The 15 best films coming to Netflix in September 2022

To anyone who doesn’t like 1995’s teen rom-com , we say: As if! Charming, ahead of its time, and credited with helping put Paul Rudd on the map, this film inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma centers around silver-spooned Beverly Hills High School student Cher (Alicia Silverstone) who, not content to rule the school socially, decides to play matchmaker with two teachers and take a new student under her wing. But much like Silverstone’s character herself, this is a very surface-level reading and there’s much more than meets the eye. Writer-director Amy Heckerling, who’s been sadly relegated to directing middling TV shows these days, pulls off a peppy and fun high school romp with some unexpectedly deep themes. In a revisit to the film in 2020, The A.V. Club’s , “Clueless singlehandedly revived the teen movie at a time when that genre seemed all but dead thanks to the glut of sex comedies and John Hughes high school romances that had filled the previous decade.”

Writer-director Brian Helgeland’s medieval action-comedy-romance confused 2001 audiences due to its sunny disposition and anachronistic soundtrack. Case in point: a Middle Age-era dance scene is set to David Bowie’s “Golden Years” while a jousting tournament features Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” But this fun conceit has aged well. The film stars Heath Ledger as William, a young squire whose master dies just before winning much needed cash at a jousting tourney. Against the will of his fellow squires (played by Alan Tudyk and Mark Addy), William disguises himself as his master and wins the tournament. After meeting a young Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), the crew set off on an adventure where William seeks to keep on winning, including the heart of beautiful Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon), while avoiding the wrath of evil Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell). In his of the film, Keith Phipps notes the clichés but admits, “A Knight’s Tale works just fine, showing far more heart than the average summer blockbuster for all its shopworn calculations.”

After a nearly 10-year break between features (the excellent Medicine for Melancholy was all the way back in 2008) writer-director Barry Jenkins came roaring back in 2016 with , a smashing success with critics, audiences, and Academy Award voters. Thus, the table was set for Jenkins’ 2018 follow-up feature , a gorgeously shot (by James Laxton) adaptation of a James Baldwin novel of the same name. The film also tells an always popular tale of two young lovers Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) who are ripped apart after Fonny is unjustly arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. This all has the makings of a film well received by critics but missed by audiences; if you’re one of the people who missed it in theaters, you now have a chance to fix that. In a beautiful , A.A. Dowd wrote, “The film fares best when Jenkins just trusts the expressive force of his filmmaking, when he uses his own tools to evoke, if not match, the magic of Baldwin’s writing.”

is a tour de force of highly entertaining filmmaking. The 1983 film is also incredibly violent, gory, and all-around excessively strange, making it a bit surprising it’s found such a foothold in worldwide pop culture. Master director Brian DePalma rejiggered Howard Hawks’ 1932 (just under the precode years) gangster morality tale by teaming up with screenwriter Oliver Stone. Together, they forged a new look at the morality of ’80s excess; the combination of Stone’s distrust of authority alongside DePalma’s provocative, arty style worked like gangbusters. In a 2003  of the film’s DVD, Scott Tobias wrote, “Is it possible that an entire generation of rap stars could misread the rise and fall of Tony Montana, a nouveau riche Cuban drug lord, as a rags-to-riches story about living large and going down in a blaze of glory?”

News recently broke that a remake of the goofy but adored Patrick Swayze starrer was headed into production with Jake Gyllenhaal in Swayze’s “Dalton” role. The Internet’s collective dude and dudette contingency did not take this news lying down. Rather than realize they don’t actually have to watch the remake if they don’t want to, they got mad and acted if a cinematic malfeasance had been committed. Then again, it is nice to see people feeling passionate about a movie they love. What makes the campy and faux-macho Road House work is the charm and charisma that is Swayze. In a for a series titled The New Cult Canon: Road House, Scott Tobias said, “One of the qualities that separates Road House from lesser Swayze vehicles is that it’s a Joel Silver production—glossy, vulgar, testosterone-driven, shamelessly commercial, and given to catchphrases.”

