38 best dramas on Netflix in 2023

Drama can hit hard and hurt so good.

You gotta love that gut punch of tragedy backed by a swelling orchestral score and how it can be a ruthless rush. Sometimes a tearjerker — one that invites us to cry along with the characters — feels better than therapy. Other times, watching a protagonist persevere through hellish hardship can give us the hope we need to persevere ourselves.

Whatever kind of drama you’re craving, Netflix’s library of film and TV awaits you. Whether you want poignant period pieces, provocative performances, memorable melodramas, unique crime narratives, acclaimed coming-of-age tales, or a curious case of a dismembered hand on a mission, we’ve got you covered.

Here are the best dramas on Netflix streaming now.

1. Beyond the Lights

With Beyond the Lights, filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King, Love & Basketball) takes the classic tale of A Star Is Born and gives it a modern update with a focus on mental health. Noni Jean (a radiant and fantastic Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the latest pop sensation — think an emerging Rhianna — with a stage mom (played perfectly by Minnie Driver) who controls every facet of her life. Hours after winning her first Billboard Music Award, Noni gets drunk for the first time, locks herself inside her hotel, and attempts to jump off the balcony. It’s a cop named Kaz (Nate Parker) who ends up talking her down, and yes, in a classic over-the-top Star Is Born romance, the two immediately fall for each other.

What’s so special about Beyond the Lights is that it’s not just a love story, but one that devotes more time to getting inside the mind of a young woman grappling with depression and suicidal ideation beneath the persona she shows her fans. It’s a film that manages to believably craft a big-scale story about fame and the musical industry while never losing sight of its intimate character study. — Oliver Whitney, Contributing Writer

How to watch: Beyond the Lights is streaming on Netflix.

2. Tigertail

Tigertail, the moving and underseen drama from Master of None co-creator Alan Yang, tells a semi-autobiographical story based on Yang’s own father, a Taiwanese man with a dream of going to America. The film hops back and forth in time, from the older hardened Pin-Jui (an excellent Tzi Ma) living in present-day Bronx to memories of his younger, hopeful self in Taiwan (Lee Hong-chi). We see two vastly different men, one today who struggles to connect with his American-born daughter (Christine Ko), and his younger, fuller self who chose to marry a woman he didn’t love for an opportunity abroad. With a visual style reminiscent of master filmmakers Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tigertail is an ode to Chinese cinema that poignantly explores an attempt to move forward by reckoning with the pain and sacrifices of the past. — O.W.

How to watch: Tigertail is streaming on Netflix.

3. Arrival

In Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film, a series of mysterious spaceships have just landed in 12 different locations across the globe. Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a linguistics professor who’s recruited by the U.S. military to help Jeremy Renner’s physicist decipher the coded language the aliens are using to communicate, and to try to stop the humans from igniting a war. But as Louise connects with the creatures and learns their language, she’s flooded with visions of her young daughter. 

With Arrival, Villeneuve uses a nonlinear narrative and sci-fi premise to tell a deeply human story about language, the ways we communicate, and how we perceive time. Sci-fi films may not always bring tears, but it’s near impossible to get through Arrival with dry eyes. — O.W.

How to watch: Arrival is streaming on Netflix.

4. Miss Juneteenth

When Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie) was in high school, she was crowned Miss Juneteenth at a prestigious pageant in her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. Now a single mother pulling double shifts at the local barbecue joint with a side gig as a funeral home makeup artist, Turquoise is saving every dollar to enter her young daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze) into this year’s pageant, which grants the winner a full scholarship to an historically Black college. The only thing is, Kai isn’t really into it. 

Miss Juneteenth, written and directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples, brings a rich tenderness and a historical specificity to a familiar story of mother-daughter struggle. It never turns to maudlin storytelling or melodrama, as so many films of the same variety tend to. Instead, Peoples’s film features characters who feel painfully real to life, especially Beharie’s single mother stuck between the fantasy of the future she never had and the one she dreams of for her daughter. — O.W.

How to watch: Miss Juneteenth is streaming on Netflix.

