Netflix most popular movies, Finding the finest Netflix movies can be challenging, but there will likely always be incredible movies to watch.
Whether you’re looking for the best horror movies, action movies, comedies, or vintage movies on Netflix, there are many options available.
The list is modified for 2022 to take out exceptional movies that have already passed while honoring underrated masterpieces.
We have done our best to simplify by regularly updating our list of the Best Movies to Watch on Netflix with both new and underrated movies.
This saves you time from wading through categories and searching for the ideal film to watch.
The top 20 movies currently available on Netflix are listed below:
1. Purple Heart
Director: Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
Writers: Kyle JarrowLiz W. Garcia
Stars: Sofia Carson, Nicholas Galitzine, Chosen Jacobs
The purple heart represents various feelings, including love, support, respect, and compassion. Additionally, it is a medal given to US service members who have been wounded or lost their lives in the line of duty. Purple Hearts, a romantic musical drama, combines these emotions and more.
When Cassie Salazar (Sofia Carson), an aspiring songwriter and singer of Spanish descent, learns that her health insurance no longer covers her Type 1 diabetes medication, things get much harder. The story takes place in Oceanside, California. Luke Morrow, a former addict and marine, engaged in his fights.
While he is working hard to pay off his debts, he also longs to make amends with his father. The couple first gets married with benefits after facing financial difficulties, but as tragedy hits, they are forced to go deeper into their knowledge of love, life, and each other.
Purple Hearts connects with compelling character journeys and sympathetic depictions of human interactions despite its predictable plot. Along with covering Cassie’s love life, the movie also focuses on Luke’s attempts to repair his life and the story of Cassie’s mother.
There is a lengthy episode when Cassie and Luke spend time getting to know one another through writing, and there are several memorable passages where the former shares dream that subsequently come true. The lines in this marriage of convenience become hazier and hazier as the characters feed off one other’s faith in love.
Although Purple Hearts is primarily a romance drama, director Elizabeth and her writers have taken care to address significant modern problems, such as feminism, racism, the lives of immigrants, and consent, and they do it with tact and taste. For instance, we can see two flags flying from Cassie’s balcony: one each for Pride and Black Lives Matter.
She hangs the American flag as a sign of respect after Luke is sent to a war zone. These flags serve as a visual representation of her beliefs.
Purple Hearts is energized by a beautiful melody, vibrant lighting, and warm color tones. But the story feels like a remake of movies we’ve seen before. However predictable it may seem, Purple Hearts never fails to serve as a reminder that love is not limited to romantic relationships.
It can be found in suffering, grief, esteem, compassion, and even friendly company. Sometimes our hearts just ache for a reassuring story in a world filled with negativity, and Purple Hearts is precisely that.
2. The Departed
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: William Monahan(screenplay), Alan Mak(2002 screenplay Mou gaan dou), Felix Chong(2002 screenplay Mou gaan dou)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprioMatt DamonJack Nicholson
Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime drama The Departed, which won four Academy Awards overall and best picture, was an American production. It was one of Scorsese’s most significant financial successes at the box office, an intense action thriller with an all-star cast.
Boston is where The Departed is situated. As a mole for Irish American criminal leader Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), Colin Sullivan (played by Matt Damon), a protege of Costello, joins the state police department.
Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Staff Sgt. Sean Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) selects Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a police recruit, to serve as an undercover agent to infiltrate Costello’s organization. Sullivan and Costigan are in a relationship with Madolyn Madden, a police psychiatrist.
Sullivan and Costigan struggle to identify the mole as each group becomes aware that it has been compromised while attempting to avoid being exposed for their deception. They play cat and mouse games in which each is frequently just a hair’s breadth away from finding the other.
It turns out that Costello is also an FBI informant, which is a further twist. When Sullivan finds out, he kills Costello. Then, Costigan tries to abandon his cover and disclose himself to Sullivan, but he learns that Sullivan was Costello’s snitch. A second dishonest cop kills Costigan in a bloody conclusion, and Sullivan kills the other cop while getting away with it.
When he goes home again, Dignam surprises him and kills him. A remake of the well-liked Hong Kong movie Mou gaan dou was made as The Departed (2002; Infernal Affairs).
