The Best Movies to Stream on Netflix This Week

It's time to get under some blankets and watch one (or three) of these excellent movies.

With cold January winds blowing across the country, no one would blame you for spending the entire weekend on your couch watching movies, waiting for the sun to warm us again.

Maybe it's the result of the long actor and writer strikes mucking up the content pipeline, but Netflix's new offerings this month are heavy on foreign movies and TV shows. Which is a good thing; it gives watchers the chance to try something different. Below are my picks for the nine best movies and shows streaming on Netflix this week. Because it's a blustery January, I included some cinematic comfort food to keep you warm, too.

Society of the Snow (2023)

It may be cold where you are, but it's not "eat your friends" cold. In 1972, an airplane carrying an amateur rugby team from Uruguay crashed in the Andes mountains. Though grit, heroism, and cannibalism, 16 of the 45 passengers survived. Society of the Snow tells their story with photography that makes the mountains seem as ominous as they are beautiful, but it also digs into the mysterious center of this unbelievable true story by suggesting a spiritual journey as much a physical one. 

Bitconned (2024)

I want to say I’m tired of documentaries about low lifes, but the allure of the outlaw is powerful. The alluring outlaws in Bitconned, a new Netflix original docuseries, are a gang of blackhearts from Miami who are as brainless as they are ruthless. In 2017 Ray Trapani and his pals muscled into the ground floor of the booming cryptocurrency world and scammed every mark the internet could offer up—and that’s a lot of marks. Unlike international bankers, dumb dudes from Florida who scam people tend to get caught, so Bitconned offers a comeuppance narrative to go with the “dipshits get rich” main story in the form of a New York Times financial reporter who sees through Trapani's scheme in about eight minutes.

School of Rock (2003)

If you’re looking for a comedy with funny jokes, great music, and a surprisingly emotional core, get high and click on School of Rock. Jack Black plays a slobby rocker who cons his way into a job as a music teacher at a school for stuck-up rich kids. As you might guess, the kids learn how to loosen up and rock out from their new teacher, and Teach learns how to be an adult from them. It’s formulaic, sure, but it's only a formula because it works so well.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

The self-importance of 1970s cinemas can be annoying, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an exception because it doesn’t forget to be entertaining and human while it’s trafficking in "big ideas." Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of a petty criminal who feigns insanity to serve his sentence in an insane asylum crackles with '70s antihero attitude. Randle P. McMurphy (R.P.M.—revolutions per minute. Get it?) spends his days inspiring his fellow mental patients to think for themselves and rebel against the authoritarian power structure personified by evil Nurse Ratchet. Because, like, isn't the whole world a mental institution, man? With the passage of time, the humanity and wounded dignity of the secondary characters shines brighter than Cuckoo’s Nest’s slightly hokey “messianic rebel stands up to The Man” main story. Plus, it features a very young Christopher Lloyd.

Good Grief (2023)

This romantic tragi-comedy is set among sophisticated London urbanites who have better furniture and better friends than you. But Good Grief manages to not be annoying because tragedy and death don’t spare anyone; mourning is mourning, even if you're doing it in a well-appointed Paris flat. If you like serious movies wrapped in funny jokes or comedies that are tragic, Good Grief is the movie you should watch this weekend. 

Gravity (2013) 

If you want to show off your new 8K TV and surround sound system, Gravity will provide a jaw-dropping demo. The special effects and camerawork are a cut above anything I’ve ever seen—if someone told me this was actually shot in earth’s orbit, I’d believe it—and the story is by turns existentially terrifying and strangely uplifting. Plus, the charisma of stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney nearly overshadow the technical achievements. 

Love is Blind: Sweden (2024)

January is the Monday of the year, and if you want to spend it binging mindless reality romance shows, the first few episodes of Love is Blind: Sweden just hit Netflix. The premise of the show—couples meet, date, fall in love, and propose marriage, all without seeing each other—is a little like online dating, except everyone is Swedish, so they're probably taller and have whiter teeth than your Tinder dates.

John Wick (2014)

For a long time, I thought I didn’t like action movies, but I finally saw John Wick a few months ago and realized that I freakin' love action movies—but most of them are terrible. John Wick is not terrible. Even though it hits every beat and cliché of a million action movies that came before it, Wick feels fresh. A lot of that comes down to Keanu Reeves' unlikely anti-action-hero persona, but it's also because every detail is so carefully put together. Two John Wick sequels popped up on Netflix this month, too, but in the tradition of the genre, they aren’t as good as the original.

Boy Swallows Universe (2024)

Based on a beloved YA novel, Boy Swallows Universe is a made-in-Australia series about a tween boy struggling toward manhood in a world of drug dealers, gangsters, and other dirtbags from down under. Boy Swallows Universe's smattering of magical realism and poetry is a reminder that childhood is full of love and wonder, even for kids from the wrong side of the tracks on the other side of the world.