Gadgets
The Best Movies on Netflix
What are the best movies on Netflix? That’s not an easy question to answer which is why there are some two dozen odd favourites in this list. They feature the likes of Ryan Gosling, Leonardo DiCaprio, Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Brie Larson, Amy Adams, Irrfan Khan, Keanu Reeves, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, and Liam Neeson. And they come from directors such as Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Rima Das, Meghna Gulzar, Vishal Bhardwaj, Joel and Ethan Coen, Denis Villeneuve, Paul Greengrass, Hayao Miyazaki, Paweł Pawlikowski, Andrey Zvyagintsev, and Alfonso Cuarón.
Of course, this list cannot possibly cover everything. And that’s why we have separate recommendations for some select genres that you should also check out.
- Arrival (2016) Amy Adams plays a professor of comparative linguistics in this alien first-contact film from Denis Villeneuve, which explores free-will, experiences, memory, and destiny, and masterfully delivers both personal and global messages. Jeremy Renner co-stars.
- The Bourne trilogy (2002–07)Technically not a trilogy, but the first three chapters — Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum — starring Matt Damon in the lead as the titular CIA assassin suffering from amnesia were so good that they changed the longest-running spy franchise of all-time: James Bond.
- Bulbul Can Sing (2019)Three teenagers battle patriarchy and the moral police as they explore their sexual identities in Rima Das’s National Award-winning drama — and pay for it dearly. Das writes, directs, shoots, edits, and handles costumes.
- Cold War (2018)Jumping either side of the Iron Curtain through the late 1940s to the 1960s, Oscar-winner Paweł Pawlikowski depicts the story of two star-crossed lovers (Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot), as they deal with Stalinism, rejection, jealousy, change, time — and their own temperaments.
- The Dark Knight (2008)In the second part of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, regarded as the greatest comic book movie ever, Batman (Christian Bale) faces a villain, the Joker (Heath Ledger), he doesn’t understand, and must go through hell to save Gotham and its people.
- Dheepan (2015)Winner of Cannes’ top prize, three Sri Lankan refugees — including a Tamil Tiger soldier — pretend to be a family to gain asylum in France, where they soon realise that life isn’t very different in the rough neighbourhoods. Jacques Audiard directs.
- Inception (2010)From the mind of Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a thief who has the power to enter other’s dreams and steal their ideas, and is then given the mission of his life if he wants to be reunited with his family. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy co-star.
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)In Nazi-occupied WWII France, a young cinema owner (Mélanie Laurent) and a group of soldiers (Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender among them) inadvertently cook up parallel plot to assassinate the Nazi Germany leadership. The 17-minute opening scene is a highlight of this Quentin Tarantino flick.
- La La Land (2016)A barista and aspiring actress (Emma Stone) and a struggling jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) meet and fall in love in Los Angeles in this musical that won both Stone and writer-director Damien Chazelle an Oscar. It’s uplifting, endlessly charming, and heartbreaking.
- Loveless (2017)A Cannes winner about the social ills of life in modern Russia, told through the eyes of two separated parents (Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin) who are drawn back together after their 12-year-old child goes missing. From award-winning director Andrey Zvyagintsev.
- The Lunchbox (2013)An unlikely mistake by Mumbai’s famously efficient lunchbox carrier system results in an unusual friendship between a young housewife (Nimrat Kaur) and an older widower (Irrfan Khan) about to retire from his job. Ritesh Batra writes and directs.
- Marriage Story (2019)Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play an entertainment industry couple going through a divorce, which pulls them — and their young son — from New York to Los Angeles, the two different hometowns of the protagonists. A Netflix original, from Noah Baumbach.
- The Matrix (1999)A computer hacker (Keanu Reeves) starts to question the nature of his reality in the Wachowskis’ seminal work, and with help from a group of rebels (Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss), he begins the fight against the machines that now rule the world.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)The legendary British comedy troupe mix their talents with the tale of King Arthur and his knights, as they look for the Holy Grail and encounter a series of horrors. A contender for the best comedy of all-time.
