10 Movies on Netflix That Will Absolutely Blow Your Mind

Emma, a free-spirited girl with blue hair, influences Adele’s life dramatically, teaching her how to be honest with herself and discover her true desires about love. The film beautifully and realistically portrays Adele’s evolution, from a high-school girl to a grown-up woman. The spirit Emma lights up in her never dies. Blue Is the Warmest Color or La Vie d’Adèle is an honest, intense, and charming picture, prepare not to blink and have your face glued to screen from start to finish.

A documentary that is immediate and plays out like a thriller. Beautifully shot in Virunga National Park in the Eastern Congo, the story focuses on the struggles between Park Rangers and a list of adversaries including poachers, oil company goons, and an Islamic revolutionary army. The stories of the endangered gorillas and the people who struggle to protect them will break your heart and at the same time give you hope in humanity. On top of this, the editing is superb and gives the film an intensity that rivals any recent thriller.

A brilliant science fiction film from the writer of 28 Days Later (and 28 Weeks Later).

It tells the story of a developer who is invited by a billionaire CEO to participate in a groundbreaking experiment and interact with a robot called Ava. Questions of trust and ethics soon collide with the protagonist’s personal views. It’s a cultural take on the debate between artificial and human intelligence.

The visual effects are stunning and efficient, making Ex Machina feel just as casually futuristic as Her. In its emphasis on ideas, it is as daringly simple as a David Fincher production.

Two Korean-American brothers run their family’s shoe store on the day of the 1992 L.A. riots. The day starts as they hang out at their struggling business with an 11-year-old African American girl, Kamilla. Then the Rodney King verdict is in the news and violence breaks out.

Written, directed, and starring Justin Chon, it’s a tight 94 minutes of impressive film-making that speaks volumes about America’s intra-minority race relations. It’s a work that elicits sympathy and manages to uplift the violent event to a human level. An amazing movie.

Scarlett Johanson, in her best performance since Lost in Translation, and Adam Driver, in the peak of his career, star in this heartbreaking drama as a couple going through a divorce.

They are respectively an actor and a director living comfortably in New York. They’re keen to make the divorce go smoothly so as not to affect their son, but with entirely different visions of his future, this proves to be difficult.

This premise makes for familiar territory for director Noah Baumbach who specializes in dramatic storytelling of the intellectual upper-class (like his other Netflix movie The Meyerowitz Stories). Here, Baumbach made his best film yet.

Divorce is a recurring topic of our daily lives, but somehow there hasn’t been a movie that treated it with as little melodrama and as much compassion as this one. It’s still a difficult movie, but it’s good difficult. Perfect difficult.

The Look of Silence is an incredible documentary from Director Joshua Oppenheimer, a follow-up/companion piece to his award-winning documentary The Act of Killing. Both films focus on the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66, where the military government systematically purged up to one million communists. In this film an optician named Adi Rukun meets with various members of the death squad that murdered his brother, under the guise of providing them eye examinations. As he questions them about their participation in the killings, they show little remorse and in fact provide lurid details to the many executions. It’s a stunning and provocative look at the legacy of historical violence, along with the insidious propaganda that provoked it then and continues to justify it to younger generations.

One of the most relevant movies to come out in the past years, Moonlight is a celebration of onscreen aesthetics and delicate screenwriting, acting and directing. In the poorer area of Miami, snippets of the life of a gay African-American man are shown in three different ages, states, and attitudes. Throughout the movie, and as you witness him progress and regress, you become almost enchanted by what is happening in front of you. You find yourself in a state of understanding and not understanding, of thinking you know what’s going to happen in the next scene, but also of having no idea of what is to follow. Winner of the Best Picture Oscar, Best Supporting Actor (for Mahershala Ali who plays one of the main character’s early role models), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

When asked to play Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey decided that he would get into character and never get out, even when the camera was not rolling. This was extremely frustrating to everyone at first, especially the director, who had no way of communicating with Jim Carrey, only Andy Kaufman or Tony Clifton (an alter ego created by Andy Kaufman). At the same time, Carrey had allowed a camera crew to follow him in order to create a behind-the-scenes documentary. The footage was never released because Universal Studios expressed concerns that “people would think Jim Carrey is an asshole”. Jim & Andy is that footage being displayed for the first time since it was recorded 20 years ago, finding Carrey at a very unique point in his life. Sick of fame and almost sick of acting, he displays his true self – an unbelievably smart, fragile, and complex person. His commentary, when it’s not funny impressions, is extremely emotional and grounded – sometimes philosophical. This is one of the best documentaries that Netflix has ever bought the distribution rights for, and certainly a mind-blowing portrayal of a complex mind.

Icarus starts with director Bryan Fogel deciding to inject himself with doping substances and participate in a biking race undetected. By accident, he ends up in contact with a Russian scientist. This man transforms the movie from a personal experiment to a highly relevant political thriller. Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the scientist is at the center of accusations in Russia of a virtually impossible state-sponsored doping scheme. With links to the Russian president Putin himself, the movie keeps getting more and more interesting as the relationship between Fogel and Rodchenkov develops. Aside from all the madness that unfolds, Rodchenkov’s likeable personality makes the story more relatable and humane, and gives an insight into the pressures of working in the regulatory body in a country like Russia. You will be astonished by how much material this movie has. A must-watch.

A hot summer night, around 2 a.m. You’re outside talking with a close friend about life, happiness, and the human condition. That quality and depth of conversation, which you reach at best a couple of times a year is present throughout the 106 minutes of The End of the Tour.

The film depicts the story of David Foster Wallace, played by Jason Segel, and his interactions with then Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky, played by Jesse Eisenberg.

It’s like being with two smart friends and discussing your life and theirs in the sense that it is deeply personal, very smart while being simple, and unpretentiously relevant.

Performances are nothing short of perfect as Segel completely transforms into the character, and everything is authentically orchestrated with the deft hand of The Spectacular Now director James Ponsoldt. A rare and important film.