Loved ‘The Piano Lesson’ and ‘Emilia Pérez’? Check out more of Netflix’s best original movies
From a multi-Oscar-winning drama to an acclaimed musical adaptation, we’ve picked the top Netflix original movies available on the platform.
While Netflix has gained its popularity from its hit series like “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game,” and many others, the streamer has since its first original movie in 2015 been changing the game on how movies can be made and seen, producing high-quality projects and giving awards nominators and voters much to consider.
From Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour gangster epic “The Irishman” to the just-released adaptation of the recent Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, and more, there are plenty of Netflix Originals for your next movie night. Ready to watch? Continue below for the best of what the streamer has to offer!
Top 7 Original Movies Streaming Right Now on Netflix:
No. 7: Dolemite Is My Name (2019) | Comedy
Dolemite was his name and, well, you know the rest. Creator/portrayer Rudy Ray Moore, the stand-up who became synonymous with the kung fu-fighting pimp, gets the biopic treatment, focusing on the stranger-than-fiction story of how the legendary blaxploitation film “Dolemite” came to be. Who better to play the brash, vulgar, king of any room than Eddie Murphy, driving the vehicle at 160 miles per hour. Alongside Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Tituss Burgess, Wesley Snipes, and more, it’s literally the stuff of legend(s).
Dolemite Is My Name
The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.
No. 6: Tick, Tick…Boom! (2021) | Musical
It was inevitable that Professional Theatre Kid and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s feature directorial debut would be a musical adaptation… maybe a little bit of a surprise it was “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson’s lesser-known semi-autobiographical “Tick, Tick…Boom!,” especially when it tends to be the “Wicked”s (or, on the flip side, the “Cats”s) of the world that get the production money and star power. But of course, Miranda was going to be drawn to a story about the creative process, on writing your way in and breaking through, a feat Larson accomplished but never got to enjoy. And led by Andrew Garfield and featuring a glut of theatre icons in cameo roles—Joel Grey, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim via voicemail, etc.—“Tick, Tick…Boom!” and Miranda never forget where they come from.
tick, tick… BOOM!
On the brink of turning 30, a promising theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressure to create something great before time runs out.
No. 5: Private Life (2018) | Comedy-Drama
Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn lead the cast of the aptly named “Private Life” as Richard and Rachel, a pair of middle-aged married creatives, who are desperate to have a child by any means possible, be it artificial insemination, IVF, or adoption, and who find out how unceremonious and quietly devastating a process it can be. Tamara Jenkins, who received an Oscar nomination for “The Savages,” which focuses on two siblings tasked with taking care of their estranged elderly father with dementia, is one of the best at peeking in at life— specifically, at what might look mundane for those on the outside when it is earth-shattering for those in the middle.
Private Life
Richard and Rachel, a couple in the throes of infertility, try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper and deeper into the insular world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption.
No. 4: Mudbound (2017) | Historical Drama
Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” is the first Netflix movie I remember prior to “Roma”’s 2018 reign that had genuine Best Picture Oscar buzz and therefore the first Netflix movie I watched where I knew the streamer was going to change the awards landscape going forward. (The film received four Oscar nominations that season, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Rees and Virgil Williams, making Rees the first African-American woman to ever be nominated, and Best Cinematography for Rachel Morrison, the first woman to be nominated.) A slow burn into a devastating inferno, the historical drama follows two families with World War II veterans—one white and one Black—who are pitted against each other but who are bound together by shared farmland in the Mississippi Delta, addressing PTSD, social hierarchy, and racism in rural America that echoes many wars later.
Mudbound
In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.
No. 3: I Lost My Body (2019) | Adult Animation, Fantasy Drama
It was an uphill battle at best to try and best “Toy Story 4” for Best Animated Feature during the 92nd Oscars. Fair play to Pixar’s franchise, but “I Lost My Body” was inarguably not only one of the best animated (and best-animated) movies that year but easily one of Netflix’s best. Told in flashbacks, the French adult animated fantasy follows a severed hand that escapes from a lab fridge and searches for the rest of his body. Surreal, macabre, and original—- just don’t expect one sequel, let alone three.
I Lost My Body
A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.
No. 2: Beasts of No Nation (2015) | War Drama
“Beasts of No Nation” was Netflix’s first film to be released directly on the streamer, and it set the bar high. Cary Joji Fukunaga helms the war drama, adapted from Uzodinma Iweala’s novel of the same name, which follows a fierce warlord in Africa (Idris Elba) who trains a young orphan (Abraham Attah) to join his group of guerrilla soldiers. Where too many war dramas soften the horrors, Fukunaga exhausts his audience with realism, and Elba’s terrifying portrayal is all sharp edges.
Beasts of No Nation
Based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of an unnamed, fictional West African country. Follows Agu’s journey as he’s forced to join a group of soldiers. While he fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination.
No. 1: Roma (2018) | Drama
Busy but underappreciated for decades before “Gravity” finally rocketed him into Oscar recognition, Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 black-and-white drama “Roma” erases any questions about the filmmaker’s place in history. Following the life of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in Mixteco housekeeper of an upper-middle-class Mexican family, the semi-autobiographical epic is personal, and Cuarón takes its personal, directing, writing, shooting, and co-editing the film. The payoff was undeniable: it was the first movie distributed primarily by a streamer to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, one of its 10 nominations and three wins (Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Foreign Language Film, the first Mexican film to win the statuette). Few things are more satisfying than watching a true expert get their flowers, and the intimate, sprawling masterpiece is just what Cuarón does best.
Roma
In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.