In this article we take a look at the 25 best movies on Netflix now. Click to skip ahead and jump to 5 best movies on Netflix now.
Many of the millions and millions of people who binge watch their favorite movies and TV shows on Netflix may not know that there was a time when it was actually the first online DVD rental store in 1997, when they had less than a thousand titles and just 30 employees. This wasn’t because of the existence of more titles that Netflix was unable to obtain; they had such an early head start that at the time, these were the only titles available on DVD, with VHS being the far more popular format at the time. However, Netflix opted to rent out DVDs as VHS was bulkier and far more difficult to transport.
While Netflix initially rented out DVDs for a fee per DVD ala Blockbuster (also its biggest competitor), it soon stopped this practice and introduced a monthly membership fee for which users could rent DVDs without any fear of late fees, due dates, shipping fees, handling fees and the myriad of additional charges often input by other rental stores at the time. In fact, Netflix was a loss-making company at the time, and Blockbuster offered to acquire it for $50 million, so they would have an online presence but Netflix wisely refused the deal. As the popularity of DVDs grew, so did the popularity of Netflix, leading to an IPO in 2002.
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However, it was actually in 2007, around a decade after Netflix had been established and it had delivered its 1 billionth DVD, that it started to move away from its core business of delivering DVDs and instead moved to online streaming, as it was only around this time that bandwidth levels met the criteria needed for streaming high quality movies. This, coupled with the matching service Netflix offered, which recommended titles most likely to be watched by that specific person, made it a big hit.
Netflix currently has over 167 million members, and is one of the most dominant companies in the entertainment industry on a global level. In fact, it is this global reach which has helped local niche shows from foreign countries to be popular across the world, with shows such as ‘La Casa De Papel’ or ‘Money Heist’, plucked from relative obscurity to become an international sensation. It has also changed the entertainment landscape; now, huge movies aren’t always released in theaters, they can also be released on Netflix as shown by The Irishman in 2019, among many others. Netflix is paying top stars tens of millions of dollars to attract their services and release major movies directly on the streaming giant. In fact, it is now one of the biggest deciders of the highest earning actors and actresses in the world, especially since the pandemic hit.
Post pandemic, Netflix has been one of the few winners. In fact, many online sites have done well, with the increase in Amazon’s share price increase Jeff Bezos’s net worth by $60 billion in 2020 alone, more of which you can see in the top 20 richest people in the world. As people had to hunker down in their homes, and self isolate to prevent the virus from spreading and doing more damage than it already has, many turned to comfort television, which in turn led to Netflix userbase growing significantly as well. Netflix added 15.8 million subscribers in only its first quarter, when the lockdown hadn’t even begun.
For our rankings to determine the 25 best movies on Netflix right now, we had options from over 4,000 titles. We of course discarded TV shows as they don’t fall under our title, which made things easier but only slightly so. We then visited several websites including Vulture, Digital Trends and New York Times. We selected the fifty most common titles we found in these lists and then ranked them according to both their ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. We gave 70% weighting to IMDB as it is rated by users rather than critics, because critics can often be out of touch with the users. Based on this, we were able to get a clear picture of the top movies that are available for viewing. Remember that this list is catered to the US and, based on geographical reasons, these titles may not be available in other countries. Further, this is based on the latest listing as the titles in the Netflix library can change month to month. If you want to look for movies on a specific niche, you can take a look at the 10 movies about amnesia on Netflix. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the best movies to while away the lockdown, starting with number 25:
25. Two Popes
A biographical movie set in the Vatican City after the Vatican City leaks, the film is based on the life of Pope Benedict XVI, played by the legendary Anthony Hopkins, and his attempt to convince Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to not resign as an archbishop since he wants to end his own papacy. The screenplay and the performances were widely acclaimed, allowing it to score 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 7.6 on IMDB.
Pixabay/Public Domain
