2024 has n’t been a peculiarly bad or good year for Netflix . The cyclosis service has had few truly breakout , critically adore hit this year , but it ’s also had an equally small routine of genuinely awful misses . This Libra the Scales has both made it easy for some of Netflix ’s better motion-picture show of the past 12 months to fly disappointingly under the radar and left little interrogation about which of the cyclosis service ’s 2024 movies deserve to be consider its best .
We also have guides to thebest movie on Netflix , thebest movies on Hulu , thebest moving picture on Amazon Prime Video , thebest movies on Max , and thebest movies on Disney+ .
10. The Kitchen
Co - written and co - directed by Daniel Kaluuya , The Kitchenis a deeply felt , considered cut of sci - fi filmmaking that drops viewers in a future tense where societal living accommodations stoppage have been almost entirely eliminated from London . It rivet on a lone hand father ( Kane Robinson ) whose desire to leave the city ’s sole stay on societal housing residential area , known as “ The Kitchen , ” is complicated by a chance encounter with his estranged son ( Jedaiah Bannerman ) .
The film , which discharge on Netflix with minuscule tucket in January , is an ambitious , hold up - in sci - fi dramatic play that has just as many ideas on its mind as it does emotions lurking beneath its visually rich , vibrant dystopian surface .
9. The Shadow Strays
There are action movies that understand the power of restraint and then there are action motion picture that have no interest in ever holding back . Director Timo Tjahjanto’sThe Shadow Straysfalls hard into the latter category . A 143 - minute heroic poem about an assassinator ( Aurora Ribero ) who put out to save a kidnapped , latterly orphaned immature boy , The Shadow Straysis a ego - indulgent but even so staggering piece of work .
It features some of the most beastly and brilliantly grass action set pieces of the year , include an initiative battle that feel simultaneously indebted to films likeKill Bill Vol . 1andJohn Wickand yet distinct and violently inventive enough to be the sole workplace of a filmmaker as unique and unafraid as Tjahjanto .
8. The Piano Lesson
Malcolm Washington did n’t take the easy route when he take to make his feature directorial entry an adjustment of August Wilson ’s 1987 playThe Piano Lesson . Wilson ’s plays have been adapted a few times antecedently , include once by Washington ’s male parent , Denzel , who famously star in and helmed a film adjustment of Wilson’sFencesin 2016 . It is , however , rare to see a filmmaker turn what is originally a stage play into the form of profoundly cinematic , visually enrapturing experience that Washington does withThe Piano Lesson . The Netflix original is a dim and ambitious film , one overflowing with powerful mental image and memorable performances , let in Danielle Deadwyler ’s outstanding hold up tour as a woman who refuses to part with a kinsfolk heirloom , despite its complicated history .
The Piano Lesson , in other Logos , is deserving seek out whether you ’re familiar with Wilson ’s original play or not . It announces Washington as a fresh directorial phonation with a compelling eye and an even more challenging artistic drive .
7. It’s What’s Inside
author - director Greg Jardin’sIt ’s What ’s Insideis one of the most clever and fresh repulsion movies of the year . It ’s an ensemble thriller about a group of old college friends whose reunion is complicated when one of them get a machine that lets them swap bodies with each other . What starts out as a silly exculpation to play an extremely heighten biz ofWerewolfquickly turns into a vessel for messy , long - eat up grudges and mistakes to be unearthed again . A few appall eddy of destiny later , the film ’s reference each find themselves desperate to wrest some kind of control back from their share , more and more mayhem - fill dark . The whole picture , meanwhile , is elevated by Jardin ’s playful , DIY visual expressive style , which both matches and further reinforcesIt ’s What ’s Inside‘s intoxicatingly dark , acidic tone .
6. Carry-On
After getting briefly lost pass water unfortunately bad blockbuster for Dwayne “ The Rock ” Johnson , theatre director Jaume Collet - Serrareturned to the world of lean , B - motion-picture show action thrillers this class withCarry - On . The motion picture , a thriller about a TSA agent ( Taron Egerton ) who becomes the unwilling instrument in a bad guy ’s ( Jason Bateman ) plot to smuggle a biological arm onto a packed Christmas Eve flight , is a taut and effortlessly engaging slice of action filmmaking . It is , in fact , one of the better action at law moving picture that Netflix has invested in up to this point . It ’s a check blockbuster that feels both refreshingly modern and yet inextricably tie to the kind of ’ 80s and ’ 90s action thrillers we seldom see the ilk of any longer .
The motion picture does n’t take itself too seriously , but it is also — like so many of Collet - Serra ’s preceding thriller — undeniably well - made . It is the two things that all Netflix originals like it should be : lightweight and a whole lot of sport .
5. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
The Remarkable Life of Ibelinis a Norse documentary unloosen byNetflixthis class about Mats Steen , a man born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy . The film explore not only how Mats ’ condition made it practically impossible for him to result a normal life sentence but also how he found a second , clandestine existence in the minute he spent playingWorld of Warcraftand chatting online with the friend he made in the game . Using a mix of both archival and in - game footage , The Remarkable Life of Ibelinmovingly explore the perseverance of its real - life topic and the impingement he had on his friends ’ survive even from a distance . There are a quite a little of picture , television show , and volume made nowadays about the minus effects of our current Internet Age , and for good rationality . ButThe Remarkable Life of Ibelinisn’t one of them . It ’s an uplifting and revelatory documentary — one that discover hope in even the most heartbreaking and unmanageable of story .
4. His Three Daughters
One of Netflix ’s most low - winder and unspoilt master of the twelvemonth , His Three Daughtersis both a quietly moving family play and a wonderful show window for its three leash : Elizabeth Olsen , Carrie Coon , and Natasha Lyonne . The actress , all of whom have become more famous stars in late years , champion in the Azazel Jacobs - take aim , New York City - place play as three very unlike but inseparably colligate daughters of the same , dying gentleman’s gentleman . His Three Daughtersfollows them as they attempt to take charge of their dad in his last days and mourn their impendent deprivation in ways that sometimes infringe with each other ’s preferred methods of doing so . What emerges from all the inevitable bickering between them is a narration about heartbreak and the force of certain familial bond that merit your attention , if only for the actuate operation it deplume out of its three distinct , equally formidable wiz .
3. Woman of the Hour
Anna Kendrick ’s feature directorial unveiling , Woman of the Hour , very easily could have been a unconditional , exploitatory true - crime thriller . The moving-picture show , which is ground on the real - life story of a serial killer who went on a dating game show in the midst of his killing fling in the seventies , depicts the appall death of multiple women , and a significant portion of its screen time is take up by its central male killer ( played here by Daniel Zovatto ) . Every time it looks likeWoman of the Hourmight devolve into a trashy thriller , though , Kendrick , who both directs and stars in the film , always pull off to make a creative option that firmly re - grounds it in the well of female pain and choler at the pith of its story . It is a virtuoso directorial debut , one that elegantly and chillingly communicate its estimation without ever drop off the visual and editorial precision that elevates it above other , less intelligent true - crime fare .
2. Rebel Ridge
Rebel Ridgeis another tightly composed , face - shredding small - townsfolk thriller from writer - director Jeremy Saulnier . Unlike his past films , though , Rebel Ridgehas the tot up benefit of featuring a genuinely awe - inspiringmovie wizard performanceat the center of it , good manners of breakout starAaron Pierre . The thespian leads the film as a former marine whose desperate , reliable attempts to pay his cousin ’s bail are thwarted by corrupt local cops , led by the dirty , arrogant Chief Sandy Burnne ( Don Johnson ) . Before long , Pierre ’s Terry Richmond has been forced into a one - man warfare against his badge - wearing foe . Saulnier , however , does n’t ever go to the same , shockingly violent places inRebel Ridgethat he has in some of his late pic . Instead , he draws out the pic ’s primal fight for as long as he can .
In doing so , Saulnier attain a level of tension and kindle a point of defeat out of the viewer that is , at times , breathtaking . Almost no other thriller from this year is as well - constructed or immediately engaging asRebel Ridge .
1. Hit Man
Based on the real - spirit adventures of a college professor who worked in the eighties and ’ 90s as a bastard hitman for his local police section , film director Richard Linklater’sHit Manis a breezy , infectiously fun amatory crime comedy . It also makes a skilful case for both Glen Powell and Adria Arjona ’s movie star potential than any other project either performing artist has worked on to date . The former , who co - wroteHit Man‘s screenplay with Linklater , gets the fortune to don multiple disguise and show off his full comedic and dramatic range in the film , all while delivering one of the most witching heartthrob performances of the class .
While much of the acclaim forHit Manhas understandably gone Powell ’s direction , though , it ’s Arjona ’s heroic , deceivingly funny performance that holds the film together . Like Barbara Stanwyck or Katharine Hepburn might have done in the 1940s , she take in a sketch of a femme fatale and turn her into a living , catch one’s breath woman whose desires and ego - destructive pulsation all make gumption withinHit Man‘s heightened , screwball crime story . Linklater , meanwhile , taps full into Arjona and Powell ’s onscreen chemical science and turnsHit Maninto not only one of 2024 ’s funniest and most purely enjoyable films but also one of its sexiest . It ’s undoubtedly the best moving picture that Netflix has had to offer over the past 12 months .
