3 Perfect Movies to Watch on Netflix This Week (Sep 7-11)

After Ridley Scott's return to the sci-fi genre, The Dog Stars, tried and failed to compete with the all-conquering Spider-Man: Brand New Day last weekend, next up to provide some competition was By Any Means, Mark Wahlberg's new crime thriller also starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. However, it would prove a fruitless task, as Brand New Day continued its demolition of the box office with a sixth weekend at the top. So, heading into another week of movies overseen by the reigning Brand New Day, what should you be watching? To help you decide, here's a list of three movies you should stream on Netflix this week. For more recommendations, check out our list of the best shows and movies on Netflix. Disclaimer: These titles are available on US Netflix. 1 'The Sixth Sense' (1999) Rotten Tomatoes: 86% | IMDb: 8.2/10 M. Night Shyamalan might be a controversial filmmaker, with his overall catalog featuring more hits than misses, but this week, you should return to his magnum opus for a dark and twisted early-fall film. 1999's The Sixth Sense stars Bruce Willis as Philadelphia child psychologist Malcolm Crowe, who looks to rebuild his life after a tragic accident, finding hope through helping a troubled young boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment). Also featuring a note-perfect performance by Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense boasts one of the finest screenplays of the '90s, brought to life by a selection of beloved actors all working at their best. The Sixth Sense will draw you in and keep you hooked throughout, before pulling the rug from beneath your feet with one of the most jaw-dropping twists in all of cinema. COLLIDER . Collider · Quiz Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜 Parasite 🌀 Everything Everywhere ☢️ Oppenheimer 🐦 Birdman 🪙 No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → QUESTION 1 / 10 TONE 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. A Something that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. B Something overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. C Something grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. D Something formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. E Something lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 2 / 10 THEME 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? A Class, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. B Identity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. C Genius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. D Ego, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. E Evil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 3 / 10 STRUCTURE 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. A Genre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. B Maximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. C Epic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. D A single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. E Spare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 4 / 10 VILLAIN 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? A A system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. B The self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. C History — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. D The industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. E Pure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 5 / 10 ENDING 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? A Shock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. B Earned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. C Devastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. D Ambiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. E Bleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 6 / 10 WORLD 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. A A gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. B A collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. C The corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. D The grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. E Vast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 7 / 10 CRAFT 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. A Production design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. B Editing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. C Score and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. D Cinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. E Silence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 8 / 10 PROTAGONIST 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. A Someone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. B Someone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. C A brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. D A self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. E A quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 9 / 10 PACE 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. A I love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. B Give me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. C Epic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. D I want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. E Deliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 10 / 10 AFTERMATH 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? A Unsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. B Moved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. C Humbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. D Exhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. E Haunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is… Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. BEST PICTURE 2020 Parasite You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. BEST PICTURE 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. BEST PICTURE 2024 Oppenheimer You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BEST PICTURE 2015 Birdman You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. BEST PICTURE 2008 No Country for Old Men You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 2 'Straight Outta Compton' (2015) Rotten Tomatoes: 89% | IMDb: 7.8/10 Earlier this year, Antoine Fuqua's musical biopic, Michael, became the first biopic of all time to hit $1 billion in theaters. However, it was far from the best example of the genre, with one of the finest in the past decade currently streaming on Netflix. Straight Outta Compton follows the formation and brief success of the groundbreaking rap group NWA (Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and DJ Yella). F. Gary Gray perfectly unpacks and explores Compton in the mid-1980s and how it became the canvas for music history in this gem of a biopic. O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr., and Aldis Hodge all deliver great performances in this Oscar-nominated jewel in the music biopic crown, which makes for perfect viewing this second September week. 3 'Phantom Thread' (2017) Rotten Tomatoes: 91% | IMDb: 7.4/10 Director Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best filmmakers of this century, with 2025's Leonardo DiCaprio-led One Battle After Another eventually winning countless Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture prize. But perhaps the director's most underrated directorial effort came almost 10 years ago with the quietly genius Phantom Thread. Before he came out of retirement this year, Phantom Thread was considered the last movie of Daniel Day-Lewis, and it was the perfect way for one of Hollywood's best to bow out. A stunning, thought-provoking masterpiece, this tale of renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock's (Day-Lewis) infatuation with young Alma (Vicky Krieps) will sweep you off your feet with the highs and lows of unfiltered love explored in deft detail.