The 25 best movies on Netflix right now

What’s the best movie I can watch on Netflix? We’ve all asked ourselves this question, only to spend the next 15 minutes scrolling through the streaming service’s oddly specific genre menus and getting overwhelmed by the constantly shifting trend menus. Netflix’s huge catalog of movies continues to expand day by day, week by week, month by month. This makes keeping up to date with best the service has to offer — let alone finding something to watch after a long day — a task that feels herculean at best and impossible at worst for someone not plugged into its inscrutable rhythms.

We’re here to help. For those suffering from choice paralysis, we’ve narrowed down your options to not only our favorite current movies on the platform, but the best movies Netflix has to offer.

If you’re looking for a specific genre, we’ve got the best action movies on Netflix, the best horror movies on Netflix, the best thrillers on Netflix, the best sci-fi movies on Netflix, and the best comedy movies on Netflix ready for you.

We’ll be updating this list as Netflix cycles movies in and out of its library, so be sure to check back next time you’re stuck in front of the app’s home screen.

How we pick the best movies on Netflix

Athena

Director: Romain Gavras
Cast: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon

One of the very best movies of 2022, Athena is an intense action thriller about the uprising of a French banlieue after repeated police harassment and violence. Told through the eyes of three brothers with very different perspectives on the conflict and how it should be resolved, Athena is a powerful story. But where it really shines is in its technical acumen. Music video director Romain Gavras, making his feature debut, brings breathtaking tracking shots, intricately choreographed blocking, and an absolutely electric energy. I have qualms with the ending, but I’ll never forget the jaw-dropping experience of watching Gavras cook on this movie. Whatever he does next, I’m there. —Pete Volk

Atlantics

Director: Mati Diop
Cast: Ibrahima Traoré, Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow

It’s hard to talk too much about Atlantics without giving away what makes the experience of watching it so special. It’s a beautiful, haunting love story with a tangibly beating heart, touching on romance as well as grief, class, labor, and the lingering effects of oppression. Shot gorgeously by director Mati Diop and cinematographer Claire Mathon, it was the first movie directed by a Black woman to be featured in competition in Cannes (it won the Grand Prix award, losing out on the Palme d’Or to Parasite), and is one of the most remarkable feature film debuts for a director in recent memory. —PV

Carol

Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson

Todd Haynes’ most recent movie was the straight-to-Netflix gem May December, one of the best releases of 2023 and another movie on this very list. But this month, one of Haynes’ other masterpieces returns to Netflix after being away from the service for most of the year.

Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Carol follows an affair between two women at very different points in their lives. Therese (Rooney Mara) is an aspiring photographer who works at a department store, where she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett), a gorgeous older woman going through a difficult divorce. The two fall deeply in love in this lushly drawn, beautifully shot period romance that earned six Oscar nominations and kickstarted a stretch for Haynes of releasing a new movie every other year since. Haynes is an essential part of the New Queer Cinema movement, and Carol is an essential piece of 21st-century queer filmmaking. During this Pride month, or any other, don’t miss it. —PV

Do the Right Thing

Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro

Taking place over the course of a swelteringly hot day in Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing follows a rotating cast of characters as it traces the fault lines of racial tension between the neighborhood’s African-American locals and the Italian-American owner of a local pizzeria. From the film’s iconic shadowboxing opening featuring Rosie Perez, the beautiful and intimate cinematography of frequent Lee collaborator Ernest Dickerson, to its explosive and heart-wrenching finale, Do The Right Thing is unquestionably not only one of the greatest films the director has ever produced, but one of the most essential entries in the canon of American cinema. —Toussaint Egan

Emily the Criminal

Director: John Patton Ford
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Gina Gershon

One of the smartest movies about the gig economy and our modern money struggles, Emily the Criminal was criminally (ayyy) underappreciated when it came out in 2022. The movie follows a debt-ridden woman (Aubrey Plaza) who gets involved in a credit card scam to pay off her student loans. This pulls her in the orbit of charismatic ringleader Youcef (the reliably handsome Theo Rossi), and also deeper and deeper into the world of crime, as she looks for a way out of her difficult situation.

