The Best Movies New to Every Major Streaming Platform in April 2021

AMAZON PRIME

“Moonrise Kingdon” (dir. Wes Anderson, 2012)

A pre-pubescent “Badlands” told with the endearingly pathetic quality of an elementary school play, “Moonrise Kingdom” is the rare American film about children, but not necessarily for children. The movie begins with the most perfect premise that Wes Anderson has ever devised for himself: Two kids get together and try to run away from home, only to be stymied by the fact that they live on an island. If you squint, that pretty much sums up every Wes Anderson movie.

But “Moonrise Kingdom” isn’t a story about being stuck, it’s a story about how the things we can’t escape are often the things that love us the most, about how the greatest myths are the ones we create for ourselves, about how everything is better when narrated by Bob Balaban. It’s like a mousetrap, it’s written with a whimsical Dickensian flair, and it’s filled with lines so evocative that merely reading them can bring the whole film back to life (“I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about”). Anderson has made a lifetime’s worth of family sagas, but none of his other movies so pointedly capture what it feels like to have a home.

Available to stream April 1

Other highlights:

– “Anna Karenina” (4/1)
– “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (4/1)
– “Somewhere” (4/1)

THE CRITERION CHANNEL

“McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (dir. Robert Altman, 1971)

The Criterion Channel celebrates its second birthday by continuing to be the single most valuable streaming platform for serious movie-lovers, and its robust April lineup showcases the deep library and smart curation that has set the Channel apart from its competition. The clearest example of that might be the fascinating “Close to Home” series arranged by guest programmers Nellie Killian and Chris Mason Wells (the latter of whom is now Director of Distribution for MUBI U.S.), a pandemic-friendly slate highlighting work that filmmakers have created in their own homes. Top of the list is Jafar Panahi’s masterpiece “This Is Not a Film,” which the great Irnaian director made on his iPhone under house arrest in 2011. Other picks range from established classics (Shirley Clarke’s “Portrait of Jason”) to more recent favorites (John Magary’s “The Mend”), but the real finds here are Liu Jiayin’s “Oxhide” and “Oxhide II,” a couplet of thinly fictionalized and narrowly confined narrative films the young director made with and about her working-class Beijing family. Both are rigid, mesmerizing, and full of life. 

Elsewhere, the Channel is honoring the late and legendary Ennio Morricone with an expansive series that highlights the composer’s work over a 47-year span, starting with Marco Bellocchio’s “Fists in the Pocket” (1965) and ending with Liliana Cavani’s “Ripley’s Game” (2002). The films between range from some of Pasolini’s horniest provocations (“Teorema,” “Arabian Nights”) to one of the spaghetti westerns that made Morricone iconic (“Duck, You Sucker”) and even Almodóvar’s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” the score for which disappointed the Spanish filmmaker so much that he trashed more than half of it. That alone makes the surviving cues worth hearing. 

A series on the Marx brothers hits all the expected notes, while a package celebrating cinema’s most famous gamblers includes several of the coolest movies ever made, from Shinoda Masahiro’s ultra-nihilistic “Pale Flower” to Robert Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (our somewhat arbitrary pick of the month, if only because that coat will not be denied). The month’s new one-offs include a handful of under the radar gems from the last 18 months (e.g. Fukada Koji’s “A Girl Missing” and David Osit’s “Mayor”), while a pair of Isabel Sandoval features shine a spotlight on a major emerging filmmaker and retrace the road that led her to last year’s breakout “Lingua Franca.”

Other highlights:

– “This Is Not a Film” (4/1)
– “Pale Flower” (4/1)
– “Oxhide” (4/1)

DISNEY+

“The Kid Who Would Be King” (dir. Joe Cornish, 2019)

Joe Cornish’s delightful followup to “Attack the Block” is a unicorn of a children’s fantasy movie: It’s imaginative, it’s heartfelt, and it never feels like it’s trying to sell you anything more than a measure of hope for the future. Cornish may have bitten off a bit more than he could chew by trying to reinvent Arthurian legend as an epic, ultra-contemporary adventure, but it’s so refreshing to see a modern live-action kids movie fueled by the kind of heart and ambition that used to be a staple of Disney fare before the studio began cannibalizing its animated classics.

If anything, this epic adventure about a young boy who discovers Excalibur in 21st-century England is all about liberating a new generation from the shackles of old lore; about encouraging them to mine relevant lessons from ancient legends, and to build off the past instead of suffering under its weight. It’s revisionist history done right. 