It was the first film for which Scorsese, one of the most well-known directors in the business, received the Best Director Oscar. Nicholson’s depiction as Costello was frequently improvised and was partially modeled on real-life crime lord Whitey Bulger.
3. Extraction
Director: Sam Hargrave
Writers: Joe Russo(screenplay), Ande Parks(based on the graphic novel “Ciudad” by), Anthony Russo(from a story by)
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Bryon Lerum, Ryder Lerum
Extraction is one of the most incredible choreographed movies in the previous couple of years, with lots of violence and massive explosions. The stakes increase significantly when mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is recruited to rescue a warlord’s son who is being held captive as more and more local gunrunners and traffickers become aware of the situation.
If you exclude the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s a candidate for one of the best Chris Hemsworth films since it successfully realizes the stunt coordinator/first-time director’s vision.
4. The Irishman
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Steven Zaillian(screenplay by), Charles Brandt(based upon the book by)
Stars: Robert De NiroAl PacinoJoe Pesci
The Irishman, one of many late-period Martin Scorsese classics, is about a middle-level criminal who befriends Jimmy Hoffa and ultimately contributes to his demise.
But in Scorsese’s hands, this turns into a study of how one man alienates everyone around him and eventually ends up old, friendless, and completely alone, imprisoned in a nursing home, attempting to persuade everyone that his life as a gangster was worthwhile.
The Irishman is unlike any other gangster movie that has ever been made. It becomes a crucial contribution to Scorsese’s body of work towards the end and a fantastic one.
Here, the reflections started in films like Mean Streets and Goodfellas are finished, and even more importantly, they find their universal meaning. All along, this was the goal; clichés (and CG-painted faces) would eventually give way to reality. The truth is simply, painfully, and beautifully: “It is what it is.” The tale and the fact are entwined until the story becomes the truth.
5. I Am Not Your Ne*ro
Director: Raoul Peck
Writers: James Baldwin(writings), Raoul Peck(scenario)
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson(voice), James Baldwin(archive footage), Martin Luther King(archive footage)
James Baldwin’s unfinished book Remember This House, which would have honored three of his friends—Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers—is the subject of Raoul Peck’s book.
Within five years of one another, three black men were all killed, and the movie reveals that Baldwin was not only grieved by these deaths as horrible setbacks for the Civil Rights struggle but also genuinely worried for the spouses and children of the slain men. The movie is as much about Baldwin’s excruciating agony as his intelligence.
I Am Not Your Nero, then, is not merely a portrait of an artist but also a depiction of mourning—what it appears like, sounds like, and feels like to lose friends in public (and with so much of America refusing to understand how it happened, and why it will keep happening).
I Am Not Your Nero would have likely still been a hit if Peck had merely given us this impression, putting us directly in Baldwin’s presence. His choice to deviate from the typical documentary style, in which esteemed experts offer their opinions on a topic, fosters an intimacy that is rare to achieve in movies of this caliber.
It is beautiful to spend time listening to Baldwin’s words alone. Baldwin is the only interpreter who can be used; this is how it should be.
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Wes Craven
Stars: Heather LangenkampJohnny DeppRobert Englund
Of the three major slasher franchises—Friday the 13th, Halloween, and this one—A Nightmare on Elm Street undoubtedly gave us the most comprehensive and flawlessly polished original chapters.
Wes Craven had the opportunity to observe and be affected by the gloomy Carpenter and the significantly more sleazy and tawdry Cunningham in several F13 sequels, so this is undoubtedly a result of being the last to come around.
That’s not to say that Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a comedic actor
The straightforward premise of the movie, which explores the horrors of dreams and dubious reality, was like a gift from the gods given to the set designers and artists, who were given free rein to indulge their fantasies and produce iconic set pieces unlike anything else up to that point in the history of the horror genre. It’s a nightmare of macabre humor and nightmares.
7. Uncut Gems
Directors: Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie
Writers: Ronald Bronstein, Josh SafdieBenny Safdie
Stars: Adam Sandler, Julia FoxIdina Menzel
Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), the owner of a posh store in New York’s diamond district, provides comfortably for himself and his family but can’t help but gamble compulsively, owing his brother-in-law Aron (Eric Bogosian, maliciously slimy) a considerable sum as a result.
