Right Now, You Can Watch The 18 Best Independent Movies On Netflix:
Netflix has a lot of movies that you can watch. These days, any user who gets into the app is likely to see a lot of new movies, scary movies, and cute comedies. But because Netflix has so many large, flashy studio movies and original shows, it can be hard for the independent movies that fill the service to stand out.
Many people think of indies as low-budget projects that people do for fun. It’s the answer to all the summer blockbusters and character movies out there. They don’t just blow stuff up and load us up with CGI; they bring something else to the table.
Viewers of independent films experience a distinctiveness that sets them apart from those who watch major pictures. A lot of the time, these movies mess with plot or style, which makes people see movies in a new way.
A simple movie can demonstrate that a plot can be turned into an enjoyable film without needing millions of dollars or excessive special effects.
Whiplash:
Damien Chazelle’s first full-length movie was Guy, as well as Madeline Upon a Park Bench, which came out in 2009. But it was Whiplash, which came out in 2014, that really made him famous. It transformed into a tense, nerve-wracking thriller, taking the form of a teacher-student guidance movie.
Miles Teller plays Andrew, a jazz drummer-to-be whose dream of going to a famous New York City school turns into a nightmare when his teacher, Fletcher, is too controlling and rude.
Simmons is charismatically hateful in the part, but what makes “Whiplash” stand out is that Andrew is as set in his ways as stubborn as Fletcher is condescending and mean, and the tension between them is so great that it’s never clear which is going to snap first.
A beautiful score and strong direction from Chazelle make for a movie filled with beautiful music.
Malcolm & Marie:
If you liked Euphoria and want to see more of Zendaya, the romantic story Malcolm & Marie on Netflix should have a lot of great moments with the young star.
Zendaya and John David Washington both star in a story by director Sam Levinson that is based on his own life. Washington plays a famous filmmaker who goes home alongside his girlfriend after the festival screening of his latest film.
After his speech, he doesn’t thank her, so the pair has a night of fighting, complaining about the movie business, and trying to figure out if they’re doing well together or not.
It’s one of the few movies that actually benefits from the pandemic limits, since putting these two emotionally charged individuals in a small space only heightens the love suspense. There is no clear winner, and it’s fun to see these two charming stars trade zingers alongside each other.
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind:
Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Eternal Sunshine, is known as an artist who is very interested in what it means to perform, both as a person and as an actor in one of his movies.
Some of his work does this with such wit and energy that it’s easy to fall in love with it. Other works really make you think about what you’re willing to put up with from a guy with a camera and a crazy idea.
You may know Michel Gondry from directing all of Bjork’s great videos and the famous video for Daft Punk’s “Around the World.” He directed Eternal Sunshine, which makes it one of Kaufman’s most obviously sentimental works and also lets his unique brand of weird genre fiction psychedelia grow.
The movie is about Joel, who wants a private company to erase his memories because his ex-girlfriend had an identical thing done to hers. You have to see it to understand it.
Frances Ha:
In the past, Greta Gerwig wrote and starred in black-and-white comedies about young women trying to find their way within the professional dance world of New York City. These films received Oscar nominations as coming-of-age stories.
Gerwig is stunning as Frances, the title character, a dancer who is unhappy with her job chances and has to think about moving to Tribeca because her best friend and her neighbor want her to. Frances starts her trip to find herself with that walk across Manhattan. She then goes home, then to France, and finally settles down in Washington Heights.
God’s Own Country:
Josh O’Connor and Alec Secăreanu, who are both friends on Esquire, play two farm workers in West Yorkshire who reluctantly realize that they really, really like each other in Francis Lee’s quiet, rough, hopeful, beautiful, and ugly story.
After his dad had a stroke, Johnny took over the family farm and also took care of his grandmother. Working alone makes him feel connected for a short time through hidden sex with other young guys. As soon as lambing season starts, though, Georghe from Romania comes to help.
