We are firmly in the era of streaming, with audiences around the globe caught in the clutch of video-on-demand platforms. Netflix stands towering as arguably the biggest streaming platform on the planet, with a subscription service that gives subscribers access to a enormous collection of movies, series, and documentaries. Every genre is represented on Netflix, be it romance, war, historical epics, sci-fi or crime thrillers.
Over the many decades of entertainment, crime thrillers have a way of capturing the attention of audiences. A good mob story, the best of which is arguably The Godfather film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola, remains a title one can’t simply refuse. During this era of streaming, Netflix has also leaned into this familiar theme of crime families with hit shows like Peaky Blinders, starring Cillian Murphy in the lead role, and The Gentlemen, starring Theo James and Kaya Scodelario. Other streaming services have not been left behind either, with Paramount+’s hit seriesMobLand, starring Tom Hardy in the lead role and Pierce Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan, and Sylvester Stallone‘s brilliant Taylor Sheridan gangster series Tulsa King as standout candidates. However, Netflix is not sitting idle.
The streamer is intent on expanding its influence within that genre and had decided earlier this year to acquire the mob feature, In the Hand of Dante. The film comes from the desk of filmmaker Julian Schnabel and boasts an all-star ensemble including Oscar Isaac, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, part of its ensemble. Having premiered on the streamer on June 24, 2026, the film, which also features the Oscar-winning actor and well-known mob movie veteran Al Pacino in a starring role, has received a disappointing Rotten Tomatoes score. The aggregator website reveals that the Italy-set mob feature has earned generally negative reviews from critics. As of the time of writing, In the Hand of Dante has a 38% critics’ score on the website based on 26 reviews, officially making it one of Netflix’s worst-received movies of the year. Reviews come from both critics who saw the film ahead of its streaming release and those who watched it at its September 2025 Venice Film Festival premiere.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly witty, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel critical without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses simple comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a up-to-date kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we utilize to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is straightforward in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Is ‘In the Hand of Dante’ About?
With directorial efforts from Schnabel, In the Hand of Dante is an adaptation based on the tardy Nick Tosches‘ 2002 novel of the same name. The movie operates on an intriguing, time-bending premise with Isaac playing dual roles: one as New York author Tosches in the 21st century and Dante Alighieri in the 14th century. We follow Nick in 2002, who is contacted by the mafia because of his expert novel In the Hand of Dante. He is soon imposed upon to hunt down Dante Aligheri’s original manuscript of Divine Comedy for profit. Meanwhile, we also follow Dante himself in the 14th century as he writes the original narrative poem.
In the Hand of Dante has endured an arduous journey through production, which began as far back as 2008 with the acquisition of the rights to Tosches’ book. Besides the aforementioned names of Isaac, Momoa, Butler and Al Pacino, the ensemble also boasts other A-listers including the graceful Gal Gadot, Academy Award nominee John Malkovich, and Goodfellas filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who also serves as executive producer, among others.
In the Hand of Dante is currently streaming on Netflix, and it remains to be seen what audiences think of the movie. Stay tuned to Collider for updates.
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