5. Da 5 Bloods

Only a few years ago we got a phenomenal new Spike Lee joint. It seems to have been quickly forgotten, but Lee’s 2020 film Da 5 Bloods remains a searing and potent investigation into a piece of largely untold history —  the experiences of Black Vietnam War veterans.

In Da 5 Bloods, a group of aging Army vets reunites in present-day Vietnam to recover the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman), along with a treasure trove of gold they hid decades before. Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) set off on a journey into the Vietnamese jungle while confronting the horrific traumas of their past that overflow into the present. The entire cast delivers phenomenal performances, but it’s Lindo’s unflinching work as Paul (including a searing straight-to-camera monologue) that will go down as an all-timer Spike Lee cinematic moment. — O.W.

How to watch: Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix.

6. High Flying Bird

Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird is not your typical sports drama. The basketball film, which was shot entirely on iPhones, is less about the drama on the court and more about the systemic racism and exploitation of labor embedded within it. 

Set over the course of 72 hours, the film follows André Holland’s clever sports agent Ray as he maneuvers to protect his rookie client (Melvin Gregg) while trying to end a 25-week-long NBA lockout. It’s a twisty and complex plot, penned by Moonlight screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney, that takes a thrilling and incisive look at the ways Black players have no direct ownership over the sport their largely white team owners profit off of. A radical film about labor and racial capitalism, High Flying Bird remains relevant. — O.W.

How to watch: High Flying Bird is streaming on Netflix.

7. The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Anyone who’s seen a Yorgos Lanthimos film (Poor Things, The Favourite, The Lobster, Dogtooth), knows that they’re signing up for a wildly unique but incredibly disturbing moviegoing experience. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is no exception, and may be the filmmaker’s most cold and brutal film yet. 

A modern take on the Greek myth of Iphigenia, the drama, which blends equal parts dark humor with straight-up horror, follows Colin Farrell as heart surgeon Steven Murphy. He strikes up a friendship with a mysterious young man named Martin (an unsettling Barry Keoghan) who slowly ingratiates himself into the wealthy surgeon’s family (including a biting Nicole Kidman as Murphy’s wife). The rest of the twist-laden tale is best left unspoiled, but if you can handle some squirmy violence and ice-cold tension, you’ll get a boatload of unnerving performances and a haunting spaghetti-eating scene that won’t soon leave your memory. — O.W.

How to watch: The Killing of a Sacred Deer is streaming on Netflix.

8. Tully

In Tully, Charlize Theron’s Marlo is on the verge of a total breakdown. As a mother of three who’s just given birth to an unplanned third child, she’s barely holding it together. When her brother offers to pay for a night nanny, she finally decides to give one a call. Suddenly, the young, spirited Tully (a beaming Mackenzie Davis) arrives on Marlo’s doorstep. “I’m here to take care of you,” she tells Marlo, and she does. Tully doesn’t just help with the kids; her glowing presence brings the wearied and broken-down Marlo back to life. The latest film from the duo behind Juno and Young Adult — director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody — isn’t all that it appears to be, and its twist elevates it beyond a straightforward dramedy. — O.W.

How to watch: Tully is streaming on Netflix.

9. Blue Jay

Blue Jay is the kind of film that feels like a long, aching hug shared with an old lover. It’s a film full of nostalgia and longing, of old-but-not-forgotten heartbreak, of joyous laughs and warm smiles, and of painful reminders of what was. 

When Jim (Mark Duplass) returns to his California hometown, he bumps into his old high school girlfriend Amanda (Sarah Paulson) by chance at the grocery store. The two go for coffee and reminisce about old times, then grab some beers and dive deeper into the past. They excavate old wounds, confess difficult truths about themselves today, and fight over the decision that broke them up years ago. There’s a rawness to the film, largely thanks to mostly improvised dialogue from Duplass and Paulson, that makes Blue Jay feel cathartic for anyone who’s wondered what it could be like to run into an old ex where so much was left unsaid. — O.W.

How to watch: Blue Jay is streaming on Netflix.

10. Passing

Many actors who transition to directing tend to lean too heavily on style over story, but with Passing, which finds actress Rebecca Hall behind the screen for the first time, we get a delicate yet simmering portrait of race, sexuality, and compromise that emphasizes the power of performances. 