However, Howard also has other concerns to consider. His staff includes Demand (Lakeith Stanfield), a finder of both clients and merchandise, and Julia (Julia Fox), a clerk with whom Howard is having an affair while “keeping” her comfortable in his New York apartment.
But in the meantime, he has a special delivery coming from Africa: a black opal, the gemstone we got to know well in the movie’s opening sequence and which Howard thinks is worth millions.
His wife (Idina Menzel, pristinely jaded) is sick of his stuff. Then, on the day the opal arrives, Demany just so happens to bring Kevin Garnett (as himself, keyed so perfectly into the Safdie brothers’ tone) into the store, sparking a once-in-a-lifetime wager for Howard and a ton of new stuff to sort through.
The Safdies, in their sixth film, seem to relish in anxiety, capturing the slowness of Howard’s life and the countless lives colliding with his in all of its full-bodied beauty.
It is undoubtedly tricky—really endlessly, achingly stressful. Just before a game, Howard tells Garnett about his elaborate scheme for a large sum of money, emphasizing that Garnett understands it.
They believe that they succeed because they are tuned into something bigger and operate at a higher frequency than most. We’ve always thought Sandler had it in him so that he may be onto something. We may have had this in mind all along.
8. She’s Gotta Have It
Creator: Spike Lee
Stars: DeWanda Wise, Anthony Ramos, Lyriq Bent
She’s Gotta Have It, a levelheaded exploration of a young black woman named Nola (Tracy Camilla Johns) trying to choose between her three male lovers while also flirting with her apparent bisexuality is an explosively forthcoming feature debut that immediately announced Lee’s brave, fresh new voice in American cinema.
In a game-changing move for 1986, Lee consistently raises the notion that “none of the above” is a perfectly reasonable response for both Nola and single women. The DIY independent film’s gritty black-and-white photography enhances its overt authenticity.
9. Full Metal Jacket
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick(screenplay by), Michael Herr(screenplay by), Gustav Hasford(screenplay by)
Stars: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D’Onofrio
It is generally agreed upon that Full Metal Jacket only holds up to its first half before descending into the predictable territory. However, the standards by which we may evaluate Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam horror story in retrospect were established in the second chapter.
Even traditional material, when presented by an artist like Kubrick, is worthwhile to watch: In contrast to how the military culture presented in the early half of Full Metal Jacket alters people, the film’s second half is a bare depiction of how war changes people. Regularly experiencing debasement will split a person’s mentality in two. Their soul will crumble if they are compelled to kill another person.
This colorful and unsettling account of the Vietnam Battlefield from the perspective of a grunt mixes aspects of Gustav Hasford’s “The Short-Timers” novel with war reportage by Michael Herr (who also contributed to the screenplay) and Stanley Kubrick’s distinctive vision.
Early on, in the fundamental training conflict between a nasty drill instructor (R. Lee Ermey) and the overweight recruit he singles out for punishment (Vincent D’Onofrio), it is the film’s most robust scene. But throughout the film, Kubrick maintains a sense of unrelenting discomfort and a convoluted morality that serves as a probing analysis of the Vietnam War and its psychological toll on the soldiers who fought in it.
10. Apocalypse Now
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writers: John MiliusFrancis Ford CoppolaMichael Herr(narration)
Stars: Martin SheenMarlon BrandoRobert Duvall
An abstract and creative war film about the Vietnam War by renowned and influential director/writer Francis Ford Coppola is told through detailed scenes of allegorically alluring and compelling imagery.
A rogue Special Forces colonel who has persuaded himself and several locals that he is a deity must be found and assassinated when an American officer (Martin Sheen) in Vietnam is given an extraordinary task.
This movie, which stars the iconic Marlon Brando and then-rising star Martin Sheen, travels through its inventive and award-winning cinematography, securing its place in history as one of the most renowned works of cinema to date. The Redux version is available on Netflix and features nearly an hour of additional, never-before-seen material.
11. It Follows
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Stars: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi
It Follows is a horror film that only appears once or twice every few years.
