Based on the bestselling book by Andy Weir, the Ryan Gosling-led sci-fi flick Project Hail Mary has been the dominant force on the box office charts for two weekends in a row. Boasting over $300 million in global revenue despite still being in the early stages of its theatrical run, Project Hail Mary is already the year’s biggest box office winner. However, another sci-fi film is about to challenge for the throne as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie makes its long-awaited theatrical debut this weekend. If neither is to your taste or you’d just rather stay at home, here’s a look at three movies you should stream this weekend on Netflix.
For more recommendations, check out our list of the best shows and movies on Netflix.
Disclaimer: These titles are available on US Netflix.
1
‘American Gangster’ (2007)
Rotten Tomatoes: 81% | IMDb: 7.8/10
As the first days of April arrive, this weekend brings with it a smorgasbord of new and returning titles to the Netflix catalog. Among them is American Gangster, a 2007 docudrama starring Denzel Washington as the titular gangster, Frank Lucas. As he rises through the ranks of the 1960s drug trade, Lucas quickly comes under the radar of Newark Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe).
A gangster biopic as fascinating as it is gripping, Washington and Crowe are at their very best in this gem of a thriller. Directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by Steven Zaillian, the film earned a pair of Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Ruby Dee in the Best Supporting Actress category. The film also features performances from Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
2
‘Mission: Impossible’ (1996)
Rotten Tomatoes: 67% | IMDb: 7.2/10
If you’re looking for tense thrills this weekend, then you simply can’t go wrong with the movie that kicked off one of the best modern franchises. Released in 1996, Mission: Impossible was a global audience’s introduction to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, as, whilst under suspicion of disloyalty, he fights to clear his name by discovering who the real traitor is.
A pulse-racing classic that has only got better with age, Mission: Impossible might not be the best in the franchise, but as the first, it deserves even more credit. Directed by Brian De Palma, the movie is best known for Cruise’s lead performance, but it also features a stellar ensemble, including Jon Voight as Jim Phelps, Emmanuelle Béart as Claire Phelps, Jean Reno as Franz Krieger, Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, Kristin Scott Thomas as Sarah Davies, Vanessa Redgrave as Max, and Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge.
3
‘Atonement’ (2007)
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% | IMDb: 7.8/10
Another new arrival to the Netflix catalog at the start of this month,Joe Wright‘s visuallystunningAtonement, adapted from Ian McEwan‘s 2001 novel, follows a 13-year-old girl’s (Saoirse Ronan) false accusation of her older sister’s lover and the many lives that are altered forever as a consequence.
One of the finest period dramas you can find on Netflix right now, Atonement is as narratively indulgent as it is a treat for the eyes. Featuring many great performances from some of the finest British actors, it is a young Ronan who steals the show in a turn that would earn her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, making her the seventh youngest ever to do so.
