Fifteen Stoner Movies to Watch on Netflix this Month

Originally published in Smoke It Up magazine, October 2021 (as TR Floyd)

Fifteen Great Stoner Movies to Watch on Netflix This Month

Maybe you’ve spent some time on the streaming services in the past year, like I have. But that landing screen’s always trying to throw Bridgerton at you, or that Tiger show, and it’s overwhelming once you start to look past the main titles. I mean, there are documentaries on everything. And two talking pig movies. Nothing makes any sense, and pretty soon you’re watching The Bourne Identity again. Or The Bourne Supremacy. Or maybe this one is Bourne in the U.S.A.; I can’t tell one from the other. Matt Damon is running around and can’t remember anything. I get it, Matt.

But really, you still don’t have to go into town to see something cool and totally new. There’s still stuff on Netflix you may not have seen, things that don’t have Matt Damon. Nothing against him. I like those movies where he’s in a casino with George Clooney. And the one where he does a bunch of math.

Some of these titles will pull you right in, and others will sit politely across the room offering a warm, consoling place of continuity.

In short, these movies really tie the room together.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture, dir. David Wain

This biopic is a little like listening to a good storyteller in a loud bar trying to tell a really involved but compelling story about somebody you kind of know. you probably do kind of know Douglas Kenney, the tragic comic genius who helped start National Lampoon and seriously changed the way the world laughs at things. Saturday Night Live is kind of the mad child of Douglas Kenney projects, and recent SNL alums are playing some of the parts, which makes the whole thing kind of a mobius strip of comic history. Joel McHale as Chevy Chase made me understand both of them better. And Will Forte plays Douglas Kenney for the jokes, but shows Kenney’s flaws with subtlety, too.

The movie can’t save Douglas Kenney from his real life, so it’s not really a spoiler to tell you that there’s a sad end coming. But looking behind the genius of Animal House and Caddyshack, you get that Douglas Kenney lives on in a lot of ways. And the next time you watch Animal House, which might be right after this movie because how can you not, you can say an imaginary hello to Mr. Kenney as he steals the drum major’s baton and leads the Homecoming parade down an alley. It’s the perfect cameo for the guy who made absurd comedy out of absurd hypocrisy.

Ip Man, dir. Wilson Yip

Bruce Lee’s famous teacher Ip Man, sometimes called Yip Kai-man, has been portrayed in a lot of movies, some more realistic than others. Wilson Yip’s series starring Donnie Yen is part fairy tale (it is a martial arts movie, I mean, of course there’s some fantasy) but also is based on Ip Man’s super-dramatic actual life. All four Ip Man movies are on Netflix, and now’s the time if you haven’t seen them yet, especially if you’re sad that Wong Kar-Wei’s The Grandmaster, also based on Ip Man’s life, is leaving Netflix at the end of September. Ip Man takes you through his early career’s fall and rise during the Japanese occupation of Fu Shan province right before World War II. The sets, cinematography, and music all give the film its sweeping-epic feel.

The fight scenes, okay, are the reason to be here. There’s a scene with some feather duster fu—you’ll know it when you see it—that really gives you a sense of how Ip Man’s Wing Chun style of reserved, controlled fighting took hold of imaginations. Because it’s ice cold stunning. He’s a mantis shrimp, knocking down enemies with waves of scorn.

A lot of martial arts people believe Ip Man suffered from a curse related to the fact that he taught secret martial arts techniques to Westerners; even his death from cancer of the larynx was seen by some as symbolic. Of course, there has to be myth around a figure this notorious and badass. We’ll never know everything about Ip Man, but the stories will go on and on.

My Octopus Teacher, dir. Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

Okay, I said to myself, what happens if I watch it every day?

But really, by the time he said it in the movie, I was on board. A tip, though: you can really customize the mood if you change out the sound altogether. So far I’ve paired it with most successfully with Elbow and Debussy, but you do you. I’m only recommending shutting off the sound after you’ve seen it all the way through once or twice.

This movie is pretty, pretty, pretty. You know how people talk about cinematography only when the movie sucks? I’m telling you this movie does not suck, but you need to know Roger Horrocks did the cinematography because cheers, Roger. Damn. I’ve never looked up a cinematographer to go watch his other movies, but I now am working through a list and I have a lot of Miles Davis lined up.

