Top 10 Best Movies on Netflix to Watch Now! 2023

Finding the finest Netflix movies can be challenging, but there will likely always be amazing movies to watch. Whether you're looking for the best action movies, horror movies, comedies, or vintage movies on Netflix, there are many options available. The list has been modified for 2023 to take out great movies that have already passed while honoring underrated masterpieces.Show more

We at Paste have done our best to make it simple for you by regularly updating our list of the Best Movies to Watch on Netflix with both new entries and underrated movies. This saves you time from having to wade through categories in search of the ideal movie to watch.

The top 50 movies currently available on Netflix are listed below:

1. When Beale Street Talks
Year: 2018
Barry Jenkins, director
Stars include Colman Domingo, Teyonah Pariss, Aunjanue Ellis, Kiki Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Brian Tyree Henry, and Michael Beach.
Grade: R
117 minutes total

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The love narrative between Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) will serve as the rhythm for our elliptical cast of characters. The mood is holy and revelatory when the two finally complete their connection after a lifetime (only two decades) of friendship between them and their families. Tish, who serves as our narrator, speaks in both abrupt assertions and koans in Barry Jenkins' adaptation of James Baldwin's novel. Has anyone ever had sex like that? God, no, though sometimes we wish we did. And occasionally, we delude ourselves into believing that, with the right partner, we are simply two bodies against the world, in a space—possibly the only space—of our own. The couple's tale is both straightforward and complex: Despite having an alibi and overwhelming proof to the contrary, a police officer (Ed Skrein) with a grudge against Fonny manipulates a Puerto Rican woman (Emily Rios) who was the victim of a rape to choose Fonny from a lineup. Tish visits Fonny in jail in the opening scene of the movie to inform him of her pregnancy. He's overjoyed, and we instantly identify the special fusion of fear and delight that comes with becoming a father. Nevertheless, we also realize that for a young black couple, the odds are stacked against their relationship succeeding. Tish says, "I pray nobody has ever had to see anybody they love through glass. They aspire? Their performances are so beautifully synced that it seems inevitable that James and Layne would become one flesh. As Sharon, a character who can't exactly get what she wants but seems to comprehend that such development may be further than most in her situation, Regina King, who plays Sharon, Tish's mother, maybe better knows the evil of that aspiration. Even in our worry as we watch Tish's belly swell and her hope dwindle, Sharon's presence gives us comfort—not that everything will be okay, but that everything will be. She is the matriarch of the movie, a force of warmth. If Beale Street Could Talk's conclusion is essentially a given (unless your ignorance leads you through this stupid world), but there is still love there, just as there was in the beautiful opening of the movie. That offers some optimism, however pitifully small. — Dom Sinacola

2. The Holy Grail, by Monty Python
Year: 1975
Directors: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam
Stars include Terry Jones, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, and Connie Booth.
Grade: PG

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It stinks that the popularity of Holy Grail has diminished part of its brilliance. Currently, we hear a "flesh wound," a "ni! Our initial impressions are frequently of having complete scenes described to us by ignorant, obnoxious nerds. Or, in my case, of seeming like a naive, obsessive nerd and reciting entire passages to strangers. Nevertheless, if you try to put the oversaturation problem aside and watch the movie again a few years later, you'll find new gags that are just as funny and outrageous as the ones we're all familiar with. The most jam-packed comedy in the entire Python canon is Holy Grail. Given its reputation, it's astonishing how quickly we forget how many gags are in this film. If you've had it with this movie and are completely and irrevocably burned out, watch it again with commentary to obtain a second level of appreciation for the creativity with which it was produced. It doesn't appear to be a movie costing $400,000. It's fun to learn which jokes, like the coconut halves, were developed as a result of having to find creative solutions on a tight budget. The first collaboration between on-screen performer Terry Jones, who only occasionally directed after the breakup of the Pythons, and the lone American Terry Gilliam, who frequently distorted Python's cinematic style into his own distinctive brand of nightmare fantasy, moves with an uncanny efficiency. Craig Techler

3. The Irish person
Year: 2019
Martin Scorsese was the director.
Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons, and Anna Paquin are the stars.
Grade: R