- Nightcrawler (2014)Jake Gyllenhaal plays a freelance video journalist with no ethics or morals who will do anything to get the best footage of violent crimes that local news stations love. A feature directorial debut for screenwriter Dan Gilroy.
- No Country for Old Men (2007)In what is considered the best film made by the Coen brothers, a welder and Vietnam War veteran (Josh Brolin) is hunted by a hitman (Javier Bardem) after he runs away with drug deal money that he stumbled upon. Told by an aging sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) investigating the hitman’s exploits.
- The Prestige (2006)Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are rival magicians in late 19th-century London who are obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, in what some consider Christopher Nolan’s best movie, and a metaphor for the art of filmmaking itself.
- Princess Mononoke (1997)Set in a fantastical version of 14th-century Japan, the last prince of a rural tribe ventures out to find a cure for an infection that’s slowly killing him; and encounters a giant wolf goddess and her titular human companion — “mononoke” is Japanese for spirit/ monster. An environmental fable that warns of the dangers of industrialisation. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs.
- Roma (2018)Alfonso Cuarón revisits his childhood in the eponymous Mexico City neighbourhood, during the political turmoil of the 1970s, through the eyes of a middle-class family’s live-in maid, who takes care of the house and four children, while balancing the complications of her own personal life. A Netflix original.
- Room (2015)Having been born in captivity, a five-year-old boy (Jacob Tremblay) gets to experience the outside world after a miraculous escape thanks to his mother (Brie Larson), who must deal with her own monsters after getting out. Larson won the Oscar and BAFTA for best actress. Based on writer Emma Donoghue’s novel of the same name.
- Schindler’s List (1993)After witnessing the persecution of his Jewish employees in German-occupied Poland during World War II, an industrialist and member of the Nazi party (Liam Neeson) saves them from concentration camps by spending everything he has in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of an Australian novel. Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley co-star.
- Shoplifters (2018)Winner of the top prize at Cannes, the story of a group of poverty-stricken outsiders scraping together an under-the-radar living in Tokyo, whose life is upended after they take in a new, young member. Hirokazu Kore-eda writes, directs, and edits.
- Spirited Away (2001)The only non-English-language film to win the Oscar for best animated movie is about a 10-year-old girl called Chihiro who wanders into the spirit world with her parents, where the elders are turned into giant pigs. Chihiro then must work in a bathhouse to discover a way to return to the human world. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs.
- Talvar (2015)Meghna Gulzar and Vishal Bhardwaj combine forces to tell the story of the 2008 Noida double murder case, in which a teenage girl and the family’s hired servant were killed, and the inept police bungled the investigation. Uses the Rashomon effect for a three-pronged take. Irrfan Khan stars.
- Wadjda (2012)The first feature-length effort from a female Saudi director (Haifaa al-Mansour) and shot entirely in her home country — cinemas were banned in Saudia Arabia when this was made — tackles a young girl’s (Waad Mohammed) quest for a little freedom in a heavily-patriarchal society, as she tries to win a Quran recital competition and buy a bicycle for herself.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
-
Camera3 years agoCharles ‘Chuck’ Geschke, co-founder of Adobe and inventor of the PDF, dies at 81
-
TOP SCEINCE7 days agoInherited predisposition for higher muscle strength may protect against common morbidities
-
TOP SCEINCE7 days ago
Stellar winds of three sun-like stars detected for the first time
-
world news5 days ago
Jewish diaspora expresses concern as Iranian drones launch toward Israel
-
TOP SCEINCE7 days ago
Brightest gamma-ray burst of all time came from the collapse of a massive star
-
Camera2 years agoSony a7 IV sample gallery
-
world news5 months ago
Gulf, France aid Gaza, Russia evacuates citizens
-
TOP SCEINCE3 days ago
Plastic pollution can kill variety of ocean embryos
