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Jeffrey M. Anderson

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TechHive's film critic names the best new movies Netflix has to offer for streaming.

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Netflix has a massive movie catalog these days, both original productions and entertainment licensed from studios across the globe. Not all of it is great—for every The Irishman you'll encounter two or three bombs like The Kissing Booth—so finding something worthwhile to watch can be a challenge if you don't have the time or patience to sift through thousands of titles. Here we focus on the best that Netflix has to offer, so you can spend more time watching and less time searching.

Updated November 12to add five new additions to Jeff's recommendations. His previous picks follow, also in alphabetical order, starting with No One Gets Out Alive.

Passing

A truly astonishing, impressively assured writing and directing debut by actor Rebecca Hall (Godzilla vs. Kong, The Night House), Passing (2021) is based on a 1929 novel by Nella Larsen. It tells the simple story of Irene (Tessa Thompson), who is able to "pass" for white while shopping or having tea, etc., but happily returns to her Harlem home with her Black husband (André Holland) and children. One day she runs into an old friend, Clare (Ruth Negga), who is "passing" full time, with platinum-blonde hair, and even married to a handsome white racist (Alexander Skarsgård). After spending a little time with Irene, Clare begins to hunger for her real self, begins clawing at her carefully-constructed facade, making more and more frequent trips to Harlem.

The "waiting for the other shoe to drop" plot is a bit simple, but Hall handles it with incredible honesty and finesse, and it all feels just right. Best of all is the film's look: plain black-and-white cinematography compressed within an old-fashioned 1:1.33 frame, emulating old movies while also suggesting the rigidity and constriction of the movie's themes.

The Harder They Fall

An exciting mess of a movie, lit as if shining the frontier sun through a prism, Jeymes Samuel's bold, kinetic all-Black Western The Harder They Fall (2021) is a must-see for anyone who can handle gore in the name of art. The complex 139-minute tale has Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) seeking revenge against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) for killing Nat's family when he was a child (and also carving a small cross in the boy's forehead). They each form gangs—Stagecoach Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz) and Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo) join up with Nat, and Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield) are on Buck's side—and go to war, with bloody headshots aplenty.

Director Samuel emerges full force, with fluid, confident use of color, space, and rhythm, where characters sizing one another up is as important as the shooting, and it all becomes a rumination on violence itself. While the story is fictional, and practically unreal, the characters' names come straight out of the history books.

It Follows

A definite contender for the best horror movie of the last 10 years, David Robert Mitchell's It Follows (2015) contains a simple, terrifyingly primal idea. A pretty, blonde teen, Jay Height (Maika Monroe) decides to sleep with a boy she likes; when she does, he informs her that he has passed something on to her. There's a force, a thing, that walks toward you. It never speaks, never runs, and it can look like anything. You do not want it to touch you, so you must sleep with someone else and pass it on.

The "following" theme is right out of nightmares, but coupled with the complex concept of sexual awakening, it becomes something more, perhaps the subject of term papers or of a therapist's office. Mitchell has clearly been inspired by John Carpenter, using expertly staged widescreen frames and natural locations (no shaky cam), as well as a deeply unsettling score by the composer known as Disasterpiece.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

An animated feature from Sony Pictures Animation, The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) is a zany, lunatic scramble, but it's also endlessly creative, lots of fun, and kinda lovable. The eldest daughter of a Simpsons-like family of misfits, Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is getting ready to go across the country to film school and leave her annoying family behind. (She uses the vacant-eyed family dog for a series of creative videos called Dog Cop.)

On the day of her flight, her well-meaning, doofus dad Rick (Danny McBride) decides to take a family road trip and drive there instead. Unfortunately, the machine apocalypse has just begun, and flying robots (commanded by a renegade Siri-like operating system voiced by Olivia Colman), are imprisoning all humans. Through sheer luck, and maybe some stupidity, the Mitchells survive, and it's up to them to save the world. Maya Rudolph voices mom Linda Mitchell, and Mike Rianda voices the young dinosaur-loving son Aaron.

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It

netflix ritamoreno jma — Legendary actor Rita Moreno candidly talks about her life and shows off her nifty new top in the documentary *Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It*.

A truly great showbiz documentary, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (2021) succeeds on three levels. First and foremost is the Puerto Rican-born Moreno herself, here a vibrant, energetic—and frequently hilarious—87.

She allows herself to be shot candidly, and she contributes fearless, no-nonsense on-camera interviews that reveal the personal horrors she has endured and survived (including racism, harassment, rape, and a volatile, destructive relationship with Marlon Brando). Secondly, the movie is a forward-thinking document for the 21st century, telling Moreno's story in terms of representation and diversity; the clips of her early work are not viewed through a lens of nostalgia, but rather with a sense of dismay and embarrassment over their cultural cluelessness. "I did what I had to do," she says. "I needed to work." Thirdly, despite all this, the movie still celebrates the idea of showbiz itself, the excitement of it, and how it's possible to look forward to things improving.

