Netflix first launched its streaming operation in late 2007. In the service’s infancy, the selection wasn’t huge, but for a while, the options were varied and exciting. In those days before Netflix proved just how valuable streaming rights could be, they could acquire and offer films from nearly all the major studios.
These days, the Hollywood studios aren’t just Netflix’s suppliers, they’re its main competitors. Most have their own streaming services like Disney+, Paramount+, and HBO Max, and they funnel their library titles to their own websites. As a result, Netflix’s library of older studio films has contracted even as the company has ramped up production of its own movies.
Still, sprinkled amidst Netflix’s hundreds of original titles, you can find some older films that are worth seeking out. For the purposes of this list, we’re calling anything made before the year 2000 an “older film.” Something made at least 22 years old feels pretty old to us.
The options include war films, romantic comedies, science-fiction thrillers, indie dramas, horror films, and even a Western or two. Below, we’ve picked ten of the best older titles streaming right now. They’re all available on Netflix, at least as of this writing.
The Best Older Movies on Netflix Right Now
All of these movies were made before the year 2000 and all of them are currently available to stream on Netflix. (All of them are also very much worth watching.)
Apocalypse Now Redux (1979)
You can basically count the number of pre-1980s movies on Netflix on two hands. But at least one of them is Apocalypse Now, one of the greatest war films ever made. Francis Ford Coppola staked most of the political capital he earned through The Godfather movies on this epic adaptation and update of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Along the way, he endured one star’s heart attack, another star’s mercurial behavior, and a typhoon or two. Despite the film’s infamy as a runaway production, Apocalypse Now became one of the last great cinematic achievements of the New Hollywood era — and one of the only ones you can watch on Netflix right now.
Blade Runner (1982)
Journey to the dark future year of, uh, 2019, where a race of artificial lifeforms known as replicants are being hunted down by cops known as blade runners. What follows is a future noir that contemplates the nature of existence even as it explores a mystery about a group of runaway replicants hiding on Earth. The version on Netflix, the so-called “Final Cut,” is director Ridley Scott’s preferred version. It runs about a minute longer than the “Director’s Cut” (which despite its title wasn’t personally overseen by Scott) and eliminates the theatrical cut’s happy ending and infamous voiceover narration by Harrison Ford.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
At the other end of the New Hollywood era from Apocalypse Now was Bonnie and Clyde, which helped launch one of the most adventurous eras in the history of mainstream American filmmaking with its frank depictions of sexuality and violence. Some of that material may look quaint now in comparison with the decades of crime films that followed (and shamelessly copied its formula), but the movie’s impact can’t be overstated. And if you’ve never seen this crucial piece of 1960s cinema, it’s available right now on Netflix.
Croupier (1998)
Clive Owen’s breakthrough performance came in this ’90s noir about an cold-hearted writer who moonlights as a card dealer. He’s approached by a woman with an offer to assist in the robbery of his casino, and as is usually the case in any good film noir, things do not work out as initially planned. In tone and style, Croupier bears a lot of influence from past crime dramas, but with a bleak worldview all its own. And it’s no wonder it made Owen into a star. Nobody plays this sort of detached loner quite like he does.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket explores the Vietnam War in two distinct chapters. In the first, a group of fresh recruits are molded into soldiers by a brutal drill instructor (R. Lee Ermey, in the role that launched his lengthy acting career). In the second section, the surviving grunts encounter the horrors of war on the front lines. There might not be a better double bill you could program on Netflix right now than Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now. (It wouldn’t be what you would call an upbeat double bill, but it would be really good nonetheless.)
Last Action Hero (1993)
Last Action Hero was the first movie that credited Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer, and he had approval over many aspects of the film. That makes it all the more interesting that Last Action Hero not only satirizes the action genre, but Schwarzenegger himself, who plays both fictional super cop Jack Slater and the “real” Schwarzenegger in Last Action Hero’s final act. After Jack ventures from the fictional world into the “real world” and saves Arnold’s life at the premiere of Jack Slater IV, the two share an awkward conversation. Arnold thinks Jack is some kind of professional impersonator hired for the big premiere; Jack cuts him off and says “Look, I don’t really like you. You’ve brought me nothing but pain.” It’s a fascinating moment for an actor who frequently played characters with multiple personalities (Total Recall), secret lives (True Lies) and even outright doubles (The 6th Day) — and whose personal life later blew up in his face.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Movies are made in the language of dreams, but few speak more clearly in the language of bad dreams than A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s terrifying masterpiece of somnambulant horror. The film launched a long-running franchise of Nightmare sequels, but none can match the simple, visceral scares of the original. Robert Englund became a decade’s defining boogeyman as the knife-gloved Freddy Krueger, stalking the teens on Elm Street in their sleep.
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Of all the ’90s movies critics got wrong, this one might be their worst blunder. Contemporary reviews dismissed it as a shallow, superficial, melodramatic Western. In fact, it’s got one of the decade’s deepest casts — including Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Gary Sinise, Woody Strode, Pat Hingle, Mark Boone Junior, and a fabulous pre-L.A. Confidential Russell Crowe — plus a script full of sharp frontier dialogue and director Sam Raimi applying all of his coolest camera tricks to Western gunfights. What’s not to love?
Titanic (1997)
Just think: Titanic became one of the biggest movies in history because obsessive fans in the late 1990s kept going back to the theater to get lost in the doomed romance between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack and Kate WInslet’s Rose over and over again. It did repeat business like few films in the history of the medium. Today, those fans could just pay $15.49 once and watch Titanic every day for an entire month, plus twice on Sundays. There’s a thought experiment for you: If Titanic premiered on Netflix instead of in theaters, would people have watched it five or ten times at home? Would it become the same kind of phenomenon? Or would it have faded quietly into obscurity? It‘s tough to say.
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
One of the most influential movies of the 1980s, this massively popular rom-com about a man and a woman who enter into a tentative friendship rather than a relationship launched Meg Ryan’s career as a Hollywood A-lister and turned the corned beef sandwich at Katz’s Deli into an unlikely sex symbol for the ages. Nora Ephron’s quotable screenplay gave the world phrases that are still commonplace to this day — When Harry Met Sally… is credited with popularizing the term “high maintenance” — and its structure and style have inspired an endless string of imitators.