Set in 1920s Harlem and based on Nella Larsen’s novella of the same name, Passing finds childhood friends Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga) reuniting as adults by chance one day. Though both are light-skinned Black women, they live drastically different lives: Irene is married to a Black doctor (André Holland) and lives in Harlem, while Clare lives her entire life passing as white, even to her unknowing and very racist white husband (Alexander Skarsgård). As the two start spending more time together, tensions mount — including an undoubtedly queer longing between the women — and Clare begins living a double life. Hall’s adaptation, shot minimally in black and white, is an intimate and aching character study where Thompson and Negga each do some of their finest work yet. — O.W.

How to watch: Passing is streaming on Netflix.

11. RRR

It’s an action movie! It’s a musical! It’s a romance! It’s a bromance! And it’s a drama! RRR, the Oscar-winning Indian Tollywood film (also known as Indian cinema in the Telugu language), has everything you could want in a blockbuster. S. S. Rajamouli’s three-hour epic is historical revisionism taken to its most thrilling, spectacle-filled extreme. The film imagines a fictional tale in which two real-life Telugu revolutionaries — Alluri Sitarama Raju, also known as Rama Raju (Ram Charan), and Komaram Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) — team up to take down the British empire. It’s a story full of twists and romance, some of the most jaw-dropping action sequences you could dream of, including tiger fights and a now-famous musical sequence that’s the epitome of joy on screen, all grounded in a vision of anti-colonial revolutionary drama. The very best of cinema, baby! — O.W.

How to watch: RRR is streaming on Netflix.

12. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Viola Davis gives nothing less than what you’d expect from the EGOT-winner in her performance as the legendary titular blues singer, dubbed the “Mother of the Blues.” The George C. Wolfe adaptation of August Wilson’s stage play takes place over the course of one day during a tumultuous recording session with Ma and her band in 1927 Chicago. While on the surface the main drama is Ma’s late arrival to the session and a recording snafu, at its core Ma Rainey is a film about the raging pain, generations of trauma, and the exploitation inherent to white supremacy in America. While everyone gives standout performances, including Davis, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, and Glynn Turman, it’s Chadwick Boseman’s work as the fiery trumpeter Levee that aches the most. Perhaps that’s because Ma Rainey was the late actor’s final film, but it’s also a testament to his incredible ability to hold you right there with him, feeling every thread of emotion across his face. — O.W.

How to watch: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is streaming on Netflix.

13. The Lost Daughter

In The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal steps behind the camera to write and direct a complex look at motherhood — including the expectations, assumptions, and stereotypes placed upon women who have children — with a level of nuance and uncomfortable honesty rarely explored on screen. 

In a fusion of grounded drama and psychological tension, we follow Olivia Colman’s Leda, a woman on vacation in Greece. When she meets a young, struggling mother (​​Dakota Johnson), Lena becomes haunted by flashbacks of her own experiences as an ambivalent young mother (played by Jessie Buckley). It’s a taboo subject, that of the neglectful mother, but Gyllenhaal’s film, based on the novel by Elena Ferrante, invites us to sit with and witness the aching torment at the heart of Leda’s story. — O.W.

How to watch: The Lost Daughter is streaming on Netflix.

14. Cities of Last Things

Fusing science fiction with neo-noir and family drama, Cities of Last Things is a Taiwanese film that explores three separate nights in one man’s life, backwards. We first meet Zhang Dong Ling (Jack Kao) in his sixties, living in a futuristic dystopia where he refuses to divorce his wife over an unknown incident. As we jump back in time, first to a younger Zhang (Lee Hong-chi) working as a police officer who meets a shoplifter, then to a teenage Zhang (Hsieh Chang-Ying) who’s been held by police alongside a mysterious woman (Ning Ding), we begin to piece together the shards of a traumatic past, and the women he’s encountered who’ve shaped the man Zhang’s become. Cities of Last Things is a compelling experiment in genre-blending that has the thrill and grittiness of Minority Report crossed with the emotion and lush visual style of a Wong Kar-wai film. — O.W.

