Labor Day weekend is over, and many of us have the post-holiday blues. Some will cure it by seeing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the highly-anticipated sequel to the 1988 comedy hit starring Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. Others will chose to stay home and see what’s on streaming.
If you fall into the latter camp and have an active Netflix subscription, then this list is for you. The following three films offer a variety of quality entertainment to suit any mood you’re in. The only downside is that watching any of these movies will make you want watch more just like them, and who has the time for that?
Need more recommendations? Then check out the best new movies to stream this week, as well as the best shows on Netflix, best shows on Hulu, best shows on Amazon Prime Video, and best shows on Disney+.
First Man (2018)
There are underrated movies, and then there are criminally underrated movies, and First Man belongs in the latter category. A prime Oscar contender in late 2018, its subsequent mediocre box office, combined with a lack of universal praise, sunk its chances to be recognized in major categories like Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Only six years later, First Man is now considered to be a film unjustly ignored and worthy of reconsideration.
The movie tells the true story of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s (Ryan Gosling) trip to the moon in 1969, including the grueling training required to take the trip and the physical and psychological effects it had long after he came back to Earth. The Crown‘s Clare Foy is terrific as Armstrong’s first wife Janet, and the film is rounded out by some the best character actors working today, including Ciarán Hinds, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Shea Whigham, and more. The film’s realistic visual effects won it an Oscar, but really, this film should’ve given Gosling his long overdue statuette.
First Man is streaming on Netflix.
Legends of the Fall (1994)
As a big movie epic, Legends of the Fall fails spectacularly. The film, which tells the sweeping story of three brothers as they all fall in love with the same woman before, during, and after World War I, just doesn’t have the depth or movie magic that other similar pictures like Doctor Zhivago have. So why on earth am I recommending it? Because as pure melodrama, it works quite well, and it’s never not interesting to look at.
That’s due in part to its actors, which include Brad Pitt (Wolfs) in his mid-90s prime, as well as a scenery-chewing Anthony Hopkins, a resolute and grim Aidan Quinn, and a weepy, perpetually melancholy Julia Ormond. It also helps that the cinematography is by John Toll, who won an Oscar for his work in capturing a Depression-era America and it’s golden heartland full of sunlit fields and stormy skies. If you like hearts being broken, many people dying, and Pitt with long, flowing blond hair, then Legends of the Fall is for you.
Legends of the Fall is streaming on Netflix.
The Mustang (2019)
While 2019 was a stellar year for movies, one great movie got lost in the shuffle: The Mustang. A meditation on rehabilitation and redemption, the film takes place in a remote Nevada prison. There, Roman Coleman (a terrific Matthias Schoenaerts) is serving a time for a violent assault he committed 12 years earlier. Still haunted by his crime, Roman rebuffs his pregnant teenage daughter’s attempts to see him and isolates himself from his fellow inmates.
In an attempt to try to get reintegrate him back into society, he’s placed in a rehab program where select prisoners are tasked with training wild horses so they can be auctioned off to ranch owners. He’s paired with the surly mustang Marquis, and soon, man and animal forge a bond that could save them both. It sounds sentimental, but The Mustang never resorts to simple clichés in telling its enormously affecting story. The ending is bittersweet, but also inevitable; it honors what Roman has gone through with Marquis, but recognizes all the sins he’s still holding himself accountable for.
The Mustang is streaming on Netflix.
