergio Pablos, a weathered animation film creator, here’s a future holiday classic to be reckoned with. Klaus is a beautifully old-school-looking, 90s Disney-style animation movie about the origin story of the world’s most beloved toymaker, Santa Klaus. Dispatched to a bleak arctic town, because he really wasn’t very good at his job at all, mailman Jesper stumbles upon the now-famous Klaus, making an acquaintance that will change the town forever, and, with it, the way Christmas is celebrated around the world. In addition to its homely warmth, funny moments, and nostalgic hand-drawn animation style, you will recognize many famous voice-overs in this festive family film, including the always amazing J.K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, and Jason Schwartzman, to name a few.

24. Operation Odessa (2018)

best

8.9

Country

N/A, United States of America

Director

Tiller Russell

Actors

Juan Almeida, Kristy Galeota, Ludwig Fainberg, Nelson Tony Yester

Moods

Discussion-sparking, Dramatic, Thrilling

The movie opens with a guy called Tarzan, saying in a Russian accent: “I called my friend Michel, and I said can I buy a submarine, a used one?” Apparently, two days later he called him back asking: “With, or without missiles?” This should give you a decent idea of how the protagonists of this Tiller-Russell-directed documentary roll. Operation Odessa is the crazy true story of how the FBI, Pablo Escobar, and the Russian Mafia were played by three criminal outsiders in a $35 million submarine deal. Strictly speaking, it belongs in the true crime documentary genre, but it can also be treated as a real-life black comedy. The protagonists are so audacious, it is hard to believe that most of this story is true. The submarine deal story is only the tip of the iceberg here. Crazy, funny, and just really well done!

25. Procession (2021)

best

8.9

Country

United States of America

Director

Robert Greene

Actors

Dan Laurine

Moods

Challenging, Depressing, Discussion-sparking

Difficult but essential viewing, Procession tracks the progress of six men undergoing art therapy—specifically, by creating short filmed scenes to process their trauma from being sexually abused by Catholic priests. The resulting films we get to see are wildly varied in the emotions they express, forming a rich and powerful tapestry of the effects abuse can leave on individuals. And to see these men confront the worst events of their lives through filmmaking begins to feel like validation for filmmaking itself, that it can truly be an art form that changes and saves lives. But even more striking, somehow, is the unbreakable bond that forms among these survivors throughout this entire process, captured with reverence and overflowing compassion by director Robert Greene.

26. Philomena (2013)

best

8.8

Country

France, UK, United Kingdom

Director

Stephen Frears

Actors

Amber Batty, Amy McAllister, Anna Maxwell Martin, Barbara Jefford

Moods

Character-driven, Feel-Good, Heart-warming

An inspired by true events tale about an elderly Irish woman trying to find the child she was forced to give up many years earlier. Steve Coogan co-wrote the script and, though the base story is a tragic one, his special brand of very subtle, wry wit is apparent in the dialogue throughout. Judi Dench plays the mother who had kept her “sinful” past a secret for fifty years and, being Judi Dench, I don’t need to bother going on about her exemplary talent, suffice to say she’s charming beyond measure in the role. Steven Frears directs, as usual, deftly, and keeps the story compelling scene after scene, intensifying the emotions inherent to each, whether they be heart-warming, comedic, or outright enraging. Whoever decided to let Steve Coogan have his way with the script, it was a brave and wise choice and together this cast and crew have produced a wonderful and important piece of cinema.

27. Frost/Nixon (2008)

best

8.8

Country

France, UK, United Kingdom

Director

Ron Howard

Actors

Andy Milder, Clint Howard, Eloy Casados, Frank Langella

Moods

Sunday, True-story-based

A relevant and deeply entertaining movie that only has the appearance of being about politics. In reality, it is about television, and one brilliant journalist’s pursuit of the perfect interview.  Richard Nixon stepped away from the public eye after the Watergate scandal, and was counting on a series of interviews three years later to redeem himself. His team assigns an unlikely reporter to sit in front of him, a British reality TV host named David Frost. Both men have everything to gain from this interview by going against each other, as Frost tries to extract a confession of wrongdoing in Watergate that Nixon never gave.  Who will win? The master manipulator or the up-and-coming journalist? Frost / Nixon was originally a play, and this adaptation is full of drama and boosts great dialogue.