How to watch: Cities of Last Things is streaming on Netflix.

15. Carol

Lesbian period dramas have become a stereotype at this point, but no matter how many studios continue to churn out, there will always be room for Todd Haynes’s masterful Carol. 

In the 1950s New York City-set drama, Cate Blanchett is as magnetic and piercing as ever as Carol Aird, a mother in a loveless marriage whose mere gaze casts a spell on you. And a powerful spell it certainly does cast on the young and timid Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), a budding photographer with the most basic Nice Guy for a boyfriend you could imagine (a perfectly annoying Jake Lacy). After Carol leaves her gloves at Therese’s department store job, the two go out for a decadent lunch, then later a trip to Carol’s upstate home. A glorious and dramatic love affair ensues. It’s full of quiet moments of intimacy, swooning romance, and heartbreaking drama, all captured with stunning and vibrant Super 16 film cinematography that evokes the style of female photojournalists of the ‘40s and ‘50s. — O.W.

How to watch: Carol is streaming on Netflix.

16. Mars One

Mars One follows the daily lives of a working-class Black Brazilian family after the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. But you don’t need to be familiar with the politics of the country to understand and empathize with filmmaker Gabriel Martins’s emotional family drama.

Deivinho (Cícero Lucas), the youngest of the family, plays soccer to appease his father (Carlos Francisco) but secretly hopes to become an astrophysicist. His older sister Eunice (Camilla Damião) has started dating a woman but hesitates to come out to her parents. Their mother Tercia (Rejane Faria) can’t get enough work as a housekeeper, but lately her worst ailment is a suffocating anxiety that’s convinced her she’s bringing bad luck to those around her. Full of heartfelt performances, Mars One uses the tense political atmosphere of the 2018 election to tell a relatable story about class, everyday hardships, and the dream to escape this world for the promise of another. — O.W.

How to watch: Mars One is streaming on Netflix.

17. Paddleton

For a heavy drama that will make you weep, look no further than Paddleton. It’s a film about cancer, but worry not, this isn’t the type of mawkish weepy that exploits a cancer diagnosis for melodrama. The heart of Alex Lehmann’s film lies in its central relationship: a sweet and wholesome friendship between two lonely straight dudes who love watching old school martial arts movies and solving puzzles.

After being diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, Michael (Mark Duplass) has chosen to end his life in an assisted suicide. In his remaining time, he’s asked his upstairs neighbor and best friend Andy (Ray Romano) to just hang out with him. The two watch movies, eat pizza, play a game they invented, and go on a little road trip. Paddleton is a film about those small moments of human connection, of honest and gutting conversations held with your closest people, and about the small slices of life that carry the most meaning. It’s also one of the most moving platonic love stories about two men, and that’s something we could always use more of. — O.W.

How to watch: Paddleton is streaming on Netflix.

18. Whiplash

Writer/director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash is a movie about loving jazz music so much that you’ll let J.K. Simmons throw a chair at you if he thinks it’ll make you one of the greats. All Andrew (Miles Teller) wants in this Oscar-winning drama is a chance to be revered as one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time, and he’s willing to give up everything for it. Pushed by his own perfectionism and the violent manipulation of his brutal music instructor (Simmons), Andrew focuses on nothing but his music until his relationship crumbles and his hands bleed.

The uniqueness of Whiplash is Chazelle’s musical approach to filmmaking, which relies on the throbbing beat of a drum and anxious rattle of a snare to create a drama buzzing with tension on all fronts. Watching Whiplash feels like being thrown into an anxiety attack, and it’s one you can’t quite look away from. — O.W.

How to watch: Whiplash is streaming on Netflix.

19. Pieces of a Woman

Pieces of a Woman is the type of film you put on if you’re itching for a harrowing drama that will utterly wreck you. Actually, it’s more of a horror story than a drama. Vanessa Kirby, in her most arresting work to date, plays Martha, a corporate exec in Boston who’s pregnant with her first child. The centerpiece of the film takes place in an unbroken 24-minute shot of Martha’s home birth, alongside her husband (Shia LaBeouf) and midwife (Molly Parker). Without giving away too much, things go unspeakably, horribly wrong. 