Available to stream 4/16

Other highlights:

– “Third Man on the Mountain” (4/2)
– “Caravan of Courage” (4/2)

FILM MOVEMENT+

“The Road to Mandalay” (dir. Midi Z, 2016)

Last month saw the overdue U.S. release of Midi Z’s surreal and scalpel-sharp #MeToo headtrip “Nina Wu,” but that Lynchian revenge film was in some ways a radical change of pace from the slow-burn social thrillers that first brought the Myanmar-born Taiwanese filmmaker to the world’s attention. Nominated for six Golden Horse Awards, “The Road to Mandalay” stars “Nina Wu” actress and screenwriter Wu Ke-Xi as a Burmese refugee who strikes an uneasy romantic partnership with a boy from her hometown as they make their way across the Mekong River and towards the undocumented life that calls to them from Taiwan, Thailand, or wherever they might be able to find a home on the other side. But the world is not kind to the vulnerable, and this tender but unflinchingly blunt tale of survival finds that love is a heavy burden for people whose basic dignity is challenged by every step of their journey. 

Available to stream April 2

Other highlights:

– “Afterlov” (4/16)
– “Fanchon the Cricket” (4/16)
– “Perdita Durango” (4/23)

HBO MAX

“Wanderlust” (dir. David Wain, 2012)

After breaking the internet and rewriting history by finally #ReleasingTheSnyderCut last month, HBO Max now finds itself looking for another way to unite streaming customers onto a single platform, and this time it will have to do so without the help of those Mother Boxes. Dumb-wonderful as the new “Mortal Kombat” reboot might look, the latest float in HBO Max’s year-long parade of day-and-date blockbusters probably won’t have quite the same cultural footprint as a four-hour superhero movie thing that legions of overzealous fans have been demanding for almost half a decade. Fortunately for the service and its subscribers, HBO Max has a deep list of library titles that it can loan out in a pinch, and a number of bonafide classics should be surfacing on the app’s home screen by the time you read this. 

For New Yorkers who are starting to get weirdly nostalgic for the city’s godawful subways after being cooped up inside for the last 13 months, you can’t do much better than Walter Hill’s “The Warriors.” For Californians starting to get even more weirdly nostalgic for when porn was something that everyone had to watch in public, there’s “Boogie Nights.” For midwestern kids whose parents’ glass egg has just been stolen by Guido the killer pimp, there’s “Risky Business.” And for everyone who’s planning to start along a new path in life after we emerge from the pandemic, there’s David Wain’s under-appreciated masterpiece “Wanderlust,” which is mind-blowingly funny even before you realize that Belson is a creature of the beltway.

Other highlights:

– “Mortal Kombat” (4/23)
– “Boogie Nights” (4/1)
– “Risky Business” (4/1)

HULU

“Thelma” (dir. Joachim Trier, 2017)

A pretty but isolated misfit named Thelma (Eili Harboe) leaves her religious home and enrolls at a university in Oslo; she’s shy and tends to tremble, but Thelma doesn’t appear to be afraid of other people so much as she is of herself. By the end of the brilliant and deeply unnerving film that “Oslo, August 31st” director Joachim Trier has named after her, you’ll understand why. Thelma’s awakening begins with a same-sex friendship that might seem to be the seed for something more — something she may not be able to control. Trier endows the intractable compulsions of self-discovery with a supernatural charge, as animals start to follow Thelma wherever she goes, and a flirtatious night at the opera threatens to kill everyone in attendance. It would be ruinous to discuss how “Thelma” develops from there, but rest assured that Trier ramps up the strangeness with every new scene, this frigid little fairy tale eventually coming to feel like an adaptation of “Carrie” as directed by Ingmar Bergman. It’s hard to classify, and even harder to forget.

Available to stream April 17

Other highlights:

– “28 Days Later” (4/1)
– “The Pawnbroker” (4/1)
– “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (4/1)

IFC FILMS UNLIMITED

“Kaboom” (dir. Gregg Araki, 2010)

IFC Films Unlimited is offering a fun and eclectic grab bag of great movies this April, starting with a double feature that pairs one of the most sedate documentaries ever made (Errol Morris’ “Vernon, Florida”) with one of the most exuberant (Wim Wenders’ “Pina”). From there, the streamer’s April slate pivots to another master as IFC pays tribute to the late filmmaker and raconteur Bertrand Tavernier, whose lavish and lively 2010 period romance “The Princess of Montpensier” epitomizes the kind of full-bodied storytelling that allowed its director to remain a major name in French cinema for more than half a century. And then of course there’s Gregg Araki’s “Kaboom,” a queer, serio-campy apocalyptic college sex romp that reimagines the doom generation in the most literal terms and — in its own irreverent way — captures the end of the world chaos of the last 10 years better than almost any film that’s been made since.

