The five best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend
How ironic is it that a lot of movies end with people “starting over”, generally after a massive change or tragedy, and in theory, it sounds rather lovely when people talk about a new beginning in real life too, doesn’t it… Actually, no, scrap that; it sounds easy, which is worse, as though you simply decide one morning that the old life has been a bit shabby and the new morning will be everything. Be honest, how many Netflix flicks have you binged where films start/end this way?
And then those folks in the film do try to carry on, alright, for a while, except if getting rid of all that old rubbish was that easy, there had been no rehabs or therapists in existence! Not that this kind of cinema is bad. Please, most people watch it because they want to escape the harsh realities we’re all living in, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Still, if you’d rather like stories where starting again is a bit wonky and nobody has the slightest idea whether they are fixing their life or making an even bigger mess of it, this weekend’s picks are all for you.
That’s more or less where these five Netflix films find their characters: when the old plan has fallen apart, and they are trying to figure out what comes next.
The five best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend
Doing Life (Tyler Perry, 2026)
We might as well start with the latest one. Now Doing Life is a prison romance, which is not exactly where you expect a list about fresh starts to kick off, because Naomi Baker plays a single mum already trying to keep her life from going completely trashy, while Jay Reeves plays a man behind bars whose own future has more or less hit a brick wall, so neither of them is having a “fresh start”, technically.
Their connection begins through letters, and what thought it starts as two people just writing back and forth, son, blooms into something with meaning, which is where Tyler Perry gets into that whole second-chance business without making it neat, because sometimes the new start of your life turns up from a place that looks, on paper, like a complete dead end.
Ruth & Boaz (Alanna Brown, 2025)
From prison letters we move to Tennessee with Ruth & Boaz, which is quite the change of scenery, although Ruth is having quite the difficult time, leaving the Atlanta music scene after her life takes a knock and ends up helping Naomi, a widow trying to keep going after her own loss. So Ruth is not arriving with some grand reinvention plan here, alright? She is basically trying to work out what on earth comes next, and somewhere in that muddle she meets Boaz, a vineyard owner who becomes more than just another guy she happens to know.
Now, before you think the film just forgets Naomi as soon as romance is in the picture, you are mistaken, and thank God for that, because director Alanna Brown wanted Ruth and Naomi’s relationship to be equally important, which gives the story a bit more backbone than simply waiting for Ruth to find a man and call the job done. Ruth & Boaz also launched Tyler Perry and DeVon Franklin’s Netflix partnership for faith-based films, so this little Tennessee love story was a more important milestone than you think.
Nappily Ever After (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2018)
Now in Nappily Ever After we are dealing with a woman who, from the outside, looks as though she has got life more or less sewn up, and you know the type we mean: decent career, doctor boyfriend, nothing much to complain about, except Sanaa Lathan’s Violet Jones has spent years trying to fit this very particular picture of what she ought to be. This woman was told everything right down to the hair her mother taught her to keep straight, so when the proposal she has been expecting fails to materialise, well… that puts the cat among the pigeons, because once her perfect picture cracks, she starts looking at the rest of her life and wondering how much of it she chose for herself in the first place.
Did you know that for a part in this film, Lathan shaved her own head on camera for real, with one proper chance to get the scene, so all that hair on the floor is hers, and you can understand how much effort she has put into living Violet’s character! Haifaa Al-Mansour directs from Trisha R. Thomas’ novel, and the film is not fussed with handing Violet another chap and giving it a cookie-cutter ending. The real business is her unpicking this life she has built for everyone else and seeing what is left when she stops trying to be such a goodie-two-shoes.
A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry, 2022)
Twenty-seven years: That’s how long A Jazzman’s Blues rattled around Tyler Perry’s life after he first started writing it in the 1990s. Having sneaked into an Atlanta performance of August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, met Wilson afterwards and gone home with enough encouragement to start putting the whole thing on paper. Perry once fancied himself as the lead opposite Halle Berry as well, but, well… two and a half decades will rather spoil that plan.
By the time the film came, Joshua Boone had taken over as Bayou, and Solea Pfeiffer was Leanne, two young lovers in 1930s Georgia who get torn apart when racism and Leanne’s ability to pass as white shove their relationship into a strange pace, leaving Bayou to leg it to Chicago, where music gives him another crack at life. Except the past, as ever, doesn’t stay put. Perry finally got to make the first screenplay he ever wrote. Took him long enough, though.
Good on Paper (Kimmy Gatewood, 2021)
Good on Paper may have the wildest backstory of all the films because Iliza Shlesinger did not have to dream up much of the dating nightmare she faces in the film. That’s right, around two-thirds of the film came from her own experience, and she has said every lie Dennis tells in the movie was told to her by the man who inspired him.
Shlesinger plays Andrea, a stand-up comic who has kept romance unprioritised for a long time until Dennis turns up looking like a Yale-educated hedge-fund success with his life in order, which, naturally, is where things start going wonky, because the more Andrea gives him access to herself, the more his story starts springing leaks. Her best friend Margot realises that something is off before Andrea does, and from there the whole thing becomes detective work, with Andrea trying to work out how much of Dennis exists outside his own storytelling.