Do you want to watch a movie this weekend? You could catch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in theaters for a second time if you like. But if you want to stay home, Netflix is still your best option. This week, the Netflix original movie The Mother gives Jennifer Lopez her first real action flick in over two decades. And if you need a bit more drama, Tom Hanks’ most recent film, A Man Called Otto, is heating up the Netflix charts.
Of course, these flicks are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s always something new to watch on Netflix. But if you don’t have time to keep track of what’s coming and going, that’s something we can help you with. All you really need to do is check out our continuously updated list of the best movies on Netflix right now.
Looking for something else? We’ve also rounded up the best shows on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best movies on Disney+. For Netflix fans, check out the 10 most popular movies on Netflix right now.
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It might be a bit late in her career for Jennifer Lopez to jump back into action films, but if it worked for Liam Neeson, then it can work for J-Lo. The Mother casts Lopez as an unnamed assassin with a particular set of skills, none of which are particularly useful when it comes to being a parent.
But when the Mother learns that the daughter she gave up, Zoe (Lucy Paez), is in danger from her enemies, she drops everything in an attempt to save her from an old foe, Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes). And nothing Lovell puts in the Mother’s way can stop her for long.
Tom Hanks really plays against type as the title character in A Man Called Otto. Otto Anderson has good reasons to be severely depressed and even suicidal. Rather than facing his twilight years without his recently deceased wife, Sonya (Rachel Keller), Otto prepares to end it all until he keeps running into his new neighbors, Marisol (Mariana Treviño) and Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo).
Much to Otto’s annoyance, he can’t kill himself because Marisol and her family always seem to arrive at inopportune times. But through their growing connection, Otto may yet find a new reason to live.
Who could have known that Pitch Perfect would launch two sequels and a spinoff series, Peacock’s Bumper in Berlin? Only the fans of the original film, which is now back on Netflix and racing up the movie charts. Anna Kendrick headlines the cast as Beca Mitchell, a college freshman who is somewhat involuntarily drawn into the intrigue of the campus’ all-female a cappella group, The Bellas.
Beca quickly finds herself clashing with The Bellas’ leaders, Aubrey Posen (Anna Camp) and Chloe Beale (Brittany Snow), over the group’s stale routines. Beca also ends up courting Jesse Swanson (Skylar Astin), a freshman who joins The Bellas’ bitter on-campus rivals, The Treblemakers. That’s a recipe for drama, especially when Beca’s personal desires conflict with the aspirations of her group.
Ronny Valentine (Vince Vaughn) faces multiple crises in the black comedy The Dilemma. Ronny and his buddy/business partner, Nick Brannen (Kevin James), are on the verge of a pitch that could change their lives forever. However, Ronny soon discovers that Nick’s wife, Geneva (Winona Ryder), is cheating on him with Zip (Channing Tatum). And if Nick discovers the truth, it may imperil their company.
To compound things even further, Ronny’s attempt to learn more about Geneva’s affair only causes his girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Connelly), to believe that his gambling addiction has returned. This forces Ronny to question whether his personal life is more important than his professional aspirations.
The story of Whitney Houston is both a triumph and a tragedy. The late singer rose from obscurity to become one of the most famous women in the world, only to die suddenly at 48 years old. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody doesn’t attempt to sugarcoat Houston’s history, as it follows her meteoric rise and equally epic fall.
In the film, Whitney (Naomi Ackie) is supported by her friend-turned-lover Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) before hitting the music industry like a tidal wave. As Whitney’s fame grows, she marries Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) and descends into drug addiction that threatens her career and even her life. And yet it’s impossible not to root for Whitney to pull herself out of that spiral.
Thanks to the success of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, fans are revisiting the final Shrek film, Shrek Forever After, on Netflix. Mike Myers once again reprises his role as Shrek, who laments that he has become a domesticated ogre after to his marriage to Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and the arrival of their rambunctious kids.
When Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) offers Shrek a chance to be a true ogre again, his magical powers create an alternate world where Shrek was never born and the kingdom is ruled with an iron fist by Rumpelstiltskin himself. To put things right, Shrek will have to reconnect with greatly altered versions of Fiona, Donkey (Eddie Murphy), and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas).
You’ll get a lot more out of The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die if you watched the five seasons of The Last Kingdom that came before it. But it works as both a series finale and as a standalone movie. In the film, Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon) is unwillingly put into the middle of a war for the future of England.
Ingrith (Ilona Chevakova) predicts that seven kings must die before England will be united under one ruler. That means Uhtred must eventually pick a side between Aethelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons (Harry Gilby), and his deadly rival, Anlaf, King of Dublin (Pekka Strang).
The Best Man Holiday is one of the rare sequels that gets the entire cast back together after an extended period. Fifteen years after marrying Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut) in The Best Man, Mia (Monica Calhoun) invites their extended circle of friends for a Christmas holiday together. However, Mia’s declining health is soon apparent, as is the lingering tension between Lance and his former best friend, Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs).
In secret, Harper has already agreed to write an unauthorized biography about his famous ex-pal, Lance. And when the truth comes out, it may tear them apart for good and force their friends to take sides.
If you’ve ever heard of the legend of the chupacabra, then you know that these goat-sucking fiends aren’t exactly cuddly. At least that’s what we thought before Chupa. In this charming (and family-friendly) adventure, young Alex (Evan Whitten) goes to Mexico to visit his family in the wake of his father’s death.