The plot is the usual boy-meets-octopus narrative. It’s a tough life in the ocean, so don’t get too attached. But she’s a minx, our girl, and she’s busting up her natural predators like Ip Man is now training cephalopods. I can’t get enough of that scene where she’s creeping up on the camera for the first time, holding up the nearest shell like an improvised shield, riveted but cautious, like me the first time I saw a Keurig machine in the office. Technology. It’ll mess with you.

I’ve found new uses for the term “pajama shark,” as you no doubt will.

Fantastic Fungi, dir. Louis Schwartzberg

Good lord, it’s time lapse footage of all kinds of mushrooms growing before your eyes. How big is your television? Do you care if it’s more than lots of mushroom footage?

It also turns out trees are really, really cool.

Note: a lot of people who didn’t like this movie either think it has no science in it or that it has too much science in it. I’m always interested in things that make people straight up contradict each other.

Castle Castigliosto, dir. Hayao Miyazaki

If you’re like me, you’ve thought to yourself, what if Smokey and the Bandit was anime, but also French? And here you go.

Before Studio Ghibli, the great Hayao Miyazaki directed this James Bond-esque caper film featuring counterfeiters, a nefarious count, a runaway bride, and a legendary outlaw named Lupin. Ridiculous chase scenes, copious noodle consumption, fights with obscure weaponry, all in glorious old-school 2D animation.

Inside the villain’s castle, you have to put a key in a golden goat’s nostril to unlock the door. There’s so much to unpack here.

The Babysitter: Killer Queen, dir. McG

This one just came on somehow the way Netflix will throw things at you, and it did occur to me that maybe I should go back and watch Part 1 first. Except I decided this movie series probably wasn’t like a Downton Abbey situation, and I was already pulling for that kid in the brown corduroy suit walking around like Harold from Harold and Maude. 

Some smart little nuggets turn up amidst the gore and the mixtape soundtrack. I’m pretty sure the last and only time that I’ve seen the name Gore Vidal on a high school English classroom chalkboard, for instance, I wrote it myself. About the time I was thinking, wow, I wish I’d seen the first one so I could support my theory that this film is a new entry on the list of sequels that surpass the original (Godfather II, The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator II, Cars II), one of the characters actually BROUGHT UP the list of sequels that surpass the original, and I had to rewind a couple of times to be sure that’s what I heard.

Random notes: a third installment is in the works, so let’s hope the Godfather similarities end. Watch it one time just paying attention to wallpaper, because something is going on there. And “we’re all just kids doing little hacks to try to live our best lives” is really the quotation of 2020.

Hubie Halloween, dir. Steven Brill

I can’t stand Adam Sandler. So now I’ve probably made everybody mad, either for loathing the guy because you like him or for putting this movie on the list because, like me, you get hives from his voice.

I got blindsided by this movie. Kept waiting for it to get mean, and it doesn’t. In fact, it totally sets up a bunch of opportunities to be hateful and lets them all slide. It may be sweet, but it sure isn’t dumb, and I laughed so hard at Maya Rudolph and Tim Meadows I had to lie down on the floor.

But what really got me is the whole love letter to small towns that this movie turned out to be. Heck, there’s even a radio station that plays dedications and everybody is listening to it, like in American Graffiti. Except it gets weird.

If you’re tired of really mean comedy and snark, if you like to imagine there’s still a world where taking candy from strangers is a perfectly fine idea, and if you think maybe even the bad guys deserve a break sometimes, watch Hubie Halloween.

I guess I have to watch Uncut Gems now.

The Platform, Dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

I did not know what I was in for on this one, and it’s certainly a mindbender. A bleak study of humans as their own predators, The Platform is like a Borges story that takes place in Kafka’s prison as designed by M.C. Escher.

Every day, a platform full of food descends, and for a few minutes on each floor, inmates get to eat from it. By the time it gets to the inmates on the lowest floors, the food is gone. The metaphor isn’t hard to get, especially with the main character reading Don Quixote to try to stay sane. (It doesn’t work).

There’s some graphic violence and psychologically disturbing scenes, but the movie raises important social questions about community and isolation—even more relevant over the last year. It’s a dark ride, but not your average horror movie.

Da 5 Bloods, dir. Spike Lee

There are so many reasons to see it, and it’s best on a really big screen so you can experience the four different aspect ratios Spike Lee uses to tell this story. It’s weird to talk about how great the editing is, but the fluid movement between 16mm to Super 8 to ultrawide digital makes this movie mesmerizing to watch. This style sometimes mimics the disorientation of battle, but its seamlessness also reminds you that memories can be treacherously wrong.

