How to Find the Best Movies on Netflix

by jamilammar

This is the ultimate question. The search for the holy grail. A journey equal to the path of enlightenment from the Dalia Lama himself.

Ok, maybe it’s not all of that. But hey, it’s pretty important to find good movies, and find them fast! Otherwise, you just end up wasting your time on this planet and, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”. Today I would like to show you the way to find the best Netflix movies.

So today I am going to go over my technique for finding the best movies Netflix has to offer. Trust me, this techniques will help. The best Netflix movies are hard to find.

It may come as a surprise, but I often just Google: “Best Movies on Netflix,” just like everyone else. Sometimes I’ll find a good site that’s good for a few off the beaten path movies. However, I’ll still have to wade through the many personal reviews of the movies on the list. If I’m lucky, I’ll stumble across some cool people out there with a good taste in movies. My advice is to find a list on a site you like, sign up for their email list, and enjoy Jamilslist movies forever! No wait, I mean, enjoy their lists forever!

Yeah Jamil, I’ve tried that, but no one has as good as movies as you! What do I do when I’ve watched all the movies on your list?? Where is the second best Netflix movie list?

Ok, so the next step is to go straight to the source. Hop on Netflix and head to the movie “details.” That’s where you’ll find a plethora of great and horrible reviews. My advice is to close your eyes just enough that you can’t read the actual reviews and just focus on the stars. If you can see a bunch of blurry 4 and 5 star reviews, take the title and google it, adding “review” to your search.

Hopefully, a few slightly more reputable review sites will show up in your search. The most popular are Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. If you see at least a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.6 (don’t ask me why 6.6 is the number; IMDB has a very strange indicator of a movie’s worth) on IMDB, you’ve made it past step two. Here you have to dive in again and look at the actual reviews and opinions. If you read things like “Offensively grotesque and disturbing scenes of needless gore” you know you’ve got a good one on your hands! But you rarely get so lucky. Even Rotten Tomatoes is a coin flip sometimes. But if you’ve made it this far, you have a good chance of finding something worth watching.

*Bonus Tip

When you see bad reviews, don’t just dismiss them. You need to dig into the bad reviews just as much as you do the good ones. I’ll never forget how I found the horror Baskin. I ran into a review on Rotten Tomatoes that couldn’t stop talking about how much they hated how “sick and twisted” it was. Then my eye caught another green smashed tomato review that had words like “disgusting… horrible movie… completely inappropriate scenes of unnecessary violence,” and that folks, is how I found the movie Baskin. Trust me, far more people have horrible taste in movies than good ones. If you use reverse tactics, you might just pick up a good one.

With all that said, here are my secret weapon searches for finding the best movies:

Best IFC Netflix Movies

Best IFC Midnight Netflix Movies

Netflix Movies by Magnet (If you see “Magnet” at the start of the movie. You’ve won!)

Sundance Winner Netflix Movies

And that my friends, is how you find the best Netflix movies. But like anything else, practice makes perfect. Good movieson Netflix are never easy to find. You will start to see the patterns and I promise that you will get quicker and quicker at it. Sometimes I strike out, but I can usually find 1 to 2 quality movies a week. It’s all about finding a quick pick, quitting a bad movie QUICK, then rinse and repeat. Or you know… you could just sign up for my email list, enjoy my Netflix movie list, and let me do all the heavy lifting 🙂