Screenwriter Kata Wéber based the film on her own experience with a similar loss and grief, which she went through with her partner (and the film’s director) Kornél Mundruczó. Pieces of a Woman is a film that’s almost too painful to watch at times, and one that’s had plenty of controversy — many critics have taken issue with the birth scene and called out the emotional exploitation of the film itself, not to mention the real-life abuse allegations against LaBeouf. That said, it’s worth watching for Kirby’s and Ellen Burstyn’s performances alone. — O.W.

How to watch: Pieces of a Woman is streaming on Netflix.

20. Beasts of No Nation

The very first Netflix Original film remains one of the studio’s best. A nightmarish war drama about a young West African child soldier, Beasts of No Nation is told through the eyes of the 12-year-old Agu (played by Abraham Attah in his first feature role). Set during a civil war in an unnamed West African country, we follow the young boy as he’s recruited by a brutal and sadistic rebel commander (a terrifying Idris Elba). 

Though it’s an unquestionably difficult film to watch for the extreme violence alone, it’s the visual language of Beasts of No Nation that pushes it out of the realm of mere war porn. The film’s vibrant color palette, use of tracking shots, and one unforgettable sequence of infrared-like photography that turns the greens of the jungle into a hallucinatory pink are what lend the war drama a poetic and surreal quality. — O.W.

How to watch: Beasts of No Nation is streaming on Netflix.

21. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

If anyone’s going to make the stewing rage and explosive conflicts of familial dramas as entertaining and funny as they are sobering, it’s Noah Baumbach. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) finds the intersection of dark humor and personal tragedy in a story about sibling rivalries and old family wounds that have yet to heal. 

There’s the eldest Danny (Adam Sandler, great as usual in his dramatic turn), the successful financier Matthew (Ben Stiller), the lone daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel as the film’s sneaky MVP), their famed sculptor father Harold (Dustin Hoffman), and his latest wife Maureen (a kooky Emma Thompson). What follows is dysfunctional family drama at its finest, with plenty of laughter and tears along the way. — O.W.

How to watch: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is streaming on Netflix.

22. The Hand of God

The Hand of God is a film that is at once incredibly specific to a certain place and time, and yet accessible and moving even if you’re not from there yourself. Set in 1980s Naples, the latest from Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, The Young Pope) follows the coming-of-age tale of Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), a young man who’s just experienced a devastating family tragedy. He reckons with grief and heartbreak, has his first sexual experience, is enraptured by a love for a legendary soccer star, and muses over a lingering desire to make movies one day.

The film is based on Sorrentino’s own life growing up in Naples and carries with it details and personal touches that feel like the director is letting us peek into a world not our own. The Hand of God is the sort of poetic, deeply human storytelling that you can find your own story within, and if that doesn’t speak to the power of cinema, I’m not sure what does. — O.W.

How to watch: The Hand of God is streaming on Netflix.

23. Loving

Loving details the story of the couple at the center of Loving v. Virginia, the historic 1967 case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage. But the intimate drama from filmmaker Jeff Nichols achieves something that few biographical films in Hollywood have — it deftly tells a story about a groundbreaking piece of history not through melodrama, caricature, or an overbearing flurry of facts, but by letting its lead actors tell it through their performances. It’s an actor’s film, and not the showy, big monologuing type, but a patient film with performances that simmer with a quiet yet blistering power.

Ruth Negga portrays Mildred Jeter, who falls in love with and marries Joel Loving (Joel Edgerton), a white construction worker in Virginia. We follow the two through the everyday anti-Black racism and police violence of their daily lives, leading up to the famed Supreme Court case. While both give fantastic performances of the reserved couple at the film’s center, it’s Negga’s work especially that makes Loving a film to seek out. — O.W.

How to watch: Loving is streaming on Netflix.

24. Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can is a movie that is endlessly rewatchable, the type of don’t-change-the-channel movie whenever it’s playing on cable TV (for those of you old enough to remember those days). It’s got the perfect Steven Spielberg blend of emotional drama, suspense, comedy, and style, with a killer cast. 

