I've scoured the new releases of Amazon's Prime and FreeVee platforms this month to present the best new movies and series the streaming services have to offer.
Amazon's tentpole original release this month is May/December romantic comedy The Idea of You starring Anne Hathaway. Don't sleep on the second season of sci-fi neo-Western Outer Range or the third season of The Outlaws either; both are excellent.
Along with new series and movies, I've highlighted some great older movies coming to Prime this month, including one of my favorites of all time, 1955's All that Heaven Allows, and Amélie, which proves FreeVee has room for twee French cinema, too.
The Idea of You
Based on a novel by Robinne Lee that began as a piece of Harry Styles fan fiction, romantic comedy The Idea of You stars Anne Hathaway as Solène, a 40-year-old single mom who goes to Coachella and unexpectedly falls in love with Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine), the 24-year-old singer in August Moon, a band playing the main stage. The Idea of You is sitting at a 90% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers praising Hathaway's excellent performance, the romantic chemistry between the movie's leads, and the film's easygoing, character-driven comedy.
Starts streaming May 2
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
To accompany the release of The Idea of You, Prime is dropping an older take on the May/December romance genre: 1955's All That Heaven Allows. Jane Wyman plays a rich widow whose life is defined by the opinions of her snooty children and the squares at the country club. Rock Hudson plays the dashing young landscaper/free spirit she falls in love with. Upon its release, All The Heaven Allows was regarded as a well-made melodramatic romance, but director Douglas Sirk was archly satirizing 1950s middle-class mores and Hollywood romance clichés, a piece of cinematic misdirection that wasn't noticed until decades later.
Starts streaming May 1
Outer Range, season 2
The set-up of Outer Range will seem familiar for fans of TV neo-Westerns: Josh Brolin plays Royal Abbot, a Wyoming rancher fighting to protect his land. But the series takes a wildly unexpected turn toward the supernatural when Abbot discovers a mysterious, perfectly round hole on the edge of his property and otherworldly events begin occurring around the ranch. The first season of Outer Range left a lot of unanswered questions. Let's hope season 2's answers live up to the promise of the premise.
Starts streaming May 16
The GOAT
Remember back around 2004, when reality television was everywhere and shows like The Surreal Life had washed-up celebrities live together to see what would happen? The GOAT feels like a throwback to those halcyon days. Hosted by Daniel (Tosh.0) Tosh, The GOAT features 14 "reality superstars" like CJ Franco from F Boy Island and The Bachelorette's Joseph Amabile living together in GOAT Manor and competing for $200,000 and the honor of being named the greatest reality star of all time.
Starts streaming May 8
The Outlaws, season 3
Created by and starring Steven Merchant, co-creator of the U.K. version of The Office, The Outlaws serves up very British comedy with a side order of Christopher Walken. It follows a pack of minor scofflaws from different walks of life who come together to do community service for their crimes. Things get complicated when they discover a cache of hidden money and decide to keep it, angering the drug dealer it belongs to. Now is an excellent time to catch up on the first two seasons if you are unfamiliar.
Starts streaming May 31.
58th Academy of Country Music Awards
All your favorite country stars will be on-hand to do-si-do at the 59th Academy of Country Music Awards. Billed as "Country Music’s Party of the Year," this year's event will be hosted by Reba McEntire, who is also slated to perform new music during the show. It's a really interesting time in country music, as the often-staid genre confronts a new wave of performers. The "entertainer of the year" category, for instance, pits neo-traditionalists like Cody Johnson against new school iconoclasts like face-tattooed, hip-hop influenced artist Jelly Roll.
Starts streaming May 16
Whiplash (2014)
Winner of three Academy Awards, Whiplash tells the story of Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a student drummer who longs for jazz perfection, and his complicated relationship with his ruthless teacher/band leader Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a man who will do anything to get his students to perform at the peak of their talent. A movie that turns music instruction into a thriller with its tight pacing and editing, Whiplash has more than earned its Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%.
Starts streaming May 1
Amélie (2001)
Amazon's FreeVee isn't the first movie platform I go to for French magical-realist cinema, but it is streaming Amélie in May, so maybe I'm wrong. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's portrayal of an awkward Parisian waitress (Audrey Tautou) and her strange hobbies will satiate any desire you have ever had for the twee and magical, but it manages to avoid cramming in so much whimsy that you feel sick.
Starts streaming May 1
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Starring Owen and Luke Wilson and directed by Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket is one of the highlights of the 1990s indie movie craze. The story of a group of eccentric nobodies trying to pull off an ambitious heist, Bottle Rocket's quirky vibe is both of-its-moment and timeless. Even with a relatively low budget and a lack of feature film experience, Wes Anderson's talent is undeniable, and his fingerprints are on every frame of this endearing and strangely affecting movie.
Starts streaming May 1
Last month's picks
Fallout
The Fallout video games are practically revered among gamers, so there will be a lot of critical eyes turned toward Prime’s TV series based on them. Luckily, Fallout’s executive producer Jonathan Nolan knows how to adapt a dystopian science fiction story—he created HBO’s Westworld. In classic Fallout style, the series is set 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse obliterated humanity, and begins with the hero, Lucy (Ella Purnell), stepping out of a Vault-Tec vault into a bombed-out Los Angeles. She’ll encounter gun-slinging ghouls, the power-suited Brotherhood of Steel soldiers, a Mr. Handy robot, and all kinds of “hey, I recognize that!” material from the games. Hit play to see if it lives up to its legacy.
