After the unstoppable run of horror hits Obsession and Backrooms, with both breaking multiple box office records, this past weekend saw the inevitable rise of a long-awaited return to sci-fi for Steven Spielberg. Disclosure Day, which boasts a superb central performance from Emily Blunt that some are calling Oscar-worthy, stormed to the top of the box office charts last weekend with a global haul of $93 million. In the shadow of Disclosure Day‘s impressive start to box office life, it’s now time to take a look at what is worth watching at home. So, with that in mind, here’s a list of three movies you should stream on Netflix.
For more recommendations, check out our list of the best shows and movies on Netflix.
Disclaimer: These titles are available on US Netflix.
While one of the most exciting sci-fi movies of 2026 debuted in theaters this past weekend, one of the most underrated gems of 2025 made its Netflix debut. Song Sung Blue, written and directed by Craig Brewer and based on the documentary by Greg Kohs, follows Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman as a Milwaukee couple and a Neil Diamond tribute act, known as Lighting and Thunder.
Exploring the many euphoric highs and terrifying lows in their whirlwind life together, Song Sung Blue boasts two of the most electric performances of last year from Jackman and Hudson. In fact, for her trouble, Hudson was awarded a surprise but much-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Of all the new films to arrive on Netflix this month, Song Sung Blue is one of the best.
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Mumblecore is a niche sub-genre of film that has a strong fanbase. Of the many great mumblecore movies, 2013’s Drinking Buddies is one of the most accessible for those dipping their toe into a new genre. Directed by the founding father of mumblecore, Joe Swanberg, this heavily improvised romantic comedy follows two brewery colleagues who, after flirting at work, spend a weekend together with their significant others.
This gem of a rom-com, dubbed “charming” and “effective” by critics, boasts an impressive line-up for such a small budget, including Jake Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston. Without saying much, the film does lots of talking, hiding its intelligence behind some deftly constructed improvisation. Bittersweet and immersive, Drinking Buddies is well worth your time.
Before she leads the third season of HBO’s hit video game adaptation The Last of Us, Kaitlyn Dever‘s underrated 2022 rom-com is worth a watch on Netflix. The film stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts as exes, who board a flight to Bali on a mission to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they made 25 years prior.
Effortlessly charming and packed with humor, Ticket to Paradise is a visually stunning piece of escapism during your tough working week. Directed by Ol Parker, the film proved surprisingly successful at the 2022 box office at a time when rom-coms struggled to entice an audience. This was no doubt thanks to the star power of the central pair, but it was also a great chance to catch a glimpse of one of Hollywood’s best rising stars in Dever.
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