28. Struggle: The Life And Lost Art Of Szukalski (2018)

8.8

Country

Poland, United States of America

Director

Irek Dobrowolski, Ireneusz Dobrowolski

Actors

Adam Jones, Charles Schneider, Ernst Fuchs, Gabriel Bartalos

Moods

Mind-blowing

This is an amazing documentary but be warned, the main character has some weird characteristics.

By coincidence, an art collector stumbles upon an undiscovered collection of sculptures and paintings that can only be described as the work of a genius. There was almost no reference to the artist, but upon research the collector finds that they are by a man called Stanislav Szukalski. He traces him down and finally locates him living anonymously in a California suburb. 

The documentary, Struggle: The Life And Lost Art Of Szukalski, is a collection of tapes from numerous interviews in the 1980s between the collector and Szukalski. He was helped by George DiCaprio, who would later produce this movie with his son Leonardo (!). 

In these interviews it becomes clear that Szukalski is pure genius. The funny thing is that he seemed to be well aware of this fact himself. 

Remember the weird characteristics I mentioned in that first sentence? Here we go. Szukalski’s past is full of a lot of antisemitism, sexism and bigotry. 

The question that lingers is how exactly can this forgotten-genius story be reshaped by the discovery of his twisted opinions. Can the artist be separated from the art? It’s a personal matter for the people who found Szukalski and later made this movie. It might never get as personal for you, but this movie will sure try to provoke an answer.

29. The Teachers’ Lounge (2023)

best

8.8

Country

Germany

Director

İlker Çatak

Actors

Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Antonia Luise Krämer, Canan Samadi, Eva Löbau

Moods

Gripping, Suspenseful, Well-acted

The Teacher’s Lounge is one of those movies where a simple misunderstanding is blown out of proportion, so much so that it causes the fabric of a community to unravel into chaos. Aided by a precise score, it ticks like a timebomb, with every second filled with so much dread and anxiety you have to remind yourself to breathe. It’s an impeccable and taut thriller, but it also works as an allegory about modern-day surveillance and authority. Director İlker Çatak gives the Gen-Z students and their much older teachers a level field where they struggle for control, and the result is both bleak and funny. It’s often said that schools are a microcosm of the real world, but nowhere is that more apparent than here. 

30. Flipped (2010)

best

8.7

Country

United States of America

Director

Rob Reiner

Actors

Aidan Quinn, Anthony Edwards, Ashley Taylor, Callan McAuliffe

Moods

Heart-warming, Sunday, Sweet

A seven year old Bryce (Callan McAuliffe) moves to a new neighbourhood across the street from a very spirited little girl named Juli (Madeline Carroll). She falls in love at first sight much to the dismay of the shy young lad. For the next six years, Juli overwhelms Bryce with her affections until a series of events and misunderstandings leaves her heartbroken and angry at him. Fed up, Juli begins to ignore him. However, her absence triggers a change of heart as Bryce realizes his fondness of her. He will do anything to win her back. The whole film, set in the late fifties holds the warmth and charm of small town living. With a balance of passion and playfulness, the extraordinary young cast are brilliant in their roles. Based on the novel by Wendelin Van Draanen, this endearing story of young puppy love, will make your heart melt!

Comments

S
shrek

Cargo is a great hidden gem on netflix

A
Anonymous

Burning is another gem in this list, highly highly recommended.

A
Anonymous

Safety not guaranteed is a hidden gem – highly recommended.

A
Anonymous

nice family movies on net flix

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