Credit: Netflix

Everybody constantly yaps about how movies these days aren’t how they used to be, and most of the time that’s just nostalgia talking. But we don’t blame them; they do have a point. Because when you visit or revisit something from the late ‘90s, loads of those movies genuinely had more personality than half the stuff getting churned out now.

Back then, characters were allowed to be awkward, smug, insecure: basically, whatever the story needed. Remember the frizzy hair from the 90s. Today, everyone feels like they’re straight out of a salon, even a regular office-going character. The chaos is missing. And makers didn’t seem terrified of making audiences uncomfortable for a bit either, which sure makes them different from the movies we watch today.

And that’s probably why people still keep going back to these movies years later because every one of them feels made by somebody who actually had a proper vision instead of a boardroom checklist. Brilliant stuff!

Enough ranting! Let’s just get to the point. So if all the above things resonate with your inner cinephile’s frequency, then this weekend’s Netflix movie recommendations are all from the retro watchlist. Go ahead and add them to your cart.

The five best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend

Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997)

The mad thing about Good Will Hunting is that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the script themselves when they were still dead young and eventually ended up winning an Oscar for it. Fair play to them because the film is still counted as an all-time classic among movie lovers. It’s a story of Will Hunting, who works as a janitor at MIT, but he is secretly a maths genius who can solve problems that proper professors are struggling with. The problem is, Will has also got a massive chip on his shoulder and spends more time getting into fights with his friends than doing anything useful with his talent.

After another scrape lands him in trouble with the police, Professor Gerald Lambeau comes and pushes him towards therapy with Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams. That’s where the film properly gets you because Sean slowly chips away at all the emotional baggage Will has been carrying around for years. The conversations between them still feel incredibly real now. Proper beautiful bit of writing, that.

Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

Right, first things first… if nobody’s spoiled Fight Club for you yet, avoid reading too much about it before watching it because half the fun comes from watching everything slowly go completely off the rails. Edward Norton plays an unnamed office worker who is exhausted with life. He can’t sleep properly and spends his evenings buying furniture because he thinks owning expensive shelves might magically fix his brain.

Then Tyler Durden turns up. Brad Pitt plays him with this dangerous confidence that immediately changes the entire film’s energy. Suddenly, the pair start underground fight clubs where blokes batter each other senseless just to feel something again. Sounds dead simple at first… then the film keeps getting darker and more uncomfortable the longer it goes on. And fair play, people are still arguing about it now.

Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)

Before Scream turned up, slasher films were running out of steam a bit. Then Wes Craven came and basically took the mick out of the entire genre while making one of the best horror films ever at the same time. It’s impossible that you haven’t interacted with the Scream film series yet, but if you haven’t, here is what you should know. Everything starts in the town of Woodsboro after a teenager named Casey Becker gets a phone call from somebody asking horror movie questions in the creepiest voice imaginable.

Genuinely… that opening scene still makes people nervous answering unknown numbers now. Once Ghostface starts targeting Sidney Prescott and her friends, the whole film turns into this brilliant guessing game where everybody looks suspicious. What makes it work is how self-aware it is without becoming annoying about it. The characters actually know horror film clichés and spend half the runtime talking about “the rules” of surviving scary movies, which was a pretty fresh idea back then.

Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)

Lots of coming-of-age films try dead hard to sound clever, but Rushmore is one of those movies that actually did it. Wes Anderson’s style is all over this film already, but it still feels rough around the edges compared to his later stuff. Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman, is basically the world’s most overconfident school student despite being absolutely rubbish academically. The guy joins every club imaginable and spends most of his time getting carried away with ridiculous plans instead of doing actual work.

Then he becomes obsessed with teacher Rosemary Cross and starts competing with rich businessman Herman Blume, played brilliantly by Bill Murray. And don’t worry… the whole thing sounds bizarre because it absolutely is. But underneath all the awkwardness and weird little jokes, the movie is really about loneliness and people trying desperately to matter to somebody.

Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995)

Martin Scorsese basically looked at gangster films in the ‘90s and decided to make everything bigger, and hence, he made Casino. The film starts with Robert De Niro playing Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a gambling expert sent to Las Vegas by the mob to secretly run the Tangiers Casino. At first, Ace treats the place like a research lab. Every tiny detail matters to him because he knows the entire operation depends on appearances.

Then Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) arrives, and everything starts getting seriously dangerous. Nicky talks with his baseball bats instead of normal conversations, which usually complicate matters. Then Sharon Stone enters the film as Ginger and… wow. Absolute car crash of a relationship from the second it begins. What makes Casino so addictive is watching greed slowly poison everyone involved. Nobody knows when to stop. Every character thinks they can stay in control forever. So this one is for the cool kids.