Leonardo DiCaprio is as sly and suave as ever portraying the famed teenage con man Frank Abagnale Jr., who — as the myth goes, according to Abagnale Jr. himself — managed to impersonate a PanAm pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, a Secret Service agent, and a teacher all before the age of 22. Tom Hanks plays Carl Hanratty, an FBI agent desperate to catch Frank; Christopher Walken is Frank’s father; and Amy Adams is a braces-wearing hospital worker enamored by the con artist. A thrilling caper dramedy with heart, Catch Me If You Can has it all. — O.W.

How to watch: Catch Me If You Can is streaming on Netflix.

25. Mank

A movie about movies, David Fincher’s Mank takes a look at the man behind Citizen Kane, the film long regarded by many as the greatest of all time. Gary Oldman plays Herman J. Mankiewicz, an alcoholic writer rushing to finish the script for Orson Welles’s 1941 film about a newspaper tyrant, based on real-life tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Just like Citizen Kane, Fincher’s film jumps through time with a nonlinear narrative that recounts Herman’s time in Hearst’s inner social circle and his struggles writing the script. We go from rowdy parties at the famed Hearst Castle full of 1930s Hollywood elites to glamorous studio lots and snapshots of Hollywood corruption during the Great Depression. Mank is especially a treat for fans of old Hollywood, but you don’t need that knowledge to appreciate Fincher’s black-and-white film, which remains one of the most visually stunning movies in recent years. — O.W.

How to watch: Mank is streaming on Netflix.

26. The Power of the Dog

Among our favorites of 2021 is Jane Campion’s slow-burn thriller with the gritty grandeur of a Western. Academy Award-nominee Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Phil Burbank, a rugged rancher, who can rope, ride, and run down anyone with his cruel wit. Once his bullied brother (Academy Award-nominee Jesse Plemons) marries, Phil’s favorite target becomes his gentle (and genteel) sister-in-law (Academy Award-nominee Kirsten Dunst), who could well crumble under his cold stare. Toxic tensions burn slow and mean as Campion smoothly unfurls a story unpredictable, unnerving, and outstanding. This one grows more compelling with each rewatch. Give yourself over the sickening swoon, and you’ll understand what had critics raving and why Campion (once again) took home the Academy Award for Best Director.* — Kristy Puchko, Film Editor

How to watch: The Power of the Dog is streaming on Netflix.

27. Phantom Thread 

If Daniel Day-Lewis is really and truly permanently retired from acting (and let’s hope he’s not, for acting’s sake), then he went out on a darn high note with this profoundly romantic anti-romance from director Paul Thomas Anderson. DDL’s persnickety couture bastard Reynolds Woodcock (a name the director and his star came up with as a gag, which stuck) and his right-hand sis Cyril (Lesley Manville, who will go right through you) have the disgustingly wealthy eating out of their satin-lined gloves when the film begins.

SEE ALSO: Why has ‘Phantom Thread’ given us so many great memes?

So, how does a stumbling bumbling nobody waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps in a blow-the-doors-off performance) flip their entire pristine world upside down with nothing but a well-calculated blush and a basket of mushrooms? That’s the stuff of romance, in all of its violent, push-pull swirl. And Phantom Thread captures the dunderheaded swoon of that first blush, plus all of the fallout that necessarily falls after in order to keep that flame forever burning.* — Jason Adams, Freelance Contributor

How to watch: Phantom Thread is streaming on Netflix.

28. Mudbound

Based on the Hillary Jordan novel, this period drama charts the relationships and racial conflict between two farming families in the 1939 Mississippi Delta. Taking audiences from the brutal battlefields of World War II to the mud-sucking fields of a community on the brink of eruption, co-writer/director Dee Rees’s explosive drama earned plenty of praise from critics, as well as four Oscar nominations. Among these accolades were Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Mary J. Blige, who was also nominated for Best Original Song (“Mighty River”). Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Rob Morgan, Jason Mitchell, and Garrett Hedlund were also a part of an ensemble, heralded for their powerful performances. — K.P.

How to watch: Mudbound is now streaming on Netflix.

