Movie Ideas for Your Coronavirus Quarantine: Netflix Edition

With everyone staying “Safer at Home” during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all looking for ways to occupy our time. There are only so many walks, bike rides, and trips to the supermarket you can take to fill up your day. One great idea for spending a few hours is to catch up on your movie watching. I’ve seen approximately 13,927 movies in my life but still come across something new worth seeing all the time. It’s also comforting to go back a revisit a great film that I haven’t screened in a while. With that in mind, I’m coming up with lists of movies to consider checking out while sheltering in place.

For my first installment, here are twelve films currently on Netflix worth a watch (or re-watch!).

About Time

I love this movie more than I probably should. Richard Curtis, the writer of Love Actually & Four Weddings and a Funeral, revisits similar ground in this romantic fantasy about a young man (Domhnall Gleason) who can travel back and forth in time. He uses his power to try and win the woman of his dreams (the always welcome Rachel McAdams). The time travel aspect of the story is handled lightly and loosely. If you’re looking for ironclad time travel logic, check elsewhere. If you’re willing to just go with the flow of the charming story, check it out. This one is also free on Amazon Prime right now.

The Edge of Seventeen

This coming of age story came out to little fanfare back in 2016. One of our best young actresses, Hailee Steinfeld, plays Nadine, a high school outsider whose world is rocked when her best friend starts going out with her more popular brother. Woody Harrelson should have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work as Nadine’s favorite teacher. While the story sounds formulaic, it goes deeper than expected, ending with a surprising amount of heart. You can also find this free on Amazon Prime.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller enjoying a day skipping high school in Chicago makes this movie an all-time classic. If you are one of the few people in the world who haven’t seen this, move it to the top of your list immediately. If you haven’t watched this John Hughes masterpiece in a while, revisiting the memories will put a much-needed smile on your face. You might even want to watch it with an eye towards one popular fan theory that Ferris doesn’t actually exist and is just a figment of Cameron’s imagination. 

Gerald’s Game

Netflix has turned itself into a boutique movie studio in the last couple of years, but they have been producing some outstanding movies long before that. Mike Flanagan, who would later create The Haunting of Hill House series and direct Doctor Sleep, the overlooked sequel to The Shining, helmed this version of one of Stephen King’s most unusual novels. Carla Gugino, one of Hollywood’s more underutilized actresses, winds up locked to her vacation home’s bedposts after her husband dies during some rough sexual role play. What follows is as fascinating as it is terrifying.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Being stuck at home gives you the time to check out some of the longer movies you have never had the chance to tackle. This three-hour Clint Eastwood spaghetti western seems like the kind of film perfect for the situation. Ennio Morricone’s score is iconic. The cinematography is awe-inspiring. The stylish gun flights have often been imitated (including by my 48 Hour Film Project team!). Quentin Tarantino has called this Sergio Leone classic the “best-directed film of all time.” 

Groundhog Day

This one is another comedy classic with Bill Murray reliving the same day over and over again in Punxsutawney, PA. It might be the best performance in Murray’s career, and he is in top comedic form. However, very few movies are as deceptively deep as this one. I love that there are so many articles on the net focused on how long Murray’s character spends in the time loop. I’m also sure I am not the only person who thinks about what I would do if this situation happened to me.

Her

One of my top films of the 2010s, Her creates a world in the near future where a lonely man (the endlessly interesting Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his phone’s operating system (Scarlett Johansson, giving one of the all-time great voice over only performances). Both man and machine evolve in unpredictable ways as the story plays out, and it will not surprise me if this film plays more like a documentary in decades to come.

Hugo

Martin Scorsese is best known for gritty films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. And all of those masterworks are worth watching. These tenuous times might call for something a little lighter, though. Hugo nicely fits that bill, telling the story of a 12-year-old orphan in 1931 Paris who tries to activate a mechanical man his father was working on before he died. The plot later involves Georges Méliès, a real-life French film pioneer from the silent era who is very close to Scorsese’s heart. The film is an absolute delight.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

This comic book adaptation was a puzzling box office disappointment from Edgar Wright, co-writer and director of Shaun of the Dead. Michael Cera plays the title character, a garage band bassist who falls in love with an Amazon Delivery girl named Ramona (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, another actress who deserves more quality roles). Through an unfortunate series of circumstances, Scott has to battle all of Ramona’s evil exes before he can finally date her. It’s goofy and outlandish, but very entertaining.

The Shawshank Redemption

Netflix is killing it right now, with so many classic films available to stream for free. It’s amazing to think that this was another box office dud during its initial run. The golden age of video rentals helped turn this into an all-time great. It’s been the top film on the IMDB’s Top 250 List since 2008. This Stephen King based masterpiece from director Frank Darabont is one of those movies worth revisiting year after year. And with so many people in need of hope right now, the story’s themes are sure to resonate.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

This twenty-year-old movie is one that many people may have missed. A young Matt Damon inhabits the title character, an amoral conman who inserts himself into the lives of a wealthy young couple, played by Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, in 1950s Italy. As Roger Ebert noted in his four-star review, Damon’s Tom Ripley is a monster doing things only a monster would do, but we still want him to get away with it. This is one of many really good movies from decades ago in danger of being forgotten. I wish streaming services would do more to promote films like it.

Tootsie

This comedy is one of my personal favorites. My parents took me to see it on my twelfth birthday, and it was one of the first non-sci-fi “adult” movies to make an impression on me. Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a talented but down on his luck actor in New York who no one will hire. He makes himself over as actress Dorothy Michaels and auditions for a role on a popular soap opera as his new alter ego. After Hoffman gets the part, the character becomes a national sensation. When he falls in love with the show’s lead actress (Academy Award winning Jessica Lange), complications ensue. Hoffman gives one of his best performances and the film features hilarious supporting work from Bill Murray and the film’s director, the late, great Sydney Pollack.

Join me next time for some movies free to watch on Amazon Prime.