Best New Movies and Shows on Netflix: Labor Day Weekend 2023

Love Again is our pick of the week – Picture: Sony Pictures.

With the extra long weekend for Labor Day in the US, there’s plenty of time to dive into some of the new releases on Netflix, and thankfully, there have been some great ones. Here are our top six picks of the best new movies and series now streaming. 

Thanks to over 80 titles being added to Netflix this week (65 of which were added on September 1st), there’s plenty to watch. If you’ve missed any of the new releases from the past seven days. You can find roundups and the full expanded list of new titles via our What’s New on Netflix hub.

Did you miss any of our recommendations from last week? We picked out our favorite eight new titles last Saturday, including the biopic Big George Foreman.

Love Again (2023)

Rating: PG-13
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director: Jim Strouse
Cast: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Sam Heughan, Céline Dion

Hitting Netflix just 120 days after its debuted in cinemas earlier this year, this new 90s-inspired rom-com stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan.

As we’ve mentioned in the run-up to the new rom-com hitting Netflix, when it was released in theaters, it divided critics and audiences immensely. Case in point, as it stands, the RottenTomatoes score from critics sits at 24%, whereas the audience score sits at the polar opposite with 91%.

If you’re looking to sign up to Netflix to watch Love Again, you’ll need to opt into a premium tier with the movie unavailable on Netflix’s ad-supported one.

Wind River (2017)

Rating: R
Language: English
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Jeremy Renner, Graham Greene
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Runtime: 107 min / 1h 47m

Taylor Sheridan has become a force of nature in recent years, with the Yellowstone franchise becoming a juggernaut for Paramount. Given that the show and all the spin-offs are locked away from Netflix, the best you’ll get on the big N is Wind River, which returned to Netflix on the first of the month.

Featuring excellent performances from both Olsen and Renner, the movie follows a rookie FBI agent who is being assisted by a Fish and Wildlife Service tracker looking into a teen’s murder on a Wyoming reservation.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Rating: R
Language: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey
Writer: Robert Schenkkan, Andrew Knight
Runtime: 139 min / 2h 19m

There have been some fantastic World War II movies over the past few decades, but none left me in awe of the brutality of war quite like Hacksaw Ridge did, which tells the story of a young soldier becoming a hero despite never firing a weapon.

A superb performance from Garfield and the visceral imagery throughout landed the Lionsgate movie a couple of Oscars and rightly so.

Fences (2016)

Rating: PG-13
Language: English
Genre: Drama
Director: Denzel Washington
Cast: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson
Writer: August Wilson
Runtime: 139 min / 2h 19m

Much like Hacksaw Ridge, Fences also netted an Oscar following its initial release in 2016, thanks partly to two stunning performances from Washington (currently topping the box office this weekend with The Equalizer 3) and Davis.

Here’s what you can expect from the period drama if you’ve never caught it before:

“A once-promising baseball player who was denied a shot at the big leagues because of his race comes to terms with his life in 1950s Pittsburgh.”

Arrival (2016)

Rating: PG-13
Language: English
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker
Writer: Eric Heisserer, Ted Chiang
Runtime: 116 min / 1h 56m

One more Oscar-winning movie to feature before we move onto our TV pick for the week and one of two Jeremy Renner movies that’ll feature in this list.

The story revolves around a language expert who’s desperately recruited by the US military to try and communicate with an alien ship that’s entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

Denis Villeneuve, more commonly associated with the Dune franchise at the present time (sadly, Part 2 was recently punted into 2024 – boo!), was the director behind this moving and visually stunning sci-fi classic.

One Piece (Season 1)

Number of episodes: 8
Rating: TV-14
Language: English
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Cast: Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd
Writer: Steven Maeda, Matt Owens
Runtime: 64 mins / 1h 4m

One last recommendation for One Piece from us, we promise. It’s been hard to avoid the new Netflix adaptation with the amount of advertising and marketing done for the show, but it looks to have paid off. Many reviews cite the show as breaking Netflix’s curse regarding live-action anime adaptations.

Now officially certified fresh on RottenTomatoes, the critic’s consensus thus far has been that “One Piece captures the essence of its beloved source material with a charmingly big-hearted adaptation that should entertain longtime fans as well as patient newcomers.”

We quite agree, and all eyes are now on its season 2 prospects.

What are you watching on Netflix this weekend?