29. Bad Genius

In high school, challenges like envy and SAT exams can feel like life-or-death drama. Director Nattawut Poonpiriya pays tribute to that intensity with an unusual — and uniquely thrilling — crime narrative. Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying stars as a brilliant but broke student who uses her smarts not only to get good grades, but also to create a cheating scheme to help out her classmates, who are rich in cash but poor in brains. A crackerjack ensemble cast brings plenty of verve to a familiar premise, which is punctuated with suspenseful scenes of narrows escapes and clever cons. Yet amid the thrall of it all, Poonpiriya offers a thought-provoking theme about class conflict and how being a genius isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. — K.P.

How to watch: Bad Genius is now streaming on Netflix.

30. The Woman King

Inspired by the Agojie of West Africa, The Woman King explores the passions, problems, and camaraderie of this all-female band of warriors. While Viola Davis dazzles at its center, co-stars Thuso Mbedu, Sheila Atim, and Lashana Lynch shine alongside her. Each brings powerful charisma to a full-throated performance that keeps audiences equally riveted through scenes of battle or blossoming romance, gut-punching grief, or pugnacious celebration. As she did with The Old Guard, Gina Prince-Bythewood marries action with emotion, creating sequences that make our pulses race and our hearts shudder.* — K.P.

How to watch: The Woman King is now streaming on Netflix.

31. Marriage Story

Breaking up is hard to do. Knowing that all too well, writer/director Noah Baumbach tapped into his own experience with divorce in creating Marriage Story. This critically acclaimed 2019 drama thoughtfully splits its focus between a director and actress suffocating in a dying marriage. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson deliver performances so raw with aching and rage that the film’s hardest-hitting scenes feel intensely voyeuristic. Both leads earned Oscar nominations for laying themselves bare here. However, it was a scene-stealing Laura Dern, in a supporting turn as a fabulous and ferocious divorce attorney, who won the film’s only Oscar. Honestly, fair. Heads up: This one is ill-suited for Netflix and Chill viewing! — K.P.

How to watch: Marriage Story is now streaming on Netflix.

32. In the Dark

Want a detective drama with some spice and snark? Then check out this CW series from Corinne Kingsbury, which centers on an amateur sleuth seeking justice for her murdered friend. Twentysomething Murphy Mason (Perry Mattfeld) is a lot like the glowering gumshoes of classic film noir. She’s got a world-weary attitude, a sharp mind, a sarcastic wit, and an insatiable thirst for hard liquor. To her mom and friends, she’s a self-sabotaging screwup. So, when Murphy claims she’s found a local teen dead in a back alley, few believe her. It doesn’t help her cause that she’s blind and the corpse vanishes before the cops turn up. Thus, it’s up to Murphy to clean up and crack the case, no matter what dark paths she must traverse with her seeing-eye dog, Pretzel. Warning: Between Mattfeld’s chaotic charisma and the show’s nonstop twists, this series is downright addictive. — K.P.

How to watch: In the Dark Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Netflix.

33. The Harder They Fall

Directed by Jeymes Samuel, The Harder They Fall not only boasts an incredible cast — Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, LaKeith Stanfield, and Delroy Lindo — but defiantly reclaims the Western, even before the opening credits roll. A tale of heroes and villains, the film follows Nat Love (Majors) on a quest for revenge against the formidable Rufus Buck (Elba). But he’ll have to make his gunslinging way through “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (Stanfield).

As Mashable’s Kristy Puchko writes in her review, “Bursting with dazzling Black stars, the Netflix-made Western introduces some of the fascinating Black cowpokes who made their mark on the Wild West. Co-writer/director Jeymes Samuel resurrects their legends with style, attitude, and an opening title card that teases, ‘While the events of this story are fictional…These. People. Existed.'”* — Shannon Connellan, UK Editor

How to watch: The Harder They Fall is now streaming on Netflix.

34. I Lost My Body

Animated films often fall into the categories of kid-friendly comedies, chipper musicals, or rollicking adventures. This extraordinary French film not only breaks from expectation by being a tender drama, but also offers something scintillatingly strange by making its protagonist a dismembered hand in search of his missing body. Adapted from the Guillaume Laurant novel, this Jérémy Clapin-directed cartoon delivers a raucous journey through the suburbs of Paris, from cozy apartments and dangerous subways to glittering rooftops and a jolting realization.