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Peggy Sheeran (Lucy Gallina) observes her father Frank (Robert De Niro) packing his bag for a business trip via a door that has been left open. Trousers and shirts are put inside the bag, each one carefully folded and tucked. The brutal tool of Frank's trade, the snubnose revolver, is inserted. He is unaware that his daughter is staring at him because she is naturally silent and has remained so for the most of their adult interactions. He closes the file. She vanishes behind the entrance. Her opinions linger. The Irishman, a new movie by Martin Scorsese, has a scene that occurs about a third of the way through and replays in the closing shot as an elderly, deteriorating, and completely alone Frank sits on his nursing home bed, having been abandoned by his family and bereft of his gangster friends over the course of time. He might be waiting for Death, but it's more probable that he's waiting for Peggy, who rejected him and doesn't intend to pardon his transgressions (played as an adult by Anna Paquin). Scorsese's moral compass is Peggy. She's a tough judge: The movie has a negative perspective of machismo because it's portrayed as being masked by the mafia and mugs. When Scorsese's main characters aren't plotting or using violence to carry out their plans, they may be screaming at each other, eating ice cream, or in the most extreme cases, engaging in pathetic slap fights. This scenario reminds me of similarly tragic sequences in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon and Drunken Angel: fights between want tobe roughs driven into fighting by their own bluster. Frank worked for the Bufalino crime family, which was headed by Russell, from the 1950s to the early 2000s, according to The Irishman (Joe Pesci, out of retirement and intimidating). It involves killing some individuals, beating up others, and, when the situation calls for it, even detonating a car or a structure. When not committing acts of gangland terrorism, he can be found at home reading the newspaper, watching the news, or dragging Peggy to the neighborhood grocery store to get beat up for pushing her. The poor doomed bastard adds, "I only did what you should," as Frank takes him outside and crushes his palm against the curb. The Irishman is a historical nonfiction book that details Sheeran's life as well as the lives of the Bufalinos and their associates—especially those who passed away before their time—through his life (that being most of them). It also depicts childhood under the shadow of callous brutality and explores what a young girl must do to stay safe in a world where violence rules. — Andy Crump

4. I'm not your black.
Year: 2017
Raoul Peck is the director
Grade: PG-13

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James Baldwin's unfinished book Remember This House, which would have honored three of his friends—Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers—is the subject of Raoul Peck's book. Within five years of one another, three black men were all killed, and the movie reveals that Baldwin was not only grieved by these deaths as horrible setbacks for the Civil Rights struggle, but also genuinely worried for the spouses and children of the slain men. The movie is as much about Baldwin's excruciating agony as it is about his intelligence. I Am Not Your Negro, then, is not merely a portrait of an artist, but also a depiction of mourning—what it appears like, sounds like, and feels like to lose friends in public (and with so much of America refusing to understand how it happened, and why it will keep happening). I Am Not Your Black would have most likely still been a hit if Peck had merely given us this impression, putting us directly in Baldwin's presence. His choice to deviate from the typical documentary style, in which esteemed experts offer their opinions on a topic, fosters an intimacy that is rare to achieve in movies of this caliber. It is beautiful to spend time listening to Baldwin's words alone. Baldwin is the only one who can be used as an interpreter; this is how it should be. Shelly M. Houston

5. Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro
Year: 2022
Director: Mark Gustafson and Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, and
Grade: PG
114 minutes total

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The experiences of Guillermo del Toro's teenage heroes are always infused with the grim truths of life and death. The co-director of Netflix's newest Pinocchio adaptation, which masterfully combines the director's flair for dark fantasy with the equally bizarre fairy tale components of Carlo Collodi's 1883 The Adventures of Pinocchio, is best known for his fascination with the intersections of childhood innocence and macabre whimsy. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, like all happy marriages, brings out the best in both partners. The stop-motion musical is a work of art that imbues Collodi's beloved picture book characters with personality and depth to create a sophisticated tale about disobedience, mortality, and the love between a parent and child. This adaptation, which is the 22nd to be made into a movie, stays loyal to Collodi's original stories' gory tone while brazenly eschewing their archaic moral messages. The many adventures of Pinnochio are told as cause-and-effect tales in The Adventures of Pinocchio (and noteworthy adaptations that followed) in order to warn kids away from acting defiantly. A night of enjoyment and leisure on "Pleasure Island" in Disney's 1940 animated film almost converts the wooden boy into a salt-mining donkey. He meets a grisly end as a result of delinquent behavior in the original serial La Storia di un Burattino. The fascist environment created by del Toro flips these notions of submission and servitude. Disobedience is a virtue, not a sin, in his Eyes.
The gravity of these moral inquiries is heightened by the idea of death, which permeates the mind and heart of the movie in so many ways. Del Toro's Pinocchio is interested in what our mortality can teach us about being human. If earlier adaptations are preoccupied with life—with the puppet's exceptional consciousness and the hope that he may one day become a "genuine boy"—del Toro's Pinocchio is preoccupied with death. Death is never far away from the main character or his loved ones in the movie. Carlo is impacted by death, and death follows Pinocchio on his arduous journey. The fact that death isn't viewed with the customary Western dread and cynicism is what makes del Toro's Pinocchio so beautiful. Here, death is airy, enigmatic, and bathed in stunning blue light. The idea that we will one day—possibly unexpectedly—leave this earth is what makes our time here so lovely, therefore death is not something to be feared, but acknowledged and accepted when the time comes. Normally, I don't recommend listening to crickets, but trust Sebastian J. because this is the first time the Pinocchio story has ever been recounted in this way. —Kathy Michelle Chacón