At movie theaters nationwide this weekend, the action and horror genres will be well served with the simultaneous debuts of Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and the vampire ballerina movie Abigail. (I’m not making that second one up; it exists!) Those movies have their fans, but it’s not a stretch to predict there will be quite a few people who will want to stay home to see what’s on streaming instead.
The king of those streamers, Netflix, always has something for everyone. And Digital Trends has crafted a selection of three underrated movies currently streaming on Netflix that are worth your time and attention this weekend. One is a guilty pleasure action movie, another is an underrated comedy from eight years ago, and the last one is a little-seen thriller from 2020.
Need more recommendations? Read our guides to the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, and the best movies on HBO.
Anna (2019)
I’m a sucker for slightly sleazy European-set action movies, so it makes sense that I’m recommending Anna. Make no mistake, this is not as good as La Femme Nikita or even Red Sparrow, the universally trashed 2018 thriller with Jennifer Lawrence as a frequently nude assassin. But Anna has it’s own B movie charms, and offers enough good car chases through narrow cobblestone streets, gunfights in crowded posh restaurants, and respected actors like Helen Mirren and Luke Evans wielding ridiculous Russian accents to be worth your time.
The plot is virtually identical to Nikita‘s: a downtrodden woman (Sasha Luss) is recruited by a shady organization (in Anna‘s case, the KGB) to escape her terrible life. If she serves faithfully (i.e., kills people) for five years, she’ll win her freedom. She honors her commitment, but (surprise!) the KGB doesn’t, and tries to eliminate her. Anna‘s director, Luc Besson, also directed Nikita, so the shameless mimicry is somewhat excused, and he still knows how to craft a good, tense action scene after all these years. Anna won’t win any awards for originality, but it’s the perfect action movie to watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Anna is streaming on Netflix.
How to Be Single (2016)
This movie is better than it has any right to be. On a surface level, everything about How to Be Single looks generic and unbearable: the Ellen’s Book Club title, which makes it sound like it’s a prequel to the awful What to Expect When You’re Expecting; the cast, some of whom are among the least funny people around; and the plot, which is straight out of the rom-com factory. But the movie is better, smarter, and funnier than you’d expect, and it’s one of the more underrated movies in the genre.
After dumping her long-term boyfriend, Alice (Dakota Johnson) moves to New York City to live with her older sister, Meg (Leslie Mann). Once there, she befriends wild child Robin (Rebel Wilson) and lovelorn Lucy (Alison Brie). All four women have comic misadventures as they look for love and happiness in the Big Apple. Yes, I know, this sounds like Sex and the City, but it’s not; instead, it’s a humorous roundelay of bittersweet romance, told with a slightly sarcastic tone that tempers the sweetness.
How to Be Single is streaming on Netflix.
Inheritance (2020)
For many, 2020 was a lost year for a lot of reasons, so it’s hard to even remember what movies came out that year. That’s unfortunate, as there were several that got lost both then and now, and deserve to be discovered. One of them in Inheritance, a nifty little thriller about the immoral wealthy class.
When New York City business tycoon Archer Monroe (Patrick Warburton) dies, a substantial inheritance is left to his surviving family members: his wife (Connie Nielsen), his son (Chace Crawford), and his daughter, Lauren (Lily Collins). But when a posthumous video confession from her father unearths family secrets, Lauren embarks on a journey of discovering long-kept secrets from the past that threaten her future. If you’re a fan of seeing rich people fight over the spoils of their wealth and utterly insane plot twists, Inheritance is the movie for you. Plus, it has Simon Pegg!
Inheritance is streaming on Netflix.