Johnny and Georghe become closer while they are camping to watch over the ewes. Over time, Georghe shows Johnny that being angry and rude is not the only way of expressing himself or treating other people. It’s a beautiful movie that makes the most of Keighley’s and Haworth’s stark beauty.
Beasts Of No Nation:
Beasts of No Nation, available on Netflix, tells the story of Agu, a child fighter who learns guerrilla warfare tactics during an African civil war. British actor Idris Elba, who is well known, plays the lead role in the movie. Abraham Attah, who is new to acting, plays Agu.
Elba and Attah were up for a lot of awards for their parts. Elba won awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the Independent Spirit for his supporting role. Attah, on the other hand, won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead and the prestigious Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival.
Lady Bird:
So much of Lady Bird is true to life that it’s hard not to see yourself in it. Many people have called “Lady Bird” a semi-autobiographical work because it so confidently drops the viewer into the everyday life of Saorise Ronan’s bored high school student in Sacramento. The movie captures a teen’s self-obsession in a way that is both annoying and charming, but mostly very familiar.
Gerwig started her acting career with low-budget independent films. The movie flows from one vignette to the next, the dialogue between Lady Bird and the people in her life is written, and the film realistically treats the tropes of high school movies while still having a more polished look than Gerwig’s low-budget independent films.
It was one of the most important movies of its time and helped make A24 famous for its house style, but it also doesn’t date. Lady Bird will always have new fans as long as people grow up.
The Lost Daughter:
The Lost Daughter is a slow-burning, scary story regarding motherhood as well as all the pain that comes along with it. It is based on the same-named book by Italian author Elena Ferrante.
This is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first movie as a director. It’s about Leda, a literature professor on vacation in the Greek Islands, who becomes obsessed with a young mother as well as her daughter.
As the story goes on, Leda’s past and Nina’s family get in the way of what was supposed to be a friendship between the two women. It slowly turns into something darker. Glimpses of Leda’s life as a young mother in Greece are intertwined with her comings and goings in Greece.
These reveal her decisions and her interest in Nina as well as little Elena. The result is a character study that is extremely honest and looks at mom in a way that few other films can.
Tangerine:
Tangerine is a movie about a transgender worker named Sin-Dee who finds out that her boyfriend and boss have been cheating on her with a straight woman. They shot the entire movie using three iPhones.
It’s crazy to live in one of the most mythologized places in the world and be a part of one of the most pushed-to-the edges of American life. Although Sin-Dee’s life has many happy, beautiful, and light times, it is also very hard.
The movie never stops showing how the sex workers, LGBTQ+ people, and foreigners have all found comfort within each other, even though chaos rules their lives. Tangerine is a great modern take on an old comedy, even though it shows bold ideas and uses some strange filmmaking methods.
Moonlight:
The Academy Award for the best picture being won by Moonlight, after mistakenly naming La La Land as the winner, will never be forgotten. But that’s just an asterisk next to a very important coming-of-age story that takes place over three different time periods.
It’s about a young man growing up in Miami and dealing with his sexuality, which he thinks will make him more and more of an outcast, while also looking for advice that his drug-addicted mother can’t give him.
The movie is both poetic and moving, and its skilled cast earned it a lot of praise. Mahershala Ali got an award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a sympathetic drug dealer.
Local Hero:
One of the people who helped make British independent movies what they are today is Bill Forsyth. There’s a lot of quirky friendliness and a sense of regional pride that you can find in shows like Brassed Off, Made within Dagenham, and The Full Monty that came after Local Hero.
‘Mac’ MacIntyre arrives in rural Scotland as a representative of Knox Oil and Gas boss Felix Happer. He just got back from Houston, Texas. The plan is to purchase the village of Ferness as well as the land around it, which includes a beach, and build a huge oil plant there.
The people in the area are not shocked by the oil money coming their way; they are thrilled. But old Ben is still not convinced. He knows how important the beach and the sea really are. Ferness starts to bother Mac over time.