It’s a career-best performance from Plaza, who is as funny and dry as ever, but Emily the Criminal’s script allows her to use her dramatic chops in ways we’ve rarely seen outside of White Lotus and Ingrid Goes West (and even those are primarily comedies with dramatic elements). Relentlessly paced, constantly tense, and always centered on the terrific leading performance at its core, Emily the Criminal is one of the best American films of the decade, and its potency will only grow as the problems it shines a light on continue to be exacerbated. —PV

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Director: George Miller
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

In 2015, George Miller released Mad Max: Fury Road, a post-apocalyptic tour de force that rocketed to the heights of the box office and reasserted Miller’s status as an action auteur of the highest caliber. Nearly a decade later, Miller released Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, to a comparably tepid and muted response. In spite of this, I believe time will be kind to Miller’s follow-up, which deftly builds upon the framework of the previous film to weave together an origin myth worthy of its titular protagonist.

The film is not only an explosive spectacle, but a lesson in the futility of revenge for revenge’s sake, the redemptive power of love, and the indomitable will to survive in a world rife with senseless cruelty and barbarism. I think that’s a sentiment worthy of holding on to, now more than ever, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga communicates that in spectacular fashion. —TE

Ghosts of Sugar Land

Director: Bassam Tariq

Director Bassam Tariq recently got replaced on Marvel’s upcoming Blade movie, and it’s as good a reason as any to catch up with his masterful 2019 short. Best known for the hip-hop drama Mogul Mowgli starring Riz Ahmed, Tariq’s previous movie is an enthralling documentary well worth the 21-minute running time.

Ghosts of Sugar Land is about a young group of friends in the suburbs of Texas, and what happens when one of them becomes radicalized by ISIS. A compelling portrait of an America we don’t often get to see depicted on screen, Tariq offers no easy answers, instead leaning on the shock and despair of the friends left behind, and on the dangers of isolation and loneliness in a country that often seems on the brink of collapse. A winner of multiple festival awards, including the 2019 Sundance Short Film Jury Award, Ghosts of Sugar Land is not to be missed. —PV

Godzilla Minus One

Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Hidetaka Yoshioka

This month, one of 2023’s best movies is finally available to stream for Western audiences. Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One takes the franchise back to its roots: the disillusionment of Japan’s postwar era. The King of the Monsters is once again a metaphor for atomic weapons, but where Minus One really makes its mark is with the human characters who strive again annihilation.

Ryunosuke Kamiki plays Kōichi Shikishima, a former kamikaze pilot buried under a mountain of survivor’s guilt, with Minami Hamabe as Noriko, the woman he can’t bring himself to marry. Rounding out the cast are more adventure staples, like the trio of loyal and comedic co-workers, including the older scientist who has the right plan to defeat the monster (Hidetaka Yoshioka). The key to Godzilla Minus One isn’t that the ingredients are unusual, but in Yamazaki’s presentation and execution of this full-throated anti-war, pro-hope, anti-military, throwing-shade-on-America war blockbuster.

Minus One accomplishes the rare feat of making the human drama of a Godzilla movie as compelling as the monster action — and the monster action is really, really good. Godzilla Minus One was the best time many Polygon staffers had in a movie theater in 2023, and now we can finally watch it at home. —Susana Polo

Grave of the Fireflies

Director: Isao Takahata
Cast: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara

Grave of the Fireflies is unlike any other film Studio Ghibli has produced to date. It is a war story, though not in the fantastical sense like Howl’s Moving Castle or The Boy and the Heron: It’s a tragedy about a pair of siblings who labor under the devastation brought about by the conclusion of the Pacific War, and who are faced with the absolute worst that humanity has to offer yet still manage to eke out a few precious, albeit fleeting, moments of happiness and love. It is, without question, one of the most affecting, bittersweet, and beautiful anti-war dramas ever produced, and a bona fide gem in a filmography studded with treasures.

