Netflix’s top 10 movies list is usually dominated by accessible (and often entirely disposable) movies from crowd-pleasing genres like action, comedy and animation, so it’s a pleasant surprise to see a serious, thoughtful, affecting drama like “His Three Daughters” take its place on the list. While it may not be successful enough to start a trend, it’s still reaching a far wider audience than such a small, self-contained indie drama usually does.
Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne play the title characters, semi-estranged sisters who reunite to care for their father in his final stages of terminal cancer. Writer-director Azazel Jacobs’ movie takes place almost entirely within the family’s New York City apartment, where the sisters confront past resentments and process their anticipatory grief.
If you’ve made it through the emotional catharsis of watching “His Three Daughters,” here are five similarly moving family dramas to stream next.
‘You Can Count on Me’
The siblings played by Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo in Kenneth Lonergan’s directorial debut lost their parents when they were just kids, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still grieving. Sammy (Linney) still lives in their childhood home in a small upstate New York town, while her brother Terry (Ruffalo) is a bit of a vagabond, drifting from place to place and often out of touch.
Sammy is initially thrilled when Terry returns to town, especially as he bonds with Sammy’s young son Rudy (Rory Culkin), but the siblings soon come into conflict, with old issues arising again. Linney and Ruffalo capture the genuine love and persistent frustration between Sammy and Terry, whose relationship may be messy but will never disappear. The bond forged when they were kids will always transcend their differences.
Watch on Pluto TV
‘The Skeleton Twins’
As writer-director Craig Johnson’s film opens, twins Milo (Bill Hader) and Maggie (Kristen Wiig) haven’t seen each other for a decade, but they remain connected on a deeper level. They clearly share many of the same mental health issues, and they simultaneously find themselves at the breaking point of attempting suicide, unaware of what the other is doing. They reconnect when Maggie invites Milo to return to their hometown, although their dynamic remains slightly distant.
As in “His Three Daughters,” a key bonding moment comes via song when Milo puts on Starship’s cheesy power ballad “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and cajoles Maggie into joining him in a lip-sync dance routine. Hader and Wiig bring their comedic skills to Johnson’s melancholy story, making Milo and Maggie charming even as they’re flailing through various crises largely of their own creation.
‘Little Women’
Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1868 novel is one of the best movies about sisterly solidarity, starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson and Eliza Scanlen as the exuberant and supportive March sisters. Ronan plays the ambitious Jo, an aspiring novelist who narrates her family’s story, as the sisters navigate potential romances and careers, along with illness, financial struggles, and their father’s service in the Civil War.
Gerwig takes a non-linear approach to Alcott’s story, jumping around in time to find new parallels between various events in the sisters’ lives while allowing the audience to spend more time getting to know the characters. It’s a beautiful, warm-hearted film that doesn’t shy away from tragedy but ultimately celebrates the power of sisterhood in the face of any challenge.
Watch on Hulu
‘The Meyerowitz Stories’
The relationship between Meyerowitz brothers Danny (Adam Sandler) and Matthew (Ben Stiller) is just as strained as the relationship among the sisters in “His Three Daughters,” and they also come together for the sake of their aging father, Harold (Dustin Hoffman), who relies on them for help. He also resents them, especially when they try to advise him on his career as an artist, which has never proceeded to his satisfaction.
Harold eventually needs medical care, too, which causes further tension between the brothers, as well as with their neglected sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel). Like Jacobs, writer-director Noah Baumbach tells a specific type of New York story, about flawed and privileged but sympathetic characters trying to process their fractured childhoods and get in touch with their true selves.
Watch on Netflix
‘Beginners’
Christopher Plummer deservedly won an Oscar for his role as Hal Fields, a closeted gay man who is finally able to live openly in the last years of his life, following his wife’s death. Hal himself passes away a few years later, leaving his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) to deal with the fallout, trying to learn from his parents’ complicated choices.
Writer-director Mike Mills intersperses flashbacks to Oliver’s past with a present-day story about the indecisive Oliver tentatively pursuing a romance with French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent). Mills brings plenty of humor to the story about finding love and coping with grief, showing the joy that Hal felt even as he was facing death. Both Hal and Oliver deal with difficult personal journeys that allow them to embrace what they really want — if they can just open up to it.
