3 Underrated Netflix Movies You Need to Watch This Weekend (September 6-8)

Labor Day weekend is over and many of us are suffering from the post-holiday blues. Some will cure it by watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuicethe long-awaited sequel to the 1988 comedy hit starring Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. Others are choosing to stay home and watch whatever is streaming.

If you fall into the latter camp and have an active Netflix subscription, then this list is for you. The following three films offer a variety of quality entertainment for whatever mood you’re in. The only downside is that watching any one of these films will leave you wanting to watch more of them, and who has time for that?

Need more recommendations? Check out the best new movies to stream this week , as well as the best shows on Netflix , best shows on Hulu , best shows on Amazon Prime Video , and best shows on Disney+ .

First Man (2018)

There are underrated movies, and there are criminally underrated movies, and First man belongs to the latter category. A major Oscar contender in late 2018, its subsequent box office woes, combined with a lack of universal acclaim, ruined its chances of being recognized in such important categories as Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Just six years later, First man is now regarded as a film that has been unfairly ignored and should be reconsidered.

The film tells the true story of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s (Ryan Gosling) journey to the moon in 1969, including the grueling training required for the trip and the physical and psychological aftermath of the journey long after he returned to Earth. The CrownClare Foy is terrific as Armstrong’s first wife Janet, and the film is rounded out by some of the best character actors working today, including Ciarán Hinds, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Shea Whigham, and more. The film’s realistic visual effects won it an Oscar, but really, this film should have given Gosling his long-awaited statuette.

First man is streamed on Netflix.

Legends of the Fall (1994)

Like a great film epic, Legends of the Fall fails spectacularly. The film, which tells the compelling story of three brothers who all fall in love with the same woman before, during and after World War I, simply lacks the depth or movie magic that other similar films like Doctor Zhivago have. So why on earth do I recommend it? Because as pure melodrama it works very well, and it’s never not Interesting to watch.

That’s partly due to the actors, including Brad Pitt (Wolves) in its mid-’90s prime, as well as a scenery-chewing Anthony Hopkins, a determined and grim Aidan Quinn, and a tearful, eternally melancholic Julia Ormond. It helps that the cinematography is by John Toll, who won an Oscar for his work capturing a Depression-era America and a golden heartland of sunny fields and stormy skies. If you like broken hearts, lots of people dying, and Pitt with long, wavy blond hair, then Legends of the Fall is for you.

Legends of the Fall is streamed on Netflix.

The Mustang (2019)

Although 2019 was an excellent year for movies, one great film has been forgotten: The Mustang. A meditation on rehabilitation and redemption, the film is set in a remote Nevada prison. There, Roman Coleman (a terrific Matthias Schoenaerts) is serving a sentence for a violent attack he committed 12 years earlier. Still haunted by his crime, Roman rebuffs his pregnant teenage daughter’s attempts to see him and isolates himself from his fellow inmates.

In an effort to reintegrate him into society, he is placed in a rehabilitation program where select inmates are tasked with training wild horses so they can be auctioned off to ranchers. He is paired with the gruff mustang Marquis, and soon man and beast forge a bond that could save them both. It sounds sentimental, but The Mustang never resorts to simple clichés to tell its immensely moving story. The ending is bittersweet, but also inevitable; it honors what Roman went through with Marquis, but acknowledges all the sins he still holds himself responsible for.

The Mustang is streamed on Netflix.