With a sophisticated aesthetic and complex emotional narrative, I Lost My Body won praise on the film festival circuit and a slew of critics’ guilds, as well as the César for Best Animated Feature. If you’re not much for subtitles, worry not! Netflix also offers a meticulous English over-dub. — K.P.

How to watch: I Lost My Body is now streaming on Netflix.

35. Alias Grace

If you love The Handmaid’s Tale, then you’ll relish Alias Grace. Also adapted from a Margaret Atwood novel, this miniseries delves into historical fiction, exploring the motives of 19th-century murderess Grace Marks. Sarah Gadon stars as Grace, an Irish woman who came to Canada to make a humble life for herself as maid to the farmer Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross). So, why did she kill him?

Sarah Polley’s sensational script unfolds the lyricism of Atwood’s words with an agile ear for dialogue, while director Mary Harron plumbs the depths of the human soul to craft a tale of murder that’s more melancholic than merciless. The result is a mini-series that is restrained yet absolutely riveting. Anna Paquin, David Cronenberg, and Zachary Levi co-star. — K.P.

How to watch: Alias Grace is now streaming on Netflix.

36. Call Me by Your Name

Twenty-two-year-olds don’t get nominated for Best Actor every day. Indeed, only two actors in the 95-year history of the Academy Awards were younger than Timothée Chalamet was in 2017 when he waltzed into the Dolby Theater in his white tuxedo after having given irrepressible life to the bookish teenager Elio Perlman in Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 romantic masterpiece Call Me by Your Name. And I’d have given him the statue, too.

SEE ALSO: ‘Call Me by Your Name’ is the rare case where you should watch the movie before reading the book

Dropping amid dark Trumpian days here in the U.S., this too-brief Italian summer, flush with color and fluids, saw Elio feeling out those first deepest intimacies with his father’s summertime professorial assistant Oliver (Armie Hammer)…and also, somewhat memorably, a peach. And it felt like the coming-of-age movie so many of us had been waiting our entire lives to see.* — J.A.

How to watch: Call Me By Your Name is streaming on Netflix.

37. Lady Chatterley’s Lover

This modern adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s scandalous 1928 novel will leave you absolutely swooning. Emma Corrin (The Crown) is spectacular as Connie Reid, the titular Lady Chatterley. Her marriage to Clifford Chatterley seemed like the perfect match before the war, but when he returns paralyzed, withdrawn, and uninterested in her happiness, Connie feels utterly alone and isolated in their empty countryside manor. She finds a refuge for her oppressive loneliness in the estate’s gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell). Very quickly the two begin a torrid affair that is both passionate and tender, exuberant and profound — and a threat to both of their lifestyles. 

Much like the source material, Lady Chatterley’s Lover puts sex on full display. The couple’s trysts are steamy and explicit, but thanks to the incredible vulnerability of Corrin and O’Connell, and the steady hand of director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, they never feel pornographic. The lovers’ stolen moments are deeply intimate and personal. Together, in the sumptuous woods of the Chatterley estate, they explore each other’s bodies and souls with unbridled joy. It’s an elegant and sensual adaptation that makes an age-old story feel like a breath of fresh air.* — Kristina Grosspietsch, Freelance Contributor

How to Watch: Lady Chatterley’s Lover is streaming on Netflix.

38. A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls is a modern fable about loss, suffering, and childhood. In it, a young boy (Lewis MacDougall) copes with the prospect of losing his mother by befriending a tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) that tells him three illuminating stories in exchange for one story from the boy. The movie is based on the fantasy novel by Patrick Ness, who wrote it based on an idea from Siobhan Dowd, a writer who died of cancer before writing the book herself.* — Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

How to watch: A Monster Calls is now streaming on Netflix.

*Asterisks signify a blurb has appeared in a previous Mashable list.

UPDATE: Nov. 1, 2023, 4:30 p.m. EDT This story was originally published in Jan. 2021 and has been updated to reflect current streaming options.