It follows a fairly straightforward idea, and it does it flawlessly. The movie’s story centers on a young girl who learns that a spectral presence transmitted through sex is haunting her.
We get to follow her as she tries to find a means to defeat the ghostly presence without just giving it to someone else as she enlists her friends to battle the force following her.
12. A Cop Movie
Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios
Writers: David Gaitán, Alonso Ruizpalacios
Stars: Leonardo Alonso, Raúl Briones, Mónica Del Carmen
The docu-fiction hybrid A Cop Movie features many arresting images, but one perfectly captures the spirit of the director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ investigation of Mexico’s police force.
Police academy student Teresa prepares to jump off a 30-foot diving platform and into a swimming pool after tying her wrist to a long, thin length of rope.
The final obstacle she must clear to graduate, “decisiveness,” poses a severe threat to her life because she cannot swim, and her likelihood of drowning is callously avoided by keeping her hand tied to the ground. In an exciting twist, Teresa becomes more of an avatar for Ruizpalacios to examine the civilian perspective of the nation’s police force.
The character Teresa, who is based on a natural person, is played by actress Monica del Carmen. Monica del Carmen has expertly crafted herself into the likeness of the real-life officer, reenacting her workplace struggles patrolling the streets of Mexico City.
Teresa is presented as the sincere central subject for nearly half of the movie. She is accompanied by fellow actress Ral Briones, who plays Montoya (also a real guy), the other half of the pair that other police officers have called “the love patrol” because of their flirty connection.
The movie’s second half makes it very evident that these sentiments are only partial projections of their real-life equivalents, even though they initially show themselves as two officers simply trying their best under a failing system.
A Cop Movie is subtle yet bold in its critique of police corruption and the individual officers who buy into it—their good intentions be damned. It does this by meticulously creating this illusion and then subtly exposing the hypocrisy behind it.
13. Bonnie and Clyde
Director: Arthur Penn
Writers: David Newman, Robert Benton, Robert Towne(uncredited)
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard
“Miss Bonnie Parker is here. Clyde Barrow here. We loot banks.” Warren Beatty, the producer and performer, helped launch a brand-new trend of provocative, challenging, and youth-oriented filmmaking with straightforward but truthful words.
The Arthur Penn-directed movie initially drew negative reviews—our critic called it “a poor bit of baldfaced slapstick”—but its impact and power were unquestionable as time went on. Every performance is exceptional, but Beatty and Faye Dunaway rarely produced performances that combined sexuality, danger, restlessness, and boredom in their other work.
Films like Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde have a gritty realism that is just as brilliant and wise as the French New Wave. Still, they are also infused with the freewheeling American spirit that a corporate goal hasn’t yet muzzled.
14. The Disciple
Director: Chaitanya Tamhane
Writer: Chaitanya Tamhane
Stars: Aditya Modak, Arun Dravid, Sumitra Bhave
We are sold the idea that dedicating your life to something—art, a love, or religion—is admirable, but frequently only if it conforms to our romantic notions of what that life should be like.
Is success, no matter how late it comes or even if it comes posthumously, a reason to work hard? This concept is explored by writer, director, and editor Chaitanya Tamhane through the life of classical Indian vocalist Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), a sincere hardliner raised by his music-loving father (Sumitra Bhave).
Will he emerge from the shadows and be acknowledged for his greatness? Or will he go into tangential obscurity like his father?
Sharp, dark comedy punctuates the introspective movie with jabs at pigheadedness. Fascinating long takes resonate with the same type of richness found in its diverse array of singers’ undulating and give us enough space to soak in the music and the commitment on display.
Similar depth can be seen in Modok’s outstanding performance, concealed by a yearning tension and steadfast gaze. He represents the unfulfilled artist, who observes success from fools and cretins all around him but cannot imagine what would prevent him from achieving it.
A genuinely winning portrait is produced by this performance, which is tragic, lovable, and spiky.
The Disciple is as steady and detached as Sharad’s motorcycle, but it has affection for its central sadsack artist and his commitment to never selling out.
15. The Master
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin PhoenixAmy Adams
There is seldom a scene in The Master that isn’t captivating because of how mysterious, tragic, and humorous the characters are studied. Paul Thomas Anderson is the director of the movie. He keeps some of the stylistic inclinations from There Will Be Blood.