Available to stream 4/21

Other highlights:

– “Pina” (4/7)
– “Vernon, Florida” (4/7)
– “The Princess of Montpensier” (4/14)

MAGNOLIA SELECTS

“The Lovers and the Despot” (dir. Ross Adam and Robert Cannan, 2016)

Hollywood is full of power-mad producers, but none of them could ever hold a candle to Kim Jong-il. Not so fondly remembered as a sociopathic dictator, the former “Dear Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” was also a major cinephile who — even before his father bequeathed him supreme control of the country — actively tried to weaponize motion pictures in order to fortify ideology at home and bolster North Korea’s reputation abroad. He even wrote a book about film theory called “On the Art of the Cinema,” a revolutionary text which offers almost as much insight into movies as “The Art of the Deal” does into business.

Needless to say, when Kim required something to enhance the local industry, people tended to do whatever was necessary in order to make it happen. So when Kim, frustrated by the tired ideological plots that defined North Korea’s national cinema, wondered aloud how he might lure a great South Korean director to come work in Pyongyang, his lackeys knew exactly what to do: They kidnapped one. And they also nabbed his leading lady — his once and future wife.

Those interested in North Korean culture may already be familiar with the strange saga of Shin Sang-ok and his leading lady Choi Eun-hee, but “The Lovers and the Despot” offers its definitive telling. Built around newly recorded testimony from the 89-year-old Choi, this straightforward documentary is shaped by the unmistakable confidence of an incredible story. It helps that Choi makes for a vibrant and deeply feeling subject, as Shin’s widow reiterates her personal history with the tainted zeal of a life that sounds like a movie but aches like a scar. Choi’s recollections are corroborated by a wide variety of secondary sources, their roster of talking heads ranging from spies to film critics to the couple’s children. Best of all are the snippets of audio recordings that Shin and Choi surreptitiously recorded during their conversations with the Dear Leader, in which you can practically hear the eggshells cracking under their feet as they try to appease their captor and financier. 

Available to stream on April 6.

Other highlights:

– “Compliance” (4/27)
– “Prince Avalanche” (4/27)
– “The Good Heart” (4/27)

MUBI

“Labyrinth of Cinema” (dir. Obayashi Nobuhiko, 2019)

When “Hausu” director Obayashi Nobuhiko was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live, he immediately decided to revisit an autobiographical screenplay idea he’d written as a young man and kept in a drawer throughout his four-decade career as one of Japan’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers (not an easy pantheon to crack).

When Obayashi finished “Hanagatami” in 2017, the 80-year-old auteur found himself in an unexpected situation: He wasn’t dead. Complicating matters further, he was also haunted by the dying words that Akira Kurosawa had left behind to the next generation of directors: “The beauty and power film can save the world from war and lead it toward peace. If you can’t do it, your children can.” Obayashi determined that, if he was still alive, it must mean that he could do it. And so — in the midst of receiving chemotherapy for the disease that he ultimately succumbed to a year ago this month — the irrepressible renegade fit every hope he still had left for the future into one unforgettable three-hour swan song. 

Perhaps the highest praise that one can offer the inimitably surreal “Labyrinth of Cinema” is that it somehow manages to live up to the promise of its making. Technically the story of an Onomichi movie-theater whose owners decide to screen a marathon of Japanese war films on the night before their business is shut down forever, Obayashi’s farewell can’t even get through the opening credits before it begins to fold into itself and throw up a more expressionistic plea for harmony.“Our wish for world peace resulted in this passionate movie!” chirps a disembodied voice in between an ode to poet Nakahara Chuya and a shoutout to… American stage icon Hinton Battle? Why not.

It’s a fittingly self-reflexive introduction to a film about a portal that opens between modern audiences and the war movies that document the worst atrocities in modern history, as “Labyrinth of Cinema” loops into a now-or-never meditation on film’s ability to reach people in their own time. Spaceships, yakuza, schoolgirls, a quick walk through the Russo-Japanese War, and more lo-fi green screen effects than most people could fit into their entire careers… Obayashi packs it all in to his last goodbye, which squeezes a century of Japanese movies into a slipstream as dense as the spaghetti bar that sent Homer Simpson to the hospital. It’s an essential (if exhausting) “so long” to cinema from someone whose work has always been a testament to the medium’s power.

