Here are the Netflix went from that company you ordered DVDs from by mail to the dominant leaders in global on-demand Internet streaming media.
Only six short years ago, Netflix decided to start producing original films, series, documentaries, and stand-up specials, with the aim of having their platform be 50% original content in the near future. What seemed like a costly novelty at the beginning has now become a model of business and creativity coveted by traditional studios and auteur film-makers alike. Their offerings have won Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars, as well as having competed in some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals.
Focusing on movies, these are the streaming exclusive films that defined the decade, as well as offered the best the medium had at a time when the idea of being a streaming-only movie was considered a major step down. To make things easier, this list will only include films that were explicitly designed to be viewed primarily, if not exclusively, on a streaming service. Films that had brief festival or theatrical runs do count, but not ones that were given traditional runs elsewhere while being streaming exclusives to a particular territory (for example, Alice Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro or Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth.) Some films are Netflix exclusives and were purchased to be such but also received theatrical releases in smaller territories, so they're counted too.
15. I Lost My Body
This 2019 French animated film features one hell of a hook: A severed hand escapes from a dissection lab and goes on a journey to find its lost body. Imagine if Thing from The Addams Family had an existential crisis and you’re halfway there. As you can imagine with a story featuring a body-less hand scuttling around the streets, this is a proudly weird movie but I Lost My Body is one of the truly great animation achievements of both streaming and cinema at large.
14. Beasts of No Nation
Cary Joji Fukunaga kicked off Netflix’s new age of original movies with this bleak but beautifully told drama about child soldiers living through a brutal civil war. Idris Elba gives one of his best performances in Beasts of No Nation as the Commandant of a child soldier battalion, and the deeply uncompromising view into an oft-overlooked cost of war offered the perfect starting point for Netflix to show just what they were capable of.
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, the directorial debut of Green Room screenwriter Macon Blair, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize. That can often mean big things for an indie movie but most people didn't even seem to notice this one once it debuted on Netflix. The streaming service was criticized for not promoting it enough, which is a shame because the film itself is a fascinating blend of laughs and thrills with a brilliant leading turn from Melanie Lynskey. She plays a woman whose house is burglarized, leading her to decide to track the crooks down and exact her own form of justice with her oddball neighbor (Elijah Wood) who has a soft spot for nunchucks. It's a low-key gem very much worth a visit if it ed you by.
12. Okja
Before he set the world alight with the astounding drama Okja that harkens back to classic family films like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, albeit with a much darker undertone. It's worth seeing alone if only for Jake Gyllenhaal's utterly demented performance.
11. First They Killed My Father
Angelina Jolie, when she isn’t too busy making Marvel movies and being one of the most famous women on the planet, is also a damn good director. Despite her megastar appeal, Jolie has never gone for the easy stories with her directorial efforts, be they romantic dramas set during the Bosnian War or World War II biopics featuring POW camp torture. First They Killed My Father, her fourth film as director, is easily her best and the one closest to her heart. Based on the biography of Cambodian activist Loung Ung, the film depicts a five-year-old girl's time as child soldier during the Khmer Rouge regime. Jolie pulls no punches in documenting this atrocious period of history but never loses sight of the human cost. Utterly uncompromising and the work of a director with so much to offer First They Killed My Father is a real hidden gem in streaming exclusive cinema.
10. Atlantique
French actress Mati Diop made history when she became the first black female director to have her film premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. There, Atlantique took home the Grand Prix prize, and deservedly so. Set in a suburb of Dakar, where unpaid workers on a futuristic tower decide to leave the country by the ocean for a better future, this romantic drama takes some unexpected turns that you have to see to believe. Atlantique is beautifully haunting and expertly helmed by Diop in a way that makes its genre-bending twists seem easy. Hopefully, this is the start of a long and storied career for her.
9. 13th
Netflix has found a strong niche in documentaries, be they long or short form. They’ve won and been nominated for Oscars and Emmys, and a few of them have even made a tangible difference in the real world. In of political impact and filmmaking prowess, no Netflix documentary succeeds more than Ava DuVernay’s 13th. Titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, DuVerney's stunning documentary examines how the abolishment of slavery in America, except as a punishment for conviction of a crime, helped lead to the modern-day prison-industrial complex. It's an immensely convincing piece of work that lays out a complex thesis in succinct and encourages viewers to stay angry about a decades-long injustice that has all but criminalized black Americans as a whole. Deservedly, 13th landed a Best Documentary Feature nomination at the Oscars.
8. Private Life
Tamara Jenkins is one of the best and most sinfully overlooked directors working in independent American cinema today, and Private Life is the sort of sensitive but unflinching drama that would have swept up every award of the season had enough people paid attention to it. Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn star as a pair of celebrated writers who are desperately trying to have a child. This tough time in their lives, involving medical exhaustion and awkward familial interactions, is deftly portrayed in ways that are seldom seen in film, remaining both funny and frequently tragic.
7. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Last Summer, Netflix helped to revive the fortunes of the romantic comedy genre in Hollywood by reminding producers everywhere that there is indeed a hungry and sizeable audience for such films, long after the industry declared them to be dead. The jewel in the crown of their “Summer of Love” was the immensely charming sequel is on the way.
6. High Flying Bird
The immensely prolific and varied director Stephen Soderbergh wasn’t satisfied with dropping just one Netflix exclusive this year: He had to release two. Of the pair, High Flying Bird is also bold in its take on the intersections between race and the sporting world, thanks to a sharp screenplay by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the playwright behind Moonlight.
