There Are Only 19 Near-Perfect Movies On Netflix According To Metacritic

If you're worried you've run out of good content to stream on Netflix — or simply find the idea of looking for something new too exhausting compared with the ready availability of that show in your "Watch It Again" list — Metacritic has made it pretty simple. With its weighted average (or "Metascore") of critic reactions, Metacritic is among the most widely revered internet authorities on what's worth watching. Anything with a score of 90 and above can be counted as just about perfect, and many of those cinematic triumphs are available to stream on Netflix.

There's something "near-perfect" for lovers of just about every genre too. Of the films that have landed in this extremely difficult-to-reach range, Netflix subscribers can enjoy documentaries, war epics, period pieces, biopics, romances, and more. The wide variety of subject matter and style also means that of these films, there are bound to be a few you haven't seen, perhaps in a genre you haven't yet ventured too far into. There's no better place to start than the best Netflix has to offer. So read on and find the perfect flick according to Metacritic.

International bestseller Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer whose works have been translated into dozens of languages, had an adaptation of one of his short stories make it all the way to the Cannes Film Festival — as well as to the cream of the crop on Metacritic, with a score of 90. Based on Murakami's "Barn Burning," the 2018 psychological thriller Burning also became the first Korean film to make it to the Oscars shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film.

What you'll love about this movie, as so many have, is the burning — specifically, the slow, slow burning of the meditative narrative as it illuminates both the characters and plot with maddeningly sophisticated unease. But the film also sheds light on the duality of the society in which it takes place. The working-class lens of the main character, who becomes obsessed with the upper-class man who's stolen his love, highlights the juxtaposition between the leisure and tumult of the respective ends of the economic spectrum in South Korea.

Without spoiling too much — walk into this film knowing as little as possible — we'll say that Burning goes places you won't expect. It's a twisty tale of desire and desperation, and it features an absolutely brilliant performance from Steven Yeun of Minari and The Walking Dead fame. For a film that starts off as a quiet drama and then goes some very shocking places, be sure to check out this compelling Korean thriller.

Did you ever expect that an Adam Sandler movie would score a 91 on Metacritic? Of course, Uncut Gems isn't an "Adam Sandler movie" in the traditional sense of the phrase — comedies that are often panned by critics and that cast Sandler in the lead as the endearing underdog. Sandler, in fact, holds more Raspberry Award nominations than any other actor in Hollywood, with the exception of Sylvester Stallone (who has his own share of great movies, too).

But while many were initially skeptical of Sandler's apparent break from form, he proved his chops as an actor in 2019's crime thriller from Josh and Benny Safdie. Here, Sandler once again plays the underdog, but the stakes are much higher than a getting a high school flame or winning a football game. Instead, Sandler's character finds himself trapped in a world of gambling, mobsters, and priceless stones. The plot gets so convoluted and thick that it would be harder to cut than a diamond, frantically propelling the action forward even as its characters fall desperately behind.

The central element that keeps this wild escapade from playing as implausibly out of control is Adam Sandler's performance as jeweler Howard Ratner. Even when you know he doesn't, he'll never let go of the illusion of having a plan — or not needing one. Howard's delusional bravado has made him a mildly successful smooth-talker, but it's also his constant means of self-destruction throughout this film. This double-sided coin is the rarest artifact of all. Sandler's acting prowess lures the viewer into rooting both for and against him, meaning there's never a moment we're not engaged.

"Living on the edge" isn't always presented in stories of espionage, wilderness survival, or drug addiction. The Florida Project shows us just how close to the edge millions of Americans live in their everyday existence. And the 2017 film has been praised for showing that existence — in all its facets — in such an empathetic light.

The socioeconomic divide in America is glimpsed through the eyes of a little girl named Moonee, who lives in the Magic Castle motel. Because of its proximity to Disney World, the young girl meets all sorts of amusing characters as a result of the area's tourism (one couple accidentally books the Magic Castle motel for their honeymoon instead of the Magic Kingdom). Though there's a pronounced difference between the weekenders spending their leisure time at an expensive theme park and Moonee and her mom struggling to make ends meet, it's all portrayed through the innocent and endearing point of view of a six-year-old.

The film, which earned a score of 92 on Metacritic, reflects a wider perspective on America from a new and utterly absorbing vantage point, buoyed by some phenomenal performances, especially Willem Dafoe's. Both the film itself and its protagonist are evidence of the power of imagination to make the best of the world. For example, the last scene in Disney World was filmed on an iPhone without Disney's knowledge. That's about as indie and underdog as it gets.

There are a few dramas based on books in this list, but Spotlight is a different brand of literary inspiration. It's based on a series of stories published in The Boston Globe that all centered around the same subject matter — the epidemic of child abuse in the Boston area by Roman Catholic clergy. The star-studded cast (including Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton) represents the investigative Spotlight team at the Globe, whose search for the truth about one priest uncovers a pattern of abuse (and cover-up) even deeper than they anticipated.

Though the 2015 film takes some artistic license — re-ordering some events and inflating or omitting others for the sake of drama — it's fundamentally accurate, and even this metric forces audiences to consider just how disturbing the story really is if even the minimum is true. And that's just what the film is trying to get at. The drama works because it focuses on just how high up the corruption goes and the lengths to which supposedly venerable institutions went to protect themselves at the expense of others. And that expense is well-documented, as this film rightly chooses to devote a lot of screen time to how deeply the abuse has impacted the victims over the years.

