10 Best Netflix Original Movies Of All Time, According To Letterboxd

Netflix original movies sometimes don't have the best reputation. Netflix's slate of homegrown motion pictures, particularly when it comes to costly attempts at traditional action blockbusters like "The Gray Man," have often been derided for, among other faults, lacking visual polish and their lifeless ambiance. This reputation isn't entirely unwarranted, as seen by Netflix releases like the "365 Days" movies, "He's All That," "The Bubble," the "Rebel Moon" movies, and countless other dismal titles. This streaming company cranking out so many features has created a wave of subpar cinema that sometimes makes yesteryear's terrible theatrical movies like "From Justin to Kelly" look more tolerable by comparison.

Still, some filmmakers have managed to deliver some all-time great movies within the Netflix confines, including Jane Campion, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese. For a look at the very best of this crop of cinema, just look at the Netflix original movies with the highest average user ratings on Letterboxd. The 10 highest-rated Netflix movies on this site (excluding documentaries and concert films) are an eclectic bunch that help highlight what kinds of motion pictures stand out to 2020s audiences. 

They also highlight the kinds of movies only Netflix greenlights, such as 2D animated family movies or costly pieces of international cinema. There's so much to unpack in looking at what Letterboxd users adore the most. Thankfully, Netflix's cinema output goes deeper than "The Ridiculous 6."

It'd be fitting to say that, in the general consciousness, the 2025 feature "The Son of a Thousand Men" is running a bit under the radar. As of this writing, this motion picture doesn't even have its own English Wikipedia page, while no critic reviews are recorded for it on its Metacritic page. That hasn't stopped this Rodrigo Santoro star vehicle, though, from securing a mighty big following on Letterboxd. This fantastical project from director Daniel Rezende chronicles an isolated fisherman (Santoro) who's always wanted a child to call his own. Soon, a man plagued by loneliness finds a young orphan who changes his life. 

The various rave reviews for "Son of a Thousand Men" emphasize many different qualities that made this feature so special to those who've seen it. Chief among its most widely acclaimed virtues, though, is its deftness in navigating so many different narrative threads as well as Rezende's moving execution of major poignant moments. Santoro's central performance also received glowing marks, while the cinematography was similarly lauded. Most importantly, many of these Letterboxd reviews feature testimonies from users who felt "The Son of a Thousand Men" had shifted something inside them. 

They walked away from the film more grateful for their connections to others and conscious of how their existences intersected with the broader strokes of history. Those aren't too shabby achievements for a movie that's largely been overlooked in the 2025 cinema landscape.

Having now made all of his post-2016 directorial efforts with the streaming service since 2017's "The Meyerowitz Stories," one could argue Noah Baumbach is one of this company's most prolific filmmakers. Granted, some of Baumbach's Netflix works, like "White Noise" and "Jay Kelly," didn't really go anywhere with audiences. Still, Baumbach has clearly become comfortable in the Netflix domain, and his distinctive artistry delivered at least one majorly iconic feature for the platform. That would be 2019's "Marriage Story," which starred Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a couple going through the messy process of divorce.

The dialogue-heavy and externalized writing and performances littering "Marriage Story" don't just provide compelling insight into this film's characters. They also allow audiences to hear and feel emotions they've long felt but just never expressed. Through these fictional existences riddled with idiosyncratic flourishes, a mirror is provided into our own lives. There's a reason Driver's "every day I wake up" yelling speech from "Marriage Story" became a meme. We've all had moments where we've felt that frustrated. This is just one of many moments where Baumbach's filmmaking taps into something so real.

The achingly three-dimensional portraits of each of the lead characters, not to mention a murderer's row of terrific supporting players (like a hysterical Wallace Shawn in a bit part), further accentuate the endless feats of "Marriage Story." No wonder Letterboxd users love this movie. It's one of Baumbach's (and by extension Netflix's) greatest triumphs.

Korean culture has often thrived on Netflix. Korean-led movies and TV shows have become major cultural sensations, like the TV program "Squid Game" or Bong Joon-ho's 2017 movie "Okja." The 12 best Korean movies on Netflix reflect how vital this country's expansive artistic scene has become to the streaming platform. Inevitably, at least one (if not several) of the many original Korean films that Netflix has financed and released would have to end up on this list. Thus, writer/director Bang Woo-ri's "20th Century Girl" is one of Netflix's most beloved features on Letterboxd.

To be clear, this 2022 romantic drama is not a gender-flipped adaptation of the 1973 T-Rex song "20th Century Boy" nor is it some kind of prequel to the Mike Mills classic "20th Century Women." Instead, it's a period piece (set in 1999) following a teen girl who tries getting a sublime boyfriend for her best buddy. Naturally, though, she ends up swooning for the cute boy meant for her pal. Conflicting allegiances to friendship and potential romance threaten to capsize her life. Letterboxd reviewers heaped praise on this feature for taking what could've been a disposable premise and turning it into something impactful.

