Netflix has thousands upon thousands of movies on its streaming platform, and, if you’re not careful, you can find yourself spending longer picking out a film than actually watching it.
If you want to speed up the decision-making process, then you can always let the critics narrow down the selection for you.
To that end, we’ve dug into Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the top 100 movies of all time, and rounded up which ones you can currently find on Netflix.
The Irishman
Netflix will be happy to see this drama, which it ploughed between $159 million and $250 million into, depending on which reports you believe, sitting pretty in Rotten Tomatoes’ list.
An epic in every sense of the word, The Irishman saw director Martin Scorsese bring together Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci for a grand saga, which charts the journey of Frank Sheeran (played by De Niro), a truck driver who wound up becoming a hitman for the notorious mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci), a man with connections right into the heart of the US government.
A mammoth watch at three hours and 29 minutes, the scale, performances and attention to detail of Scorsese’s epic all wowed the critics.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 95%
Roma
Alfonso Cuarón's 2018 team-up with Netflix proved to be another critical success for the man behind Gravity and Children Of Men.
A deeply personal film, Roma is based on Cuarón's own upbringing and is set in the early 1970s. It follows Cleo, a housekeeper for a middle-class family in Mexico City, who helps to look after married couple Antonio and Sofía and their four children.
Initially, things are fine, but when Antonio suddenly runs away with his mistress and Cleo finds out that she's pregnant, everything is thrown into turmoil.
To get some breathing space, Sofía decides to take the kids on vacation, and invites Cleo along to help. It’s a trip that will change everything.
As well as directing this film, Cuarón also wrote, produced, shot, and co-edited this film, taking the ‘hands-on’ approach to whole new levels..
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 96%
Wonder Woman
Gal Gadot’s storming solo bow was an $800 million box office bonanza, and holds a mighty 93% on Rotten Tomatoes’ rating.
An origin story for Diana Prince, we track her journey from Amazonian princess to superhero, bringing an end to the first World War along the way…
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 93%
Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s heart-pounding World War II thriller was greeted with a wave of five-star reviews upon its arrival and continues to wow all who see it.
Telling the story of the evacuation of Dunkirk from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air, Nolan’s blockbuster features Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Rylance in key roles.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 92%
Spotlight
This starry drama is our first recipient of the Best Picture award, beating the much-loved epic The Revenant to take the Oscar in 2016.
The film focuses on the travails of the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the US, and in particular its work on exposing widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by Roman Catholic priests.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%
The Farewell
Awkwafina and writer-director Lulu Wang teamed up for this gentle comedy, which Rotten Tomatoes scores at a formidable 97% on its critical rankings.
The film, which began life as an episode on the radio and podcast series This American Life, follows a Chinese-American family who, upon learning their grandmother has only a short while left to live, decide not to tell her and schedule a family gathering before she dies.
Naturally, that decision brings some consequences, often hilarious ones.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%
Arrival
Denis Villeneuve has yet to make a critical misstep, even if his big-budget sci-fi sequel Blade Runner 2049 failed to find much success in theaters.
His peak thus far is Arrival, an elegant and cerebral piece of science-fiction, the likes of which hadn’t been seen before.
We watch on as the world reacts to the arrival of 12 extraterrestrial spacecraft, which hover over various locations around the Earth, provoking different reactions and re-opening old wounds.
As nations teeter on the verge of global war, the US tries to establish communication with the new arrivals, and decides to send in Amy Adams’ linguist Louise Banks and Jeremy Renner’s physicist Ian Donnelly. Can the two find a way to communicate with the extra-terrestrial visitors and avoid catastrophe? It’s a race against time.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 94%
Marriage Story
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson’s searing portrait of the demise of a marriage is a tough watch, but an absolutely gripping one.
Written and directed by indie master Noah Baumbach, the film documents the unravelling of the marriage between Driver’s Charlie, a successful theatre director, and Johansson’s Nicole, an actress hoping to revive her career with the offer of a new TV show in Los Angeles, an opportunity which would force her to move her young son away from their life in New York.
Some of the scenes are wince-inducing, but the performances are stellar, Baumbach’s writing is brilliant, and it remains an essential watch.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 94%
The Invisible Man
Horror maestro Jason Blum oversaw this chilling new take on H. G. Wells' novel, which was a hit at both the box office and with critics.
The Invisible Man stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a woman trapped in a violently abusive relationship with a wealthy optics engineer and businessman named Adrian Griffin.
Soon after Kass finally works up the courage to leave Griffin, she learns that he’s apparently killed himself. However, a series of strange coincidences in Cecilia's life start to turn lethal, forcing her to work to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see…
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 92%
12 Years A Slave
Steve McQueen’s brutal drama was a triumph with critics, audiences and Academy voters, who rewarded it with the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, a free-born African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841 and sold into slavery. The film documents Northup's journey as he battles to stay alive and recover his freedom in the face of appalling cruelty.
It’s a must-watch, although you may find yourself watching much of it through your fingers due to the realistic brutality.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 95%
Argo
Many were surprised when Argo beat out competition from Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook to take home the Best Picture Oscar in 2013, but that didn’t mean the film failed to impress the critics.
Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, the film retells the bizarre tale of the CIA mission to rescue six US diplomats who were in hiding in Tehran after they avoided capture when Islamist students seized the American embassy in 1979 . The CIA team pulled off the rescue under the guise of scouting locations for a science-fiction film.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 96%
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Netflix’s own take on August Wilson’s 1982 play holds a sizable 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and with its gorgeous production design and top-drawer cast, it’s easy to see why.
With a cast led by Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts, the movie documents a particularly turbulent and bloody recording session for Ma Rainey, an influential blues singer in 1920s Chicago.
Tragically, the film ended up being the final appearance of Boseman, and the movie is dedicated to his memory.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%
1917
Sam Mendes’ pacy World War I thriller scored 10 Oscar nominations, and was lauded by critics when it arrived in cinemas in 2019.
The film is set amid the carnage of the Western Front, and follows two British soldiers, Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Game Of Thrones star Dean-Charles Chapman), who are sent on a mission to deliver orders to call off a doomed attack and save hundreds of soldiers from certain death.
Starring alongside MacKay and Chapman are some of the top British actors, including Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Daniel Mays, and Richard Madden.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 89%
L.A. Confidential
While launching the careers of then relative unknowns Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, this 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy's novel was an instant hit with critics.
The film, which also starred Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, and James Cromwell, wound up earning nine Oscars nominations and two wins.
L.A. Confidential follows three very different cops, one straight-laced, one in the maverick mould with a violent streak, and another after fame and headlines, all of whom become obsessed with finding the person responsible for an unsolved murder at a downtown Los Angeles coffee shop in the early 1950s.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 99%
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
This tender drama was a runaway success when it debuted on the festival circuit in 2020, and continues to charm audiences.
Starring Sidney Flanigan in her first role, and Talia Ryder, the drama follows Flanigan's Autumn Callahan, who discovers that she’s pregnant, but can’t get an abortion in her native Pennsylvania without parental permission.
Confiding in Skylar, her cousin and best friend, the two decide to travel to New York for the procedure, but run into all kinds of trouble along the way.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 99%
Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s whipsmart action spectacular was his biggest commercial success to date, and it’s easy to see why.
Powered by a handsome cast and an impeccably curated soundtrack, Wright has always had a knack for blending high-tempo action with laugh-out-loud comic beats, as shown in Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, but here he takes the formula to a new level.
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 92%