Still, he also continually finds ways to take chances and make bold decisions that are utterly unanticipated. The apparent influence of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology on Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his church, The Cause, was the main topic of pre-release press coverage for the movie.
There are unavoidable similarities between the two ideologies, but that is not the point. Anderson never takes the stance that religion or cults are like freak shows.
Even in a masterful montage showing a succession of taxing workouts that Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) can’t or won’t let educate him, the character’s struggle takes center stage.
The rites’ strangeness is practically incidental. In his role as a drunken World War II soldier with both physical and emotional scars, Phoenix performs his career.
He stumbles around one place until he must run to another, obsessing over sex and producing experimental booze, having gained little help from a psychiatric crash course for returning troops with post-traumatic difficulties. As a master of the visual arts, Anderson makes excellent use of the extra detail.
When Freddie is being tracked, Dodd first appears as a small but enthusiastic figure aboard a cruise ship, far off but the center of attention.
Freddie hasn’t met Dodd yet, but he can hear the boat beckoning him. That might be the case either because Dodd met Freddie in a previous life or because Freddie is a desperate alcoholic looking for cover.
The biggest tragedy for Freddie is that the less tempting explanation leaves him without a solution while the more appealing one provides him with the incorrect one.
16. Raw
Director: Julia Ducournau
Writer: Julia Ducournau(dialogue)
Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella
If you’re a proud owner of a dark sense of humor, you might con your friends into seeing Julia Ducournau’s Raw by telling them it’s a “coming of age movie.”
Yes, during the movie’s running length, Justine (Garance Marillier), a naive new college student, matures; she discovers her true identity as a person approaching adulthood. But most young people who grow up watching movies are unaware they have lived their entire lives unknowingly fighting a natural, even greedy, urge to eat raw meat. It is Permit Ducournau.
Raw is a clear admission to the painful nature of Justine’s gloomy flowering, more than just a wink and a gesture to the picture’s visceral specifics.
Even while the movie is horrifying and it is alarming, the most complex feelings Ducournau expresses here are frequently those that are invisible to the naked eye: Fear of exposed and bloody flesh, family traditions, popularity politics, and confusion about one’s own identity is just as terrifying as fear of female sexuality.
It’s a gorefest that makes no excuses and provides much more food for thought than its effects.
17. Da 5 Bloods
Director: Spike Lee
Writers: Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, Kevin Willmott
Stars: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters
The search for hidden gold is neither prosperous nor trouble-free. There are always obstacles on the lengthy path to reconciliation, whether with one’s trauma, family, or national identity.
These facts, together with the corrosive effects of institutional racism and a plethora of historical allusions—to American history, music history, and film history—combine to create Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, a traditionally styled Vietnam action movie made in accordance with his cinematic vision.
Like in BlacKkKlansman (2018), Lee draws parallels between the past and present by relating the fight for civil rights, cloaked in protest and conscientious objection, to the current American struggle against fascism the government supports.
Lee introduces four of the five types of blood after beginning with a montage of incidents and individuals speaking out against the Vietnam War, which is referred to mainly as the American War for the rest of the film: Bonded Vietnam veterans Eddie (Norm Lewis), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Paul (Clarke Peters), and Melvin went to Ho Chi Minh City allegedly to locate and retrieve the remains of their deceased squad leader, Norman (Chadwick Boseman).
Naturally, there’s more. “More” consists of roughly $17 million in gold bars planted in Vietnamese soil, once the property of the CIA but now claimed by the Bloods as compensation for their suffering as soldiers engaged in a war for a nation run by individuals who don’t respect their rights.
When Lee asserts forcefully that despite the length of time since the end of the Vietnam War, America is still persistently waging the same conflicts against its people and, for that matter, the rest of the globe, he is at the height of his abilities.
And Lee is still frustrated and incensed by the current situation, which sees Black Americans still subjected to discrimination, ballot suppression, and medical negligence. Da 5 Bloods’ breadth is almost essential in this situation. Right on, as Paul would say.
