When you’re looking for something to stream and want to choose a stellar film to sit down with, you can always turn to the professionals for guidance.

They say everyone’s a critic. But the ones who annually travel the globe for film festivals, whose bylines are associated with esteemed publications, and whose writing shapes awards seasons have a wealth of movie knowledge that outmatch all the casual film nerds on your pub trivia team. And while critics can definitely make mistakes — sometimes even issuing re-reviews years after filing one that they no longer stand by — when they’re in overwhelming agreement that something is great, that means it’s definitely worth your attention.

So we’ve rounded up a list of 16 movies that hyper-articulate cinema scholars seem to collectively adore. Cue up these picks to refine your own taste — or just to see what all the fuss is about.

Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee “has always been ahead-of-his-timely,” wrote Variety in its review of the filmmaker’s Da 5 Bloods, which “marks another bold salvo from an artist committed to delivering political statements through popular entertainment.” The film follows four Vietnam vets as they return to the scene of their service to search for the remains of their fallen comrade — and a fortune they left behind. And if you finish that stream and want another Spike Lee joint, scroll down this list and catch his 1986 directorial debut She’s Gotta Have It.

Da 5 Bloods

2h 35m   R   2020

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Dolemite Is My Name

Add a laugh-out-loud comedy to the list! Craig Brewer’s riotous biopic stars Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, the filmmaker and comedian who created the foulmouthed character Dolemite in the ’70s. Despite racking up an excellent 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film was snubbed by the Oscars — most egregiously for Murphy’s acclaimed comeback performance. Entertainment Weekly wrote that the star “brings so much hope and hunger and pure life force to the role that he makes you believe in every punchline, pelvic thrust, and spectacularly misplaced karate kick.”

Dolemite Is My Name

1h 58m   R   2019

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Hit Man

Chances are you’ve seen a movie with a hit man –– a dark figure who carries out his work with chilling exactitude. Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, loosely based on a true story, cleverly turns that notion on its head. Glen Powell (who also co-wrote the script) stars not as a real assassin, but a nerdy professor who poses as a hit man for police stings. But when he falls for a young woman (Adria Arjona) trying to hire him, he starts getting caught up in his own deceptions. The New Yorker described the genre-spanning film as “a diabolically smart yarn” that is “among the cleverest and most resonant” romantic comedies in recent years.

Hit Man

1h 55m   R   2024

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Hustle

He’s beloved for his comedic sensibilities, but it would be a mistake to underestimate Adam Sandler as a dramatic actor. In director Jeremiah Zagar’s sports drama Hustle, which the New Yorker observed to be “a refracted self-portrait, a work of personal cinema” for its star and producer, Sandler plays a weary basketball scout who discovers a talented Spanish prospect (real-life player Juancho Hernangomez) and works to prepare him for the NBA draft.

Hustle

1h 58m   R   2022

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I Care a Lot

If you’re into slick thrillers with a savage sense of humor, you’ll care a lot about I Care a Lot. Written and directed by J Blakeson, the 2020 dark comedy about guardianship fraud stars Rosamund Pike as Marla Grayson, a con artist who makes a living exploiting the elderly — until she messes with the wrong family. The New York Times described it as “wildly entertaining,” and said that Pike, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for her razor-sharp performance, “leans into her villainy with unwavering bravado.”

I Care a Lot

1h 58m   R   2021

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The Irishman

It’s never exactly a surprise when a Martin Scorsese movie collects accolades, but it’s always a cinematic treat. The revered director’s three-and-a-half-hour crime epic The Irishman, about the life of mafia hit man and Jimmy Hoffa associate Frank Sheeran (as recounted in Charles Brandt’s nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses), is such a movie: It earned 10 Oscar nominations. Simply put (by the Boston Globe): “The movie is a masterpiece.”

The Irishman

3h 29m   R   2019

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KPop Demon Hunters

Anyone familiar with K-pop knows its fan base is distinguished by their unwavering devotion. In co-writer-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans’s animated musical action adventure,  a K-pop girl group makes use of their fans’ devotion to power their fight against demons. The band, Huntr/x, is composed of choreographer Mira (May Hong), rapper Zoey (Jin-Young Yoo), and lead singer Rumi (Arden Cho), who grapples with the secret that she herself is half-demon. Enter the Saja Boys, a rival boy band of demons led by Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), who struck a deal with demon-ruler Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) to beat Huntr/x at their own game. The film is filled with chart-smashing K-pop music written by some of the genre’s biggest names. As IGN notes, “It’s a relentless celebration of both the music that inspired it and the medium of animation itself.” 

