Action gets treated like comfort food, but the genre only works when someone commits fully to the premise, whether that is a hunted man on an island, a dinosaur heist, or a teenager in red spandex figuring out his own strength. Netflix has quietly stacked a run of titles that cover the whole range, from franchise landmarks to a couple of newer arrivals worth knowing about. Here is where to start.
Apex traps Bruce Willis as a wrongly convicted ex cop offered his freedom if he survives being hunted for sport by six paying clients on a remote island, with Neal McDonough as the client who wants it most. It plays its high concept straight, which is exactly what a chase movie like this needs.
Jurassic World Rebirth sends Scarlett Johansson's extraction specialist and Jonathan Bailey's paleontologist into restricted territory to pull dinosaur DNA for a pharmaceutical client, with Mahershala Ali along for the ride. Director Gareth Edwards leans on scale and practical creature work rather than reinventing the formula, and the chemistry between the three leads is doing real work.
Spider-Man is where Sam Raimi built the modern superhero movie almost by hand. Tobey Maguire spent sixteen hours and over a hundred and fifty takes perfecting the cafeteria tray catch because Raimi wanted the moment to feel physically real rather than animated, and that instinct runs through the whole film.
Spider-Man: Homecoming resets the character as an actual teenager, and director Jon Watts said he pictured it as a John Hughes movie with a suit stitched on. Michael Keaton's Vulture is the reason it holds up: a working class villain built from resentment at Tony Stark rather than a costume looking for a plot.
War Machine puts Brad Pitt inside a satire based on Michael Hastings' book about the real command shakeup in Afghanistan, with the character modeled closely on General Stanley McChrystal. David Michod's script is more interested in the absurdity of modern command than in staging firefights, which makes it an odd, sharp entry in this list.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse introduced Miles Morales to the screen and won the Oscar for best animated feature, the first time since 2011 that award had gone anywhere other than Disney or Pixar. The film mixes computer animation with hand drawn texture to make something that still looks unlike anything else in the genre.
How to Train Your Dragon rebuilds the animated original in live action with Dean DeBlois, who directed the first film, back at the helm, and Gerard Butler returning as Stoick. It sticks close to the beats viewers already know, which is either the point or the limitation depending on what you want from a remake.
The Rip follows a group of Miami police officers who stumble onto a massive stash of cash during a routine seizure, and watches the trust between them curdle once outsiders learn what they found. Joe Carnahan directs a cast led by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck through a story built on paranoia rather than shootouts.
Spider-Man 3 crams in Sandman, the New Goblin and Venom after Sony pushed Raimi to add the symbiote for its merchandising potential, on top of a storyline Raimi had already planned around Harry Osborn. The result is overstuffed, but the set pieces, especially anything involving Sandman's transformation, still land.
The Fifth Element was Luc Besson's own idea, one he had been writing since he was a teenager, and its look owes as much to fashion as to science fiction. Jean Paul Gaultier designed roughly a thousand looks for the cast and extras, giving the film a street level future that still feels specific decades later.
Venom: The Last Dance closes out Tom Hardy's run as Eddie Brock, the role he has said will be his last time playing the symbiote. Whatever you make of the trilogy, this is the one built to send it off.
My Dearest Assassin is a Thai original about a woman targeted since childhood for her rare blood, raised by a secretive clan of assassins after her parents are killed, who finally chooses to stand and fight rather than keep running. It is stylised and violent, but the question underneath it, about what you owe the family you choose, is what gives it weight.
Twelve very different ways to spend two hours; pick the one that matches the mood you are actually in tonight.