Soon enough, Alex finds a lost chupacabra cub that he takes in and nurtures. Meanwhile, an American scientist, Richard Quinn (Christian Slater), will stop at nothing to find the cub and its mother, and somehow, Alex must find a way to protect his new friend.
After a decade away from Hollywood, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first film after serving his two terms as California’s Governor was a small town sheriff, Ray Owens, in the action thriller, The Last Stand. Within the story, Ray is anything but a typical action hero, and he’s not really eager to engage Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), a violent drug lord whose escape route goes directly through Ray’s town. But Cortez’s trail of destruction leaves Ray no choice but to act.
Ray and his deputies are so severely outgunned that he’s forced to recruit a local weapons enthusiast, Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville). Unfortunately for Ray, Cortez is bringing a small army of his own.
One of the best sci-fi movies of the 2010s on Netflix, Inception was the film that firmly established Christopher Nolan’s movies as events. It’s also a masterfully well-made story about Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who literally makes his living invading the dreams of other people and stealing their secrets. Dom’s job is complicated by the fact that his subconscious mind is also haunted by a very literal version of his late wife, Mal Cobb (Marion Cotillard).
After years in exile away from his children, Dom is given the chance to return home by the enigmatic Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe). The catch is that Dom and his new team have to invade the mind of businessman Robert Michael Fischer (Cillian Murphy) and convince him to break up his father’s empire. However, each layer of Robert’s mind brings new dangers to Mal and his team. Once they go in, they may not come out.
Minions: The Rise of Gru is a film that Peacock should probably have kept to itself, since it was one of the few animated hits of 2022. But Peacock’s loss is Netflix’s gain as the delightfully silly Despicable Me origin story of Gru (Steve Carell) unfolds with the child supervillain and his Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) attempting to impress Gru’s idols, the Vicious 6, which includes Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), Jean-Clawed (Jean-Claude Van Damme), Svengeance (Dolph Lundgren), Stronghold (Danny Trejo), and Nin-chuck (Lucy Lawless).
Unfortunately for Gru, his efforts only alienate the Vicious 6 and turn them into his enemies. But with the help of the Vicious 6’s former leader, Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin), Gru and the Minions have a fighting chance.
There’s a lot going on in I See You, and you’ll miss the clues if you aren’t watching closely. Equal parts mystery and horror, the film starts out like a thriller as Detective Greg Harper (Jon Tenney) and his partner, Detective Spitzky (Gregory Alan Williams), are assigned to an apparent copycat serial abduction based on a killer that Greg put away years ago.
At the same time, Greg’s home life has been shattered as his wife, Jackie Harper (Helen Hunt), is having an affair that is threatening to tear their marriage apart. There’s also an unseen presence in Greg and Jackie’s house that haunts them with seemingly harmless pranks before escalating into violence and murder. That’s just the beginning of a twisted tale that eventually draws everyone together.
All three Riddick films are now back on Netflix, but Pitch Black remains the best of the trilogy. That’s because it plays out like a sci-fi thriller rather than a standard Vin Diesel action flick. This was Diesel’s first turn as Richard B. Riddick, a killer whose eyes can see in the dark. In a distant part of space, Riddick is captured by bounty hunter William J. Johns (Cole Hauser), and both men have the misfortune of being on a starship that crashes on a remote planet.
After Riddick escapes, the survivors, including Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell), Jack (Rhiana Griffith), and Abu al-Walid (Keith David) realize that the planet is overrun by fearsome creatures whenever it gets dark. In order to survive this planet of monsters, they have to rely on their own monster: Riddick.
Netflix just took home the Oscar for Best Animated feature for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and it’s already got another strong animated flick out this week. The Magician’s Elephant adapts Kate DiCamillo’s novel of the same name, and it tells the story of a young orphan named Peter (Noah Jupe). Peter’s only wish in life is to find his missing sister, Adele (Pixie Davies), Through a fortune teller, Peter is told that he has to find a Magician (Benedict Wong) who will summon an elephant.
Incredibly, the prophecy comes true. But before the elephant can lead Peter to his sister, he is forced to perform three impossible tasks. And the attempt will change Peter’s life forever.
Idris Elba’s John Luther returns in the Netflix original film Luther: The Fallen Sun. And right off the bat, Luther is tossed in jail for everything illegal he did in the Luther TV series. Luther’s incarceration was engineered by his current adversary, David Robey (Andy Serkis), and it demonstrates just how much Robey fears the disgraced detective.
However, Luther eventually escapes from prison to go after Robey and bring him down for good. Unfortunately for Luther, his former colleagues on the police force are also hunting for him.
This sci-fi film from the writer and director of Train to Busan is part explosive action spectacle, part exploration of big business and technology run amok. The film follows a scientist working on the next generation of lethal, combat-oriented artificial intelligence, developed from the brain patterns of one of the world’s most celebrated mercenaries, who was left comatose after a failed mission. The catch here is that the mercenary is actually the mother of the scientist, who has spent decades grappling with both her mother’s legacy and the company’s ownership of what remains of her mother.
Andrew Garfield stars as Rent playwright Jonathon Larson in this semi-autobiographical film directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The musical drama chronicles Larson’s struggles to bring the rock musical he’s been working on for years to the stage while navigating love, friendships, and both personal and professional pressure in New York City.
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