Netflix Movie Recommendations This September

Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and weathered shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) must stop an enormous great white shark terrorizing the beaches of Amity Island. What makes Jaws extraordinary isn’t the shark — it’s everything around the shark. Spielberg builds dread through suggestion, character, and John Williams’s two-note score, and the three-man chemistry between Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw across the back half of the film is as good as anything in American cinema. All four Jaws films arrive September 1, but if you watch only one, make it this one. The sequels decline in quality sharply — Jaws 2 is watchable, Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge are famously troubled — but the original remains completely, startlingly great.

Alien (1979) is Ridley Scott’s slow-burn space horror — a haunted house film set on a space freighter, with H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph design remaining one of cinema’s most unsettling creatures. Aliens (1986) is James Cameron’s sequel, a completely different kind of film: a military action movie in the same universe, trading isolation and dread for armored marines and firepower. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley across both films is one of cinema’s great character arcs. The ideal approach: watch Alien on one evening, Aliens the next. They work beautifully as contrasting experiences — and if you can only do one, the original Alien is the more technically accomplished, but Aliens might be the more immediately enjoyable.

Tony Montana (Al Pacino) arrives in Miami from Cuba with nothing but ambition — and proceeds to build and then destroy a cocaine empire in one of the most flamboyantly realized crime films ever made. Brian De Palma directs with maximum stylistic excess, and Pacino gives a performance so committed and over-the-top that it has become permanently embedded in American cultural memory. Lines from this film are still quoted by people who have never seen it. It’s long (170 minutes), loud, and genuinely quite violent — and if those elements put you off, this isn’t the film for you. But as an example of pure cinema ambition, as a portrait of greed and self-destruction, and as a time capsule of 1980s Miami excess, it’s irreplaceable.

Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) are on a mission from God — specifically, to save the orphanage that raised them by putting on a concert. Getting there involves one of cinema’s longest and most joyous car chases, a parade of legendary musical cameos (Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway), and an escalating series of disasters that somehow remain endearing throughout. The Blues Brothers is one of those films that anyone who loves music, comedy, or pure cinematic absurdity will find something to love in. It’s loud, excessive, and exactly as long as it needs to be. Perfect for a Friday night with people who need cheering up.

Tom Hanks plays Sam Baldwin, a recently widowed father in Seattle whose young son calls a radio talk show hoping to find his dad a new wife. Baltimore journalist Annie (Meg Ryan) hears the broadcast and becomes inexplicably drawn toward this stranger she’s never met. Nora Ephron’s direction is warm and precise, the chemistry between Hanks and Ryan requires almost no screen time together to function, and the film pays loving tribute to An Affair to Remember in a way that makes both films richer. This is genuinely one of the great feel-good films of its era and it holds up far better than most romantic comedies of the decade. Perfect September viewing — something about the change of seasons suits it perfectly.

Pop superstar Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is preparing for a massive world tour when she begins experiencing increasingly terrifying visions and unexplainable events tied to a supernatural curse. Rosemarie DeWitt plays her mother and manager, while Kyle Gallner reprises his role from the first film. Director Parker Finn doubles down on the body horror and psychological unraveling that made the original work, and Naomi Scott throws herself into the role with real commitment. The film’s 86% Rotten Tomatoes score puts it well above the horror sequel average — the typical franchise horror sequel runs around 50–60% — and critics specifically praised its willingness to go further and darker than the first film. You can watch this without seeing Smile (2022) first, but the original is also very much worth your time.

Grace (Samara Weaving) marries into a wealthy, eccentric family and discovers too late that their tradition requires a new bride to play a game on her wedding night. The game drawn: hide and seek. The stakes: her life. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett direct with real confidence — the film is funny, tense, and bloody in roughly equal measure, and Samara Weaving anchors it with a performance that keeps the audience rooting for her no matter how absurd things get. Ready or Not works beautifully as a standalone horror night, particularly for viewers who find pure horror too relentless but enjoy when the genre is mixed with dark comedy. It runs a brisk 95 minutes and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The 1974 original arrives this September (not the 2003 remake listed in some sources — verify which version is on Netflix in your region). Tobe Hooper’s film is almost defiantly raw — shot on 16mm, sweaty and oppressive, and far less graphically violent than its reputation suggests. What it creates is a sense of relentless wrong: something is deeply off about this film from the first frame, and that atmosphere never releases you. It’s a historical document as much as a horror film — the prototype for an entire genre, made for almost nothing, and still one of the most effectively unpleasant viewing experiences in the American horror canon. For horror history completionists, it’s required viewing. For casual horror fans, it’s an extreme experience worth knowing about.