Start streaming April 11
Dinner with the Parents
Don’t discount this original comedy series because it’s on FreeVee. Dinner with the Parents’ cast includes some of the funniest people who have ever been seen on a screen, including Dan Bakkedahl, Michaela Watkins, and Carol Kane—there’s even a YouTube star, Daniel Thrasher, for the kids. Adopted from wildly popular British sit-com Friday Night Dinner, each episode of Dinner with the Parents revolves around a family meal at the eccentric Langer family’s house, a meal that inevitably descends into chaos.
Starts streaming on FreeVee on April 18
Música
Camila Mendes from Riverdale and internet personality Rudy Mancuso star in this Amazon original romantic comedy. Mancuso co-wrote the screenplay and composed the music in Música too. Described as an “untraditional romantic comedy that moves to its own infectious beat,” Música tells the story of Rudy (natch) a charismatic Brazilian street performer with synesthesia—he experiences everyday noises as music. Rudy’s directionless life is turned inside-out when he meets Isabella (Mendes), a beautiful woman who works at a fish market and seems to understand him much better than his girlfriend.
Starts streaming April 4
THEM: The Scare
The second season Little Marvin’s horror anthology series is set in 1991 Los Angeles and stars Deborah Ayorinde as Dawn Reeve, an LAPD detective investigating a particularly grisly series of murders. With the city teetering on the edge of chaos, Reeve tracks down the killer, but begins to suspect that something worse than human evil may be behind the crimes, and it’s targeting her and her family. THEM: The Scare also stars Pam Grier as Athena Reeve, and that’s reason enough to check it out.
Starts streaming April 25
How to Date Billy Walsh
If you’re in the mood for a teenage love story, check out How to Date Billy Walsh. Set at a posh British boarding school, Billy Walsh tells the story of Archie’s lifelong crush on his best friend Amelia (Charithra Chandran). Just when Archie is ready to tell his pal how he feels, Amelia meets Billy Walsh, a handsome, charismatic American transfer student, and she falls hard. Complications, as they say, ensue, as Amelia tries to date Billy and Archie tries to secretly keep them apart. It may not be the most original story for a teen comedy, but it’s presented here with sincerity and wit.
Starts streaming April 5
Going Home with Tyler Cameron
This reality/renovation show chronicles former Bachelorette and current handsome boy Tyler Cameron’s quest to start a construction business in his hometown of Jupiter, Florida. We are meant to believe that Cameron has always dreamed of working in construction, and now that he no longer stars in a top-rated television show where a gaggle of attractive women compete for his affection, he is finally free to pursue his real passion: renovating other people’s houses. Each of the eight episodes of Going Home features a remodeled home, and the series also boasts appearances from reality TV stars like Matt James, Rachael Kirkconnell, Jason Tartick, and Hannah Brown.
Ong Bak - The Muay Thai Warrior (2003)
I sometimes forget how great martial arts movies can be, often for years, but then I’ll watch something like Ong-Bak and go, “wait, why do I ever watch any other kind of movies?” Tony Jaa turns in a performance on the level of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan with his portrayal of Ting, who sets out from his small village to retrieve a stolen statue of Buddha. That plot, though, is secondary to the fight sequences. Shot in pre-digital, no-wire-work times, Jaa and the rest of the cast’s stunts and choreography will have you saying “Goddamn” or shaking your head in pure disbelief.
Starts streaming April 1
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool. A screening of Jesus Christ Superstar is an Easter tradition in my house, and it should be in yours too. The story of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus told through hippie-era acid rock, Jesus Christ Superstar works as both campy rock opera and as straight story-telling—the source material is pretty solid. Packed with great music by Andrew Lloyd Weber and featuring performances from talented long-hairs like Ted Neeley as Jesus Christ and Carl Anderson as Judas, Jesus Christ Superstar is so great, it almost makes me forget I’m an atheist.
Starts streaming April 1
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
If you’re the kind of person who can separate an artist from their work, watch (or re-watch) Rosemary's Baby, a masterpiece horror movie from director Roman Polanski. It’s strange that a criminal and reprobate like Polanski could have made a movie as progressive and pro-feminist as Rosemary’s Baby, but art is sometimes weird like that. Rosemary’s Baby’s pregnant-with-the-devil story works on the surface as a creepy slow-burn suspense/horror tale, but underneath is a scathing critique of the patriarchy, with powerless Rosemary systemically victimized and violated by everyone and everything in her supposedly perfect life. It’s still hard-hitting 55 years later, and it features stand-out performances from Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon.
Starts streaming April 1
The Holdovers (2023)
I can’t say enough positive things about The Holdovers. A character-driven drama directed by the great Alexander Payne, The Holdovers stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, a hardass classics instructor at a New England boarding school. Tasked with babysitting a crew of poor-little-rich-boys with nowhere to go over Christmas vacation, Hunham strikes up an unlikely friendship with troubled-but-intelligent delinquent Angus Tully (played by Dominic Sessa) and the school's cook, Mary Lamb (a role for which actor Da'Vine Joy Randolph won an Academy Award). It’s the kind of movie that you know will make you cry about five minutes in, but the tears are honest, man.
Starts streaming April 29