Netflix Movie Night: Easy Explanations of Great Films to Watch

What’s Up on Netflix Lately?

If you have Netflix in the USA, there’s a lot to watch! Here’s a quick list of what’s been popular:

• A thriller show called I Will Find You has been the #1 TV show for two weeks in a row.
• A new real‑life looking version of Avatar: The Last Airbender is moving up the popular list.
• Lots of new movies have been added, and we are still watching them.

This week, we dug into Netflix’s “magic box” of older movies (we call it the vault) and found three great ones. We sorted them from the lowest score to the highest score on a movie review website called Rotten Tomatoes (think of it like a report card for films).

The three movies are:

1. The Hunger Games (a made‑up story about a tough future)
2. Apollo 13 (a true story about space)
3. Moneyball (a true story about baseball and math)

Let’s learn about each one in a super simple way!

The Hunger Games

A Whole Make‑Believe World Comes to Netflix This Month

Before this movie, a lady named Jennifer Lawrence was in other films and got a big award nomination (like a “good job” sticker) at age 20 for Winter’s Bone. She also played a blue superhero helper named Raven in X‑Men: First Class. But she became super famous as Katniss, a brave girl in The Hunger Games.

This movie came out in 2012. It was made by director Gary Ross and is based on the first book in Suzanne Collins’s best‑selling trilogy. It started a bunch of movies (we call that a franchise) that made $3.3 billion! That’s a LOT of money. It also made many similar future‑set sad movies popular for a whole decade.

What happens in the story? (ELI5 version)

• Imagine a made‑up country called Panem after the world ended.
• A rich city called the Capitol controls 12 poor areas (districts).
• Every year, the Capitol makes a scary TV show: kids from the districts must fight in a big arena until only one is left alive. This is called the Hunger Games (like a deadly game of tag).

How the Hunger Games work (easy steps):

1. The Capitol runs 12 districts and keeps them in line.
2. Once a year, they pick one boy and one girl from each district by drawing names.
3. Those kids go into a dangerous arena to fight to the death on live TV.
4. When Katniss’s little sister Prim is picked, Katniss says “I’ll go instead!” so her sister stays safe.

She goes with a boy named Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a grown‑up helper named Haymitch (Woody Harrelson). They have to make people like them on TV, trick the bad president (Donald Sutherland), and try not to get hurt.

Important Point: All five Hunger Games movies, even the new one from 2023 called The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, start streaming on Netflix on July 14. Mark your calendar!

Apollo 13

Tom Hanks Shows a Scary Space Trip

This movie tells a true story from 1970. Smart people—screenwriter William Broyles Jr. and director Ron Howard—turned the real words of space captain Jim Lovell and writer Jeffrey Kluger’s book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 into a nail‑biting film.

The simple story:

• Tom Hanks (a very famous actor sometimes called “America’s dad”) plays Jim Lovell, who goes to space with two friends (played by Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon).
• They are supposed to land on the moon, but boom! An oxygen tank breaks.
• They can’t land on the moon now; they must hurry back to Earth.
• Inside the tiny space capsule, they work with helpers on the ground (led by Ed Harris as Gene Kranz) to figure out how to get home without burning up.

This movie was nominated for 9 Academy Awards (big movie prizes also called Oscars) including Best Picture, and it won 2 for Best Sound and Best Film Editing.

Important Point: On Rotten Tomatoes, Apollo 13 has a 92% score. That means almost all reviewers liked it!

Moneyball

How a Math Paper Beat Baseball

This movie is from 2011. Even if you don’t like baseball (like the writer of the original article!), this film is so good it might make you want to watch a game.

The true story made simple:

• A baseball team called the Oakland A’s didn’t have much money in 2002.
• Their boss Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt, who got a Best Actor nomination) needed to build a winning team cheaply.
• He hires a smart younger guy Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, who got a supporting actor nomination) who just finished college at Yale.
• Peter uses sabermetrics (a fancy word for using math and numbers to pick players that others ignore).
• They find players who are not popular but are actually good when you look at the data.
• The movie shows if this nerdy idea works! (Hint: it’s based on the real 2003 non‑fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, so you can guess it did something right.)

Important Point: Moneyball has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score – the highest of our three picks!

More Fun Coming in July

Netflix isn’t stopping! Later in July you can also look forward to:

• A new funny show with Will Ferrell called The Hawk
• A movie called Wicked For Good
• The first three Scream scary movies

If you want more ideas, a website called How‑To Geek has lots of streaming suggestions.

Summary

Let’s recap what we learned:

• Netflix right now has popular shows like I Will Find You and the live‑action Avatar: The Last Airbender, plus new movies.
• We looked at three movies from Netflix’s vault, sorted by Rotten Tomatoes score (low to high): The Hunger Games, Apollo 13 (92%), Moneyball (94%).
• The Hunger Games is a pretend story about kids fighting in a sad future; all five films hit Netflix July 14.
• Apollo 13 is a true space story with Tom Hanks that got many Oscar nods and won two.
• Moneyball is a true baseball story where math helped a team win against the odds.
• More movies and shows are coming in July, so there’s always something to watch!

FAQ

Q1: What is Rotten Tomatoes?
A: It’s a website that collects movie reviews. If a movie has 92%, it means 92 out of 100 reviewers said they liked it. It’s like a report card for films.

Q2: Are Apollo 13 and Moneyball real stories?
A: Yes! Both are based on true events. Apollo 13 really happened in 1970, and Moneyball is about the real Oakland A’s baseball team from 2002.

Q3: When can I watch all the Hunger Games movies on Netflix?
A: Starting July 14, all five movies including the 2023 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes will be available to stream.

Q4: What does “sabermetrics” mean in Moneyball?
A: It’s just a smart way of using math and statistics (like counting hits and walks) to decide which baseball players are actually good, even if they don’t look like stars.

Q5: What other things are coming to Netflix in July?
A: A Will Ferrell series called The Hawk, a film Wicked For Good, and the first three Scream movies, among others.