Judd Apatow had a nice run of instant-classic comedies, starting in 2005 with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and ending, arguably, with This Is 40 in 2012. It ended there because people really hated , and for pretty surface-level reasons; the main complaint seemed to be no one wanted to hear another rich white guy complain about life. Apatow is indeed a rich white guy who got rich making movies about white guys, so the “write what you know” mentality makes sense for a writer-director who had just turned 40—and, even though he’d reached a level of success, still struggles like we all do. In the end, This Is 40 is a truly funny movie with a hilarious cast of Apatow regulars like Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann, plus scene-stealing turns from Albert Brooks and Melissa McCarthy. Give it another shot! In a B+ for The A.V. Club, Noel Murray said, “a few broadly comic moments aside, This Is 40 also captures the rhythms and concerns of real life in ways that slicker Hollywood comedies don’t.”

It’s a bit of a conundrum how a film as original, funny, wildly inappropriate, and amazing as 2013’s isn’t way more popular. The basic premise is Jay Baruchel (playing himself, as is everyone in this star-studded film) comes to Los Angeles, a place he hates, to do some work and hang with pal Seth Rogen. In an attempt to get Baruchel to warm to the town that pays his bills, the guys go to a party in the Hollywood Hills at James Franco’s house and, while there, the biblical Rapture happens. The earth opens up, demons swallow people whole, and all hell breaks loose. Beloved actors like Michael Cera, Emma Watson, and Mindy Kaling are killed as randomly as anyone on earth—but, you know, in funny ways. The film eventually settles in to become a sort of survivor story as Rogen and Baruchel hide out alongside Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson in Franco’s house. If you’ve never seen it, you’re missing out. If you have, you’ll probably want to see it again. In a B- review of the film for The A.V. Club, , “If there’s a central joke holding the movie together, it’s that it takes a literal apocalypse for these pampered entertainers to realize that (a) they’re pretty lousy people, and (b) they don’t really like each other.”

Come on an emotional rollercoaster regarding Rob Zombie’s 2022 full-length feature film . When news arrived that Zombie would be writing and directing a film based on the classic 1960s television show The Munsters, people seemed generally pleased. Then, as he invariably does, Zombie cast his wife Sheri Moon Zombie as vampire matriarch Lily Munster, beginning the slow squeal of air being let out of the excitement balloon. Still, some great photos of the shoot began cropping up, which indicated Zombie was not joking when he said he was staying totally true to the look and feel of the original series (which only lasted two seasons). But then trailers for the film dropped, and many felt they looked flat-out dumb. In any case, it’s a positive for us all that it drops on Netflix September 27 (so folks don’t have to pay extra to see it in a theater).

Warner Bros. flat-out canning their Batgirl film caused a massive wave of anger across the Internet as film fans unanimously agreed this was a huge waste of money. Why not just put the film on HBO like every other DC film and move on? Yet that same amount of frustration never seemed to happen when the brilliant Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe biopic-ish film was slapped with an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, thus sentencing the Joyce Carol Oates adaptation to skip theaters and go straight to Netflix. At least people can tune in to see Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, Adrian Brody as Arthur Miller, and Bobby Cannavale as Joe DiMaggio. But with a cast and team of this caliber, Blonde deserves a theatrical release.

Stanley Kubrick’s troubling yet strangely beguiling hits Netflix in September. Make sure you have your adult account locked solid! Indeed, Malcolm McDowell’s Alex and his ragtag Droogs will be spreading a bit of the ol’ ultra-violence around to a streaming service that, before now, wasn’t big on showing challenging films like this and the aforementioned Blonde. You go, Netflix! Alienate that Stranger Things crowd by showing even stranger things. Kubrick’s 1971 classic is an all-time great, with its chilly, deadpan examinations of good versus evil, law versus order, and free will versus authority. With so much duality floating around, it’s not much of a surprise that critical analysis is all over the map, interpretation-wise. One note remains consistent: A Clockwork Orange is a punch to the gut that manages to provoke deep thoughts. In 2000, on Empire: “The up-side of the film’s waning shock value is that the clamor of knee-jerk reactionaries is less likely to drown out a discussion of its intrinsically moral stance.”

