The depths of winter demand a night in with a great movie. The problem? Choice paralysis. Every streaming platform has thousands of films available. To cut through that, here are 30 great hand-picked movies on Stan* right now. Don’t have Stan? Check out our guides on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max.
12 Years a Slave (2013)
A true story where slavery’s horror weighs on the very will to live, Steve McQueen’s Oscars best picture winner stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped into southern slavery. Masterfully made and uncompromising.
Animal Kingdom (2011)
Told with nightmarish economy and Aussie vernacular, David Michod’s debut charts a Melbourne crime clan’s deadly eruption. With Ben Mendelsohn as a paranoid killer and Jacki Weaver the controlling matriarch, this is a can’t-look-away crime drama.
Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Audiences at large discovered Timothee Chalamet with this heart-rending depiction of first love as director Luca Guadagnino captures every turning point for Chalamet’s Elio and Armie Hammer’s Oliver. Discovery, joy and loss are intertwined.
Clueless (1995)
Jane Austen’s Emma is relocated to Beverly Hills in a teen comedy so enjoyable that it rightly still populates our shared cultural idiom. Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz is the preposterously perfect student whose life comes unstuck when she discovers matchmaking.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Ang Lee delivered the wuxia martial arts genre to the world with this thrilling 18th century adventure in which Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh’s stoic Chinese warriors seek a stolen sword and possibly each other. Gravity and genre-defying.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
And here’s the Michelle Yeoh double-bill, with the Malaysian as the anchor in this inter-dimensional epic in which immigrant family trauma, freaky bureaucrats and apocalyptic fates intermingle. It’s both delightfully absurd and undeniably tragic.
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Director Steven Soderbergh and star Julia Roberts gave the legal drama a memorable underdog heroine in this real-life story of a Californian legal clerk who uncovered deadly corporate crimes and refused to take a backwards step.
Fargo (1996)
With thick North Dakota accents and a subtle reading of evil’s ease with the mundane, the Coen brothers follow a pregnant sheriff (Frances McDormand) diligently unwinding a botched kidnapping. It is the quintessential laugh-until-you-cry black comedy.
Fight Club (1999)
The true end of the 20th century bug was this subversive satire from David Fincher in which a corporate drone (Edward Norton) finds purpose via a badass bestie (Brad Pitt). Fighting each other and the audience’s morality, the film coolly runs amok.
The Fugitive (1993)
With Tommy Lee Jones as his hard-charging pursuer, Harrison Ford is the grieving husband on the run after being framed for his wife’s murder. This is one of the great Hollywood action-thrillers – edge-of-your-seat momentum meets heroic recklessness.
The Godfather (1972)
The gangster film as American epic, Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece about a 1940s New York mafia clan combines indelible performances – Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and more – with starkly tragic image-making.
Godland (2022)
The physical and philosophical worlds combine to harrowing heights in this 19th century drama about a Danish priest (Elliott Crosset Hove) tasked with founding an Icelandic parish. Specks of the harshest humour dot spiritual doubt and colonial guilt.
Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s monumental crime drama stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as respectively a brilliant master thief and obsessive police detective drawn together in a Los Angeles punctuated by cataclysmic shootouts and flawed personal relationships.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025)
Rose Byrne rightfully earnt her Academy Award nomination in this psychological drama in which a working mother’s professional and personal limits are breached. Byrne’s performance is so raw that the genre’s boundaries collapse.
La La Land (2016)
With the chemistry between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling providing the accelerant, this contemporary update of the classic movie musical escapes gravity as two hopeful artists experience the thrill of discovery and the cost of success.
Nightcrawler (2014)
With a terrifyingly acute performance that now feels prescient, a gaunt Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a sociopath whose amoral ambitions have no limit while flourishing as a freelance cameraman racing to nocturnal Los Angeles crime scenes.
One Fine Morning (2023)
Mia Hansen-Love has been a crucial French director this century, and this riveting tapestry of beginnings and endings is a stellar example. A never-better Lea Seydoux plays a Parisian widow who begins a relationship just as her father’s health declines.
Paterson (2016)
Jim Jarmusch crafts eccentric milieus. Sometimes they’re inhabited by vampires or spies, but here it’s simply a New Jersey bus driver (Adam Driver) with a yen for poetry and a whirlwind wife (Golshifteh Farahani). Life’s everyday expression sparkles.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
One of the cinema’s greatest romantic dramas, Celine Sciamma’s acute period piece captures love with soul-shaking intensity and barely suppressed risk as a painter (Noemie Merlant) connects with her subject (Adele Haenel).
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
An all-time action-adventure, with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford at the top of their games as the thrilling movie serials of the 1930s get a non-stop update when archaeologist Indian Jones pursues an ancient weapon.
Samson and Delilah (2009)
Recently selected as this masthead’s best Australian movie, Warwick Thornton’s debut is a devastating mix of Indigenous social realism and unflinching love as two teenagers – played by Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson – flee a tiny outback community.
The Secret Agent (2025)
Authoritarianism’s brutal reach permeates this 1970s-set Brazilian drama as an academic (Wagner Moura) finds himself marked for murder during the military dictatorship. It’s a unique thriller with evocative side-steps and a dreamy aesthetic.
Sicario (2015)
Taylor Sheridan’s best writing remains his screenplays for leading filmmakers. Here Denis Villeneuve’s striking imagery tuns the Mexican drug cartel mission of an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) into an unending ordeal. Benico del Toro says little and steals his every scene.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
With Anthony Hopkins matching impeccable manners with murderous joy, this cornerstone serial-killer thriller stars Jodie Foster as a rookie FBI agent prodding his incarcerated monster for help. Key moments have a startling terror.
The Substance (2024)
Hollywood double standards are the perfect cauldron for this take-no-prisoners body horror experience. Demi Moore is the ageing screen star forced to use black market drugs, creating Margaret Qualley’s younger version of herself. It really doesn’t go well.
Talk to Me (2022)
Adelaide YouTube siblings Danny and Michael Philippou earnt a global hit with this twisted tale of supernatural possession. There are twists and scares, but also – crucially – genuine longing and deep regret. Their gore has gravity.
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
The heavy metal satire that defined the mockumentary, Rob Reiner’s laugh-out-loud comedy about an ageing British band’s chaotic American tour is a stone-cold classic. That it’s mostly improvised is the chef’s kiss.
Tootsie (1982)
Star Dustin Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack fought continually through the making of this farcical romantic-comedy, but it worked. With Hoffman as a broke actor who poses as a woman to get a soap opera role, the film is both genuine and hysterical.
The Truman Show (1998)
A fable for the looming reality TV age, Peter Weir’s comedy-drama about a man (a terrific Jim Carrey) unaware that his entire life is a television production broadcast to the world is tenderly grounded and technically innovative.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Kathryn Bigelow’s requiem for the war on terror follows CIA analyst (Jessica Chastain), who dedicates her life to tracking down Osama bin Laden. It is a gripping, kinetic geopolitical drama, humming with procedural detail.
All information correct at July 2026. *Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