No One Gets Out Alive

Ambar (Cristina Rodlo) is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico; she dropped out of school to take care of her sick mother, and now she's trying to make a go of it in Cleveland, working at a sweatshop, desperate to earn enough money to purchase a phony American ID. She finds a cheap place to live, in a huge house run by the grumbly, matter-of-fact Red (Marc Menchaca) and his sinister brother Becker (David Figlioli). Before long, she begins hearing strange noises, and creepy figures lurk in the dark.

Based on a novel by Adam Nevill, No One Gets Out Alive (2021) isn't exactly even-handed in its attempt to combine real-world troubles and supernatural horrors, but it manages many potent moments in both camps, and Rodlo is appealing enough to draw us in. You won't believe the truly strange thing that lies at the center of all the trouble; it has inspired both laughter and awe.

Concrete Cowboy

Based on a novel by Greg Neri, Concrete Cowboy (2021) moves with a most familiar story arc, but its setting is wonderfully unusual. Teen Cole (Caleb McLaughlin, from Stranger Things) has been in one fight too many in his Detroit high school, so his mother sends him to live with his father, in Philadelphia. The father, Harp (Idris Elba), is part of a community that raises and rides horses amongst the big city hustle-bustle. Of course, father and son are going to clash and Cole will get into more trouble, and then, eventually the son will fall in love with horses, bond with one horse in particular (a troublemaker named Boo), connect with his father, and become a better person.

But the setting—the ramshackle, slightly illegal stables—and the connection to the past (many American cowboys were Black, a fact that white history tends to overlook) make it endlessly fascinating and lovable. A scene with a man in a wheelchair riding a horse may have viewers wiping away tears. Clifford "Method Man" Smith, of the Wu-Tang Clan, plays a sympathetic cop.

Fruitvale Station

Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler made a powerful feature debut with Fruitvale Station (2013), based on the New Year's Day, 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant by police in the BART train station of the title. Coogler's carefully researched screenplay depicts the events of the day leading up to the tragedy. Michael B. Jordan gives a star-making performance as Oscar, who already has a difficult day, trying to get his grocery store job back so he doesn't have to deal drugs, trying to placate his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who has caught him cheating, and trying to buy food for his mother's birthday party. (Octavia Spencer is extraordinary as the mother.)

Coogler takes his time with the day's details, dropping in moments of beauty, reflection, and heartbreak, resulting in a surprisingly tender, thoughtful movie, rather than one based on outrage. Additionally, Coogler's choice to show the white cops (Kevin Durand and Chad Michael Murray), but not give them a backstory, is a bold one. Despite strong acclaim and many awards, the movie somehow failed to earn even a single Oscar nomination.

Magnolia

Paul Thomas Anderson's incredible, humanistic, century-ending epic Magnolia (1999) is beautifully sustained, with sharply drawn characters, and yet its worldview is cosmic, and nearly lunatic. A narrator (Ricky Jay) begins the three-hour-plus film by describing several astounding coincidences before we meet the characters.

Philip Baker Hall plays the host of a kids' TV quiz show, and William H. Macy plays a grown-up former contestant. Jason Robards plays a man dying of cancer, Julianne Moore plays his younger wife, and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the male nurse looking after him. John C. Reilly plays a cop investigating a possible murder and falling for Melora Walters. Then, there's TV motivational speaker Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), who does an uncomfortably revealing sit-down interview with a reporter. Things progress, with the characters discovering things about each other before something truly astonishing happens. Anderson was only 29 when he made it, and it shows the skill of a much more seasoned filmmaker.

The Old Ways

Journalist Cristina (Brigitte Kali Canales) finds herself locked in a room. She had traveled to Veracruz to do a story. She's of Mexican heritage but can't speak Spanish. She tries to understand what's going on as an old woman (Julia Vera), face covered in paint, and an unsmiling man (Sal Lopez) with floppy gray hair, occasionally look in on her. Suddenly Cristina is shocked to see her cousin Miranda (Andrea Cortés), who explains in English that she, Cristina, has a demon inside of her, and they hope to exorcise it.

That's the start of The Old Ways, an outstanding horror film written by Marcos Gabriel and directed by Christopher Alender, that crosses cultural commentary with powerful, creepy tension. The film equates the confined space of the room with Cristina's limited knowledge of her culture, and cleverly builds the mystery of just what the demon inside her could be (if there is one). The brilliant ending only increases the mystery and expands the discourse.