Available to stream April 27

Other highlights:

– “The Crazies” (4/12)
– “Suburban Birds” (4/9)
– “Black Pond” (4/5)

NETFLIX

“The Master” (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

The most inscrutable and enigmatic of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, “The Master” is always mesmerizingly just out of reach, turning you inward every time you reach out to meet it. A.O. Scott hit the nail on the head when he described it as “a movie that defies understanding even as it compels reverent, astonished belief.” But there are answers here, even if Anderson doesn’t provide any clear indication of what they might be; whatever meaning you manage to tease out of this story is yours to keep.

On its most basic level, “The Master” is a gripping two-hander about a man and his dog. Philip Seymour Hoffman is almost unfathomably brilliant as the volatile Lancaster Dodd, a new age pseudo-prophet in the mold of L. Ron Hubbard (he’s not unlike a film director, the ringleader of a traveling circus who has to string people along through sheer force of will). Joaquin Phoenix is every bit his equal as the alcoholic Freddie Quell, a man whose face is twisted into a perpetual sneer even before he’s set adrift in the wake of World War II. One barks commands and the other rolls over, but neither one of them can play fetch alone. As Dodd puts it, with no small amount of spite: “If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first person in the history of the world.”

Dodd and Quell really aren’t so different, and Anderson’s dream-like storytelling helps swirl them together until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins (Jonny Greenwood’s seasick score roots that confusion in the pit of your stomach). These are two men haunted by past trauma who have happened upon opposite ways of trying to outrun it; two men using each other as beacons to navigate the choppy waters between memory and imagination; two men who “can’t take this life straight.” But then again, who can? Just look into someone’s eyes, don’t blink, and repeat your name until you start to believe that it tells you something.

Available to stream April 15

Other highlights:

– “Crimson Peak” (4/1)
– “Dark City Beneath the Beat” (4/15)
– “The Mitchells vs. The Machines” (4/30)

OVID.tv

“Transit” (dir. Christian Petzold, 2018)

The pandemic may be winding down, but it’s hard not to feel as if we’re all still unstuck in time. When life gets “back to normal,” will it feel like we’re picking up where we left off? Like we’ve skipped the tracks to some kind of parallel timeline? Like we’ve ended one thread and started to fray at another? Mileage may vary, but it’s safe to say that Christian Petzold’s “Transit” will only continue to seem less alien as the present splinters away from the linear path it once seemed to follow.

Boldly adapted from Anna Seghers’ 1944 novel of the same name, “Transit” takes an existential romance about a man (Franz Rogowski) trying escape from Nazi-occupied Europe via Marseille, and transplants it into the present day… sort of. While the film was shot on the streets of modern France (the roads hum with electric cars, and the cinematography isn’t aged in any way), digital technology is also nonexistent, and the bureaucracy our hero encounters is decidedly old-fashioned. As our desperate hero assumes the identity of a dead writer and begins an oblique flirtation with the late author’s wife (Paula Beer), Petzold’s compelling love story loses itself somewhere between truth and allegory in a way that allows it to reflect on the ongoing refugee crisis while also tracing the specter of fascism across the centuries.

Available to stream April 15

Other highlights:

– “The Deep Blue Sea” (4/16)
– “Potiche” (4/7)
– “La Commune (Paris 1871)” (4/9)

SHUDDER

“The Power” (dir. Corinna Faith, 2021)

Shudder can always be expected to do its thing and offer a monthly assortment of horror mainstays (this April’s titles include seven Val Lewton classics like “Cat People” and “I Walked with a Zombie”), but the streamer is increasingly asserting itself as an essential source for excellent first-run fare as well. Last summer found Shudder beating everyone else to the punch and serving up the first pandemic banger with “The Host,” and now the service is back with another fresh hit in the making: Corinna Faith’s spine-tingling “The Power,” which stars Rose Williams as a trainee nurse who has good reason to be afraid of the dark when she shows up to her night shift at the decrepit East London Royal Infirmary during one of the planned electricity outages that plagued England during the winter of 1974.

Writing about the film in her B+ review, IndieWire’s Kate Erbland lauded Faith’s atmospheric debut for its scares, its smarts, and its Linda Blair-worthy lead performance: “Williams’ work allows Faith to take some big leaps, anchoring the film through unexpected twists and turns, eye-popping gore, and a series of climactic revelations. She, and the film’s earned ending, leave an emotional charge that stings right through the chills, a peek into the darkness that can never be unseen, a light that can never be turned back on.”

Available to stream April 8.

Other highlights:

– “Cat People” (4/2)
– “I Walked with a Zombie” (4/2)
– “The Body Snatcher” (4/2)