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The 50 Geekiest Movies Streaming on Netflix

Everyone loves streaming movies, but no one more than hardcore nerds. Here are the 50 films currently streaming on Netflix that no member of the fandom should miss.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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    Buying Guide: The 50 Geekiest Movies Streaming on Netflix

    Contents

    Geeks are the bedrock of the entertainment industry. We're the audience that makes a film a blockbuster, handing over our hard-earned dollars in droves at the box office. Arguably, it could be said that geeks were the first to embrace the at-home streaming of movies from services like Netflix, as well. Put it together and you know that Netflix must be rife with nerd-tastic films, the tales of derring-do set on the backdrops of alien worlds and fantasy lands that drive the big budgets. And maybe even a few that make you think about the human condition.

    Much as it's nice to have the option for unlimited browsing of movies you'll never watch, that "robust library" of films is sometimes lacking, even today. For example, none of the Star Wars or Indiana Jones films are streaming on Netflix. Only a couple of James Cameron classics are available, and directors like Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg, and other speculative fiction greats are woefully underrepresented.

    As always, the studios and their licensing deals continue to muck about with what's available to Netflix at any given time. For example, I watched JJ Abram's love-letter to 1980s Spielberg, Super 8, on Netflix last year, but as of this writing, it's not available. Also missing: just about every comic-based super-hero flick of the last decade featuring big names from Marvel and DC Comics.

    That's my way of saying, don't be surprised if the films in this list are pulled from Netflix with zero notice. We'll try to keep it up to date; let us know in comments below if you see changes.

    Meanwhile, it wasn't hard to find 50 truly worthwhile movies to watch that hit all the right dork buttons. I limited the choices to science fiction and fantasy tales, with some horror thrown in if it had a super-natural element. Now sit back and fire up your My List with some streaming greatness (and check out the best geeky TV shows at left, too.)

    About Our Expert

    Eric Griffith

    Eric Griffith

    Senior Editor, Features

    My Experience

    I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

    I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

    In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

    I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

    The Technology I Use

    My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

    I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

    I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

    I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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