So many of the "20th Century Girl" Letterboxd reviews boil down to people exclaiming how shattered their hearts are or how they'll have to talk about this film in an impending therapy session. Bang Woo-ri delivered something clearly shattering with her "20th Century Girl" exploits.

Displacement. How do you translate such a grueling and rich emotion into a cinematic form? Director Fernando Frías de la Parra did just that with his 2019 feature "I'm No Longer Here." This feature chronicles Ulises (Juan Daniel García Treviño), who yearns for his home of Monterrey, Mexico, after moving to America. It was vital he shift to another country (since a local cartel threatened his life), yet the desire to smell familiar scents and hear recognizable sounds persists. Parra manifests these emotions on-screen in audacious forms, including through the non-linear structure of "I'm No Longer Here."

The Letterboxd reviews for "I'm No Longer Here" often convey an awestruck tone, particularly regarding the excellent dancing skills of the lead characters and how this film's tone is so intoxicating. Within these cinematic confines, "I'm No Longer Here" makes the deeply specific psyche of Ulises something people want to marinate in for hours on end. The cinematography and acting also received tremendous praise, with the former quality proving essential to making "I'm No Longer Here" such an acclaimed atmospheric exercise. Best of all, Letterboxd reviewers heaped praise on "I'm No Longer Here," emphasizing deeply human connections in the middle of a conceptually grim story.

Some movies would use the saga of Ulises as an excuse to deliver a derivative descent into poverty-informed miserabilism. "I'm No Longer Here," meanwhile, takes this narrative as a launchpad for more distinctive artistry.  

In the modern cinematic landscape, there have been several streaming movies that needed a theatrical release. "Train Dreams" is certainly one of those features, especially since it wasn't conceived as a Netflix original. Instead, this melancholy voyage into America's late 19th-century/early 20th-century debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as a totally independent movie that could've been acquired by a theatrical studio. Instead, Netflix purchased the feature, thus ensuring the absolutely gorgeous imagery conceived by director Clint Bentley and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso would only be experienced in a handful of theaters (just enough to qualify the feature for Oscar consideration).

It's a tragedy that "Train Dreams" was relegated to a Netflix release where it languished next to "Kinda Pregnant" and "The Last Days of American Crime." However, this nominee for best picture at the 2026 Oscars still struck a chord with Letterboxd users. Even when confined to a TV screen, the luscious and precisely arranged visuals populating "Train Dreams" are bound to impact a viewer. This ode to the natural world certainly makes woodland terrains stunning to behold. Meanwhile, Joel Edgerton's tremendously lived-in and believable performance as Robert Grainier is a perfect anchor for this project. As years pass within this story, Edgerton subtly and achingly conveys the passage of time affecting Grainier.

"Train Dreams" beautifully captures life's heartbreak, beauty, and subtle wonders. It's a miraculously tender and tear-inducing enterprise whose popularity with Letterboxd users is a no-brainer.

Stories about young love doomed to be disrupted by tragic deaths have fascinated the general public since the days of "Romeo & Juliet." In the modern world, such stories often concern teens with life-threatening illnesses who have brief, but passionate romantic connections. The likes of "The Fault in Our Stars" or "Everything, Everything" have scored their own fanbases, so it shouldn't be a surprise that a 2024 feature in that mold, "Drawing Closer," would be one of Netflix's most beloved films on Letterboxd. This particular title concerns Akito (Ren Nagase), who only has a year to live, striking up a connection with Haruna (Natsuki Deguchi), who only has six months to live.

Time is short for both of these souls, yet writer/director Takahiro Miki (who also penned the script with Tomoko Yoshida) chronicles Akita and Haruna finding so much joy in bonding during their exceedingly finite lives. This saga fueling "Drawing Closer" appears to be especially popular with Letterboxd users who clearly can't get enough of films that reduce them to tears or puddles of yearning. For these viewers, "Drawing Closer" has an ability to deliver absolutely shattering sequences that would make the 98 best romantic movies of all time beam with pride.

The strong performances and crackling chemistry between the two leads also garnered tremendous praise from Letterboxd denizens. Sometimes, you need a movie that obliterates your heart and reminds you how vital human connections are. For many Letterboxd reviewers, "Drawing Closer" fully accomplished those missions.

Writer/director Edward Berger's 2022 take on "All Quiet on the Western Front," based on author Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel of the same name, inevitably garnered its fair share of critics as it secured feats like several Oscar wins. German critics were especially harsh on the feature (which hails from the same country and is told in German) for, among other faults, abandoning its source material. Meanwhile, other high-profile criticisms were aimed at the feature's outsized tendencies (especially in the Volker Bertelmann score). These rampant critiques are especially fascinating to consider since, if one were to just examine the Letterboxd reception to this "All Quiet on the Western Front," the film seems to have garnered far more enthusiasm than backlash. 