Isao Takahata’s body of work may not be as highly lauded as that of Hayao Miyazaki’s, but his animation is not any less impactful, poignant, or transcendently moving. Grave of the Fireflies is not a film for the faint of heart. It is, however, a movie that I maintain every serious appreciator of the medium of animation, let alone anime, should see at least once in their life, if only for the fact that neither your life nor your understanding of animation will ever be the same after having watched it. —TE

Hit Man

Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio

Richard Linklater returns with this Netflix Original that is at once one of his most straightforwardly enjoyable and commercial films since School of Rock, and one of his slipperiest. Adapted by Linklater and star Glen Powell from a magazine article about a Texan professor who moonlit for the police as a fake contract killer in a quasi-entrapment scheme, Hit Man takes this unbelievable truth and spins it into a shaggy-dog story that’s at once romantic, hilarious, broad, philosophical, and quietly dark. The film’s as elusive as its shape-shifting subject and will leave you with plenty to think about — but not before you’ve laughed, clapped, and marveled at a showstopping rom-com climax that puts Powell and costar Adria Arjona right at the peak of the genre. —Oli Welsh

Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Fresh off its rerelease in 70mm and IMAX, Christopher Nolan’s intergalactic masterpiece, Interstellar, has come to Netflix, and while the small screen doesn’t quite do justice to the movie’s grandeur, it’s no less entertaining at home. If you didn’t get the chance to catch this one in its return to theaters, you absolutely owe it to yourself to revisit Interstellar. —AG

Jigarthanda DoubleX

Director: Karthik Subbaraj
Cast: Raghava Lawrence, S.J. Suryah, Nimisha Sajayan

Movies about the Power of Cinema™ can be self-important, saccharine, and worst of all, boring. Jigarthanda DoubleX is none of those things. A sprawling tale of gangsters, movie stars, politicians, and the people caught between them, it’s one of my favorite movies of 2023, and a truly special film.

It’s the 1970s, and a coward who believes it’s his destiny to become a cop gets framed for a quadruple murder. He gets released from prison by a corrupt movie star/politician on the condition that he kills one of the lieutenants of that movie star/politician’s rival. Naturally, our coward poses as a movie director, because his target (a notorious gangster who loves Clint Eastwood) has made it his new mission in life to be the first dark-skinned movie star in India. While making their silly movie (a biopic of the gangster, of course), they fall in love with the magic of cinema and its transformative power on a personal and societal level.

Jigarthanda DoubleX is firing on all cylinders throughout its nearly three-hour run time, with superb direction, complex characters fully embodied by terrific actors, thrilling action sequences, and a surprising amount of emotional depth for a movie with this outlandish of a premise. Don’t miss it. —PV

The Killer

Director: David Fincher
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Sala Baker

The Killer is too good to fit into any specific boxes. David Fincher’s latest movie, once again a Netflix-only release like Mank, feels distinctly post-genre. Sure, technically it’s a thriller about an assassin who botches a hit and has to deal with the consequences, which include a price on his head too. But it’s so much more than, like a comedy about one bad day of work, or a tragedy about a guy who loves The Smiths too much. Fincher’s real flex in The Killer is to present all of these seemingly competing genres and styles as one consistent tone where no moment ever feels out of step with another, whether it’s jokes about McDonald’s or bone-crunching fights. 

Aside from Fincher’s technical skills, the other thing that makes The Killer’s dexterity possible is Michael Fassbender’s terrific performance as the assassin at the movie’s center. Fassbender goes from a winding monologues about the requirements of precision in every aspects of one’s life, to lamenting his latest fuck up in a moment’s notice without ever losing his put-on bravado. And it’s hilarious every single time.

This constant snapping between self-serious thriller and parody keeps every second of the movie fresh and makes it one of the best that Netflix has to offer. —AG

The Man from UNCLE

Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander

Director Guy Ritchie is experiencing a bit of a renaissance thanks to his Netflix series The Gentlemen, which premiered on the platform in 2024. The Gentlemen is a perfect showcase for Ritchie’s talent for writing fast-talking British criminals, but it’s another movie on Netflix that might be his high-water mark for purely fun filmmaking: The Man from UNCLE.

