The Paralysis Of Choice
How many times has the following situation happened to you: It’s time for a night in, in front of the TV. You open Netflix, scroll over to “movies,” and are confronted with hundreds of movies—but none of the new, big name blockbusters appeal to you. You scroll a bit to try and find something…anything…but nothing is intriguing enough to click on.
Well, we’ve all been there—so we put together this list of hidden gems on Netflix to prevent that awful moment of indecision the next time it’s movie night.
Enemy
You really can’t go wrong with a Jake Gyllenhaal drama—and it’s directed by Denis Villeneuve of Dune fame to boot. This 2013 thriller has high ratings from both critics and audiences, yet seems to have been criminally under-watched.
Featuring stellar performances from Gyllenhaal as a man who discovers he has an exact lookalike, the movie's twists and turns will keep you glued to your couch.
The One I Love
The One I Love came out in 2014—when Mark Duplass was at the height of his indie darling-dom, and Elisabeth Moss was captivating audiences in the final seasons of Mad Men.
The twisty, mind-boggling plot, about a couple who tries to fix their marriage with a weekend getaway and quickly discovers that something is off about the house they’re staying in, is full of surprises.
About Time
This one takes a twisty plot and ups the romance quotient, as the ever-charming Domnhall Gleason and Rachel McAdams navigate a romance, while one of them grapples with an unexpected talent for time travel.
The Richard Curtis (Love Actually)-directed love story is at times heartwarming and others heartbreaking, and guaranteed to elicit a few tears. Plus, it features a wonderful performance by Bill Nighy.
The Invitation
This suspenseful pick centers around a tense dinner party, where a man receives an invite to his former home from his ex-wife and her new husband. Michiel Huisman, who plays the new husband, gives a beautifully creepy performance, and the film features stunning camera work by cinematographer Bobby Shore.
The End Of The Tour
The End Of The Tour didn’t really get a lot of love when it came out due to its somewhat niche subject. It’s based on writer David Lipsky’s memoir of a five-day road trip he took with author David Foster Wallace. Foster Wallace’s megafans took umbrage with the subject, casting, and basically everything else about the film.
However, if you approach it like a normal person, it’s intensely enjoyable to watch the fictionalized versions of Lipsky and Foster Wallace discuss and debate.
The performances, especially Jason Segel’s turn as Foster Wallace, are worthy of more praise than they received at the time of the film’s release.
Kilburn Media, The End Of The Tour
Green Room
Jeremy Saulnier is a beloved if under-watched director of indie horror fare. His newest, Rebel Ridge, comes out on Netflix in September. If the trailer piques your interest, his earlier films are worth a look, particularly Green Room.
The premise—about a punk band who have to escape a group of skinheads after they witness them committing a crime at a remote venue—is about as taut as it comes, and the movie is full of twisted surprises. It also features one of Anton Yelchin’s best performances.
Broad Green Pictures, Green Room
Like Crazy
Speaking of Anton Yelchin, the gone-too-soon star shines in this tearjerker of a romantic drama with Felicity Jones, about a couple trying to keep their relationship going in spite of the barriers created by distance and immigration status.
Director Drake Doremus wrote the screenplay with Ben York Jones, basing much of the premise on their own experiences in long-distance relationships.
1922
Among the many adaptations of Stephen King books, there are the hits (The Shining), and the very many misses (Thinner, various Children of the Corn). For that reason alone, 1922 is a pleasant surprise. It tells the tale of a man who plans to off his wife for money, and attempts to enlist the help of his teenaged son.
The Rugrats Movie
Many of us grew up with Rugrats, but the 1998 film was largely overshadowed in many of our memories by flashier Disney fare.
However, movies based on TV shows go, this is a solid and entertaining entry in the micro-genre.
Obvious Child
Obvious Child came into the world as a 2009 short film starring Jenny Slate, who stayed on for the feature film version in 2014. The romantic comedy-drama tells the story of a comedian who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand, and the difficult decisions that ensue.
Rooks Nest Entertainment, Obvious Child
The Autopsy Of Jane Doe
Emile Hirsh and Brian Cox playing father-and-son coroners? Say no more. It seems implausible in this post-Succession world to imagine a horror starring Logan Roy, but it exists. In this film, the father-son duo are tasked with finding the cause of death of a Jane Doe, only for supernatural hijinx, to put it lightly, to ensue.
Can’t Hardly Wait
Of the wave of teen comedies of the late 1990s, some are well-remembered and many were rightfully forgotten—but people don’t talk enough about Can’t Hardly Wait.
While it features some of the tired clichés and stereotypes (nerd loves popular girl who loves jock) of teen romances that came before it, the charming performances by the ensemble cast make up for its faults.
Frida
Oscar-bait biopics can feel formulaic and dime-a-dozen—but the beautiful visual storytelling of Frida, starring Salma Hayek and based on the novel of the same name, a dramatized account of artist Frida Kahlo’s life, subverts those trappings.
Somehow, the team behind Frida managed to capture elements of Kahlo’s life as colorfully, beautifully, and viscerally as the artist did in her own artworks.
Handprint Entertainment, Frida
The Ravenous
Few people know, but Quebec has its own filmmaking and star system which acts like a microcosm of Hollywood—and it puts out some seriously good films each year. One of the best is The Ravenous, starring one of Canada’s most beloved and talented stars, Marc-Andre Grondin.
Put it side by side with any other entry in the zombie apocalypse genre and it absolutely holds its own.
La Maison de Prod, The Ravenous
Hush
Before Mike Flanagan was THE Netflix horror darling with shows like The Haunting of Hill House and The Midnight Club, he was cranking out well-crafted and underrated horror flicks like Oculus and Hush, a slasher starring Katie Siegel as a writer who is terrorized by a masked killer at her house in the woods.
Due to the Siegel character being deaf-mute, the film is largely silent, which only adds to the tension.
