3 underrated Netflix movies you should watch this weekend (January 10-12)

Has anyone not watched Carry-On yet? The Netflix original movie, which premiered about a month ago at the height of the holiday season, has quickly become one of the most popular Netflix movies ever. If you haven’t, you should check it out — it’s quite the nifty thriller.

If you have and are looking for something else to watch this weekend, well, Netflix has plenty of movies for you to choose from. The following three movies are a little underrated, and while flawed, they are worth watching if you’re in the mood for a historical thriller, a Civil War action epic, or a documentary about one of the kindest actors who ever lived.

We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.

Free State of Jones (2016)

The American Civil War has spawned numerous great movies throughout the years. There’s 1989’s Glory, which helped Denzel Washington win his first Oscar; 2012’s Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s excellent biopic starring Daniel Day-Lewis as our 16th president; and, of course, 1939’s Gone with the Wind, which is still the highest-grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation). While not as great as those movies, Free State of Jones is still a worthy film to watch and chronicles a man and an event not really known by a lot of people.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, a real-life figure who defected from the Confederate Army and joined the Southern Unionist militia in Jones Country, Mississippi. There, he and other members of the militia fight against Confederate soldiers who are stealing crops, money, and valuables from the very people they are supposed to be protecting. Knight’s ultimate goal is to establish a “free state of Jones,” one where all of its citizens, black and white, are treated equally.

The movie plays fast and loose with history, but its spirit is accurate, and it’s the rare Civil War picture that also works as a really good action movie. You can tell McConaughey is invested in the material since he gives an unusually impassioned performance that’s far from his work in such lightweight rom-coms like The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. He cares here, and you find yourself caring, too.

Free State of Jones is streaming on Netflix.

The Good Shepherd (2006)

Robert De Niro is best known as a great actor, the star of such stone-cold classics as The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. But did you know he’s also a director? His second feature, The Good Shepherd, was a big swing, a movie that attempts to tell the birth of the CIA and stars such luminaries as Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Lee Pace, Joe Pesci, and The Day of the Jackal‘s Eddie Redmayne.

The film follows Damon’s fictional character, Edward Wilson Sr., as he graduates from Yale, meets and marries his love, Margaret (Jolie), and trains to be a counter-terrorism spy for the U.S. government. After starting a family, his now-grown son, Edward Jr. (Redmayne), inadvertently becomes involved with his father’s affairs by romancing a woman who may or may not be a Russian agent.

And that’s just one subplot in a movie that’s full of them. The Good Shepherd is a hefty 167 minutes, and your butt feels it after two hours have passed. But if De Niro fails to hit a home run, at least he scores a triple play, and the movie feels like a monumental epic about an institution we all are aware of but know very little about. The cast is pretty solid, too, with Damon capably taking us through the decades as a man who has to close off his feelings to be successful at his job. It’s an underrated performance from The Talented Mr. Ripley actor and one that deserves some attention even in 2025.

The Good Shepherd is streaming on Netflix.

Remembering Gene Wilder (2023)

To many, Gene Wilder looms large as a key childhood figure. His role as Willy Wonka in the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is still beloved today and handily beats Johnny Depp’s and Timothée Chalamet’s later interpretations of Roald Dahl‘s beloved character. But there’s more to Wilder than just that one role, and the documentary Remembering Gene Wilder shows just how impressive the actor’s career really was.

It’s not every day that an actor’s film debut also happens to be one of the best movies ever made. Yet Wilder’s supporting part in Bonnie and Clyde happened almost by accident and led to his Oscar-nominated turn in The Producers just a year later. From there, Wilder didn’t look back, and as the documentary chronicles his rise as a comedic actor in the 1970s and 1980s with such hits as Young Frankenstein, Silver Streak, and The Woman in Red, it also finds time to document his marriage to Saturday Night Live cast member Gilda Radner and his onscreen partnership with the groundbreaking standup comic Richard Pryor. It’s a breezily entertaining documentary that, if you weren’t a fan of his before watching it, will convert you by the end of it.

Remembering Gene Wilder is streaming on Netflix.