Catch these 7 movies before they leave Netflix in March

Set your notifications. Cancel Wednesday night trivia. If you’re old like me, actually get out your red pen and mark your calendar. Seven movies are leaving Netflix this month, and you’ll want to be sure to watch them before they say farewell.

One of them is an Oscar-winning Best Picture. Another, in the eyes of many, should have been. One is a sheer guilty pleasure.

There’s cutting-edge satire, vitally important social commentary, and quite possibly the best film ever made in its particular sub-genre.

Seven movies to stream on Netflix before they leave in March

I will caution you about one thing: with a minor exception or two, these movies tend toward the violent, from the outright physical to the intensely emotional. There are some comic moments to be found and perhaps a tiny bit of offbeat romance, but these are generally high-octane, in-your-face adventures. However – and this is vital – even when they turn dark, all seven of these movies remain great fun to experience.

Most are around until the end of March, but don’t be fooled. A couple have requested early check-out. We’ll begin there.

Leaving March 16

A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

This one comes from the smart side of the Liam Neeson studies in violence. From the moment he made Taken in 2008, Neeson seemed to get caught in a Nic Cage pulp-fest. All of the literal Taken follow-ups are trash, but the Taken-adjacent revenge films starring the Irish giant feature some real gems. This one was written and directed by Scott Frank (writer of Dead Again, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, and both Logans). It is based on Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder novels.

Neeson is perfectly cast as the alcoholic detective Scudder who gets sucked into a labyrinthian series of crimes in NYC. There is good support from the likes of Dan Stevens, Boyd Holbrook, and David Harbour, and a very young Brian “Astro” Bradley, who plays a teen befriended by Scudder.

Moody and dark, the tightly plotted story doesn’t have the black humor of Neeson’s Cold Pursuit, but fans of gritty detective stories will love it. Thirteen-and-a-half times smarter than Taken 3, which came out the same year.

Leaving March 23

Oldboy (2003)

This is the original South Korean Oldboy, directed by Park Chan-wook. Not the 2013 Spike Lee remake with James Brolin. Lee’s version is pretty good itself, but Park made perhaps the single greatest revenge film in the history of cinema.

The premise is ingenious. A typical youngish business grunt is kidnapped after a night of heavy drinking. When he awakens, he is locked in a room. It’s a decent room – certainly not a dungeon. But he cannot leave. For 15 years, he is held in that room, fed and tended to, but never told the why or where of his situation. Then, without any fanfare, he is freed.

The rest of the movie follows his quest for an answer, which turns very violent at times. Park is a genuine master of this slow-burn sense of impending terror growing out of the most mundane things. This is a horror film for people who appreciate intricate character portraits under extreme stress. Plenty of movies attempt this type of thing. None has ever done it better.

Leaving March 30

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Be careful – most Netflix movies are leaving on the final day of the month, but this apocalyptic action masterpiece departs one day early.

Thirty years elapsed between the third film in the Mad Max franchise – Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome – and this reboot. Even fans of George Miller’s original trilogy couldn’t have expected such a triumphant return. Picking up the spartan heavy metal ethos of the original films, Fury Road extends the story in a bold new way, without succumbing to the excessive, borderline camp that was creeping into Thunderdome.

Tom Hardy is the nominal star, but the movie catapulted Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa into the stratosphere as a new action hero. It is an amazing visual display full of sound and fury, both futuristic and ancient, ultra-violent and ultra feminist all in one glorious maelstrom. Relative newcomers like Riley Kehoe, Zoe Kravitz, and Nicholas Hoult are on hand to provide an insane youthful energy. The movie won six Oscars but lost out to Spotlight for Best Picture. It topped many critics' lists for the best movie of 2015.

Leaving March 31

Baby Driver (2017)

I totally get if you don’t choose to watch a movie in 2024 that stars Ansel Elgort and Kevin Spacey. If you can look past the off-screen lives of the actors, you get a clever, fast-paced action film written and directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs the World). This was Wright’s first foray into a more realistic brand of action film, freed of zombies and superheroes.

Elgort is Miles – the titular Baby – a wunderkind getaway driver in the employ of Spacey's crime boss, Doc. It’s a classic gritty crime set-up about a young guy caught up in a world that he longs to escape. But it is done with extreme panache. Baby’s tinnitus becomes central to the movie's lifeblood – the music that he plays while driving to block out the ringing in his ears. The subsequent soundtrack album charted across the globe, rising to number 3 on the rock album charts in the USA.

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton’s breakthrough film of 1991, may be more relevant today than when it was initially released. The first movie to successfully cash in on the rise of gangsta rap, it succeeded both commercially and artistically. It also introduced a number of young actors to the world, including Angela Bassett, Regina King, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, and Ice Cube.

Singleton relied heavily on the stories Cube had been telling as a rap artist with both NWA and on his own to craft a cautionary tale of growing black in L.A. in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Though the movie was criticized for its violence, most of it is concerned with everyday life. That certainly entails violence, but it is just as likely to be the emotional, psychological type of violence growing out of endemic poverty and racism as physical attacks.

Laurence Fishburne, as Furious Styles (to the best of my knowledge, no relation to Imperator Furiosa), is the outspoken conscience of the story. His efforts to raise his son Tre (Gooding) are at the heart of the story. He is the chorus in a modern-day Greek tragedy.

The Menu (2022)

Mark Mylod’s pitch-black satire is not for everyone. (I can’t convince my wife to watch it.) But if you appreciate this particular brand of psychological and physical sadism in the service of a compelling, very funny story, there have been few better examples this century. Mylod has been a highly successful director of cutting-edge television (Entourage, Shameless, Game of Thrones, Succession), and he has clearly developed the skill to find comedy in the darkest parts of the human psyche.

In The Menu, he has the perfect actor in Ralph Fiennes to embody Chef Julian Slowik, operator of the exclusive, isolated Hawthorn restaurant. The film initially seems like a send-up of the culture of high-end cuisine, and it certainly does that.

But it goes much further, exploring the particular brand of sycophantic worship that enables the public at large to suffer any abuse just for a favorable glance from their hero. In this case, it is a chef. But it is easy to apply the story across a wide range of public idols.

The Sting (1973)

If the preceding movies strike you as too dark for your tastes, you can fall back on classic Hollywood myth-making. When it came out in 1973, George Roy Hill’s movie struck some as vulgar despite its quaint throwback setting. More than fifty years later, it simply stands as a great romp. It has major-league star power from heartthrobs Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Their interplay as mentor and student stands for a changing of the guard in Hollywood itself. Newman’s Henry Gondorff teaches the art of the big con to Redford's enthusiastic young Johnny Hooker, who wants revenge on a big shot bully, played with sinister, mustache-twirling delight by Robert Shaw.

Virtually every great character actor in town shows up for a while as part of the elaborate scheme the two cons cook up, and part of the fun is spotting Ray Walston here or Harold Gould there. Then there is the music. The depression era setting was made romantic by the ever-present tinkling of Scott Joplin’s ragtime piano compositions, which took the country by storm when the movie was at its peak.

The movie won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. In hindsight, maybe American Graffiti should have taken the top prize that year. But American Graffiti isn’t about to leave Netflix.

The Sting, along with the other six movies mentioned above, is a great movie, and you should watch or re-watch it before they do.