The best movies new to Netflix, Max, Prime and Hulu this May

May is finally here and with it a list of some of the most anticipated film premieres of the year. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, I saw the television light upAnd Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are this month’s must-see movie releases, but if you’re looking for the best movies new to stream this May on Netflix, Hulu, Max, and more, you’ve come to the right place.

This month we have Jonathan Demme’s classic concert film Stop making senseLana Wachowski’s divisive yet exhilarating book The Matrix ResurrectionsBaz Luhrmann’s maximalist music biopic Elvisand more.

Here are the movies new to streaming services that you should watch this month.

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Editor’s Choice

Stop making sense

Where to see: Max
Genre: Concert film
Director: Jonathan Demme

It’s been 40 years since one of America’s great rock bands rele ased one of the greatest concert films of all time, and now you can stream it in your beautiful home, with your beautiful wife.

Stop making sense is only 88 minutes long, and it’s not just lean in terms of running time; The film contains virtually nothing except performances of 16 songs compiled from recordings from four shows at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles in December 1983. But what is there is all you need.

Director Jonathan Demme (The silence of the Lambs) uses very few crowd shots Stop making sense, which is a stark contrast to most concert films. Combined with the sparse staging designed by frontman David Byrne, this decision puts the focus almost entirely on the nine musicians on stage: the Talking Heads foursome Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison, plus five others – Lynn Mabry, Edna Holt, Bernie Worrell, Steve Scales and Alex Weir. If the music alone isn’t enough to get your blood pumping, the band members’ boundless exuberance will fill your heart with joy and appreciation for this thrilling document of artists at their peak.

I have to admit that I came to my Talking Heads fan base relatively late. As such, it was the very first time I had seen it Stop making sense was actually in theaters last fall thanks to A24’s re-release. The documentary has been carefully restored in 4K resolution, with the audio remixed in Dolby Atmos surround sound Source materials (both video and audio) that were thought to be lost. The film itself has always been timeless; now it looks like that too. —Samit Sarkar

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New on Netflix

The Matrix Resurrections

Genre: Science fiction action
Director: Lana Wachowski
Pour: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

How many creators can go back to their first groundbreaking work decades later and create something new – let alone with a work as groundbreaking as The Matrix? Lana Wachowski’s 2021 sequel to the Matrix trilogy gleefully kicks and screams against the studio franchise system in which it is embedded.

The Matrix Resurrections begins stunningly with Neo (Keanu Reeves) once again trapped in the Matrix, this time in the guise of the Game Award-winning creator of a globally successful video game franchise called The Matrix. His already weak sense of reality becomes distorted after a chance meeting with a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) in a cafe, and things get weird from there.

The Matrix Resurrections ends with love and the power of true connection defeating evil. It’s a fantastic installment in the “I don’t know what’s happening anymore but I don’t care” canon. –Susana Polo

New on Hulu

Elvis

Genre: Biographical drama
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Pour: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge

Baz Luhrmann’s typically maximalist view of Elvis Presley’s life can be divisive, often depending on the viewer’s opinion of Presley as a man – or on his tolerance of Tom Hanks, who plays a goofy voice in heavy latex as his demonic manager, Colonel Tom Parker . It now forms a fascinating (and not entirely contradictory) counterpoint to Sofia Coppola’s much more reserved and nuanced female perspective. Priscilla.

But Luhrmann’s real interest is in Elvis as a performer, and the film’s main asset is a series of rousing, energetic, immersive sound mixes that illustrate Presley’s generational genius for rock ‘n’ roll iconography and stagecraft. It also gave us the rare gift of a brand new, high-profile movie star in Austin Butler – who may have (finally) ditched the accent, but has apparently decided that the wide-eyed Southern gentleman actor is a real looker, and it’s really working for him. – Was Welsh

New at Max

The lighthouse

Genre: Period horror
Director: Robert Eggers
Pour: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karamän

Robert Eggers is expected to return later this year with a remake of the German expressionist horror classic Nosferatu

, with Bill Skarsgård and Nicholas Hoult. Eggers has always had a love for historical horror, as would any fan of his 2015 debut The Witch I can attest to this, but his 2019 follow-up starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson is probably his most psychologically exciting film to date.

Set in the 1890s – and loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s unfinished short story of the same name – The lighthouse The focus is on two lighthouse keepers who are forced to live and work side by side on a small island off New England. The longer their mission lasts, the more the pair’s patience and sanity dwindle, as otherworldly visions and brutal confrontations break out under the ethereal glow of the lighthouse’s beacon. As nightmarish as it is darkly hilarious, The lighthouse is certainly one of the stylistically unique and disturbing horror films of the 2010s. –Toussaint Egan

New to Prime Video

The birdcage

Genre: comedy
Director: Mike Nichols
Pour: Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane

In 1996, when the most successful films about the lives of gay men were tragic dramas about AIDS, The birdcage was like a canary among crows.

Above the titular, bustling drag club in Miami, owner Armand (Robin Williams) and his partner Albert (Nathan Lane), also known as club headliner Starina, live. Together they lovingly raised Armand’s son Val (Dan Futterman), who is now an adult and brings his fiancée (Calista Flockhart) home to meet his parents. The only problem? She wants to bring it with her her Parents, an arch-conservative senator (Gene Hackman) and his wife (Dianne Wiest) and She I think Armand is straight. A farce ensues.

Made in the middle of the AIDS crisis (even Lane was). still in the closet), The birdcage featured a heartbreaking comedy about a low-stakes queer family drama. However, there is a lot of pointed satire in this comedy about mainstream masculinity, gender roles and conservative politics that is still relevant today. —S.P

New on Criterion Channel

Don’t look now

Genre: Horror thriller
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Pour: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason

Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 masterpiece is one of the most haunting films of all time – a dreamlike ghost story set in a foggy, out-of-season Venice that seems to crumble and dissolve before your eyes over the calm waters of the Venice Lagoon. This physical location fits perfectly with the film’s psychological location: the tender but shattered marriage of Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s characters. They are mourning the death of their little daughter in a drowning accident when a medium tells them that the little girl is trying to get through to them and warn them about something. The highly influential non-linear editing oscillates between moody atmosphere, frightening foreboding and one of the most intimate and erotic sex scenes ever filmed. One of the greatest horror films – actually one of the greatest films, period. – O.W