With a score of 93 on Metacritic, Spotlight is a rough journey into dark subject matter, but it's also a thrilling examination of a real-life conspiracy, showing how the Globe's investigation unfolded and how dangerously at odds the paper was with powerful people hiding the truth.

While Marriage Story details the fragmentation of a marriage, the critical opinion of this 2019 film, which garnered a 94 on Metacritic, couldn't be more unified. Across the stage, across the country, and across the room, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson's characters become disillusioned, first with their marriage and then with their divorce. It's undoubtedly a love story, just not the type we usually think of. Many romances are told from their beginnings, but it's a rare one that's told from the end. This makes it emotionally raw from the start, so bring your tissues.

There's love in this tale both between the family involved — the couple have a son together — and in the compassionate narrative created by director Noah Baumbach. And though the director made the film after his own divorce, there's something here that resonates with just about everyone. Baumbach wanted something more "expansive" than his own experience, and that required a lot of effort and research involving friends, acquaintances, lawyers, and mediators. Marriage Story might be more accurately titled Marriage Stories.

Part of this expansiveness and compassion requires another kind of perspective — not all of the love in the film is classically romantic. Some of it is nostalgic, some familial, and some even comes in the form of frustration and resentment, a form of love often unacknowledged or even condemned in more idealistic narratives. This narrative is refreshing because it's real. In their pain, the couple finds space for their story.

Besides watching two movies from the rest of this list back to back, 2019's The Irishman is the best three-and-a-half hours you'll spend on Netflix this year. To earn a 94 Metascore, it has to be impressive ... and keep being impressive, hour after hour.

In many ways, this film takes a very unique approach to time that's partially responsible for its great success. It took a lot of effort, both physical and digital, to capture the full lifespans of the highly coveted cast, composed of multiple crime genre veterans and long-time (as in, spanning decades) Scorsese collaborators. But these life stories are what make the film hit so hard, with its tale of an Irish hitman rising through the Italian mob, growing older, and losing everyone who's close to him.

At first, there was no guarantee the film — and making veteran actors look like men in their 20s — was even possible. So Scorsese and De Niro recreated a scene from Goodfellas (which also starred Joe Pesci and came out way back in 1990) to test their de-aging technology. This required a three-camera digital setup while the rest of the piece was shot on film. Visual effects and cinematography departments worked extensively to make sure the two methods combined seamlessly.

The ability of the same actors to play the same characters at various points in their lives was essential to the success of the film and its theme, and for the most part, it works beautifully. More than just another crime drama, Scorsese's film explores the oblivion of age and the tragedy of reflecting on deplorable but long-buried choices while the world moves on without you. And Scorsese does it all while forcing us to watch our favorite actors grow old.

This 2016 documentary is an exploration of James Baldwin's observations on race in America, primarily based on his unfinished work Remember This House. The documentary feature I Am Not Your Negro, which sits at 95 on Metacritic, reminiscences on his personal experience with civil rights leaders and American society and history. 

With a voiceover performance from Samuel L. Jackson, this film delves into the ideas of three civil rights leaders in a way we haven't seen them on film before — Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, all of whom were assassinated — from the perspective of Baldwin, a famous chronicler of the struggle against racial injustice in America and a man who knew them all. Director Raoul Peck chooses to focus overwhelmingly on the words of Baldwin himself rather than the analysis of academics, leading to a more intimate portrait of an era.

And though the four men at the heart of the film, the three assassinated activists and Baldwin himself, have been dead for decades, the story remains timeless. This fact alone is an indication of how far the US still has to go in the fight against white supremacy, and I Am Not Your Negro is a necessary and moving reminder.

You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies, as the tagline goes, and you don't get to a 95 score on Metacritic without excelling in just about every aspect of filmmaking, from sound design to acting, editing to directing. If Facebook weren't by now synonymous with a revolution in the concept of social networking, this film's title would have the ring of a thriller — and with David Fincher as director, much of the actual drama does as well.

In 2010, Fincher's The Social Network kicked off a decade that would come to be defined in many ways by the evolution of social media and culture alongside it. As a result, the film itself was a challenging endeavor. At the time of production, the events of the movie were still being disputed, so some of the brilliant tension we see in the film was closer to real than we knew.

Despite the controversy, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told Deadline that signing onto the project was "the fastest he'd ever said yes to anything" — not because he had a background or a great deal of interest in the story and controversial legacy of a website. Instead, he agreed to write the script because of the old-as-time themes of betrayal, power, friendship, and class. The Social Network took the kind of conflict we've all been through and gave it the treatment of a thriller.

The second-greatest movie critics say you can stream on Netflix is a Spanish-language opus — a testament to the canon of films by Latinx directors that's endlessly worth exploring. Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 dark fantasy parable from Guillermo del Toro, originally titled El Laberinto del Fauno in Spanish, that earned a 98 out of 100 on Metacritic.

Pan's Labyrinth is the kind of movie you can watch at any age. If you've seen it before, you'll probably realize something new each time, especially considering how engrossing the dark and mystical visuals are. A lot of effort went into them. Doug Jones, who plays both the Faun character and the Pale Man, took six hours to get into his makeup every day for the latter role. But he used that time well. He didn't speak Spanish, so he spent his time in the makeup chair practicing his lines.

For audience members who don't speak Spanish either, you hardly even notice the subtitles. The mythology is so freshly executed that if anything, it feels like you're a little kid reading a fantasy book that's coming to life before your eyes. But at the same time, the overt themes of war and death are so much darker than a typical fantasy, catching the audience in the sweet spot between whimsy and horror.