Watch List Weekly Recap 1/13/23

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”

It’s that time again: What percentage of the 3,500 movies on Netflix at any given moment are actually worth watching (3.6% — I did the math), and what are they? For paid subscribers, a list of the films that made the cut, including “Croupier” (above), a film released in 1998 and thus a relic from ancient times as far as Netflix is concerned.

The 127 Good Movies on Netflix (2023 Edition)

Faithful readers of the Watch List know of my longstanding exasperation with Netflix, the one service everyone has that’s also the one service with the weakest movie line-up (by far). Every six months or so I like to take stock of what’s actually on Netflix besides in-house series, international series, crappy movies from other countries, and Jim Gaffigan stand-up specials. The service features around 3,500 feature films at any given time, all but a handful from the last decade and bewilderingly few of which you’ve ever heard of. Allow me to assist: Following are the 127 movies on Netflix that are worth a damn, arranged alphabetically within rough genre approximation and with each title linked to its trailer on YouTube.

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The Friday What to Watch casts a spotlight on one of the very best films of 2022 (“Saint Omer,” above), just now appearing in theaters, plus a sturdy remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front” on Netflix and a glibly engaging documentary about “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.” All that and an early Mike Leigh love fest on the Criterion Channel.

Saints, Sinners, Soldiers, and Slackers

One happy result of the (relative) increase in women directors over the last few years – or, to be precise, in more women-directed films being greenlit, produced, and released – is a groundswell of stories about daughters and mothers. Some are light (“Lady Bird”), some are dark (“The Lost Daughter”), some are elegiac and otherworldly (“The Eternal Daugh…

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