Loosely adapted from the television series of the same name, the movie follows two competing spies, one an American (Henry Cavill) and the other from Russia (played by Armie Hammer), facing off in a clandestine mission in the midst of the Cold War. Of course, as with any great espionage movie, especially an action comedy like this one, there are plenty of wild ruses and ridiculous twists along the way. 

While certain metatextual elements of the film (namely Armie Hammer’s involvement) have aged somewhat poorly, the movie remains a tremendously fun time, with some of Ritchie’s funniest writing ever bolstered by Cavill and an incredible supporting cast that includes Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant. On top of all that, The Man from UNCLE also makes a pretty excellent pairing with Apple TV Plus’ Slow Horses, if you want a double dose of spying. —AG

May December

Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton

The Oscars are this weekend (or, at least, they are when I’m writing this), so I thought it would be fitting to recommend one of the bigger Oscar snubs of the year. Yes, May December got nominated for its (great) screenplay, but it is also one of the best films of 2023 and features three of the most outstanding performances of the year, none of which had room in a stacked nominations list.

The latest film from New Queer Cinema icon Todd Haynes (Carol, Safe) sees the legendary director reunite with frequent collaborator Julianne Moore for one of their most intriguing projects yet. May December follows an actor, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who travels to Georgia to prepare for a role based on Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman who became a focus of national attention after sleeping with (and eventually marrying) Joe, a 13-year-old boy when their relationship first started.

It’s an uncomfortable setting, and Haynes leans into that discomfort, both through the patience of his camera and the excellence of his lead actors. As Gracie and Elizabeth attempt to suss each other out, their identities fluctuating and blending with each other (Haynes has been very vocal about the influence of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona on this film), caught in the middle is Joe. Melton’s performance is haunting, a boy in a man’s body still caught in his teen years, closer in age to his children than to his wife. It’s the kind of adult drama we don’t get enough of anymore, and I’m glad Haynes is still here to make these kind of movies. —PV

My Oni Girl

Director: Tomotaka Shibayama
Cast: Kenshô Ono, Miyu Tomita, Shintarô Asanuma

The latest anime movie from the director of the charming 2020 film A Whisker Away (also on Netflix) starts in a place that’s going to seem mighty familiar to longtime anime viewers: A shy, uptight boy has his world upended by a loud, cheerfully demanding girl, and adventures ensue. But My Oni Girl writer-director Tomotaka Shibayama and co-writer Yûko Kakihara (Trapezium, Apothecary Diaries, the 2020s Urusei Yatsura) subvert the usual script pretty quickly, making it a sweet, rewarding surprise.

The film has some fairly fuzzy story logic that may keep viewers guessing or discussing: What the heck is an oni in this movie, anyway? When a girl with purple-pink hair and a single delicate horn drops into the life of Hiiragi Yatsuse, a quiet boy whose schoolmates frequently take advantage of his polite eagerness to please, they end up on an episodic cross-country road trip together to look for her mother.

Along the way, Hiiragi finds out that his tendency to repress and hide his emotions is turning him into an oni, too — though in this world, oni just seem to be people with horns, and there’s no sign that any of the rest of them repress their emotions. The oni girl, Tsumugi, is certainly unrepressed — and a role model for Hiiragi in many ways.

My Oni Girl owes a clear debt to Studio Ghibli — not just in the extended shout-out to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (which Shibayama worked on as a digital ink-and-paint artist), but in the character dynamics, and some of the spookier supernatural imagery. As Hiiragi supports, saves, and grows fond of his upbeat new friend, they both become targets for creatures they don’t understand, and unraveling what’s going on and what they need to do about turns what starts as a small domestic film into a big, winning adventure. —Tasha Robinson

The Night Comes for Us

Director: Timo Tjahjanto
Cast: Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, Julie Estelle

The Night Comes for Us just fucking whips, OK? Why waste time on subtlety and preamble; the film certainly doesn’t! Indonesian action thrillers have been enjoying a renaissance period ever since Gareth Evans’ 2011 film The Raid kicked the door down and mollywhopped everything else in sight. Timo Tjahjanto’s 2018 film certainly follows in the footsteps of Evans’ own, with The Raid star Joe Taslim starring here as Ito, a gangland enforcer who betrays his Triad crime family by sparing the life of a child and attempting to flee the country.

