Netflix‘s film library is vast and ever-changing, which can make it difficult to know what the streamer’s best offerings actually are every week.
Right now, the streaming platform’s selections include an unlikely mid-2010s franchise spin-off that works far better than it has any right to and a late ’90s stoner comedy that remains one of the most oft-quoted films of the last three decades. In addition to those two films, Netflix also has the understated, early 2010s dramedy that helped announce “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig as one of her generation’s most promising and observant artistic voices.
Here are the three best movies you can watch on Netflix this week.
“Creed” (2015)
“Sinners” writer-director Ryan Coogler’s ability to tell emotionally moving stories on the biggest possible canvases is well known at this point. But back in 2015, coming off the success of his 2013 feature directorial debut “Fruitvale Station,” the sheer scope of Coogler’s artistic abilities was not yet clear. That is what made “Creed” feel like simultaneously a revelation and a confirmation.
Coogler’s “Rocky” spin-off about Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the son of Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), learning to box professionally under the tutelage of Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a piece of franchise expansion that has no business working as well as it does. And yet it does. The film is intimate and epic, a soaring achievement that, when revisited, makes the ongoing, rising arc of Coogler’s career seem more and more like an inevitability.
“The Big Lebowski” (1998)
A stoner comedy for the ages, writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski” is one of the most quotable and iconic American films of the last 30 years. The duo’s unlikely follow-up to their Oscar-winning, brutal 1996 crime thriller “Fargo” abandons that film’s icy midwest plains for the urban streets and desert hills of Los Angeles.
There, the film introduces viewers to its protagonist, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a perpetually stoned slacker who finds himself caught up in a convoluted kidnapping and ransom plot involving a curmudgeony millionaire, a porn kingpin and a group of German nihilists. Featuring two unforgettable performances from Bridges and John Goodman, “The Big Lebowski” is the rare comedy that only seems to get funnier the more times you see it.
“Frances Ha” (2013)
“Frances Ha” is one of the best films that “Marriage Story” filmmaker Noah Baumbach has ever made. Set in New York City, this black-and-white dramedy follows a struggling 27-year-old dancer (star and co-writer Greta Gerwig) who finds herself increasingly unmoored in the city and in her own life after her best friend (Mickey Sumner) moves out of their shared place to live in a nicer neighborhood.
What follows is a delicate, empathetic and remarkably observant film about growing up and finding yourself — and how often that process makes you feel incapable and behind. It is one of the best portraits of late 20s confusion and heartbreak that you will likely ever see.
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