The best Netflix original movies right now

From director Fernando Coimbra and writer Chris Roessner, Netflix’s 2017 film Sand Castle stars Nicholas Hoult as Pvt. Matt Ocre, a soldier in the Iraq War. Based on true events, the story follows a team of recruits tasked with traveling to a rural Iraqi village in order to restore a water pumping station. But en route and amid the operation, Ocre will witness the many casualties of warfare, and how losses both big and small affect the civilians, his comrades, and himself.

Written and directed by Matt Palmer, Calibre stars Jack Lowden and Martin McCann as lifelong friends Marcus and Vaughn. When the former takes the latter on a hunting trip to the Scottish Highlands, a horrific accident leads to an act of homicide that the two men were completely unprepared for. Forced to contend with their fight-or-flight actions, what began as a simple getaway for some fraternal fun soon devolves into an all-out struggle of life and death. A tense nail-biter of a thriller, Palmer’s assured direction and the film’s incredible performances make this a chilling tale for the ages.

The feature directorial debut of Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a vacationing college professor who becomes obsessed with the inner dynamics of a neighboring family. After an encounter with Nina (Dakota Johnson), the young mother of a 3-year-old daughter named Elena, the lives of both women become intertwined. This unfolds a caustic trip down memory lane as Leda is forced to reckon with her own actions as a once-young mother of two. An adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel of the same name, the beating heart of Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter is Colman, who delivers a stirring yet rooted performance as the emotionally challenged protagonist on a trip to Greece she’ll never forget.

In 1943, the Allied powers plan an all-out assault on Sicily to weaken Hitler’s grip on Europe. But there’s a problem. Namely, it seems impossible to mount an invasion without exposing the force to potential annihilation. So intelligence officers Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) dream up an inspired, daring, and improbable disinformation campaign all centered around a single dead man.

One of the more unusual gangster movies you’ll see, I Care a Lot revolves around the strange, nefarious world of court-appointed guardians for the elderly. Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) is the most professional and ruthless in the business. Marla and her business partner, Fran (Eiza González), operate a well-oiled machine of seizing the assets of elderly wards and bilking them out of their money through completely legal — if extremely unethical — methods. But when she targets Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a wealthy retiree with no living heirs or family, she may have bitten off more than she can chew. Jennifer, it just so happens, harbors her own dark secrets and has close connections to a supremely volatile gangster (Peter Dinklage) who is fully ready to play extralegal hardball.

Netflix forays into teen romance in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and the slightly-less-beloved sequel To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. Lana Condor stars as teenaged Lara Jean, a quiet outsider at her high school, who has a habit of writing love letters to all of her crushes. Of course, she’d never dream of sending them. But when they’re mysteriously leaked to the entire school, it turns out her crushes may actually be interested. As all that romance begins to spiral out of control, the letters wreak havoc on her life, inspiring more love than she can handle.

Everybody knows Sherlock Holmes, but did you know his significantly younger sister, Enola? Turns out, he doesn’t know her very well either. But when their mother suddenly goes missing and Sherlock takes only a tepid interest, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) proves she’s got just as much sleuthing ability as her famous brother as she takes off for London to uncover the mystery. Along the way, she helps a runaway lord, unwittingly stumbling into a sprawling conspiracy impacting the highest levels of government.

In I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (snappy title, right?), Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) is having a rough go of things. She’s had to deal with racist old people, insensitive drivers, and home invaders, and she’s finally decided enough is enough. So, Ruth recruits her eccentric neighbor (Elijah Wood) and sets out to find the jerks who broke into her house for some good, old-fashioned revenge. The movie is a diverse mash-up of genres and film styles, veering from comedy to drama to thriller in the span of a few minutes, but thanks to Lynskey’s impressively relatable performance and consistent presence throughout, it never becomes confusing or disjointed. When I Don’t Feel at Home is at its darkest, it’s also at its best, but it never gets too depressing to enjoy.

Kid-focused pet movies are a dime a dozen, but Okja offers a little more in the way of grown-up themes; in fact, we wouldn’t recommend it for small children at all. In the face of overpopulation and dwindling resource pools, the Mirando corporation — led by neurotic CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) — develops a “super pig,” sending these huge hippo-like creatures to farmers across the world for a 10-year maturation process, at the end of which a Best Pig will be named. One of these pigs, Okja, is sent to the South Korean countryside, where young Mija (the excellent Ahn Seo-hyun) has grown up alongside it. When the ten years are up, Mirando arrives to collect Okja, and Mija takes off with the animal. On the way to New York, Mija encounters a varied, colorful cast of characters including a crazy Steve Irwin-type (Jake Gyllenhaal) and some odd animal rights activists (Paul Dano, Steven Yeung). The film is at times both horrifying and heartwarming, underscoring the serious chops of director Bong Joon-ho (The Host).