KPop Demon Hunters

1h 39m   PG   2025

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Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Chadwick Boseman’s final film performance was also one of his best. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe and based on the play by August Wilson, chronicles a fictional, contentious recording session with blues legend Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) and her studio band, including Boseman’s trumpeter Levee Green. Both Davis and Boseman earned accolades throughout the 2020 awards season (including Oscar nominations for both). “To watch these actors is pure pleasure,” wrote TIME.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

1h 34m   R   2020

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Marriage Story

You could plan a whole marathon of acclaimed films from three-time Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, but we’d start with Marriage Story. In what the Los Angeles Times called “a nearly flawless elegy for a beautifully flawed couple,” Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver star (and both earned Oscar nominations) as a married pair of artists dismantling their broken marriage. The film received 94% on Rotten Tomatoes — just one point higher than another Baumbach family chronicle to stream, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected). And you can add White Noise to the lineup — it premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival to positive reviews.

Marriage Story

2h 16m   R   2019

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The Power of the Dog

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards, Jane Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s Western novel marked a triumphant return to filmmaking after over a decade away from the big screen. Taking place in ’20s Montana, the film follows a cruel cowboy (Benedict Cumberbatch) who torments his brother’s (Jesse Plemons) new wife (Kirsten Dunst) and her teenage son (Kodi Smit-McPhee); the dozen Oscar nods included one for each of the four main actors. The film is, as The New York Times said, “a great American story and a dazzling evisceration of one of the country’s foundational myths.”

The Power of the Dog

2h 8m   R   2021

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Rebel Ridge

2024’s acclaimed Rebel Ridge was written, directed, and edited by Jeremy Saulnier, master of moody thrillers like Green Room and Hold the Dark. His latest follows Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), a former Marine on his way to post bail for his cousin, when local law enforcement seize his cash. Facing off against Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), Terry tries reasoning and even negotiating with the corrupt agents at first, but quickly realizes he’ll need to employ the unique talents he learned in the Marines to find any sort of justice. Slate called the film “that rarest of things, an auteurist action thriller with brains and heart and guts, an electrifying and crowd-pleasing work of cinema, pulp art of the highest level.” The film also garnered a 2025 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television Movie. 

Rebel Ridge

2h 11m   TV-MA   2024

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ROMA

Hailed as a masterpiece upon its 2018 release, Alfonso Cuarón’s expressive drama, inspired by his own childhood experience was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning for best director, foreign language film, and cinematography. The story revolves around Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), an indigenous domestic worker in ’70s Mexico City. Calling it Cuarón’s best film since Y Tu Mamá También, Indiewire described Roma as “a ravishing, meditative, black-and-white saga that mines its bittersweet story from the inside out.”

ROMA

2h 14m   R   2018

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She's Gotta Have It

Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, and Spike Lee made his unforgettable directorial debut with 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It. The dramedy, shot in black-and-white and in Lee’s hometown of Brooklyn, follows Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), a young woman testing the limits of her own freedom as she wavers between three lovers (one of whom is Lee’s Mars Blackmon, who’d later recur throughout the filmmaker’s iconic Nike ads of the ’80s and ’90s). Described by The Washington Post as “discursive, jazzy, vibrant with sex and funny as heck” upon its release, the film went on to inspire a series of the same name in 2017. 

She's Gotta Have It

1h 24m   R   1986

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Sing Street

After one viewing of John Carney’s Sing Street, you’ll be thinking two things: first, that you’d like to see it again; and second, that it was egregiously snubbed for a Best Original Song nomination, at the very least. The irresistible coming-of-age dramedy takes place in ’80s Dublin, where a teenage boy (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), struggling to adjust to a new school and cope with family issues, starts a band to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton). The Atlantic called the 2016 film  a “winsome, infectious pop fantasy” in which Carney “rediscovered that magic” of his 2007 hit Once. 

Sing Street

1h 45m   PG-13   2016

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Society of the Snow

Society of the Snow isn’t just a survival story — it’s an entirely immersive experience. Based on the notorious true story of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, it follows a rugby team whose plane goes down in the middle of the Andes, leaving the survivors in a brutal fight to stay alive. Equal parts harrowing and profoundly moving, director J.A. Bayona’s Spanish drama (based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name) scored an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature. As Vanity Fair puts it, the film is “grueling and enveloping, immersing us in a frigid hell from which no escape seems possible.”

Society of the Snow

2h 25m   R   2024

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Woman of the Hour

Depicting the sexism of the 1970s within the true story of a serial killer so bold he went on a dating TV show is no small feat. Anna Kendrick tackled it from both sides of the screen in Woman of the Hour. As Richard Roeper wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Anna Kendrick succeeds as both director and star, convincing as the bachelorette who chooses a monster as her date.” Kendrick is Sheryl Bradshaw, a young actor in 1978 who agrees to go on The Dating Game as a way to potentially boost her career. On the show she encounters the sexist ideals forced on single women as she navigates questions for her three bachelor potentials. The men are hidden from her view, but one has managed to conceal his identity from the show and, thus far, the public at large: Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) is a serial killer currently in the midst of a murder spree. The film follows the evening of the TV show taping, interspersed with Alcala’s encounters with his victims, all leading to a harrowing finale as an unsuspecting Sheryl chooses Rodney as her date.

Woman of the Hour

1h 35m   R   2024

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