Fellow The Raid star Iko Uwais shows up here as Arian, Ito’s childhood friend and fellow enforcer, who is tasked with hunting down Ito and recovering the girl. The action comes fast and frenzied here, with kinetic choreography and dazzling handheld cinematography that makes every punch, fall, and stab count. If you need to get your adrenaline pumping, throw this one on. —TE

Parasite

Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Cho Yeo-jeong

Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite is a many-featured organism as terrifying as it is darkly hilarious. Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder) stars as Kim Ki-taek, the patriarch of an impoverished family just barely making a living out of the basement apartment they live in. When his son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) gets a job as an English tutor for a wealthy family living in an extravagant modern home, the two families slowly yet surely intertwine in a symbiotic spiral of greed, exploitation, and class before exploding into a shockingly unpredictable finale. Trenchant social commentary combined with a breadth of memorable performances culminate in a remarkable film that’s more than the sum of its parts. —TE

Psychokinesis

Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Cast: Ryu Seung-ryong, Jung Yu-mi, Park Jeong-min

From Korean animator Yeon Sang-ho — best known for his jump to live action, 2016’s zombie knockout Train to Busan (also on Netflix) — Psychokinesis follows Shin, a bumbling, borderline-alcoholic security guard who drinks from a mountain spring recently infected by a meteorite and gains telekinetic powers. Ryu Seung-ryong is a joy as the oaf, who’s learning to control his abilities just as his estranged daughter re-enters his life and sucks him into a real-estate-driven class war. Psychokinesis plays Shin’s “fighting style” for laughs, and while it’s not as cartoonish as Chinese director Stephen Chow’s genre hybrids, the movie can make the flying object mayhem both cheeky and thrilling. The political edge gives weight to Shin’s superpowered decisions, but Sang-ho never loses sight of why everyone showed up: to push the psychic conceit to bigger and bigger heights. —Matt Patches

Space Sweepers

Director: Jo Sung-hee
Cast: Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, Jin Seon-kyu

Set in the year 2092, Jo Sung-hee’s Space Sweepers follows the crew of freelance garbagemen in space who discover a strange childlike robot named Dorothy containing a nuclear device. Hoping to ransom Dorothy in exchange for enough money to escape their poverty-stricken lives, their plan quickly escalates into a chase to stay one step ahead of the military force of a corrupt corporation. Though it’s far from the most original of sci-fi premises, Space Sweepers is still a visually impressive film with great action and a likable cast of dysfunctional characters with great chemistry. —TE

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac

2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a genuine before-and-after moment in the history of American animation. The film not only introduced a new generation of audiences to Miles Morales, but sent a shockwave through the entire industry through its pioneering approach to CGI animation that drew heavily from the texture and techniques of comic book storytelling. In short, it was a bona fide cultural phenomenon. How exactly do you top that?

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse feels like an answer to that question on several fronts; visually, tonally, and technically. Miles is faced with a personal and moral dilemma in the form of the Spot, a dimension-hopping supervillain whose vendetta against Spider-Man threatens to endanger the entire multiverse. If that weren’t enough, Miles inadvertently runs afoul of Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), the leader of a group of Spider-People from alternate universes, who believes Miles himself is the source of the problem.

From its spectacular fight sequences to its gorgeous multiversal vistas to its absolutely bangin’ soundtrack, Across the Spider-Verse steps up to the challenge of following up one of most acclaimed American animated films in years and nails it out of the park. It’s a genuine sight to behold. With one more movie on the way, the question circles back: How exactly are they gonna top this? —TE

The Summit of the Gods

Director: Patrick Imbert
Cast: Lazare Herson-Macarel, Eric Herson-Macarel, Damien Boisseau

This 2021 French-language animated drama centers on Makoto Fukamachi, a tenacious reporter who accidentally stumbles upon the biggest mountaineering story of the century: Proof that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, not Sir Edmund Hillary, were the first climbers to reach the peak of Mount Everest in 1924. However, his only lead to break the story — an elusive mountain climber known as Habu Joji — has been missing for several years. Poring over the details of Joji’s life in the years preceding his disappearance, Makoto finds himself inadvertently drawn by the very same sense of accomplishment and meaning that has compelled countless climbers to crest Everest themselves.

