The five best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend
Netflix spent the late noughties kicking at Hollywood’s door, and by 2021, it had pretty much let itself in. Between 2018 and 2021, the streamer was aggressively competing with big studios with its large-scale as well as experimental movies.
Remember Roma? The Mexican indie won three Oscars, while The Irishman and Marriage Story helped Netflix storm into awards territory. Not bad for a company plenty of people still associated with box sets, eh?
Then 2020 hit… and the film business took a punch, nay, a flurry, in the gut. Cinemas were closed while multiple release plans fell apart, but Netflix… The platform kept serving up films at home, including Extraction, The Old Guard and Enola Holmes.
By 2021, Netflix was promising at least one new movie every week. Every week! Sounds a bit crazy looking back now, doesn’t it?
The big releases grabbed the headlines, of course, but that era also left behind smaller thrillers and international dramas that never received the same fuss. And honestly, some of those are the ones worth having a second look at now.
The five best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend
The Guilty (Antoine Fuqua, 2021)
One phone call – that’s all it takes to make Joe Baylor’s entire morning go to hell. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the LAPD officer in The Guilty who is stuck on 911 duty while waiting for a court hearing, when Emily rings and can barely speak without giving herself away. That is enough for Joe. He starts pulling apart her clipped answers, checking phone records, calling her daughter, basically anything he can get his hands on, and soon he is convinced she has been kidnapped. And once Joe decides he is right, good luck stopping him!
Director Antoine Fuqua keeps us trapped inside that call centre along with Baylor, so everything outside comes through voices, silence… and obviously Joe’s assumptions. Riley Keough voices Emily, while Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano are among the actors heard through Joe’s phone calls. And then… boom. Joe’s version of events starts cracking, bit by bit. And suddenly, everything he thought he knew looks very, very shaky.
The Occupant (Àlex Pastor and David Pastor, 2020)
From a man trapped at his desk, we move to a completely contrasting one: someone who really needs to learn to stay out of other people’s houses. Javier Muñoz, played by Javier Gutiérrez, used to be a successful advertising executive in Barcelona until unemployment made him and his family move out of their expensive flat. But then… he realises he still has the keys. Eh, eh? Does he hand them back? Come on, people, of course not. He starts sneaking in and studying the family living there now. Crossing the boundary here, mate!
That family is Tomás, Lara and their daughter, and the really creepy part begins when Javier finds a way into Tomás’s life too. He discovers Tomás attends Alcoholics Anonymous and joins the meetings under false pretences as he eventually becomes someone Tomás trusts. Way to go, man! Written and directed by brothers Àlex and David Pastor, The Occupant is a story of a professional failure turning into a dark story and a reminder to check your locks twice before you leave your house.
Calibre (Matt Palmer, 2018)
This English thriller starts with Jack Lowden, who plays a guy named Vaughn. He heads into the Scottish Highlands with his friend Marcus for a hunting weekend before he becomes a father, and after a night in the village, they go into the woods with their rifles, where Vaughn spots a deer and takes the shot. Except… there is a child behind it. Sadly, the bullet kills the boy, and before Vaughn has even had time to understand what he has done, the boy’s father appears, and Marcus shoots him too. Quick reflexes, bad decision-making.
And after this shocking mess, you hope someone will make one sensible decision… but no! Marcus convinces Vaughn that going to the police will destroy their lives, so instead they hide what happened and return to the village, where they now have to sit among people who have no idea what these two men have left behind in the woods, and all the while just watch these two to confess! There might be a lot of upsetting things going on in Calibre, but one good thing that happened is that it went on to win the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature at Edinburgh.
Shirkers (Sandi Tan, 2018)
After three thrillers, we have a rather fascinating documentary for you: Shirkers. But if you thought this Netflix doc would get you out of that mystery trap, then let us stop you because it is just as bizarre! In 1992, Sandi Tan and her friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique set out to make a road movie in Singapore, with Tan writing and starring while their American mentor, Georges Cardona, directed. After shooting on 16mm, they were happy that they had finished the film, but then… Cardona vanished with the footage. Excuse me?
More than twenty years later, the reels came back after Cardona’s widow contacted Tan, although the soundtrack was missing, because this story had another twist waiting. Tan used the footage and interviews to work out what happened and confront Cardona’s hold over them, turning the documentary into a memoir with a mystery running through it. And the best part? She reclaimed the project and won Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary directing award.
Prayers for the Stolen (Tatiana Huezo, 2021)
From a stolen film, we come to our last stop, which is quite frightening, actually, because in Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers for the Stolen, it is girls who can disappear. Ana lives with her mother, Rita, in a Mexican mountain village where cartel violence hangs over everyday life, and the mothers know exactly what that can mean for their daughters, so they cut their hair short and dig hiding places into the ground. Ana and her friends María and Paula still go to school and try to enjoy childhood, but the sword of danger is always hanging over their heads.
As they become teenagers, the hiding becomes much harder, and Rita knows it. Ana’s father is away in the United States, which only makes it more difficult. The teachers struggle to stay, and families disappear without warning. Huezo adapted Jennifer Clement’s novel for her first narrative feature, bringing the observational eye she developed through documentary filmmaking, and the result is a painfully beautiful film about endurance.