2025 is here, and it’s weird living in the future. But some things remain the same: Early January still stinks, and all the good movies have already been released and watched. Nosferatu? Seen it. A Complete Unknown? Watched it opening day. What’s a person to do for the weekend?
I should probably exercise, but I’d rather watch a good movie or two. Netflix has plenty of them, and these three underrated movies are just the ticket for spending quality time at home. One is a recent arrival you may not have heard of, while the other two are older movies starring actors who are still headlining blockbusters today.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
Number 24 (2024)
The public’s appetite for entertaining war movies never abates, and Netflix is a great destination for war stories you don’t normally hear about. Take, for example, Number 24, a 2024 movie that chronicles Norway’s greatest WWII hero, Gunnar Sønsteby, who resisted Nazi occupation of his homeland from day one. I had never heard of him, and this movie, which just hit Netflix on January 1, does a great job at showing just why his life and actions are so important.
It’s 1940, and the Germans have just invaded Norway. Gunnar, a recent college graduate working as an accountant, immediately decides to join the resistance effort despite the dangers it could bring him and his loved ones. He’s recruited into a secret organization run by the British and given the codename Agent 24. Gunnar soon becomes a master of disguise as he carries out various acts of sabotage designed to weaken the Nazis hold on Norway … and maybe turn the tide of the war.
Number 24 is streaming on Netflix.
Public Enemies (2009)
In the 1930s, one of the dominant film genres was gangster films. James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart cut their teeth on playing bad men with guns, and starred in such classics as The Public Enemy and Dead End. The genre has largely fallen out of favor in the last few decades, but Michael Mann attempted to bring it back with his 2009 film Public Enemies, which told the true story of how bank robber John Dillinger was hunted by FBI agent Melvin Purvis during the Great Depression.
Johnny Depp stars as Dillinger, and this was one of his last roles where he effectively used his movie star charisma to create a complex character that’s both repulsive and charismatic. You can understand why he attracts singer Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), who can’t help but swoon even though she knows better, and makes Purvis (Christian Bale) so obsessed with catching him.
If you’ve seen any of Mann’s films, in particular Manhunter and Heat, you know he excels at crime tales involving two damaged men on the opposite sides of the law who are drawn together. Public Enemies isn’t as great as those two films, but it has more than enough qualities — the effective period look and feel, the stellar actors from Depp and Bale, and the gorgeous cinematography by Dante Spinotti — to make it a worthwhile watch at any time of the year.
Public Enemies is streaming on Netflix.
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Blake Lively recently made headlines for her lawsuit against It Ends with Us co-star Justin Baldoni, but before all of that, she was just another underrated actress looking for her breakout role. She nearly found it in The Age of Adaline, a 2015 romantic fantasy that has one of the oddest premises in a major Hollywood movie. Lively stars as Adaline, who was born on New Year’s Day in 1908, and in 2015, still looks young and beautiful. That’s because a freak accident stopped her aging process; she’s forever 29, and she hates it.
Why? Well, if you don’t age, the people around you start to notice. In the 1950s, she had to abandon her grown child and lover to evade the authorities. Now, she’s fallen in love again, and the father of her new boyfriend, Ellis (Michael Huisman), just happens to be that former love, William (Harrison Ford). Adaline can no longer hide from her past, but what will that mean for her future with Ellis?
The Age of Adaline has a ridiculous premise, but it commits to it, and the director, Lee Toland Krieger, and Lively don’t waiver in telling this strange tale of a woman who must be a bystander to history and not involve herself too deeply in the affairs of others. When she does, it’s a huge risk, and it’s a credit to Lively as an actress that she conveys this danger and makes you care about her character, who could’ve been a female Forrest Gump. Adaline doesn’t think life is like a box of chocolates; she knows life is hard, and doesn’t offer any soft platitudes to soothe herself or the audience.
The Age of Adaline is streaming on Netflix.