The 2026 Oscar nominations were just announced, and Netflix scored big with movies like Frankenstein and Train Dreams.
Chances are, you’ve seen those movies, so Watch With Us is highlighting a few below-the-radar films that warrant your attention.
Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a charming if odd love story set in 1970s Southern California, while the Emma Thompson/Stanley Tucci drama The Children Act is set in modern-day Great Britain.
If you’re craving something more violent, the classic zombie thriller 28 Days Later starring Oscar-winning Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy should satisfy your bloodlust.
‘Licorice Pizza’ (2021)
Paul Thomas Anderson is getting his flowers right now from critics and Oscar voters for One Battle After Another, but the auteur filmmaker has been killing it for over a quarter of a century now. One of his most underrated movies is Licorice Pizza, a coming-of-age comedy that draws on the director’s youth in late 1970s Southern California.
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Teenager Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is in love with twentysomething Alana Kane (Alana Haim), but she barely tolerates him. As she tries to break into Hollywood as an actress, she relies a lot on Gary for emotional support, which he interprets as love. Do they have a future as a couple? Or is Gary just being taken for a ride by someone older and more cynical than he is?
Licorice Pizza doesn’t have much of a plot, but what it does have is a great period soundtrack (you’ll hear tunes from Paul McCartney, Sonny & Cher, Donovan and more) and a memorable cast of characters that includes some real-life figures, like movie producer Jon Peters and local politician Joel Wachs. But the heart of the movie belongs to Hoffman’s persistent and idealistic teen, whose love for Alana drives the story. Licorice Pizza is one of PTA’s warmest movies and a valentine for a lost era of filmmaking that prioritized characters over everything else.
Licorice Pizza is streaming on Netflix.
‘The Children Act’ (2017)
Great actors are sometimes taken for granted, and Emma Thompson is one of them. The Oscar winner has been so respected for so long that you might miss one of her best performances. Emma Thompson’s great in a movie? Groundbreaking.
But her work in The Children Act warrants notice because it’s a tricky, multi-layered performance in a movie that appears inconsequential but is really complicated and nuanced. Thompson stars as Fiona Maye, a British judge who has to decide if teenager Adam Henry (Fionn Whitehead) has the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment due to his religious beliefs. An ordinary movie would be all about that court case, but what makes The Children Act so special is how it focuses on the aftermath of Fiona’s verdict and how it changes both her life and Adam’s forever.
I don’t dare reveal more except that the story takes several unpredictable turns that never feel phony or misguided. Well-directed and impeccably written, The Children Act gives Thompson a chance to show her considerable talents as an actress, and she creates a fascinating portrait of a woman at a crossroads in her life. Strong yet vulnerable, outwardly assertive but secretly lost, Fiona is one of Thompson’s most vivid characters in a career that includes classic literary heroines and the imperious Nanny McPhee.
The Children Act is streaming on Netflix.
‘28 Days Later’ (2002)
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is currently scaring audiences in theaters nationwide, so why not go back to where it all started by watching 28 Days Later? The zombie-thriller revolutionized the genre back in 2002 by making its undead protagonists deadlier and faster than ever.
When bike messenger Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes from a short coma in London, he’s shocked to find the busy capital deserted save for isolated groups of ravenous humans. Gradually, he discovers that a “rage” virus has infected most of the United Kingdom, and all it takes to become one of them is for normal humans to ingest a drop of infected blood. Jim eventually teams up with several other non-infected British citizens, but will that be enough to save them from all the seemingly unstoppable and innumerable zombie hordes?
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Shot on digital video, 28 Days Later looks and feels like a documentary rather than a glossy sci-fi horror picture. That’s largely why it’s been so effective even after all these years — what is normally implausible becomes all too real. Director Danny Boyle never lets you forget there are human lives at stake, and his small but talented cast makes you feel every emotion — fear, anger and sometimes hope — that gives the movie a weight most others in this genre lack.
28 Days Later is streaming on Netflix until January 31.