Many cinema diehards have crowned Michael Mann our greatest living American director. When you look at something like his 2004 gem , you understand the reasons behind the praise. Its simple premise: Los Angeles cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) picks up a sharp dressed man (Tom Cruise) who offers him $600 to make a series of stops. Since easy money is rarely ever that, Max soon discovers this wealthy mystery man is a hitman and he’s now more hostage being forced to assist in murders than cab driver earning a living. Cruise and Foxx are excellent, as is the film’s other lead: the city of Los Angeles at night. In her review for The New York Times, , “Mann makes thrillers the way that John Ford made westerns, using genre as a way into meaning rather than as an escape … Collateral bears little relation to the usual Hollywood blowout.”

One of the last (if not the last) great cinematic love stories, has been wringing tears from eyes for almost two decades. Noah (Ryan Gosling), a poor lumber mill worker working away in the 1940s, falls in love with a pretty woman named Allie (Rachel McAdams). Alas, she’s way out of his league, at least according to her wealthy parents. A summer romance ensues before Allie’s parents, acting in her “best interests,” find ways to keep the two apart. Since this is 1940, we know what’s coming; sure enough, Noah is off to fight in World War II. He writes Allie every day, even though her mother heads them off at the mailbox. As over the top as the film is, this is a lovely story told well. In his , Scott Tobias said, “Lingering memories of Gosling’s turn as a neo-Nazi in The Believer give his character an edge that the film desperately needs.”

If you’re ever looking for proof that noted hard-ass Clint Eastwood has a softer side, see his lovely 1995 film . Based off a hit book of the same name by Robert James Waller, Eastwood directs and stars as photographer Robert Kincaid, whose nomadic lifestyle one day leads him to a small town in Iowa. While looking for a local bridge, he meets meek but charming Francesca (Meryl Streep), alone on her farm with her husband and children away on a trip. The attraction between the two is palpable, but even for older star-crossed lovers, nothing is simple when love strikes from out of nowhere. The Bridges Of Madison County is a nice character study and a phenomenal acting showcase from Eastwood and Streep. Of course, Iowa in the summer has never looked more gorgeous. In a glowing review for Empire Magazine, , “As director, Eastwood goes for the slow burn in an unhurried, measured rhythm of visual details and silences that say more than the sometimes overly literary dialogue.”

Few have risen from the ashes of a well-received child actor career and remained relevant better than Jason Bateman. From Michael Bluth in Arrested Development to directing and leading as Marty Byrde in Ozark, this is an artist who has kept his nose to the grindstone. After cutting his teeth directing television, Bateman helmed his first feature with 2013’s . He also stars as Guy Trilby, an adult who’d dropped out of middle school and now seeks to wreak havoc on a school system that burned him. Guy cleverly discovers a loophole in a national Spelling Bee, open to anyone who “hasn’t completed the 8th grade.” It’s technically an airtight excuse, but there’s also no doubt that it’s wrong for a grown man to compete in a middle school spelling bee—a pretty ripe concept for a coming-of-age comedy-drama. In his B- , A.A. Dowd wrote, “Even when Bad Words is bad in the wrong way, it tends to be bad in the right way, too.”

Just when you think Netflix can’t possibly be more into Adam Sandler, they bring back one of his less popular (but still hilarious) comedies: 2000’s . Using his bespoke blend of anger and dumbassery, Sandler plays Nicky, the sweet third son of Satan (Harvey Keitel) himself who’s led a sheltered life. After Satan’s eldest sons (Rhys Ifans and Tiny Lister Jr.) leave hell in an attempt to take over the world, Satan sends Nicky to bring them back. Definitely one of the weirder Sandler comedies of the 2000s, this still manages to be funny, inappropriate, and tack on his signature sweetness by the end. In an impassioned defense of the film for Slash Film, : “From his days on Saturday Night Live to the goofy joy of Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler’s comic voice is best suited to absurdity, even better if the characters he portrays are absurd themselves.”