From the opening footage in which Muhammed Ali points out the hypocrisy of Viet Nam, especially for Black soldiers, Lee has you thinking about the bigger questions overarching this action film. Yes, it’s about a search for gold, but in Delroy Lindo’s Paul, Spike Lee gives us a character as complicated as American identity can be.

While you’ll be engaged by the action and intrigued by the way the flashback scenes remind us that we can’t always trust our own version of the past, the film leaves us wondering how so many years after Viet Nam, the Civil Rights movement isn’t over and we still have to say that Black Lives Matter, because we have a history—and a present day— that says otherwise.

Pan’s Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo Del Toro

Okay, you’ve almost certainly heard of Pan’s Labyrinth, but it’s on Netflix for now, so you can watch it over and over. Visually one of the most unruly movies you’ll ever see. This is what CGI was invented to do.

How can a movie about the cruelty of Spanish fascism be this lush and absorbing? Because Del Toto’s worlds are places of beauty built out of what remains of humanity after extraordinary trauma. The jewel-like colors, the misty sets, and the gorgeous monsters are all in contrast to the real monstrosity of fascism. Ofelia’s world can’t be defeated by the sadistic Vidal; the moment you’re the most lost, you’ve found your way.

Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner

The dead man’s widow is a Vegas dancer, and there’s Terence Stamp and Julian Sands. And Glenn Close! It’s a party! Somebody gets poisoned with hot chocolate. I mean, this movie is not Citizen Kane but it’s an excellent Sunday afternoon.

This movie fits sort of into my theory that if the police go to a house in an American movie and there are lots of books around, somebody in there has got some bodies stacked up someplace.

I heard once that Julian Sands had a pet tortoise, and it would ramble. I often imagine him asking “Have you seen my tortoise?”

Update: I miss Julian Sands, but I hope his disappearance was really a godlike rapture, and that his afterlife includes an army of grateful tortoises who worship him.

Snowpiercer and Okja, dir. Bong Joon-Ho

This one is a two-in-one, both directed by Bong Joon-Ho, who won an Oscar for the super-disturbing but fascinating Parasite. If you loved that movie and haven’t seen these two, there are some similar themes at work.

Snowpiercer is fast-paced, and if you’ve got some nice speakers, the sound is quite transporting. Especially with the shots of the train whirring through snow-crested mountains. It’s like one of those freaky gum commercials, but a lot darker.

The train holds the last of humanity after the next Ice Age has completely flocked everything. And here’s where it’s definitely in the Bong Joon-Ho catalogue: the train cars are organized by class, with the poorest people in the final cars. Things are about to change. Also Tilda Swinton is there, and she really has become the harbinger of catastrophe in film lately.

Okja ended up on a lot of Best-of lists, but be warned: despite that adorable Edward Gorey hippopotamus-looking thing, not a kid movie here. That big sweet baby is a corporate farming experiment, and you can start with that information. Not to say there isn’t a lot of cute in the movie. But… there’s also Tilda Swinton.

Both these movies have beautiful and jarring visuals, because Bong Joon-Ho wants you to think about what we’re doing to the world. And to each other. They’re immersive, emotional movies. If you decide to double-feature these, you might need to get a Vitamin D walk in between. Or watch some British Baking Show or something.

Rush, dir. Ron Howard

In a totally different mood, Ron Howard’s biopic portraying the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda will delight you with saturated colors and a roaring 70s soundtrack. It’s a bit Austin Powers without the irony. Everybody is very pretty in this movie, even when they are injured or moving very quickly, and both of those happen a lot.

If you enjoy Formula 1 racing—actually, I don’t really enjoy Formula 1 racing, and I still loved the movie. It’s stylish and loud, and will block out the world completely for a couple of hours. Which is sometimes exactly what I want from a movie.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, dir. Aaron Sorkin

Let that Aaron Sorkin dialogue just roll over you. There are too many good lines, and you’ll end up walking around saying “We’re going to try something else” for days after.

Sacha Baron Cohen won me over as Abbie Hoffman, and I was ready not to like that at all, expecting some kind of Borat-style goofiness. When Michael Keaton comes in, oh boy. Small part, big impact.

If you don’t know what happened with this case before you watch it, don’t read anything. Watch the movie, then Google. Just watch it.

The whole world is watching.