Lost In Translation:
Sofia Coppola made history by receiving an Academy Award nomination for producing, writing, and directing her second film in the same year. She won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay after that.
Lost in Translation is about an old actor named Bob Harris who goes to Tokyo to shoot a commercial. It stars Bill Murray as a serious actor and Scarlett Johansson as a rising star. He makes friends with a young woman there who has an old soul. The story and style of the movie are very quiet, which puts the players in the spotlight.
Kicking And Screaming:
Noah Baumbach’s first movie as a director was “Kicking and Screaming.” He received an Oscar nomination for scenes featuring Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver yelling at each other, and more recently, he co-wrote the story for the “Barbie” movie.
Baumbach’s first movie follows a group of college graduates who choose to avoid the real world by staying in the town where they went to school.
Josh Hamilton, years before he became one of the best dads in movies with “Eighth Grade,” leads the group as the slack writer Grover. His girlfriend Jane’s acceptance of a fellowship in Prague throws his sluggish growth out of whack.
Grover’s battles to grow up are what hold the flabby characters together. At times, the movie almost turns into a romantic comedy, with Grover’s passionate airport speech as the movie’s end.
This movie tries to get there, but it never quite does because of how boring the actors are. Chris Eigeman, Carlos Jacott, Parker Posey, Eric Stotlz, and Elliot Gould play Grover’s dad. Instead, it stays a simple and low-stakes movie with a great story that captures the awkward and confusing stages of change that make growing up so hard.
The Hand Of God:
That said, not everyone likes Paolo Sorrentino’s emotional arthouse style. But The Hand of God was a great movie for movie fans who wanted to try his work for the first time.
Instead of focusing on the themes of getting older and death that run through most of his work, Sorrentino gives a personal account about his summers as a child in Italy and how he first became interested in making movies.
This is a personal story that speaks to the artist in all of us. The Hand of God is the right song for you if you want something in the middle of 81/2, as well as Call Me By Your Name.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always:
The quietly urgent Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always is about a teen who travels out of state to get an abortion. It was a return to themes that were important to director Eliza Hittman, who followed up her bildungsroman debut, It Felt Like Love, with Harris Dickinson’s signature film, Beach Rats, which is about a teenage boy who is struggling with his sexuality.
The film had a limited audience, even on the big screen, as it only played at a few film festivals in Berlin shortly before we were all sequestered in our rooms due to the lockdown. A movie about women’s body rights might hit home even more in this political climate, making it a beautiful movie and one of the greatest films of 2020.
Room:
In this tension-filled story, the captors have held a mother and son hostage for almost ten years. The movie, which is based upon a work of fiction, uses real-life trauma cases to show how a woman named Joy as well as her son Jack live alone in a room, away from everyone else.
After planning their escape and finally being rescued, the two must now confront the aftermath of their harrowing ordeal as they adapt to life beyond the confines of the room. Every award Larson won for this movie was well-deserved, and her chemistry alongside Tremblay will make you want to grab a tissue the whole time.
The Blair Witch Project:
The Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust, which came out in 1980, is thought to be the first horror movie to use found footage. However, it was The Blair Witch Project, which made almost 500 times its $500,000 budget at the box office, that led to a lot of other movies that looked like it.
People were really scared because it looked like they might be watching something real, with most of the shots being like early selfies, looking up at the faces of the main characters.
Three film students venture into the woods to produce a documentary on the local witch tale, and their footage is unearthed a year later. The setting makes you think it could really happen.
Monty Python And The Holy Grail:
Monty Python is a British comedy group that has been together since 1969. They have made many funny movies over the years, such as The Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. The highest-rated movie the group has ever made is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The movie makes fun of the story of King Arthur as well as his search for the Holy Grail. The members of Monty Python play different parts in the movie, which makes people laugh out loud. When paired with the hand-drawn cartoon parts, the realistic special effects make the movie feel very cute.
