10 Essential Movies On Netflix You've Probably Missed

4. Fish Tank

Michael Fassbender's career has been going from strength to strength in recent years - after hitting it big with the X-Men blockbusters he's fresh from the debut of Macbeth, for which he has received much critical acclaim. He's not averse to appearing in much smaller productions, too, of which Fish Tank is one of the best. Fitting into the subgenre of British miserablist cinema made famous by the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank is an intimate portrait of a listless teenage girl, Mia (a superb performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis, who was spotted by a talent scout whilst arguing with her boyfriend at a train station), who becomes sexually involved with her mother's boyfriend Conor (Fassbender). A great companion piece to Fish Tank also available on Netflix is The Selfish Giant - both films explore the lives and experiences of youngsters living in deprived British communities; both manage to transform the mundane into something approaching visual poetry.