Fletcher Reede (Jim Carrey) is a lawyer with a pathological habit of lying who finds himself physically unable to tell an untruth for 24 hours after his son’s birthday wish comes true. What sounds like a thin premise becomes a showcase for Carrey at his most fearlessly committed — the film essentially requires him to tell the truth as comically and disastrously as possible in every scene, and he delivers. Liar Liar is one of those comedies that plays well at any age — kids find Carrey’s physical performance hilarious, adults appreciate the sharper lines underneath it, and the film moves fast enough that it never feels padded. A reliable choice for a weeknight when you want something entertaining and don’t want to work for it.

Buck Russell (John Candy) is a cheerful, disorganized bachelor suddenly called upon to babysit his brother’s three kids for an extended stretch — including a teenage daughter who has decided she doesn’t want anything to do with him. John Hughes writes and directs, and what he does here that he doesn’t always do is let the comedy carry real warmth underneath it. Candy is magnificent — big, loud, and immediately likable in a way that makes every scene feel easy even when the film is working hard. Uncle Buck is the gold standard of family comedy from this era: it’s funny for kids, it’s funny for adults, and everyone leaves it in a slightly better mood than when they sat down. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon or a multi-generation living room.

Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) discovers on his 21st birthday that the men in his family can travel back in time — and initially uses this gift to pursue the perfect romance with Mary (Rachel McAdams). Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually) directs with his characteristic warmth, but About Time earns something those films don’t always reach: genuine emotional weight about what we’d actually do if we could live moments twice. It’s a film that starts as a romantic comedy and quietly becomes something more substantial — a meditation on presence, parenthood, and what it means to pay attention to ordinary life. Bill Nighy’s performance as Tim’s father is quietly one of the best things Curtis has ever put on screen. Rated R for language and brief sexuality.

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a renowned dressmaker in 1950s London, meticulous to the point of tyranny and accustomed to getting his own way in everything. The woman he meets and falls for — Alma (Vicky Krieps) — is not what he expects. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is beautiful to look at and deeply odd at its core: a love story about control, power, and the surprising ways people choose to need each other. Day-Lewis announced this would be his final film before he later returned to acting, and the performance has the quality of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and trusts it completely. Krieps matches him scene for scene. This is not a film for when you want something easy — but for an evening of serious cinema, it’s one of the decade’s best.

In 1986 Compton, California, five young men — Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella — form a group and begin making music that captures what they’re actually living through. Directed by F. Gary Gray, the film follows their explosive rise, the corrosive effect of money and industry pressure on the group, and the aftermath that followed their breakup. O’Shea Jackson Jr. (playing his own father, Ice Cube) is a revelation, and Paul Giamatti brings real complexity to the role of their manager. Straight Outta Compton is the kind of music biopic that transcends the genre — it works as history, as drama, and as a film about creativity and exploitation that could apply to almost any corner of the entertainment industry. It’s long at 147 minutes and earns every one of them.

Twenty years after Trainspotting, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) returns to Edinburgh and to the friends he betrayed — Spud, Sick Boy, and the terrifying Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who has just escaped prison. Danny Boyle’s sequel is a film about nostalgia itself: how we romanticize the past, how the people we were at 25 haunt us at 45, and how old patterns reassert themselves. You should watch Trainspotting (1996) before this — the emotional weight of the sequel depends on knowing what came before — but T2 is not just a nostalgia exercise. It’s a sharply made film with real things to say, and Carlyle’s Begbie remains one of the most frightening presences in recent British cinema. Both films are available on Netflix this month.