Netflix should rename September to “Crime Month” as several murder-focused stories hit the service in the coming weeks. The Perfect Couple, a murder mystery series starring Nicole Kidman, is now streaming. The other noteworthy series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, arrives later this month and explores the homicidal brothers from the 1990s.
The Perfect Couple and Monsters will dominate the Netflix top 10. Many films in Netflix’s library might lose viewership because of these shows. That does not mean you should ignore them. Several movies listed below are underrated gems, including an entertaining heist from an auteur, a standout performance from an A-list star, and a cute coming-of-age romance.
Logan Lucky (2017)
Do not take Steven Soderbergh for granted. The Oscar-winning filmmaker could have easily mailed it in after the Ocean’s trilogy and signed up for by-the-book jobs for paychecks. That’s not in Soderbergh’s DNA. Instead, the filmmaker has been making interesting genre pieces and experimenting with different camera techniques (High Flying Bird on an iPhone) for over a decade. How many directors would make a heist movie after Ocean’s Eleven? Not many!
Because Soderbergh is of a different breed, he made another heist movie in 2017 called Logan Lucky. Blue-collar worker Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) plans to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway with the help of his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver), sister Mellie (Riley Keough), and an incarcerated demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). Facing a hard deadline, the group must execute the heist during a crowded NASCAR race weekend. Per usual, Soderbergh delivers the goods with Logan Lucky, a crime caper you won’t soon forget.
Stream Logan Lucky on Netflix.
The Rundown (2003)
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a global megastar thanks to a popular wrestling persona and a successful transition to acting. Johnson has acted since 2001, when he appeared as The Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns. Since then, Johnson has made his bones in action, most notably Luke Hobbs in The Fast and the Furious franchise. Yet his best performance came early in his career. 2003, to be exact. That’s the year Johnson starred in Peter Berg’s The Rundown.
Johnson plays Beck, a no-nonsense bounty hunter who specializes in retrieving assets. Wanting out of the bounty business, Beck takes one last job for his boss, Billy Walker (William Lucking). The mission: to find Walker’s son, Travis (Seann William Scott), who was last seen in Brazil. Beck finds Travis, but the duo can’t escape from the town’s tyrant and treasure hunter (Christopher Walken). No movie has used Johnson’s physicality and comedic instincts better than The Rundown.
Stream The Rundown on Netflix.
First Man (2018)
Coming off Whiplash and La La Land, Damien Chazelle could have made any movie he wanted. Whiplash, an edge-of-your-seat drama, and La La Land, a romantic musical, are loud, stylish, and fast-moving. Yet Chazelle did a complete 180 for his next film, First Man, a biopic about Neil Armstrong with Ryan Gosling playing the famous astronaut.
First Man depicts Armstrong’s time at NASA during the Space Race of the 1960s. Armstrong made his bones as a test pilot, narrowly avoiding death on multiple occasions. In 1969, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. While First Man‘s lunar landing is stunning, the film is more concerned with Armstrong, the person, who was full of grief and sadness. First Man is quiet, stoic, and hauntingly beautiful.
Stream First Man on Netflix.
My Girl 2 (1994)
My Girl is a charming coming-of-age romance about Vada (Anna Chlumsky), a curious 11-year-old girl who comes of age while learning about love, death, and grief. My Girl 2 is both financially and critically inferior to My Girl. That’s not up for debate. However, upon further review, My Girl 2 still has enough delightful moments that make it worthy of a rewatch.
In the sequel, Vada is now a 13-year-old teenager who receives a school assignment to write about someone she admires but has never met. Vada chooses her late mother, who died two days after childbirth. With permission from her father (Dan Aykroyd), Vada goes to Los Angeles during spring break to stay with her uncle Phil (Richard Masur) and learn more about her mother. While she yearns for answers, Vada’s love life gets an unexpected boost from Nick (Austin O’Brien), Phil’s girlfriend’s son.
Stream My Girl 2 on Netflix.
I Care A Lot (2020)
Rosamund Pike thrives when she’s playing the villain. The Oscar nominee was downright spectacular as the deceitful Amy Elliott Dunne in David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Pike channeled her sadistic side again in I Care A Lot. Con artist Marla Grayson is despicable; there is no way around it. She convinces the legal system to grant her guardianship over elders after making it seem like they can’t care for themselves.
Marla then proceeds to force the courts to put these elders in an assisted care facility while she sells their homes for profit. When Marla sends the mother of a crime lord to a nursing home, the mafia takes matters into their own hands and fights back. Frankly, I Care A Lot will agitate a lot of viewers. However, Pike’s performance is so over-the-top and magnetic that you can’t look away.
Stream I Care A Lot on Netflix.