(Credit: Netflix)

Stop scrolling. Just for a second. If your plan to cure your Monday blues is by watching a Netflix film, we have got just the right pick. You are not going to find anything better than October Sky tonight. Not if you are tired. Not if you are overwhelmed. Not if your brain is begging for something quiet, hopeful, and surprisingly powerful.

Here is the setting: a small coal-mining town in 1950s West Virginia. A place where boys either become miners or leave. That is it. Those are the options. But then a satellite goes up, Sputnik, and the sky gets a little more interesting. A teenage boy looks up. And everything changes.

That boy is Homer Hickam, played by baby-faced Jake Gyllenhaal before he became all brooding and complicated. This is early, Jake. Wide-eyed. Awkward. Dreaming about rockets in a town where even dreaming is a bit suspicious. He has no money. No connections. His dad wants him underground. But he has friends. A stolen book about rocketry. And a stubborn belief that maybe, just maybe, he can build something that flies.

You think you know where this is going. You do not. Because this is not a loud movie, and it does not throw big speeches at you. It sneaks up. A teacher says one kind thing. A friend refuses to give up. A father breaks in a way that feels too real. And slowly, this story about science projects and small-town life starts feeling bigger than most space films you have seen.

October Sky is not trending. It is not shiny. But it hits different. It hits in that part of you that used to make posters for science fairs. Or wanted to be something impossible. Or just needed one person to say, “Go for it.”

There is a quiet magic to it. A boy holding burnt rocket parts. A classroom full of kids who do not know what they are cheering for but cheer anyway. It is not showy. It just feels true.

And the cast? Every single one of them lands. Chris Cooper as the distant father. Laura Dern as the teacher who sees more. The friends who stumble into helping, even when they do not believe in it themselves. It is one of those films where no one’s trying to steal the scene, and somehow that makes it work even more.

What you walk away with is not “Wow, that was deep.” What you walk away with is, “Maybe I should try again.” That thing you shelved. That dream you paused. That idea you thought was too late to start. This film nudges it back toward you.

And it looks beautiful too. Not in a polished, studio-flex way. In the way that small towns look at golden hour. Dusty sunlight. Cold mornings. Empty fields with too much sky.

So, skip the mindless scroll tonight. Forget the pressure to watch something new, loud, or high-concept.

Watch October Sky. It is quiet. It is kind. It is the kind of movie that gets under your skin in the softest way possible and makes you want to do something with your hands again.

Even if that something is just building a little rocket. Out of junk. In your backyard. Just because.