Berger's unflinching vision of war as a ceaselessly brutal nightmare deeply impacted many Letterboxd reviewers, who lauded the craftsmanship underpinning these outsized displays of war's misery.

Many of these reviews also expressed the lasting impact of the imagery in this "All Quiet on the Western Front" iteration. It takes a village to make any movie, and in the case of this war feature, the inhabitants of that village (like the sound team or the makeup artists, among others) were all applauded for bringing their A-game.

Even the performances inhabiting those explosion-laden set pieces were a centerpiece of many extremely enthusiastic Letterboxd reviews. Though it clearly had its share of detractors, the 2022 "All Quiet on the Western Front" had no problem winning over Letterboxd users.

It's fair to say that filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón has a strong following on Letterboxd. This filmmaker, who hails from Mexico, has delivered five films that each have at least a 3.8 average user rating on the site. Some of his titles, like one of the best sci-fi movies of all time, "Children of Men," are among the most beloved 21st-century features on Letterboxd. It's a testament to his incredibly prolific career that the acclaimed "Roma" is his fourth-highest rated movie on this internet domain. With its 4.1 average rating, "Roma" towers over not just most non-Cuarón movies, but almost all other Netflix original features. 

After taking audiences to expansive locales like Hogwarts, outer space, or a post-apocalyptic world, Alfonso Cuarón transported viewers to 1970 Mexico City for this intimate saga about housekeeper Cleodegaria "Cleo" Gutiérrez (Yalitza Aparicio) taking care of a family when their father suddenly vanishes. Even without a 3D camera or lots of CG at his disposal, Cuarón's visual sharpness remained as compelling as ever with "Roma." The incredibly ornate blocking and camerawork in "Roma" is absolutely stunning, especially when it comes to Cleo's placement in packed crowd scenes. Rarely situated in the center frame, Cuarón invites viewers to scan densely detailed images for her.

This visual motif reflects both Cleo's societal status and the evocative images only Cuarón could deliver so well. "Roma" is a feature-length demonstration of why Letterboxd users can't get enough of this director.

Director J.A. Bayona has developed a panache for delivering movies that reduce audiences to puddles of tears. "The Impossible" made audiences sob over a family getting separated during a tsunami. "A Monster Calls" used fantasy storytelling to depict a child coping with the impending passing of his mother, to tear-jerking results. Once the credits rolled on 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," meanwhile, audiences began bawling once they'd realized they'd wasted two hours watching this subpar movie. This track record made Bayona a prime choice to helm 2023's "Society of the Snow," a film recreating the true story of a rugby team's flight crashing into the Andes.

A day earlier, these were just ordinary men joshing about ladies and sports statistics. Now, the few survivors are clinging to whatever means they can use to survive. Letterboxd users were astonished by how "Society of the Snow" depicted this historical event, particularly the craftsmanship informing the grueling plane crash sequence. There's also a common sentiment amongst these reviews appreciating how "Society of the Snow" kept maintaining tension during its runtime, to the point that many users expressed a hesitance to ever step foot on an airplane again lest they also ended up in the snowy mountains.

Of course, one need only throw a stone into these Letterboxd reviews, and you'll immediately hit a write-up talking about how "Society of the Snow" reduced them to tears. J.A. Bayona's specialty struck once more in an especially harrowing fashion.

"Klaus" already made Netflix history just by existing. This feature was the first original animated feature from Netflix Animation Studios and signaled that this streamer had grand ambitions of rivaling Pixar, DreamWorks, and Illumination in the field of feature-length animated titles. However, it isn't just this piece of trivia that's elevated "Klaus" to a notable artistic stature among audiences. This Santa Claus origin story involving self-serving postman Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) and Klaus (J.K. Simmons) has now garnered a reputation as one of the best Christmas movies of all time. That's bled over into it scoring the highest average user rating for a Netflix original movie, animated or otherwise.

Could some of those euphoric Letterboxd reviews stem from positive memories and experiences of watching this Yuletide title with loved ones during the most wonderful time of the year? Perhaps. However, scanning the Letterboxd assessments of this title, it's also clear that this Sergio Pablos directorial effort's artistic virtues also resonated profoundly with audiences. The hand-drawn animation, particularly the character designs and backgrounds, garnered heavy amounts of praise, with reviewers hailing it as a welcome reprieve from typical CG imagery. Meanwhile, the sincere execution of the most poignant "Klaus" sequences also earned lauds from Letterboxd denizens.

Even broad comedy (which sometimes falls flat in kid-friendly American animated comedies) in "Klaus" was widely praised. Delivering laughs and beautiful animation like Santa delivers presents, maybe it isn't so shocking that "Klaus" is the champion of Netflix original movies on Letterboxd.