18. Creep
Director: Patrick Brice
Writers: Patrick Brice(story), Mark Duplass(story)
Stars: Katie Aselton(voice), Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass
The Overnight director Brice, who also produced Creep this year, makes his directorial debut with this slightly predictable but gleefully deranged short horror movie.
The film, which stars the insatiably creative Mark Duplass, is a character study of two men: a naive videographer and a reclusive psychotic man who employs the former to come to record his life in a cabin in the forest. It entirely depends on its excellent results.
As the crazed madman who pours himself into the protagonist’s life and haunts him at every moment of the day, Duplass, has displayed his ability to be endearing and quirky in films like Safety Not Guaranteed, which excels here. The exchanges between the two at the beginning crackle with an uneasy tension.
It showcases the chemistry between its two main actors in a way that makes me think of the sequences between Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina. Of course, anyone familiar with the genre will undoubtedly understand its direction.
19. The Conjuring
Director: James Wan
Writers: Chad HayesCarey W. Hayes
Stars: Patrick WilsonVera FarmigaRon Livingston
James Wan is an above-average filmmaker of horror movies. The creator of popular television franchises like Saw and Insidious has a talent for writing populist horror that retains a hint of his unique aesthetic personality.
He has a Spielbergian aptitude for writing for multiplex audiences without completely losing characterization. If this list were to be expanded, several of his films would be just outside the top 100, but The Conjuring is unquestionably the scariest of all of Wan’s feature films, making it the clear Wan representative.
The Conjuring defies when and where you anticipate the horrors to occur, reminding me of the first time I saw Paranormal Activity at a crowded cinema.
Although the haunted house/possession plot is nothing new, Wan gives an old, creaky farmstead in Rhode Island a stunning makeover that is unmatched in previous films in this genre.
The movie subverts audience expectations by delivering powerful thrills without the usual Hollywood Jump Scare build-ups while invoking traditional golden age ghost stories like Robert Wise’s The Haunting. Its level of intensity, effects, work, and relentlessness elevated it several notches above the PG-13 horror it was mainly competing with.
It’s fascinating to note that while lacking overt “violence,” gore, or sexuality, The Conjuring did obtain an “R” rating. There should be respect that it was simply too terrifying to ignore.
20. The Lost Daughter
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Writers: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elena Ferrante(based on the novel by)
Stars: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson
The Lost Daughter’s Leda (Olivia Colman), a comparative literature scholar, spends most of the film’s time relaxing on a beach where the water is warm and transparent, the skies are a clear blue, and the beaches are glistening white.
However, the shore is also overrun with rude, obnoxious people, Leda’s fruit has a deadly rot, her bedroom is filled with shrieking bugs, and a young girl’s toy has been tainted by an offensive black liquid and writhing insects.
This tonal tension can characterize the essence of the movie as a glossy apple that is quickly rotting from the inside out. Leda embarks on a luxury business holiday as the story unfolds over a few days.
However, when she first sees Nina (Dakota Johnson), a stunning, mysterious young mother, her peace of mind is disturbed.
Leda becomes fixated on Nina as she unintentionally triggers memories of her own unpleasant experiences as a mother. The eerie recollections of Leda begin to pervade The Lost Daughter at that point and continue until the apple is entirely black.
Although the storyline, adapted from Elena Ferrante’s 2006 novel of the same name, is relatively simple, Maggie Gyllenhaal, the film’s first female director and screenwriter, approaches internal,lized, and externalized sexism issues with agility and subtlety.
Without Gyllenhaal’s uniquely visual sense, it would have been impossible to express Leda’s nuanced, complex mental condition. Although most of Leda’s troubles are internal, I’m sure that Gyllenhaal’s distinctively tactile storytelling speaks far more than words ever could.
Leda gently strokes Elena’s filthy doll, her touch seemingly tinged with remorse. The sound of the pin being put into Nina’s hat makes a menacing, sword-like sound, but her meticulous placement is almost seductive.
And when a younger Leda carves orange flesh, her deft, careful carving seems virtually foreboding. The Lost Daughter’s central women have outstanding performances in addition to Gyllenhaal’s superb directing, creating a perfect storm that makes a sharp depiction of the harsh demands of womanhood.
