The 7 Best Movies New to Netflix in May 2020

7. “What a Girl Wants” (2003)

Only real ’90s kids remember there was an Amanda Bynes movie about a power struggle in the British Parliament (you’d never be able to tell that it actually came out in the 21st century). And thanks to Netflix, there still is! A semi-charming and very silly YA comedy in which Bynes plays a bohemian New York City girl who learns that her long-estranged father (Colin Firth!) is running to become the next Prime Minister of England, “What a Girl Wants” is pure, unleaded throwback fuel for anyone looking to escape the pandemic by visiting a much simpler time — it’s named after a pre-“Dirrty” Christina Aguilera song, for heaven’s sake. Bynes teaches her dad and his stuffy politician friends to live a little, and he teaches her that having a rich British dad is pretty cool. 

Is it good? Don’t ask stupid questions. The fact of the matter is you’re too burnt out to watch “Céline and Julie Go Boating” on the Criterion Channel right now, and you’ve already memorized “The Princess Diaries” — a movie that doesn’t even feature a wildly overqualified Jonathan Pryce in a supporting role — so just sit back and enjoy this blast from the ancient past. 

Available to stream May 1

6. “All Day and a Night” (2020)

Written and directed by “Black Panther” co-writer Joe Robert Cole, this clear-eyed (if somewhat dramatically inert) crime saga about black men born into cyclical violence never shies away from the fact that it’s singing a familiar tune. “Same fuckin’ story on repeat” an East Oakland kid named Jhakor (another implosive performance by “Moonlight” breakout Ashton Sanders) sighs before heading to jail for a double homicide, as if the film is already looking to scapegoat its own predictability on that of the prison-industrial complex.

But the most vital thing about this gristly piece of fiction — which revisits Jhakor’s formative years, while also forcing him to confront his long-incarcerated father (Jeffrey Wright) on the prison yard — is that it neither succumbs to miserablism nor gives in to magical thinking; Cole’s movie neither resigns to the reality of a hard-knock life, nor softens into some kind of feel-good salve about one good kid who manages to beat a game that’s rigged against him (as if the ones who don’t only have themselves to blame). Equal parts “City of God,” “A Prophet,” and “Boyz in the Hood,” “All Day and a Night” finds that there’s a fine line between resilience and false hope, and it walks that line with purpose even when it’s tripping over itself.

Available to stream May 1

5. “The Lincoln Lawyer” (2011)

Cracking the top 10 on IndieWire’s (genuinely competitive) list of Matthew McConaughey’s best performances, his electric turn as underachieving defense attorney Mickey Haller is reason enough to give your undivided attention to this cable TV classic. It’s a performance so alive — so fueled by the inimitable “just keep livin’” energy of its star — that it almost singlehandedly jump-started the McConaissance.  Without this movie there might not be a “Magic Mike,” and without “Magic Mike” there definitely wouldn’t be a “Magic Mike XXL,” so we ought to show some respect where it’s due. 

Writing about this “old-school legal offering that doesn’t balk at the dark stuff” in honor of its place on the aforementioned ranking, Film Editor Kate Erbland argued that McConaughey’s performance “bridges the gap between angelic, infallible lawyer and something a bit more hard-won. Any person who works out of a Town Car has certainly seen some tough times (and has secrets to spare), but McConaughey never gets cheeky with the part, playing his Mickey Haller straight as an arrow, all the better for the world to spin wildly out of control around him.”

Available to stream May 27

4. “The Half of It” (2020)

Fresh off winning the Narrative Feature Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival (which still gave out awards despite being scrapped), Alice Wu’s “The Half of It” is the month’s most exciting Netflix Original. Here’s what IndieWire’s Jude Dry had to say about this “queer YA charmer” in their review: 

Like many teen movies, “The Half of It” begins with an animated illustration of the origins of love from Plato’s Symposium, much like that other queer cinema classic, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” What’s that? The last YA movie you watched on Netflix didn’t devote entire scenes to explaining the major tenets of existentialism through discussions on “No Exit”? From waxing poetic on Wim Wenders to cleverly chosen “Casablanca” references, “The Half of It” is a smart riff on “Cyrano de Bergerac” that celebrates friendship and self-acceptance over romance. It’s no wonder the film so effortlessly folds highbrow aims into an accessible coming of age story — writer/director Alice Wu knows her stuff.

Best known for her 2004 indie hit “Saving Face,” Wu makes her long-awaited return to feature filmmaking with this breezy and heartfelt teen comedy. Though both of Wu’s films follow young Chinese-American women coming into their queerness, “The Half of It” is clearly aimed at a younger — and broader — audience. With its plucky teen protagonist and engaging storytelling, “The Half of It” is sure to hit big with Netflix viewers who made 2018’s “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” one of the platform’s most popular original films (and spawned a franchise in the process).

Available to stream May 1

3. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008)

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” has gotten a bum deal over the last few years, as the film’s premise has become a punchline, and its finer pleasures have been understandably swallowed by the special effects wizardry that made them possible. And while it’s true that David Fincher’s most expensive movie is an ungainly thing — pimpled with terrible New Orleans accents, lessened by its labored use of Hurricane Katrina as a framing device, and frustrated by the inevitable anticlimax of its ending — there are moments of this 166-minute epic that are as touching as anything that Fincher has ever done. Well, maybe that’s a low bar; Fincher isn’t exactly known for being “touching,” but the “Zodiac” filmmaker possesses a deep appreciation for the inexorable forward march of time, and there’s something heartbreaking about how he applies it to the story of someone who’s living in reverse.

An overstuffed film about the fullness of life, and how beguiling the journey is for all of us (“There are no rules to this thing,” Benjamin writes to his daughter), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is literally all over the map. It fares worst in New Orleans. A number of the scenes in Benjamin’s home town are stuck in the mud, as it’s hard to get over the sheer strangeness of watching Taraji P. Henson raise a shriveled old Brad Pitt — this might be the one time where Fincher got a bit carried away with his technological fixations. But the movie, like the singular life of its hero, grows more interesting as he gets more beautiful. Benjamin’s romance with Daisy Fuller may not be as grounded or tactile as the aborted affair that Fincher would later construct beneath “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” but it’s ravishingly bittersweet all the same, a brief and unlikely love story about the brevity and unlikeliness of all love stories.

Available to stream May 1

2. “Back to the Future” (1985)

Do kids today know “Back to the Future?” Robert Zemeckis’ trilogy-igniting temporal adventure is a millennial favorite that’s still tightly sewn into the fabric of our pop culture, but does it hold up for audiences who aren’t so eager to hop into Doc Brown’s DeLorean, themselves? 

Okay so that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on the Netflix Top 10 to see if we get a clear answer. Regardless, I’d argue that Zemeckis’ most iconic summer blockbuster doesn’t need to lean on nostalgia, which is fitting for a movie about the seductive danger of being stuck in the past. An immaculate piece of popcorn entertainment that’s tighter than a steel drum and pays off like a slot machine, “Back to the Future” is big Hollywood at its best. And while it might fall short of the spectacle that viewers have come to expect from studio blockbusters, it perfectly captures the transportive joy that we’ll all be missing from the multiplexes this month.

Available to stream May 1

1. “Uncut Gems” (2019)

This is how we win.

Available to stream May 25