Based on Jiro Taniguchi’s 2000 manga series, The Summit of the Gods is a gorgeously animated drama about the elusive quest for personal and professional validation and the perils of hubris and selfishness. The backgrounds are spectacular, the character animation is impressive, and the film’s final moments are as exhilarating as they are profoundly edifying. Brace yourself for a film that exemplifies “adult animation,” not as a juvenile display of hyper-violence and superficial titillation, but as a story about what it means to move through the world as an adult and find one’s place and purpose in it. —TE

They Cloned Tyrone

Director: Juel Taylor
Cast: John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris

If a pulp mystery-thriller that plays out like a Blaxploitation-style take on Jordan Peele’s Us by way of the anti-authority storytelling of Boots Riley sounds enticing to you, They Cloned Tyrone is an absolute must-watch.

John Boyega stars as Fontaine, a streetwise hustler who is gunned down after an altercation with a rival drug dealer. Miraculously, Fontaine wakes up the next morning completely unharmed with no memory of the confrontation whatsoever. Together with the help of local pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and a retired sex worker Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Fontaine stumbles upon a terrifying secret: His neighborhood is the site of a clandestine government operation experimenting with cloning technology and subliminal manipulation. Faced with the existential terror of this revelation, the trio must either expose this conspiracy or surrender to the roles ordained to them.

Sharply well written, brilliantly performed, and studded with satisfying surprising and twists up to its very last minutes, They Cloned Tyrone is a standout of recent Netflix movies. —TE

Upgrade

Director: Leigh Whannell
Cast: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson

Sci-fi dystopias are rarely as fun as Leigh Whannell’s fiendishly gory cyberpunk film. Set in the not-so-distant future, Upgrade centers on the story of Grey, an auto mechanic who is rendered a quadriplegic after suffering a near-fatal gunshot from a gang of men responsible for murdering his wife. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that doesn’t sound fun at all; it isn’t.

The fun part actually kicks in when Grey is implanted with an experimental AI-assisted prosthesis that, in addition to restoring his ability to walk, also grants him the power to kick some serious ass — though at the expense of granting the AI complete, albeit momentary, control over his body. The real shining quality of Upgrade is not just its production design, with futuristic interior architecture juxtaposed with dilapidated urban environments and abandoned factory floors, but its inventive fight cinematography and camerawork using a smartphone and an ARRI ALEXA Mini camera. It’s certainly not a joyful film by any stretch of the imagination, but Upgrade’s action sequences alone are exhilarating and entertaining enough to make it worth watching the entire film as a whole, which I gotta say, is not bad at all. —TE

Wingwomen

Director: Mélanie Laurent
Cast: Mélanie Laurent, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Manon Bresch

There’s a place for movies like Alien, where a script written for a male lead character was left unchanged when a woman was cast in the role. But there’s also a place for movies like Wingwomen, an action comedy that thrives in its specificity around its characters and their experiences as women in our world.

In Wingwomen, Carole (director-star Mélanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds) has a very close and protective relationship with younger Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos) — a found family situation. They are both caught in the web of crime lord Marraine (Isabelle Adjani) and looking for a way out. When they meet a new member of their team — skilled racer Sam (Manon Bresch) — they see an opportunity for one last score to break away from their life of crime and live peacefully together.

Fun, exciting, and endearing, you will not have more fun at the movies than watching Wingwomen. I wish for 20 more years of Laurent directing and starring in fun genre pictures — especially if they also star Exarchopoulos, who between this and Passages delivered two of the most memorable performances of 2023. —PV