By If you base cultural dominance on which films and television shows are being talked about, watched obsessively and winning awards, then yes, Netflix is taking over.
The behemoth streaming service is forecast to spend £15bn on original programming this year, and as well as attractive big actors with big cheques, they also offer a level of creative control to directors that studios traditionally have not.
For years Netflix's Original films struggled to match the quality of their excellent Original series which has seen pioneering television such as House of Cards, Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black and Narcos. Now, they're cleaning up at awards shows like the Golden Globes and hosting some of the cinematic releases of the year.
In no particular order, here's ten you definitely should not miss.
Roma
In 2014 Alfonso Cuarón became the first Mexican to win the directorial prize at the Oscars for his stunning space drama, Gravity. Four years later it looks all but sure his black and white story of an indigenous domestic worker in Mexico City will win the prize again this year, and likely the coveted 'Best Picture' prize too.
The director handpicked unknown actors to bring the story to life, including a Yalitza Aparicio, who makes her astonishingly debut as lead character Cleo. Shots of a floor being washed with the reflection of a plane overhead, a sweep across a department store to show a riot outside and - honestly - some genuinely stunning shots of dog poo are just a few of the memorable sights in this film that has its fair share of devastating moments too.
Okja
Okja is a story about the crisis of overpopulation, the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, the villainous greed of corporations and the ability of childhood innocence to speak truth to power. For the most part, however, it is just the story of a girl's love for her giant pig-hippo friend.
Featuring excellent performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano, Okja is a feel good movie that will also make you feel very bad about yourself. Which is nice.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Originally intended as a mini-series, this six-part anthology has been threaded together to make a 2-hour tapestry of tales from the American frontier. It's scored a few award nominations here and there - especially deservedly in the screenwriting category - but with sudden shifts of tone coming with each chapter, it should really be enjoyed as a trip into the Coen brothers' minds.
It's brilliantly violent, with a Tarantino/ Game Of Thrones-esque way of not sparing anyone from the path of a bullet, and features excellent performances from Zoe Kazan in 'The Gal Who Got Rattled' and Tim Blake Nelson as Scruggs himself.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
'Adam Sandler Oscar-buzz' are four words you never thought you'd see together, yet there they were in the headlines after this film from Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, While Were Young) earned a standing ovation at Cannes film festival.
Sandler plays Danny Meyerowitz who along with his half-brother Matthew (Ben Stiller) struggle with life in the shadow of their father, the artist Harold Meyrowitz (Dustin Hoffman). The group are pulled back to the family home, in a set-up reminiscent of The Royal Tenembaums, for a big retrospective of Harold's work causing some wonderfully tense family drama.
Mudbound
A piece of land in the Mississippi Delta ties two families together for better and worse. Though segregated by race and class, both want better for their struggling families, a fact that forces them to work together on the shared farmland. A man from each family goes off to war and they return traumatised by combat ("They say it stops eventually," says one about his constantly trembling hand) and back to the same problems that war had freed them from.
Mudbound made history at the Academy Awards last year when Rachel Morrison became the first woman to ever be nominated for the cinematographer Oscar. It also features the directing of new talent Dee Rees, and features great performances from Mary J Blige, Carey Mulligan and Garrett Hedlund.
Tallulah
Ellen Page gets a role to rival that of her breakout performance in Juno, here acting alongside Allison Janney for a third time. However instead of instead of carrying a baby herself, here Page plays a homeless drifter who steals one from a negligent mother. Meanwhile Janney plays a mother far less formidable than her her Oscar-winning role in I, Tonya.
While the decision to take the child feels initially like a moment of madness, Tallulah cleverly raises questions about the morals of the situation. It's also an interesting new type of film about motherhood which, like Charlize Theron's 2018 film Tully, doesn't avoid the aspects which are hard to talk about.
Gerald's Game
Stephen King poses a simple question in his book, Gerald's Game. What if you were handcuffed to a bed at a remote lake house, and your husband suddenly dies, leaving you tied to the bed to die slowly? This is the dilemma Jessie (Carla Gugino) finds herself in as she weighs up slicing her hand off to get become free. It's an impressive performance by Gugino, especially given how much time is given over to her lying in bed and mentally deteriorating.
It gets more interesting as the film blurs into the surreal and the story is interlaced with hallucinations about her husband and memories which become more muddled with reality.
Private Life
Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti are superb as a cool Brooklyn couple who fear they have left it too long to have children. Together they march through the physically and emotionally draining process of IVF and adoption, complete with arguments before, during and after sex and hours in hospital waiting rooms.
Luckily their young niece is willing to as a surrogate in exchange for cash and a New York pad to crash in. Surprisingly enough her parents aren't as wild about the idea. It's a dryly amusing look at the rigmarole of trying to conceive, and one that has a surprisingly moving and memorable ending.
Beasts of No Nation
Combine the directing talent of Cary Fukunaga (True Detective 1 and the forthcoming Bond), the acting talent of Idris Elba and Netflix's deep pockets and you get Beast of No Nation. The film which drew comparisons to Apocalypse Now in its nightmarish style is based on a 2005 novel by Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala, a story about child soldiers during a civil war in West Africa.
Elba is both sinister and sympathetic as a powerful commander, and Abraham Attah making his on-screen debut at just nine years old is a potent symbol of the innocence lost in war.
Velvet Buzzsaw
"Are those the new Persols?" a nameless art-world droid asks Jake Gyllenhaal (currently wearing optician-issue light sensitivity glasses). This is just one of the throwaway gems of the Los Angeles art scene in Velvet Buzzsaw, where the new installation hit is 'Go-Pro Kindergarten' and a death at a gallery is OK if you end up spiking on Instagram Moments.
The story revolves around the inflated ego of art critic Morf Vanderwalt (Jake Gyllenhaal) whose friend/lover Josephina (Zawe Ashton) discovers the unusual art of a dead neighbour. After being pressured into selling it by her boss (Rene Russo), works of art start killing the miscreants of the art world (the likes of Toni Collette and Tom Sturridge) in gruesomely creative ways.
